Yes, as if the Night Na’vi weren’t mysterious enough already. I mean, on top of tricking the RDA into thinking that they don’t even exist for over a CENTURY, they have an evolutionary adaptation like THAT?
Man, Grace is probably pissed that she wasn’t alive for that one.
But this is also why they say, “Hunger is the bane of every Night Na’vi’s existence.” It can be pretty exhausting when your stomach is only so big, but you still need to get your daily nutrition.
But this new knowledge sparks even more questions. Why do they go back to their homelands if there’s nothing for them there? How do they survive it for 3 months? And why is it whenever they return, they greet the other clans with bountiful and unique plants and substances?
The other clans would try to go there with the Night Na’vi, but venturing there without your own Night Ikran is virtually a death sentence. And the only way you can get a Night Ikran is by going to the Pulse…which is in the Night Na’vi homelands. It’s a pretty vicious cycle.
That and nothing can prepare you for the things you’ll see there…things that no one can EVER unsee.
Do y’all ever think about how all the recom soldiers came from a na’vi woman’s eggs (and they’re probably all related🫢) and how the mother was probably a woman kidnapped by the RDA 🙁 and how Quaritch might be related to Jake from their mothers eggs 👩👦👦or am I just fucking stupid🥸 i’m genuinely curious please lmk🧐
Food? Nursing Ja back to health and all that that entails? Lyle's pov if that needs a warning lol
As promised, Chapter 20! The last of the double update. We're checking in with the boys as Ma Miles progresses, waiting patiently for their roads to we've together again. Who knows, maybe they'll all see each other soon? Anyway, please leave me a comment and make me the happiest writer in the world :3
(If you want to be tagged with the updated chapters, please leave your @ myusername in the comments!)
Previous chapter | Masterpost | Chapter 21
Getting Ja off the beach had been a nightmare. Lyle didn’t have any memories, old or new, of anything being more difficult. Leaving Mansk with Ja, he had gathered everything he could think of to make a gurney for their friend, only for the fucking weaving to cripple them. Y/n had taught them all how to weave the leaves of trees, just in case they ever wanted to settle down or whatever, under the disguise of making daybeds. Well, Lyle figured he should have paid better attention.
Luckily for them all, Ja had paid attention and through his wheezing breaths managed to guide them through it until Mansk got the gist of it and told Ja to save his strength. Mansk had the worst take on teaching Lyle had ever had the displeasure to be under, but in the end, they managed to make the gurney. To everyone’s surprise, it actually held Ja’s weight when they lifted it between them.
Navigating the jungle had been another problem entirely. With the stiff gurney between them, moving through the trees and undergrowth was a slow journey, making them easy targets for the natives, if there were any of those around. By the time the eclipse started bathing the jungle in its dangerous shadows, Lyle reckoned they hadn’t moved far at all. He could still hear the sea even though they couldn’t see it. Turning to stare at Mansk, he saw the same thought reflecting back at him.
“When the eclipse comes, you must find shelter,” Your voice rings through Lyle’s head as the shadows grow deeper and deeper. He knows they’ll have to find shelter soon. These were new territories, with new animals and potentially new threats all around them. Stopping, Lyle takes a short moment to assess their surroundings.
“We gotta get him up, man,” The sigh that leaves him is one of utter defeat. They should have stopped an hour ago, he knew that, but he had hoped that… If he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t know what he hoped for. For Quaritch to find them? Hell, the bastard was probably dead at the bottom of the sea if that animal had her way.
“Okay,” Mansk hums, and just for a moment, Lyle thanks his lucky stars that it’s Mansk he’s stranded with. Anyone else would have questioned his leadership, but Mansk had always been easy like this, always trusting that somehow, they would get wherever safely. They didn’t have time to braid a rope, hell, they didn’t even have the material for it.
“Got any cord on you?” Hopefully, Mansk would carry a bit of cord, a bracelet, anything. But as Lyle watches Mansk pat down his body, checking pockets and whatnot, that hope diminishes rapidly. “Fuck…”
They would have to find another way to get Ja up into the tree. Desperately looking around them, Lyle didn’t see anything they could use as a rope. The leaves of the underbrush were too brittle, something in the back of his mind helpfully told him. Probably something Y/n had mentioned while she taught them about the flora. Just then, Lyle watches as Mansk’s eyes grow big, only for the man to quickly step up to Ja and start rummaging through his pockets. A few seconds later, a wide grin spreads across Mansk’s face and right then, it’s the most beautiful sight Lyle has ever seen in his life. Well…
“I could kiss your ugly mug, Ja!” Lyle chuckles as he helps Mansk unbraid the wristbands that they had all refused to wear before leaving the Bridgehead.
