Ma Tsawke

Chapter Fourteen

Selfridge watches a video feed of the destruction on one of the monitors. Max and Norm stare in shock, both saddened by the sight.

"Pull the plug." A trooper crosses to the console and grabs the handle of the master breaker making Norm shout out in protest, punching a guy who got close to Jake's link but he's restrained by two other men. The strings are cut. Jake flops to the ground, limp.

Elsewhere in the smoky hell, Grace slumps unconscious. The crying kids pull at her. Mo'at, leading a group of Omaticaya comes upon the scene. She hesitates but the crying children make her relent.
"Bring her. "

Jake sees darkness. Then the top clamshell of Jake's unit is yanked upward and troopers who grab him zip-tie his wrists.

A grieving Tanhì stands with Mo'at, holding onto each other along with the Omaticaya refugees. Two hunters pull Grace's avatar on a travois. They watch as the flames burn like a funeral pyre below. A great wall of smoke darkens the landscape.

A clammy hand grips her leg as little cries sound in her ears. Tarsem clutches at her loincloth, ears lowered at the sight of his burning home. Strapping her bow around her chest, she picks him up, the crying boy immediately wrapping his arms around her to cry into her neck.

"Where are your parents' little one?" The boy cries harder and she rubs his back soothingly.

"Sempu- sempu is gone!" Tears spring in her eyes again as she looks around for his mother. Spotting her looking around with two smaller children in her arms, she looks panicked for her son.

She spots Tanhì holding him and releases a breath, coming to kiss his forehead as he reunites with what's left of his family. Tanhì continues to carry him seeing his younger siblings clutching onto his mother.

She walks to the front of her grieving people, sending one last look at what was once her home, now home to lost family and sullied memories, both burning to the ground.

"Come my people. We must leave this place."

Jake, Grace and Norm are in a common holding cell. They sit, staring in silence. Too wired to sleep, too emotionally drained to move.

"They never wanted us to succeed." Grace stares at nothing, eyes red from crying. She glances at Jake who was unmoving, slumped against the wall his bed lays against with red rimmed eyes.

"Tanhì get to you huh?" She attempts to give a teasing smile but it comes off as a wobbly grimace. He looks at her and his eyes give him away.

He's hurt beyond belief and he didn't know how or if he could fix it.

"She doesn't mean whatever she says, she just gets too consumed with her emotions sometimes, though no matter how justifiable it stings bad." Her voice cracks at the end thinking about Sylwanin. She failed her and now she failed Neytiri. How cruel faith had to be.

Meanwhile Jake was in his own inner battle. He came to Pandora for a fresh start, he'd get his legs back and move on with his life back on Earth, that was the plan. Nowhere did it include meeting aliens and feeling for them.

Not the people, not some dumb tree and not a fierce woman. Everything came at a price he supposed. Happiness isn't cheap. He's brought out of wallowing as Trudy approaches along the corridor, pushing a stainless steel trolley.