Shooting Stars | Lo'ak¹

Synopsis

Trigger Warning: Brief mentions of suicidal thoughts

Ja'lia is what most would consider the best of both worlds.

She's a kind and caring soul but also mischievous and adventurous. Her life was perfect, or at least she thought it was.

Ja'lia was an only child. Her parents cared for and loved her. She had a roof over her head and food on the table. Her father was an amazing warrior who constantly received praise from the people, and her mother had a beautiful voice that she showcased whenever celebrations were held.

Not only did she have an amazing family, but she also had an extraordinary best friend, and a group of people she considered to be her home away from home.

Lo'ak Sully was the boy that most parents warned their daughters to stay away from. No, he wasn't mean. And no, Lo'ak didn't hurt anyone, at least not on purpose. No, he always was in some sort of trouble, and most parents didn't want that for their children. Lo'ak was notorious in the Omatikaya clan for doing things he wasn't supposed to do, and that's one of the reasons he was Ja'lia's best friend. She loved to live a quiet but adventurous life.

She was calm.

He was the storm.

Together they were the calm before the storm.

If Ja'lia were being honest, she couldn't remember a single happy memory where Lo'ak wasn't present, and she was sure that it was the same for him. They grew up together, and they were each other's lifeline.

They would do anything for each other, no matter what it was, no matter what it cost them. That's one of the reasons why both of their parents stopped trying to separate them, other than the fact that they were both so stubborn in wanting to see each other that they ran away.

She was also friends with the other Sully children. However, her relationship with Kiri was slightly strained as Ja'lia was not particularly fond of the young human boy who resided in the clan. The girl had tried to be kind to him, and she tried to be his friend, but something about him rubbed her the wrong way.

Although, she would never express her distaste for the human boy in front of him, for he had never done anything wrong for her to be openly hateful towards him.

It was honestly pathetic, but she was waiting for the day he would do something to her or someone she cared for just so she could say, 'I told you so'.

Ultimately, Ja'lia did get her chance to say, 'I told you so' when the RDA returned to Pandora. When the Sky People returned, they burned huge portions of the forest Ja'lia had once called home. Of course, it wasn't directly Spider's fault, but she was grieving, so she needed someone to blame, and Spider just so happened to be there.

That day was the day her entire world came crashing down. Her mother and father had been having a date night in the forest when the fires started, and the fire took down, not only the trees and wildlife but her parent's lives as well.

When the forest started to burn, she was with Lo'ak, and she tried to run towards the fire, but the boy stopped her and dragged her onto his ikran to get away. Lo'ak dragged his best friend away as she kicked and screamed for him to let her go so that she could save her parents.

It broke his heart to hear her cries and pleas, but he knew that if he let her go to find them, he would lose her too, and he couldn't lose her.

He knew that it was selfish, but he didn't care. She was his best friend, and she had always been there for him. So, that's what he was going to do for her. If her parents didn't make it out of the fire, he was going to be there for her, and that's what he did.

Lo'ak would sit outside of her tent as he heard her silently cry. He would bring her food, rock her to sleep, and comfort her when she woke up screaming, pleading for her mom and dad to come back to her. He would listen as she quietly prayed to Eywa to take her life as well, and something inside of him shattered.

Ja'lia had always been so happy, she was his sunshine. So to listen to her say such heart-clenching words, made him feel like a terrible person. At one point, he thought maybe he should have left her go to save her parents. He thought maybe she would have been more happy with them than she was with him.

But then, one day, it was like a switch was flipped. Ja'lia no longer cried. She came out to join everyone for meals. She no longer needed him to rock her to sleep. And she no longer had nightmares.

Instead, a couple of nights a week, she would sneak into Lo'ak's family's tent and beg him to watch the stars with her. It had become a ritual that they did whenever Ja'lia was feeling overwhelmed, and it seemed to work as she no longer prayed that the Great Mother would take her away.

That's how they stumbled upon some shooting stars.

After Ja'lia saw the bright lights zooming through the sky, she wanted to ask Jake what they were, and he told her that on Earth they called them shooting stars and that if you wished on one, then it would come true.

So, anytime she saw a shooting star, she wished for one thing and one thing only.

She wished that Lo'ak would love her the way that she loved him.