I see you, Tsu'tey

Chapter 1

AN: Most of this chapter and the next 'present time' chapter is about Jake but the rest are about Awa, please enjoy! Constructive criticism is more than welcomed:)

It was a cold and rainy day when Jake got the call from the RDA, it was one of those days where everything went wrong, it was as if the bad weather was a sign of the storm to come. Jake had woken up with a bad feeling that morning, a sort of gnawing feeling in his stomach that warned him that something was going to happen. He ignored it, of course, since he came home from the war it was more common to feel that itching of repressed instincts than not. The first time they approached him was in a low budget bar full of people addicted to different substances and people with issues, he was one of those people. At first he thought they were the police and had come to pick him up after he had punched a guy in the head so hard that he passed out on the cold marble floor. The men came clad in matching black suits and dark sunglasses, it was as if they had copied how the FBI in movies used to look like. Maybe they thought he'd appreciate the irony, or maybe it was to intimidate him into leaving with them without a fight. Now he thought of the suits as signs of mourning, their suits were a soulless black but yet conveyed the strongest message. Their glasses hid their true feelings, a voice could be manipulated but eyes always told the truth. He didn't speak with them, only shook his head with a glare in his eyes and left. Those men came from the same organisation as his twin, a man he had had a falling out with just before leaving for the battlefield that would leave him crippled and broke.

Then the call came, that very same call that his old marine instincts warned him about. In the movies the one that delivered the news were soft-spoken, gentle and sympathetic, Jake didn't get that. Jake was greeted by a gruff, deep voice that barked to him that his twin was dead. He didn't get any build up to the devastating news that would come to change his whole life as he knew it, no, the delivery man just straight out spat it at him as soon as Jake lifted the outdated phone that his few military friends joked belongs in the museum. The words haunted him, taunted him even, they were ringing in his ears as he slammed the phone down on his kitchen table that was so full with scratches that the previously smooth and polished surface was a distant memory. Not only did they tell him that his brother was dead, that his twin was dead, but they demanded that he attend the 'funeral' they had so kindly arranged for him. They had a business proposal for him, that he 'couldn't resist'.

It didn't take them long before throwing the offer of a job at him, the body of his murdered twin hadn't even been burned before the wolves threw themselves upon him, urging him, no manipulating him into taking the offer. He had never been a science guy, never felt the interest to know things, he had always been Jake, Jake the military man. It was his twin that had been interested in science, it was his twin that worked hard to go to the deadly paradise in a body unlike the human one but yet so similar. Tom Sully, the overachiever and dreamer of worlds, the man that had been robbed off his dream by a man desperate for any money he could get his hands on, and was willing to kill for it. His brother had spent three grueling years in the program, he did all the work only to be robbed of it just before he was going to reap the benefits it would give him. Now Jake would take what his brother had started and finish it, he would take his brother's place and go to Pandora. As honorable as they made it seem, or how appealing the offer of a new life sounded to the veteran, he mostly took the offer because of the promise of a large sum of money. Of course some part of him did it because the idea of starting anew appealed to him, that and he thought living as a blue space monkey sounded cool.

Grace Augustine was a living legend that many only dreamt of meeting, Jake had no idea who she was until she stared him down with clear disappointment in her eyes. She didn't sugarcoat her dislike for him either, she was very vocal about it, particularly the bit where she wanted his brother and not him. Jake was used to being compared to his brother so he wasn't too bothered by her insensitive comment about his late twin, and responded with small sarcastic comment that brought out a little bit of amusement in the cold eyes of the scientist. After he woke up in his avatar body for the first time she had remarked that he had impressive motoric skills after only waking up, that sentence meant so much more from her because he knew that she without a doubt meant it. He shivers just thinking about it, the feeling of being able to walk again, to run again and to bury his feet in the ground. It was an euphoric feeling that he would do anything to keep on feeling for the rest of his life. And those actions brought him to where he was now, on a helicopter with Grace, Norm, their pilot and a few random soldiers he didn't know the names of. He was supposed to be their protection in Na'vi form, he was a trained marine but he hoped he didn't have to use those skills against anything just yet.