#Spider absolutely offed his kidnapper btw

[honeyhobi]

Idea Time

Just me rambling / half writing about a modern avatar au

Tags: Kidnapping, mentioned child murder (no kids actually die though you'll see what I mean), mentioned actual murder, domesticity??? The Sully Family rock idk

BASICALLY what if Spider went missing as a child and Quaritch went to jail for it AND THEN SPIDER TURNED BACK UP AGAIN YEARS LATER??? Maybe I'll actually write this for real maybe I won't. Just felt like jotting it down is all.

The Sully Family is having a typical day on the weekend. Things are normal, the weather is nice, everyone is off work and school on Saturday. Neytiri and Neteyam are in the kitchen doing dishes after family breakfast. Tuk is in the living room watching morning cartoons, and Jake is pretending not to be as invested in them as he really is.

Kiri is also in the living room on her nintendo switch playing Stardew Valley. She's got earplugs in to block out the sound of Tuk's chattering and the cartoons on the tv screen. Lo'ak is at the dining table on his phone, repeatedly typing out and deleting a text message to his classmate Tsireya.

Hey?

Backspace backspace backspace

Good morning, Tsireya!

Did you want to go to the movies today maybe?

Backspace backspace backspace back—

Jake's phone rings and he excuses himself into the hall to answer it. Everyone barely pays attention to the phone call as Jake answers it. Why would they? It's a typical day.

Less than 5 minutes later Jake reenters the living room and calls for everyone to "fall in." His voice is strained, something in it grabbing even Lo'ak's attention immediately.

They all stop what they're doing and crowd into the living room. Neytiri wipes her hands dry on a towel and slings it over her shoulder as she stands in the entryway, Neteyam sits next to Kiri as she pauses her game. He mutes the television and pulls Tuk off the floor and into his lap. Lo'ak sits carefully in the recliner, looking at his dad's face which has paled significantly.

Jake is gripping the armrests of his wheelchair tightly. The phone call must have been bad news. Maybe another military buddy died? Maybe the school called to tell him about Lo'ak's frequent tardiness which is totally not his fault by the way—

What Jake says next sends the world dropping out from underneath everyone's feet.

"They found Spider. He's alive."

Spider. As in Spider Socorro? None of them have heard that name in....well in probably a decade, when the boy first disappeared. An image of the smiling six year old boy from across the street flutters up from the recesses of Lo'ak's mind.

Spider had been presumed dead for years. His dad, Miles Quaritch, has been in prison for the past decade for killing his wife and son one night. The Sully Family were at Disneyland at the time, and while he hides it well, Jake still blames himself a little for not being there. If he had been, maybe he'd have heard something. Maybe he'd have been able to intervene, or see where Quaritch ran off to with the boy.

Quaritch has held onto his innocence every day since. All the way through the trial he insisted that he didn't kill his wife, someone broke in and knocked him out. Yes it was his gun, yes it was his prints, yes it was Paz's blood on his hands when the police showed up after a neighbor called 9-1-1. But if you had woken up to your wife bleeding out right next to you and your son gone, wouldn't you try to put pressure on the wound, too?

Even when Paz's mother begged during the trial for Quaritch to tell them all what he did to her grandson, where he buried the poor boy's body, he wouldn’t budge.

"If I knew where he was I would be the first one at the scene. I didn’t kill him."

But there were no other leads. No other suspects. Quaritch had no alibi or evidence to support his claims.

Lo'ak had been much too small to understand what really happened. He went to Paz and Spider's funeral but barely remembers it, at the time he just knew that his friend across the street wasn't going to be around anymore. Not until he got to middle school and did some research himself did he actually get the situation in its entirety.

And now, everything is changing. They found Spider, somewhere, somehow. Quaritch might very well have been an innocent man this whole time. Jake hasn't gone into detail just yet.

Neteyam asks, "What happened?"

Jake sighs heavily, runs a hand over his head. "That was Norm on the phone."

Norm, their old family friend who works in the police station as a CSI. He was one of the people that analyzed the evidence at the crime scene, he helped put Quaritch away.

"He says that an officer was doing his rounds last night and saw a kid walking aimlessly down the road. When he stopped him, the kid identified himself as Miles Socorro."

"Could he be lying, though?" Lo'ak wonders aloud.

Jake shakes his head. "The fingerprints match from the school database."

Lo'ak remembers vaguely the school-wide event years ago when all the students got their fingerprints taken. He still has the ID card he got from it, buried somewhere in his memories box underneath his bed. The event was for the Child Seeker's Program, developed to protect kids in the district in case they ever went missing.

So much help it had been for Spider.

But here he was, a decade later, showing up with the police. There’s got to be more to the story that dad isn't telling them, or maybe Jake doesn't yet know the details himself. What started off as a normal Saturday has been flipped onto its head.

That leaves them all to ponder the same question. What happens now?

#Spider absolutely offed his kidnapper btw #avatar the way of water #fanfic idea #miles spider socorro #miles quaritch #lo'ak te suli tsyeyk'itan #kiri te suli kìreysì'ite #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan #tuktirey te suli neytiri'ite #neytiri te tskaha mo'at'ite #jake sully #my writing