#showing dissociation through Max but its a lot different to Jakes genuinely just going wild going ham

[freshairforrabbits]

WIP Wednesday

For pretty boy ch. 15; backtracking with Max's PoV (sorry this is a bit long but fuck it)

Tags: implied sexual harassment, implied past mass shooting (because unfortunately I don't see that going away even in 150ish years, what with Freeborn Ballistics being the canonical gun manufacturer of the Avatar universe, and I could get into all the systemic issues that lead to gun violence but that's for another time), implied past domestic terrorist attack with hate crime motivations, Original Characters, this is genuinely just an excerpt of Max's PoV of that end scene from chapter 14, what else can I say things are bad for everyone haha :')

"No! Fuck, god, no, I wasn't—" Spider shakes his head vigorously. "I never lied about that. I just… he never did anything. I mean he'd toss me around, he'd wrench me after him like some kinda nantang. But he always seemed, I dunno, he'd get this weird look when he'd realize how hard he was grabbing me. He checked on me every night. He was nice in a way 'cause I had information he needed— wanted, I tried to give him just enough, tried to kill him with the ikran, some other things." Looking down, Spider continues, "one of those guys on Scoresby's stupid ship though— he got all handsy. Pretty sure my Dad almost killed him when he asked why I cut all my hair off and scrounged up a pair of those sweatpants or whatever someone had lying around."

Max tries to pretend like that isn't it's own arrow through his stomach, like somehow he should've been trying harder to get Spider back instead of skirting along the outskirts of it all. Desperate and barely staying afloat at High Camp. Bridgehead was too big, too monster, too impenetrable wall and Spider was too maybe dead— hopefully alive; Kiri, she mentioned an explosion, and he couldn't help but assume the worst. 

"I just feel like it's my fault. It's mine, Max." Voice mangling on itself, Spider croaks. "He didn't, he wouldn't've— why would he fucking—"

"That's not your fault, Spider." It's not, he wants to reach over and remove the guilt with his own two hands, remembering that little baby with the curly poof of platinum hair wobbling around the lab. Even if Spider's the reason Quaritch is breathing right now, even if he can put two and two together, it doesn't matter, it doesn't. "This isn't your fault. None of this is."

"But I—" 

"It's not your fault," Nana cuts in. "The decisions that man makes are not your own— waeto?" 

"You guys don't— fuck, you don't get it," Spider tries to protest again, teeth flashing, but Nana quiets him.

"Understood?"

Spider mumbles a small 'yes, ma'am.' And Nana clicks her tongue softly, reaching out to lay a hand on Spider's arm where he has it resting across his lap, turned in the chair to face back towards the cargo hold, eyes stuck on the cockpit door. 

"Some daddies hurt their sons, wae? Okay, Spider?" Nana says, her voice soft the way she gets when she tells Akan folktales from her childhood to the Taam Ja' residents, everyone looking for a hopeful story to sink into, of a physically meek trickster in the form of a Terran spider who beats the odds with his cunning, his craftiness, his wit— a rogue, loveable mischief maker who is constantly outsmarting his much larger foes. (It was no coincidence Spider spent more storytelling nights with the scientists than back at the Awa'atlu mo'ara, ever since Nana carved a place for herself among the aytsantu, when she offered them everything she had including her stories. That Spider had brought along Kiri and Tuk, even Lo'ak once, who would leave a space for a brother who was never going to show up, and Spider would grin at the moments Anansi would trick Tiger into letting his prey free, or when he would convince a killer python to tangle himself up out of vanity.)

"Others will hurt only others. Fucked up fathers who love their families, who tuck them in, kiss their foreheads so gentle-like, yet they have these bodies rotting in their basement. For soldiers it's a bit different, the blood's praised, the violence is worshipped." There's something like an unfortunate understanding laced on her syllables. "Just because the colonel cared about you, defended you— it doesn't mean he cares about anyone else the same. But it means we are fortunate that he hadn't hurt you that way."

Screaming chases the last word out of Nana's mouth, muffled, outside of the cockpit, in the cargo hold, enough to make them all jump-flinch. Yanking on their exopacks, Nana clutches her rifle and leaps into action as she motions for Cricket to stay, to watch Judy, to guard the door. Spider slips out of his seat and is on Nana's heels before Max can snag the boy's elbow.

With the door open it's louder. Stomach turning, the sort of thing that flashes across Max's mind with crack thud bullet impacts, huddled in the tight, cramp, dark space of a public bathroom back in Texas with dozens of other people. Of scraping pavement with his small palms, after hearing the clink of still warm bullet shell casings kicked across the ground by his feet, by many feet. Tripping over the bikes left abandoned all across the sidewalks outside, his little brother helping him back up, asking where ma and ba are, where's Madeea— she's at home, she's home, Avi. Flashing lights, sirens, android dogs with their friendly voice boxes and dark vests guiding children to first responders so they can be looked over, reunited with their families—

There was a man, a father, he knows that now, who had screamed the same way. Fighting to get back inside the shopping complex, lighting up the neon walkway with his pounding feet in a scuffle as a SWAT officer held him back, then finally pinned him down as he howled and howled and howled. Too many echoed prints where people had run glowing softly like ghosts.

