Na'vi...A Tsu'tey FF

Log Entry: 13

Nyami was waking up in the Link. It was as dark as a coffin. She pushes the lid off, letting in light, and lies there. She looks toward Jake. He looks pale and haggard, with a scraggly beard. It was hard to believe it's only been three months. Jake sat in front of the video log camera, late at night. This is many log entries later. He has lost a lot of weight. He looks like a junkie watching a test pattern.
Jake spoke to the lens, "I can barely remember my old life. I'm not sure who I am anymore."

Under a sky of thunderheads, the forest is a dark wall beyond the fence. Selfridge, wearing an exopack, tees up while Grace, Nyami and Jake approach from the direction of the Ops Center. "Good of you to stop by. How's it going out there? Our blue friends all packed up yet?" Selfridge swings his DRIVER with good form. Nyami's face scrunches us. The Na'vi had to pack?
"See, I keep hooking it. It's the damn pack." The ball drops into the mud just past a marker which reads 220. A trooper walks over to retrieve it. Nyami scoffs at him.
"The low gravity and the high air density cancel out so-" Selfridge goes on to continue.
"You called us back to report -- you want to hear it or not?"
"Go ahead."
"Jake is making incredible progress, years worth in just a few months. But -- we need more time." Grace explained. Nyami was completely lost.
"Not what I was hoping to hear." Selfridge admits. It starts to rain. Selfridge calmly pulls an umbrella from his golf bag and snaps it open.
"Parker, it's their ancestral home. They've lived there since before human history began. You can spare them a few more weeks." Grace argued.
"This thing is inevitable. What does it matter when it happens? I'm sorry, Dr. Augustine. You're out of time." Selfridge leaves them standing there to get drenched. Nyami turns to them both.
"What the hell was that about?" She demands.
"Selfridge wants the clan to move temporarily so that he can dig up the unobtainium below home tree." Jake lied. Grace glared at him.
"But the Na'vi won't move. It's their home, besides they'll destroy home tree. Why are they coming to you with this Jake?" Nyami crossed her arms in question.
"I'm the only one as close to the clan as you are. They wanted to know a bit more about the history of the tree, hence why Grace is here." Jake falsely explained again. Jake had never lied to Nyami before. He never had a reason too so she believed him. She sighed before walking away. Grave turned to Jake and slapped him.
"Now that was the stupidest thing you could've done, Marine." Grace scolded.

Strange horizontal lightning branches through the floating mountains, twisted by the magnetic fields. The sky is black and heavy with clouds. Jake was gulping black coffee like a tequila shot, looking pretty strung out. Grace is smoking furiously.
"Jake, I can't allow this. You're just not strong enough."
"It's the last door, I'm going through it. You can help me or get out of the way." Jake pushes past her toward the corridor. Grace grabbed him.
"Will you listen to me? Sometimes the Na'vi themselves die in these vision quests. The venom takes you to the edge of death. And the psychoactive alkaloid in the worm, we have no idea what that'll do in an avatar brain." Jake breaks free and wheels away, down the corridor. Grace follows Jake as he crosses to the link.
A sheet of lightning flashes across the sky outside. Norm is initializing the Link.
"Calibrating. Thirty seconds." Norm informed. Nyami was already inside her link. Jake and Her would be doing the dream hunt together. The final part of becoming part of the people. Grace puts her hands on his shoulders.
"No matter what you prove out there, you are still in here. Right here."
"I have to go all the way to become one of them-"
"Goddammit, Jake, you can never be one of them!" Grace yells. Norm and Nyami look up, startled at the vehemence in Grace's voice. "Our life out there takes millions of dollars of machinery to sustain. You visit and you leave."
During this, Jake pulls himself from his wheelchair, levering himself into the Link, hauling his useless legs inside.
Grace's tone softened, "You can never truly be with her." Jake stops, pinioned by the truth. He suddenly seems very lost.
"You know why I'm here? Because Quaritch sent me." Jake says, neglecting everyone's looks. "What?" Norm asked.
"That's right, to embed with the Omaticaya. To find out how to screw them out of their home. By deceit or by force, he didn't care. And if it turns out to be force, then how best to do it."
Norm is in shock. But Grace is eerily calm as was Nyami.
"And what about now, Jake?" Grace asks. Jake looks to his best friend.
"I'm not that guy any more." Grace nods. She's been on his journey every step of the way.
"I know."
"But if I tell Quaritch the truth, he yanks me out. I will never see her again. And if I tell her the truth, the clan throws me out. That's if they don't cut my heart out and show it to me." Jake looks hopelessly at Nyami. In his own perfect Hell.
"They won't understand what you've done." Norm says.
"They don't even have a word for "lie." They had to learn it from us." Nyami hears the tiniest crack in his voice. Grace sees he is on the verge of tears. Lost and alone, between worlds.
"I know. I taught it to them." Grace says. J
"Grace. I've gotta go. They're waiting." Jake pleads.
"Link is ready." Norm calls.
Grace stops Jake as he tries to close the lid. Jake. "You can't carry this burden much longer." She tells him.
"It's okay. Mo'at says an alien mind probably can't survive the Dream Hunt anyway."
Grace closes the lid. It feels like closing a coffin. She watches his psionic patterns aligning to his avatar, somewhere out in the night. Nyami was still sitting up in her link, processing everything Jake said. A single tear fell from her eye.
"Nyami, he's different now." Grace tried to reason.
"Doesn't change what he did. Doesn't undo all the damage he's done." Nyami said as she closed her clamshell.