Ja just rolls his eyes the best he could before wincing. Looking up at Mansk, Lyle saw that the younger man already had his eyes on him, the same worried expression painted on his face. It made them work that much faster and in no time, they had managed to unbraid the twelve wristbands Ja had carried with him. It made for the best fucking rope ever.
“So uh, you gonna do it or am I?” Mansk just looks at him as if the answer was somehow obvious, which in hindsight it kind of was.
Sighing at himself, Lyle starts climbing, looking out for the clearest route to hoist Ja up with. They would have to do it in different places, the branches of the tree changing the further up he climbed. Backing down again, he found the easiest place to balance Ja’s gurney, the length fitting perfectly between two branches. Maybe, if they were lucky, it would be enough for tonight.
“Ready?” He spoke as loudly as he dared to, relieved to see Mansk nod his head.
Letting down the paracord, he watches as Mansk ties a sturdy knot to the two cords he had attached to the gurney. Only when Mansk pulls on the paracord, does Lyle start pulling. For once in his life, he’s grateful for wearing tactical gloves as even with the layer, the cord bites into his skin. Ja was heavier than he had thought.
Mansk climbs below Ja’s gurney, making sure it doesn’t spin too much, pulling it out of the way of obstacles as Lyle struggles. Eventually, when they’re high enough off the ground, does Mansk climb higher to help him hoist Ja up. There’s a shit-eating grin on Mansk’s face, but the man doesn’t say anything as they get Ja’s gurney up to rest between the branches. Winded, they both sit down against the trunk of the tree, breathing heavily.
“What have you been feeding him, bro?” Lyle wheezes exaggeratedly, earning a hard punch to his bicep. “Dude, not cool,”
Mansk only chuckles, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he does so. It was still so weird to see him without his sunglasses, but at the same time, it was kind of nice to see what the other man was thinking. Because shit, was Mansk easy to read without his sunglasses. For a split second Lyle wonders if that was the reason Quaritch gave them all sunglasses, to help Mansk blend in. It was a nice thought, one that didn’t necessarily fit Quaritch’s narration, but still.
“Here,” Mansk hums, offering a fruit that looked oddly like a greenish testicle. “It’s a yovo fruit,”
“I knew that,” Lyle defends, immediately.
He hadn’t known that.
“How are we gonna feed him if he can’t chew?” Lyle asks Mansk as he digs into the juicy fruit, humming at the sweetness of it. “Where’d you find these?”
Mansk points to a tree just off the path that they had taken and Lyle winces. As their new leader, he should have noticed that, should have provided, just like Quaritch did. Hell, Quaritch would have never overlooked the fruit tree if he was here. He’d always made sure that his unit was tended to before he took care of himself.
“Stop overthinking,” Mansk hums from beside him, his kind eyes piercing into his when Lyle turns to look at him.
Mansk is already dicing the fruit into tiny cubes in a leaf and once he finishes, he starts squeezing them. It’s a process all in itself just to watch it, but as Mansk mashes it into a thick, slimy paste, Lyle eventually gets the gist of it. Getting to his feet, Lyle figured he might as well make Mansk’s life a helluva lot easier by making a spoon for him. Grabbing a broad enough branch, he cuts it off before sitting back down again, only to have Mansk look at him oddly.
“What?” He grunts as he starts working on the spoon-like utensil.
“You just said the prayer,” Mansk comments lightly, his words bearing nothing but genuine surprise.
It takes Lyle a moment longer than it should have to realize that he had, in fact, said his thanks to the tree for giving him the branch. Huffing a snort, he lightly shakes his head as the spoon quickly takes shape in his hand. Guess Y/n left deeper traces of herself than he had first realized.
“So, who’s gonna change him?”
The question is thrown out there so mindlessly that Lyle doesn’t really realize that the question left his own lips. When he turns to Mansk though, the younger man just smirks at him and immediately, Lyle knows that he pulled the shortest straw.
“Oh, hell no!” He hisses as loudly as he dares, “I ain’t touching his shit, bro,”
Mansk just shrugs his shoulders as he continues to mash the yovo fruit into a smoother purèe like substance. Closing his eyes, Lyle sighs in defeat. It’s just his luck to be stuck with the dirty work. If he’s going to be on do-do duty until Ja can take care of himself, then he sure as hell isn’t going to clean the man’s cammies. They gotta come up with something else - fast - or they will surely be discovered by their stench alone. Snorting to himself, he shakes his head when he sees Mansk turn his head toward him.
