The hunter brought them to a clearing north of the hometree, ribbons of smoke rose from below the crowns of the trees there, tainting the soft blue of the sky. Somewhere in the thicket of it there was a waterfall. It roared and thrashed as the water fell against the rocks there, pushing up mountains of yellowed foam. Alva remembers her Na'vi aunt having brought her there once when she was still learning how to fish.

"Did you bring your bow?" Tsu'tey whispered.

Alva shook her head. "I left it with Tru'iel for polishing. Did he tell you what happened?"

"A pack of skypeople," he spat out the word, "attacked one of our fishing spots down the river."

"Children?"

"No."

"Students?"

"Many." Tsu'tey said, hard eyes set firmly in a glare, fingers twitching to grab one of the arrows from the quiver on his back. They were freshly fletched and dipped in enough neurotoxin to stop any of those humans with a single arrow.

A sharp sting of pain and a lazy dribbling of red from crescent shaped marks made her relax her clenched hands, instead moving to fiddle with the bracelets. The clear 'clink' as the various metals and woodworks collided let her focus on the absence of screams and fired bullets.

A typical RDA sanctioned attack would consist of a group of brawny soldiers either in exopacks or AMP-suits attacking whomever they came upon with extreme prejudice, their weapon of choice almost always a gun as the natives were far superior in hand-to-hand combat and their connection with Eywa allowed them to maneuver themselves around their environment in ways that were physically impossible for the earth born men.

"Are they hiding?" She asked the hunter, a sliver of hope threading through the words. There was no disturbance reverberating through her bond with Eywa, no white hot flashes of pain to her very soul.

"Yes, in the trees." The hunter said with a curt nod to one of the taller and significantly sturdier trees.

A vague blob of blue popped up from under a large overhanging leaf, waving at them before disappearing under it again. Alva moved to wave back when Tsu'tey, without tearing his eyes away from the treeline, pushed her hand back down followed by a whack of his tail against the back of her thigh.

"No," he told her in English. "They will see."

"You should speak English more. It's nice. I like it." She said while rubbing the sore spot.

He scoffed, ears touching the sides of his head. He struck her again, and again when she protested, and a third time when she went to hit him back.

"Fine!" She turned her nose in the air, arms crossed against her chest. "Be boring, see if I care."

The blackened bone hilt of Tsu'tey's dagger was offered to her by the warrior himself, she knew not if this was the beginnings of an unspoken apology or a weapon for the upcoming fight. It was difficult to tell with 'Sey, his true thoughts often went unspoken and instead channeled into gifts or a slight shimmer in the corners of his eyes. Nevertheless, she accepted it with a bright grin full of teeth, all of which ached to be reunited with his skin. She inclined her head and pressed two fingers against the curve of his bicep as a silent 'thank you', momentarily tracing the lines of the lean muscles there.

Tsu'tey nodded at the warrior and the trip slowly crept forward, inching closer to the forest. Alva wasn't sure what her warrior was intending or if she was about to take the last step off the cliff and join him in the never-ending cycle of pain and suffering. He had grown up with the weight of a million souls on his shoulders, taking their grief when they could no longer carry it on their own, but Alva hadn't. She had been left with the memories of an entire people when her village was destroyed and along her path to her she had dropped almost all of them, leaving their customs, their language behind.

They made it to the forest unnoticed.

"I will go left, Filä will go right." Tsu'tey whispered to her, pushing some of the loose braids behind her ear, thumb straggling behind to press against the softness of her cheek. Their affection was still so new-- something not yet admitted out loud in the ways that mattered. "You will guide the students back to the kelutral. I will meet you there."

She nodded, though she didn't want to let him out of her sight. "Be strong, my warrior."

He nodded, searching her eyes for something before both he and Filä left for their separate directions. Alva swallowed harshly, feeling like the big lump was stuck there, before moving towards the tree she had seen the child in.

The deeper into the patch of thick, dense forest she went, the less sound she heard, like someone had slapped a pair of noise-cancellers over her ears. But the whirring of a machine lifting its leg and the loud thud followed by shaking was unmistakable even amidst the confusion. She wasn't alone and she cursed herself for having forgotten the very reason they were there.

Alva pressed herself against the nearest tree, holding her breath as the RDA soldier moved past. It was only when the sound had grown distant that she pulled herself up the thin branches of the tree, quickly jumping to a neighboring one when it complained loudly under her weight.

Imitating a bird, she called for the lost students. The sound echoed around the forest so there was no way they couldn't hear her, and it was one taught to all of the children of the clan in case they needed help -- their version of the SOS if you will. A mere second or two later came the answering call. Three lighter callings of the same kind followed by three smaller na'vi heads popping up from behind the leaves of a tree some distance away.

She called to them again to let them know she heard them and they disappeared under the cover once more. Alva rushed down the tree, free-falling longer than she should've but she was growing reckless as she made her way in the direction of the children. She still kept her ears open for any signs of the gun-carrying idiots wandering the forest but she didn't stop nearly as often as she did in the beginning.

