Trudy Chacon

James Cameron's Avatar has a number of sources for canon-gathering - the 2009 movie, the various books and wikis online, the game, the 2007 script, Word of God, the original scriptment when Jake was still Josh, and the deleted scenes. I intend to use all of them to flesh out the world that the movie gives( and this includes taking characters and creatures from the original script, which I'll refer to as 880-canon).

However, to me, the movie trumps the other sets of sources, being the one we actually see on screen.

What this means is that if I read something that Word of God has said, or the wikis have written up from the books, that I don't think works, I will a) try and rework it until it does or b) ignore it.

The hangar is emptier than it should be for this time of night, and none of the tiltrotors are where they should be. In fact, as she walks through, she recognises numbers and choppers that just should not be there. That's Evans' one – she went missing with her crew the day that Quaritch's XO got eaten, the day that Trudy landed herself in the brig along with the other pilots for the sake of the dead.

That's Wu and Marjan's Samson, which had caught fire due to a faulty repair with them trapped inside.

That's Brown's gunship, which had nosedived thanks to a storm.

That's Jameson's gunship, which had been thrown to the ground by one of the leonopteryxes in the same attack that left Trudy in a broken Samson with a broken leg.

That's -

“Hey there, sister,” Ing Schmidt says, lightly jumping down from the cargo bay of Samson Three One. “Long time no see.”

“...that's what happens when you die on me,” Trudy snaps at her (former) co-pilot. When in doubt, get pissed.

“Hey, now, that wasn't my idea.”

“No, I thought you deliberately sabotaged the damn chopper.” Trudy rolls her eyes to the ceiling in a gesture of long-suffering, but it's not enough. She looks at Schmidt again, opens her mouth, and, “Of course it wasn't your fucking idea!” comes spilling out.

Her voice is louder than she meant it to be, and the two women look startled as Trudy's voice bounces around the hangar.





“You,” Schmidt says after a moment, “have a lot of anger stored up over this issue. And it's been over a year.”






“I-”





“I'm gonna let you think about it,” Schmidt decides, turning back towards the (their) Samson. The bird's been damaged, Trudy can see now. Of course it's been damaged; it was wrenched through the air and then had a couple collisions with trees before finally the ground. But she can see the damage, the Samson intact but crumpled as it had been before the mechanics cut it apart to salvage to spare parts, before the cockpit was sliced up to free Schmidt's body.

Schmidt, who is dressed in the flightsuit she died in, with her long locs tied back so they won't get in her way as she unscrews one of Three One's panels.




(you need a drill to do it; she's doing it with a spanner)




Trudy – awkward, angry, hands in fists and breathing uneven – finally says, “I couldn't even protect your body. If the viperwolves wanted, they could have-”

“You did your job,” Schmidt says, without turning around. “You protected the living.”

“Walker died anyway.”

“But she died in a bed, not the jungle.”

“But, I couldn't...I just let them...eat you.”






Schmidt sighs, puts down the spanner, turns around. “Look,” she says, “I'm not mad about that. Dead is dead, Trudes. You still carved my name on the wall, that's...that's all you can ask on Pandora, isn't it?”

“I guess.”

“All you can do.,” Schmidt repeats, and then hesitates, gestures with her thumb towards the Samson. “You gonna help me fix her up?”

“...sure.”

“You sound confused.”

Trudy starts to speak, stops, tries again. “My brother turned up last year, telling me he's dead. I...already know you're dead.” She manages to bite back the, so why are you here, but it still echoes through her words anyway.

“Aw, you didn't miss me.”

“Of course I fucking did,” Trudy says, but with more tiredness than heat this time.

“Maybe I missed you, too,” Schmidt says. “No pearls of wisdom, which is actually a gross statement, because do you know how pearls are formed-”

“Ing.”

Schmidt stops, flashes a smile. “I missed you, Trudes. And I guess, wherever you are, it's a chance where we can just hang together for a bit. So, want to help me fix her up?”

“Yeah,” Trudy says at last, “yeah, I do.”

[slightly place-holdery]

Trudy likes dealing with Dr Louise Donnelly. She's more street than academy, which Trudy appreciates. But Louise is working the Na'vi near the coast, so today Trudy is just dropping her off.

Trudy doesn't even touch the ground, just hovers above it as Louise jumps out and runs out of the way. She turns and gives Trudy a cheerful salute, and then adjusts her pack slightly as she heads off. Once Louise is clear, Trudy raises Maya and turns in the air, heading back over the jungle.

She's drunk.

She thinks she's drunk.

No.

Stop.

She's numb and dizzy and nothing seems real and all she can taste is whiskey. Ergo, she is drunk.

She was numb. But she's reached the point of drunk where the whole 'numb' thing is starting to wear off.