This was a helluva situation to be in…
Somehow though, they made it work. The very next day, they had set out to gather as many leaves as they could without venturing too far from their base. While Mansk tended to Ja, Lyle took care of what he could until they switched and Mansk took over. By the end of the week, they had managed to build a semi-decent hut up in their tree. The area around them, even though they hadn’t walked very far from the beach, was quiet. There hadn’t been any signs of the natives around them and even the predators seemed to have other territories. It almost seemed too good to be true, something it most likely was, if Quaritch’s voice in the back of his mind was right. But for right now, all they had to worry about was getting Ja put together and bringing food to the table.
Something they manage quite well. As the weeks pass them by, turning into two and then four months, they manage to integrate as well as they can with the knowledge that Y/n taught them. Ja was getting better, his wheezing while breathing all but gone, though his bones would need longer to heal. Their little camp was starting to come together quite nicely, so it comes as no surprise to Lyle when one day, while they’re sitting in their hut around lunchtime, they’re surrounded by angry-looking Na’vi. Their spears are pointed straight at Mansk at him, completely ignoring Ja, as if they already knew that the man posed no threat.
“Come peacefully and no harm will become you,” A stern-looking man says in Na’vi, directing his words at Lyle.
“Slow, please,” Lyle stumbles through the little Na’vi he knows, cursing himself for not paying more attention when Y/n was trying to teach them.
Mansk, however, has no such problems.
“We will come with peace,” He tells the man slowly, eyes never leaving his.
With a huff, the Na’vi lowers his spear and takes a step back on the branch. How neither one of them had heard them coming was beyond Lyle. These were sea people, they shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on them, especially not this far up into the trees.
“Our friend is hurt, he can not run,” Mansk continues, and although his Na’vi is slow, the leader understands them well enough.
“We have seen this. No harm will come to him if you do not fight us. Our Tsahìk will take a look,” The leader says, nodding his head.
“Thank you,” Mansk replies before turning to Lyle. “Don’t fight them, you hear me?”
“Only word I got was Tsahìk,” Lyle offers instead, brows furrowing with confusion about the situation.
“The leader says their Tsahìk will take a look at Ja if we come without a fight. I agreed,” Mansk’s voice is so calm it immediately sets something ablaze within Lyle. How could he be this calm when they were just taken prisoner by the enemy?
“Sure, why don’t we offer our hearts for them to impale too while we’re at it,” He can’t help the sarcasm dripping from his lips, his nerves just about ready to make him explode.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Ja rasps from below, apparently agreeing with Mansk.
“Okay, sure,” Lyle throws his hands up slowly, “It’s not like we got anything better to do,”
They watch as Ja is lowered to the ground in the gurney they made. The soldiers are speaking too quickly for Lyle to understand, but he catches this and that odd word, enough to understand that they’re making fun of their creation. Still, as they lead them through the jungle, towards the beach, they use the gurney to transport Ja’s body.
In the end, they’re taken down to the beach where they washed up all those weeks ago. Two soldiers are paddling a canoe that was no doubt meant to bring them wherever they were going, had it not been for the fact that Ja had to be carried. For two or three hours, they walked down the sandy beach until suddenly, around the corner, something started to look awfully familiar to Lyle.
“Aw shit,” He mumbles when eventually, they round the corner fully to reveal a partly burned-down village.
Mansk says nothing as he walks by Lyle’s side, but casting his eyes to the side is enough to see that the younger man is nervous. And with good reason too. This is the village where Lyle shot that sea creature, the one where Quaritch threatened to kill the very Tsahìk that were going to help Ja. Still, they walk willingly through the partially rebuilt village, through the masses of people that now gawk and hiss at them as they’re led further down the beach. In the end, they kneel before the chief and the Tsahìk.
“Do they understand?” The chief asks the leader, his soldier.
“That one does, but the bald one is slow,” The leader of the soldiers hums as if bored.
Lyle can’t help the growl that leaves him at being called slow, not even Mansk’s elbow in his ribs is enough to shut him up. But in the end, he has to think of Ja, has to think beyond himself and however butthurt the comment made him. So in his best Na’vi, he addresses the leader.
“We have been taught,” The pronunciation and wording must have been damn near perfect as the chief's eyes widen for just a second.
“Then you understand the situation you are in?” The chief hums as he looks down at them, face the very picture of seriousness.
“We understand, Olo’eyktan,” Mansk answers before Lyle can somehow screw this up any more than he already has.
“Ah, at least this one knows how to address the clan leader with respect,” The Tsahìk huffs, her arms folded tightly across her beaded chest. Lyle can’t blame her uneasiness.
“We had planned to kill you,” The chief starts, staring each one of them in the eyes, “But you thanked the tree when you cut off her branch on your first day here. And you said thanks when gathering fruit for your survival,”
“You have shown that you can learn, that you have been taught. With time, you honored the Great Mother with everything that you did,” The chief continues as his Tsahìk huffs by his side, “We have decided to let you live, so that you may have the chance to repay the people damage you have caused,”
“We thank you, Olo’eyktan,” Mansk replies as his tense shoulders visibly relax.
