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Grace doesn't remember much about dying. There's brief flashes: pain, blood, the sting of a needle, the rumble of an engine. Her clearest recollection is Jake carrying her through the crowd like a baby, a bride, a corpse, or maybe a sacrifice.
She knows that after she woke up next to her own fresh corpse, heaving for air, there was slickness on her legs and a warm feeling in her belly. Mo'at helped her stumble away from the tree, a soothing arm wrapped tight around her waist, holding her close as the battle for Ewya’eveng raged overhead.
But it's not Mo'at holding her when she dreams at night. It's green vines wrapping around her body, her big blue self or her small human one or some monstrosity stretched in between, always being touched her with the same gentleness.
Pink and violet tendrils pet over her body from head to toe, fondling her breasts and cock, stuffing her cunt and asshole, slipping down her throat while she pants for air. It's the best fuck she's ever had, in this body or any other, and that terrifies her.
Just a dream, she decides in the cold light of morning, rubbing off the sweat and slick and seed. Just a dream, a side effect of adjusting to the meatsuit full-time. Just a dream, no matter that the plants crook towards her as she passes by, vines tickling gently over her skin.
Just a dream, until she's sitting in the lab with Norm, staring at the results in mirrored silence. Somewhere Quaritch's fucking kid is crying, but neither of them have the strength to get up and see what's wrong.
"We could." Norm coughs, rubs his beard. "We could, uh, ask Mo'at. Or, like, there's a cocktail for the Avatars in case anyone gets knocked up, right?"
"Then it'd just come back next month." She could cut out her womb with a laser and Eywa would grow her a new one. Is it even possible for a goddess--a being whose Na'vi self is only a fraction of the greater whole, a mind stitched together from trillions of uploaded possibilities--to understand the word no? Does Grace want to tell her no?
Isn't she just a little bit, or a whole bit, curious about the specimen being offered up to her on a silver platter?
Neytiri hugs her while the Omatikaya celebrate around them, giving thanks to the Great Mother for the miracle. Her swollen belly rubs against Grace's as she whispers that their children will be best friends.
Jake looks on, eyes a hair too wide. He sags in relief later as tests prove he didn't gain any small passengers on his journey through the tree (Lo'ak's conception is a few months ahead). Grace's child will be the first, perhaps the only of its kind.
Grace thinks of firsts as she wills herself to tend to Socorro's baby, the best chance she has to hone her motherly skills. She bounces him on her knee, she sings him lullabies, she changes his diapers and even sucks up the courage to kiss his chubby cheek.
Watching him sleep one night, alone in the lab, she says, "You know the humans will come back, don't you? That's why you did this. You need a stronger gun than Jake's sorry ass."
The petri dishes rattle in their shelves, all the bits of Eywa she'd collected over the decades. Is it possible to build a shrine without believing in the deity who inhabits it?
"I think they figured out the Soul Drive." Grace smooths a hand over the boy's hair, another hand over her swelling belly. "You're not the only necromancer in town, babe. Just the prettiest." The dishes rattle harder, almost shyly, and she smiles.
When she finally gets to sleep, the vines hoist her swollen ankles into the air and Grace arches with a moan, sweaty hair falling over her face. If she squints she can almost see eyes peering down at her, so many vast eyes.
"Why me?" she asks, because she's turned the question in her mind over and over without getting any closer to an answer.
The tendril slithers down her throat and she tastes pain, fire, alien creatures ravaging her flesh with their machines. And one whose touch was gentle, whose pricks were light and careful as any gatherer's, yet whose blood sang of somewhere else. Somewhere beyond the familiar, but not in a frightening sense.
Then the mind touches hers for the first time, and it is sad and guilty and clever and beautiful, so beautiful. Grace wakes up with tears running down her cheeks, fingers pressed tight to her stomach. Specimen, she reminds herself, but the word rings hollow.
As her belly swells larger, she grows thinner, losing teeth even as her hair grows thick. She gets lightheaded if she stands up too fast, brain fog pressing down like smoke from a burning forest. At first she leaves recordings to keep track of shit, then with a sharper desperation, words tumbling out of her mouth like smoke once did.
Some are for Jake, for Norm, Neytiri, Mo'at, even Socorro when he grows up. Most, though, are addressed to the same person and end the same way: I love you, babygirl. You've already made us proud.
"My body can take it," she whispers to the leaves petting over her skin. "My mind can't. She's taking everything into herself, she has to if she wants to be more than just a tank lump. A baby god needs a hell of an engine, right, E?" The leaves press to her lips, the eyes shed tears.
"And I'll fucking let you do it to me, because the world dies if I don't. Grace wasn't on the nose enough, Mom and Dad should've named me Martyr."
Big as a house, she waddles through the forest, nearly tripping over the kneeling pa'li waiting for her. Her hands are shaking too badly to make tsaheylu, but her mount knows exactly where to take her, anyway.
By the time the others arrive, Grace is already in labor. "Took you long enough," she growls out where she lies sprawled at the foot of the tree, long roots wrapped tight around each wrist, holding her steady for the next push.
There's blood, there's pain, there's screaming and cursing. Neytiri holds the baby as Mo'at works frantically between Grace's legs, trying and failing to stop the bleeding. Kiri's chest rises and falls, but her mouth hangs open, limp and still.
"Connect," Grace gasps, a tendril slipping from the tree and over her shoulder. "Please, she needs--" Neytiri starts to protest that it isn't done for newborns, but the tendril is already wrapping around Kiri's kuru. Another wraps around Grace's, holding tight as her eyes slip shut.
She stands amidst the swirling darkness, a sphere of pure light trembling in her arms. There are no more vines here, no more vast eyes. Instead, a woman in a white labcoat walks towards her, hair shining red against pale skin.
Forgive me, my love, the goddess whispers, soft through Grace's lips.
Grace shrugs. "At the end of the day it's a gift, E, seeing this world all over again for the first time." She lets out a slow, deep breath, feels her body outside do the same. "See you on the other side, yeah?"
Always. Eywa reaches, hands stretching out farther than they should on a human-looking body. Her hands press down and Grace feels herself shrink, compress, edges dissolving until she merges with the sphere of light she was holding a moment before, falling down the line together--
Kiri te Suli Kireysi'ite wakes up next to her mother's fresh corpse, screaming.