Calm Before The Storm, Jake Sully

015, The Truth.

♯┆calm before the storm .ᐟ
━━━━━━━━━━

    "I can't allow this, Jake!" Grace announced. The Uniltaron was dangerous. Much more dangerous than fighting alongside Ikran. Jake was becoming infuriated with Grace because this was the last thing he needed. His last passage into becoming one of them. To be with her. And Grace was not allowing him to do it.

"You're not strong enough, Marine..." Grace had seen the Uniltaron before. She is terrified of it and what it can do. "It's the last door. I'm going through with it. You can help me, or get out of the way," Jake scoffed at her. He didn't understand where Grace was coming from. All Jake saw was the last passage. Becoming one of them.

"Will you listen to me?" Grace shouted as Jake began to push himself through a tight gap, "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 warm, we have no idea what that'll do in an Avatar brain."

But, Jake didn't care. Those words didn't seem to activate inside of his human brain. "You told me science is about not knowing," Was all Jake could respond to Grace.

He was naive. Stupid. Arrogant. "No matter what you prove out there, you are still in here," Grace needed to remind him. It didn't matter what he did out there because his true form was here. It was this. She leaned down to take his shoulder, "Right here."

"I have to do this..." Jake looked up at Grace who became impatient with his attitude, "Become one of them."

And that was when Grace snapped, "Damnit, Jake! You can never be one of them! Our life out there takes billions of dollars of machinery to sustain. You visit, and you leave." Nothing mattered to him anymore. This wasn't his true world. Earth was no longer part of his plan to return. Pandora was his home now. That is how it all felt.

But, when she noticed Jake's face, realisation crossed her mind. A small part of Jake was doing this for himself, but the larger part was doing this for her— for Denahi.

"You can never be with her..." Grace announced. Jake stopped moving and stared up at Grace, despising the truth that had fell from her mouth. A truth he didn't want to admit. Denahi was the only one keeping him sane. Sane from being transferred from this useless body to someone he liked.

"You know why I'm here?" He asked Grace, "Quaritch sent me. He wanted me to embed with the Omatikaya people. Find out how to screw them out of their home. By deceit or force, it didn't matter. And if it turned out by force, how best to do it."

"And what about now, Jake?" In the beginning, Jake felt like that was the best. To get his human legs back and working again. A selfish reasoning to such destruction.

But now, he had fallen for one of them. He had fallen for being one of them. "I'm not that guy anymore..." Jake whispered.

He changed everything for her.

He disregarded his normal life back on Earth for her. "I know," Grace replied with a soft smile to his words. She knew that. "If I tell Quaritch the truth, he yanks me out and I never see Denahi again," Here, he was finally admitting it to himself. It wasn't all for him. It was mostly for her, "If I tell Denahi the truth, the clan throw me out. I lose her. Either way, Grace, I lose her."

He couldn't imagine a life without Denahi. From the moment he met her, the moment he saw those doe eyes begging to keep him quiet about her whereabouts. He knew he was in trouble. But how much trouble?

"They won't understand what you've done," Norm said to Jake. He nodded his head, Jake's eyes filling with tears. "They don't even know a word for lie. They had to learn it from us," Jake mentioned which made the situation much more worse.

"I know... I taught them," Learning that the Na'vi don't even know what the word lie is made this hundred times more harder. Because Jake knew what he did was wrong, but the Na'vi will think much worse.

Jake looked up at Grace once again, a more pleading look on his features, "I've gotta go, Grace. They're waiting for me." Grace thought about it for a moment. This could ruin everything for them, for Jake. He could destroy his whole Avatar and everything he had completed with it. But, he wanted to do this and she needed to respect that, "You can't carry this burden for much longer."

"That's fine. Mo'at said an alien brain can't survive anyways..." He was still going to take that chance— anything for her, right?