It wasn't long before she found the tree the children were hiding in, and as relief filled her aching heart and she braced herself for another long jump, a large hand wrapped around her tail and pulled her out of the tree she was in.

She fell to the ground with a painful thud, white hot flashes of pain radiating from her pulsing ribs to the middle of her back. The tips of her toes tingled when she tried to force herself up on all-fours.

"What have we got here?" A southern american accent rumbled from above her, a slight mechanical undertone to it due to the filters. "If it isn't our neighboring indigenous."

Alva coughed as the man curled a hand of the AMP around her narrow waist, tightening his hold when she spluttered for breath. Her fingers dug into the metal trapping her, scratching against the dips and crevices of it in hopes of finding a weakness, but the soldier only laughed as she, in her desperation, drew blood from her frantic scratching, tightening his hold even more as she lost nail after nail when he moved in certain ways that trapped them there.

"Let me go!" She screamed at him, abandoning her scratching to pound on the glass dome protecting him from them. "Let me go!"

"Not a chance in hell, sweetheart." The man shook his head.

Alva twitched in his hold, kicking at whatever she could find, screaming 'let me go' over and over again as her blows increased in power. But nothing was enough to break through neither glass nor enforced metal legs, earning herself bloody knuckles and a numb foot in the process. As her efforts dwindled, his hold tightened until she could hear the creaking of the bones there, a paralyzing, cold sort of fear taking hold of her.

Her head lolled to the side, black splotches dancing on the edges of her vision as the man's hold didn't let up. Had she not been so weakened by her time away she might've put up more of a fight, but she had spent too much of her energy taking shortcuts in the trees without paying attention to what was happening below. The trees are safe, but not always, she echoed a thought she had long ago.

Suddenly the head of an arrow pushed through the man's chest, making him let go of her in his shock. The man turned around to face... Tsu'tey who promptly fired another arrow into the man's skull, sneering as the big machine tipped over, the slight twitching of arms and legs the only sign of the man being alive before that too stopped.

Alva's eyes widened. "B-behind you," she rasped out, a bloody hand desperately trying to point at the RDA soldier sneaking up behind him. But Tsu'tey wasn't listening to her hoarse warnings, too honed into her injuries and chalking up the crunching of foliage beneath a heavy foot to be the sound of the children climbing down the tree to them.

In an act of desperation, Alva grabbed Tsu'tey's knife from its scabbard on the side of her thigh, and with the last of her strength she hurled it towards the exo-pack wearing soldier behind him. She held her breath. It missed. Alva wasn't sure if it was disappointment or relief that flowed through her then, but she didn't care to find out, it was enough to alert Tsu'tey to the danger.

Tsu'tey's eyes widened as well and he twirled around to see what she threw it at, snarling in the back of his throat when another human took from behind him. He grabbed his knife and in one graceful movement had pushed it straight into the man's heart, twisting it with cruel callousness when blood dribbled out of the man's mouth and onto his hands.

"Ai, kalweyaveng." He spat on the soldier, pulling his knife clean from the corpse before hurrying over to Alva.

She had managed to push herself up against a tree by the time he reached her. "Hello, my warrior," Alva greeted him with a bright smile, pushing through the pain. "I thought you were supposed to go left."

"I did." He said. "Left led me here."

He grabbed her by the shoulders, moving her as slowly as possible so that he could cradle her against his chest, her nose resting against his sternum. The warm breaths dancing across the skin there as a constant reminder of her presence when the present started mixing with the past. Tense silence turned into loud screaming and the echoes of bullets having been fired, flawless skin marked only by bruises turned darker and covered in blood.

"I'll be right as rain after a week's sleep." She managed to chuckled before a sharp bout of coughs rattled through her chest, tearing him from the vision. "Or two." Alva added, fingers angling his face down to rest on hers.

"You were supposed to use the knife, little leaf, not throw it away." He muttered against her hair, letting himself be guided to where she wanted him to be. "I had another."

"Silly, silly, 'Sey," she giggled softly against him, "I was always going to be fine with you here. The knife was so you would look behind you. You didn't listen to my warning," she scolded him.

"I could not hear it."

"Should ask Ngeha to look at your ears then. I'm sure even Grace in her lab heard me shouting at you."

There was a slight shift and then he detached himself from her, his large yellow eyes not missing a single new injury on her body; every new bruise marring the length of her torso, each torn nail, and every speck of blood tainting the blue. But he did not need more sorrow and regret in his heart and soul, and so Alva moved through the pain, standing up in front of him.

"Let's go home." She told him, offering him the better of her hands, biting down the wince as he grabbed onto it.

The children made the final climb down their tree and gathered around the pair, whining softly at the sight of her, to which she whacked them all with her tail when they began fussing around her in one big circle of small hands and wide, sorrowful eyes.

"Home," she repeated, pushing the leader of the small group out of the forest with her hands firmly placed on his shoulders. Long since used to pain, Alva was no novice at pushing it down into the dark depths of her soul until it was time to drown in it.