“Your friend can not move, what has caused this?” The chief asks, pointing at Ja’s still body.
“He is squeezed by tulkun,” Lyle offers to the chief's utter surprise.
“A tulkun did this?” There’s mumbling around the soldiers, some names being offered, but none that Lyle catches.
“Yes, it attack the…” He’s not sure what ‘boat’ is in Na’vi, but the chief seems to fill in the blanks either way.
“Payakan,” Nodding to himself, he turns to his Tsahìk, whispering something. “We will take your friend to the healers,”
“What of us, Olo’eyktan?” Mansk asks, but the chief just smiles at him.
“You will help rebuild the village,”
And well… looking back, that could have been a helluva great way to start a story of some kind. Three bros lost in the jungle on a foreign planet, in new bodies. But hell, their life with the Ta’unui hadn’t been bad at all. Sure, they still got the odd stink eye or the hissed ‘demon’ thrown after them sometimes, but for the most part, they had been accepted in a way no alien ever would have been back on Earth. For all purposes, they lived a free life while working for the people’s forgiveness.
“Whatcha grinning at?” Ja asks as he walks over, his therapy for the day over.
“Nothing, kiddo,” Lyle just chuckles as he turns back to the sunset.
“Have you seen Mansk?” Ja finally comes to a stop before him, grunting as he slowly sits down on the sand.
“Nah, he’s probably somewhere off preparing food for the communal meal. It smells delicious all the way over here,” He can’t help the grin that crosses his face. “How’s your limp? Looking better each day I see you now,”
The compliment made Ja’s chest puff while a huge grin spread across his face. The younger man had worked hard to get where he was. As soon as the Tsahìk knew what was wrong with him, she made sure that he got the help he needed. The right kind of help. With bone-strengthening supplements and stinky pastes, she had wrapped the entirety of his body in seaweed as she burned algae or whatever over his body.
While Lyle worked on rebuilding the village, Mansk helped with the food. Apparently, the grill master had more than a knack for preparing food the Na’vi went nuts about, which, to him anyway, was the easier of the two tasks. Hell, he was sure he’d cut his fingers open or skinned his leg so many times by now that he might as well have lost all feeling in the area. Still, as he turns his head to look over the rebuilt village, he can’t help but feel proud. In fact, he had even asked Ok’umu, the Olo’eyktan, if he could lend his help to the other villages they had burned down. It would be his way of giving back to the people.
“I asked Ok’umu if we could stay today,” Lyle hums, as Ja quiets down in a comfortable position.
“What’d he say?” Ja hums back, seemingly calm. But if Lyle had learned anything in the past months they had spent with the Ta’unui, it was to read his friends.
“That we could stay,” Well, more or less. The Olo’eykatan did say a lot more than that, but the bottom line was that they could stay.
“Just like that?” Ja asks, turning to face Lyle.
“Just like that,” Lyle hums back, but of course, he should have known better.
“What more did he say?” Ja presses just as Mansk’s footsteps approach them in the sand.
“He said that thanks to Lyle pulling his weight, we have not suffered the shame of being useless,” Mansk adds unhelpfully as he comes to a stop before them.
Immediately Ja goes quiet, his ears drooping as his tail twitches behind him. He’s as much an open book as Mansk is. Leaning up, Lyle grabs a hold of his head and ruffles the unruly mop that has been growing there. He knows Ja feels as if he isn’t doing anything, but when Lyle or Mansk has come to get him after therapy, to take him home to the kelku Lyle had built for them, he had often stopped right outside the Tsahìk’s marui pod and listened to Ja ask about different medicines and methods. Without him knowing it, the Tsahìk had been teaching Ja about healing from the moment he was well enough to stay awake for more than half an hour.
“Stop thinking you’re useless just because you’re healing. Hell, kid… you broke every bone in your body and you’re still walking,” Lyle chuckles as Ja tries to get out of his hold.
“He’s right, you know,” Mansk hums, unwrapping a huge piece of meat from a leaf before handing a piece out to each of them. “Tsahìk’s been teaching you healing medicine for weeks,”
That seems to be enough for Ja. With a bit of food in his belly and peace around them, it seemed that life was smiling at them for real this time. They wouldn’t take this third chance of theirs for granted, holding onto it with arms and legs. As long as they were allowed to stay, they would continue helping out, continuing being helpful until their numbers were called. Sighing contently, they sat in silence as they watched the sun setting over the horizon. Soon enough the communal meal would begin and then there would be dance and laughter until it was time to retreat.
Nah, life with the Ta’unui wasn’t bad at all, so what could possibly happen to disrupt that peace?