He sees his ba, covered in a dozen shades of gulal, hugging him and Avi far too tight. Ma running up a second later. Safe, not like that man's family, not like that father who shattered that day.

The Samson's hull shudders with the movement of bodies, something, someone being slammed down, and Max jolts out of the past. Thrown over thirty years forward in an instant; historic mass shootings far away. Jake's screaming has spilled into pleading that leaves Max breathless at the sound, hunching over, Cricket telling him it's alright, it's not Quaritch, it's just— 

"Don't! Don't! Fuck— !"

Jake's never sounded like that. This screeching, metal nails to chalkboard, prey flipped on its back expelling every last bit of air from its lungs because it knows it's going to die. 

Norm's voice whips through the line. 

"Max, fuck, shit, I'm sorry, Jake—" Max's heart skips, as Jake's yelling and thrashing echoes and Norm's voice comes through clear across it, sword cutting. "Max! How far out are we?!" 

Max relays the estimated remaining flight time mechanically, kicking up the speed by a few knots. And it all goes to utter shit because Norm drops off the comm after admitting he can't hold Jake that long, and Max knows what he's going to do, he almost leaps out of the pilot's seat to stop him. But he can't, he can only grip the console, flip switches, vibrate in place, call back to Cricket and tell them to get Spider's ass back in here, now. 

Because Quaritch is off leash, the rotors might be drowning it all out but he can see him up and moving on the camera helping Norm restrain Jake (because Cricket tells him what they're seeing, an edge to their voice, and the camera is blotched out with blue shapes that are too big and moving too much). Jaci's disapproval swims in his head because he knows, he knows she would've tried something different, anything different, but they don't exactly make a point to teach crisis management in the air on limited resources with people twice their size. And his hindbrain is still screaming they're dead, they are so completely fucking dead with Quaritch free to roam the aircraft's cabin like this is some evening trip to the sunken shores of Italy and he's a paying passenger with a VIP. 

Jake's shouting tapers off. The world lulls, shudders, Max's pupils shake as he shoots Spider a frantic glance when he's finally settled back in his seat. Quaritch does much the same on the square box of the camera feed, back to his corner behind the cockpit, Nana out there still with a rifle aimed, two blue shapes huddled on the floor of the Samson, Norm's head ducked low. 

"He's out," is what Norm relays, whisper soft, picked up clearly. "He's um, he's okay." 

Max wets his lips. Necklace feeling more like a noose on his neck, sweat creeps from his hairline down his back. "Norm. You…"

"I had to." 

"..." 

"Look I had to, what— god, what fucking choice do we have?"

"You cut him loose," Max states, like he's delivering bad news, the aggressive progression of a disease. Thankfully the cockpit door is closed once more. "You let Quaritch—" 

"I know." Then almost inaudible, practically throat click sounds, "I'm sorry." Silence lulls. "But if we'd killed that asshole back at the jetty, Jake would've— he would have…" Norm sighs, unable to finish it. "He's barely alive, Max. Just me with my avatar? He'd have jumped, he would've drowned or screamed himself right into a— a state of shock. Either scenario we turn up with a dead body. We're lucky, alright? We're—"

"We are risking everything." It's odd, how the tables have turned, with him realizing the gravity of this, of Norm seeing Jake and changing his mind about playing things very safe.

"Yeah. We are." Norm sniffs roughly, clears his throat. "I just want him alive, Max. I don't think that's too much, I don't." 

Sylwanin, Eytukan, Trudy, Grace, Neteyam, Mingxia, (Jake), countless others; names he barely knew and faces he barely saw.

Grief twists rough and razor behind his sternum. Of the people he's lost, even the ones light years back home. At the camera showing a scene of Norm's back angled towards it, huddled on the Samson's cramped floor with Jake gathered in his lap, trying to keep his chest upright because they both know he has some form of walking pneumonia.

Nana says through the comm that she's got an eye on the colonel, if he so much as twitches she'll shoot, a fire to her voice, a shake.

Spider hunches in the copilot's seat, swiping at his chin with the heel of his wrist, sniffing loudly through his mask he keeps firmly on. Cricket remains quiet, Judy doesn't make a sound. 

Max shakes away the image of his little brother crying much the same, huddled in the groove of worn couch cushions, bare feet tucked close, of the shooting, of the echoes of Jake's screaming, of everything and everyone and a dozen times where it felt like he was being crushed by invisible hands, and he presses on faster towards the thick squall of dark clouds, the flash of purple lightning ahead.