They were almost at the kelutral when her legs gave out and she fell to the ground in one lifeless heap as she was pulled from her Avatar body. The last thing she heard was the shocked gasp of the children and Tsu'tey before it all went black.

Alva came to with a loud gasp, her hands clutching the shirt above her pounding heart. She barely managed to lean over the pod before sour vomit rushed up her throat. One of the assistants rushed over with a bucket but was a second too late and ended up with her hands covered as proof of her effort. She backed off, looking a bit green herself now.

"W-what?" Alva croaked, pressing her eyes shut. "Why?"

She leant her face on the cold surface of the pod, phantom pain from her Avatar injuries mixing with the nausea and mind-shattering headache. The cool touch helped some but just as quickly as it soothed the burning heat it was gone, head pulled back by a firm hold on her hair.

"Alva," someone was cradling her face in their hands, thumbs brushing against her cheekbones. "Hey, hey, Alva. What's wrong with her?!"

"We told you not to pull the plug, you absolute moron," a female voice sneered. "You're lucky there won't be any permanent damage with the way you tore her back here. The human brain is so incredibly sensitive, you can't just yank at it when you want it somewhere else!"

"Are you okay, Alva?" He asked her.

She scoffed. "No. I feel like my head is exploding."

"I'm sorry but we need to talk."

Alva forced her eyes to flutter open. A blob of pale skin and light hair moved in front of her, something shapeless and without a clear face. Her vision spun and she groaned. The shape moved close again, she saw him touching her before she felt it. It felt familiar but her jumbled thoughts couldn't yet separate this world from the other, an uncomfortable pressure building in her lower back from where her tail was supposed to be squished.

"Parker?" She asked, squinting.

Her brother nodded, the vague shapes melting together and forming the body she knew to be his. Then her eyes danced over to the redheaded woman fuming behind him, the butt of a cigarette clenched tight between her fingers, the end glowing faintly with light.

"Why is Grace here?"

"Why do you think?" Grace huffed. "Max sent me the report on your little after-hours project. Really? Did you have to antagonize him?" The woman's words were harsh but Alva thought she spied the undercurrent of pride to them.

Alva chuckled. "Mama always said to throw away toys I wasn't using, and Quaritch has more than enough spares hidden away."

Parker pulled at his hair. "Never mind the AMP suits! This isn't about them, this is about you and your little alien boyfriend murdering two of the SecOps securing that sector. Really, Alva? The suits I can explain away as technical malfunctions, but this?"

"Couldn't this have waited until tonight?"

"No, no it couldn't!" He denied. "You told me you were safe out there. You promised me that you would stay out of danger. That was our deal. That was the only reason I let you leave this place."

"Only reason." She repeated, voice flat. "I would have been safe with my warrior if you had not sent those soldiers after him. The only danger for me out there are your dogs."

Parker pinched the bridge of his nose. "Not the point, Alva. Look," he leaned forward, pointing his finger at her, "we had a deal, you and I. I let you leave the base in your Avatar body and you stay safe. I've been more than generous with this. You said you wanted to leave with Grace, I said as long as you bring one of my men with you. You said you wanted to live as one of them, I said yes but...?"

"I would come straight home if I got injured." She finished the sentence. "I didn't think it applied to incidents of your own design, brother."

"I gave you one finger and you took my whole hand."

"Eywa provides."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He asked. "Alva? What's that supposed to mean? Hey, you, bring me the yellow container on my desk. Now." Parker snapped his finger at one of the tech assistants who had followed him down into the linking room. The assistant nodded and rushed out of the room in a blur of dark clothing and obnoxious pink hair.

"No, wait, hey, what?" Grace protested. "Now what does that mean? She's not getting back on those drugs, Parker. You saw what they did last time."

Alva rocked back and forth before sitting up straight in the pod. Her arms shook with the effort, threatening to give in at any moment. She twitched her toes in the yellow socks but when the tingling didn't fade, she hopped down. Stumbling a bit, she managed to steady herself with a hand thrown out to grab onto one of the rolling tables.

"Bye!" She limped away from her brother and Grace, the table acting as a walking support when her legs kept shaking; not quite ready to bear her full weight again.

Parker sighed. "Get back here."

"Nope! Goodbye! Eywa bless you all!"

"Alva!" Grace slung an arm around her waist. "What are you doing?" She hissed when the two were a bit away from her brother. "You're doing this now? You're going to get your ass sent home on the next rotation."

"He won't." She said, "where one goes, the other follows."

"I think you give your brother too much credit on this." Grace warned.

Alva giggled. "I know, but as soon as I admit to myself who he truly is, all will come crashing down. I think I shall enjoy having a brother for a bit longer, even if he is flawed."

"Flawed is an understatement." Grace muttered, guiding Alva and her creaking table out of the linking room and into the lab. Max was overseeing some cacti-like plants being transferred into bigger pots and Alex was laying face down on the floor in the corner.

"It's complicated."

Trudy joined them as they walked into the outer corridor. "Where we going, boss?"

"Selfridge has gone too far so we're getting the hell out of here. Take us home, Trudy."