Carl's room is closer, but she would have gone to his door instead of hers even if she'd had to go to the other end of Milliways.

She knocks, rests her head against the doorframe. She's wearing just shorts and a tank, and it's actually starting to be cold.

She knocks again. "Carl, you there?"

She's in Dallas. It's a Dallas with trees and green and a shining sun that she's never seen before (it's a Dallas like Asheville, 2010) and she's walking along the quiet, empty-where-are-all-the-people street. She's wearing: combat boots, flightsuit, her hair in its ponytail.

She's not wearing: any weapons.

Hey, GM.

Trudy pauses, turns, scans the buildings and windows and doors. Sniper, enemy, targets-

“GM!”

Her pause turns to an actual stop. “...Gene?” Her brother was the only one to call her that; GM, from Gertrude Maria.

Her first thought is that her brother looks old. Normally in dreams, he looks as he did when she left; twenty-nine. Logically, he's thirty-nine, but her dreams have never shown this. For a moment, the man jogging towards her is a stranger. His black hair is shot through with grey, the lines around his mouth and eyes are deeper, and he looks tired, thin, drained. There is a scar on his face that wasn't there before.

He's wearing his fatigues (no weapons) and when he pulls her into a hug, she can feel his bones.

(nothing like combat to lose weight)

“Jesus, you look young,” Gene says, now holding her at arm's length to study her face.

“And you look like shit.”

He grins at her. “Shoulda seen me earlier.”

Even in a dream, this statement is confusing. “Earlier?”

“Yeah, when I was being killed.”

Trudy reaches up and grabs his wrists, forces a smirk. “That ain't funny, bro.”

“Piece of shit body-armour. Got stabbed, like you did. But there weren't no one to drag me to safety. I don't recommend death by mob.”

Trudy can feel the blood draining from her face. “...where?”

“Tibet. Peacekeeping mission. Didn't you break your leg on one of those?”

“Yeah.” Trudy is frowning, staring at her older brother and trying to breathe. “You can't be dead,” she manages, fighting the panic bubbling up in her throat.

“Sure I can,” he says. “I am.”

“Why you talkin' to me, then? Why aren't you talkin' to Rosita?”

“My little girl couldn't hear me.” He shrugs. “You're asleep some place where you can. An' it's been odd, not havin' you around.”

“We didn't talk much anyway.”

“....you've been away for ten years,” Gene points out.

Trudy glances away for a moment. “I know. But for me, seven of those years were spent asleep. It just feels like three.”

“Huh. Not that long, then.”

“Only some days,” and the two share a grin. Sometimes, a tour feels like a lifetime; others, just like a day.

“'Splains why you're still wearin' your old uniform, then.”

“Huh? I'm not, I'm wearing my SecOps-” She glances down. She has her dogtags round her neck; the US flag on her arm; US Marines printed against her breast.

“Once a Marine, always a Marine,” and Gene's tone is odd. Trudy looks up at him, and something in his expression makes her glare.

“Yeah? What of it?”

“Don't you....sometimes wonder if y'sold yourself out?”

“Oh, please,” she snaps. “Someone had to put Alicia through college, and it sure as hell weren't gonna be you. And don't,” she adds, poking him in the chest with her finger, “don't you even think of callin' me a conquistadora.”

“Dad said that.”

“Yeah, he did. And then he disowned me, or did he forget to tell you that bit?”

“Nah, he mentioned it. Feels bad about it.”

Trudy snorts in contempt. “Bit late for that.”

He starts to reply, and then stops. “Look, GM, I gotta go soon. Just. Be careful, okay? I don't mean in your flying,” he says, interrupting her before she can begin to argue with him. “I mean. Look, when Dad called you that, he-“

“He what?”

“Just be careful, in what they tell you to do, okay?”

“Since when have we worried ‘bout that, Gene?” She asks him, feeling old, and tired, and entirely lost.

(he can’t be dead, he can’t be dead, it doesn’t matter that they figured without saying that they probably would miss the other’s funeral, he’s her big brother and he can’t be dead)

He doesn’t smile at her self-mocking tone. “I mean it. It’s not because the RDA’s the RDA and not the government. It’s…”

“It’s I’m part of an invasion force.”

“Yeah. It’s gonna turn ugly, Trudy. You know that.”

“So, what, the guy who managed to get into Delta is tellin’ me to ignore orders?”

“I’m just saying be careful. I know you. You’ve got a conscience.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not really.” He steps close and kisses her forehead. “I’ll be seeing you, sis.”

(don’t go)

“When?”

“When it’s time.” Gene steps back, straightens, and salutes her sharply. “Chief Warrant Officer Chacon.”

She can do this. She can straighten up and salute him back and say, “Gunnery Sergeant Schuyler,” and watch as he fades from view without crying.

She can, and she does, but no one said that she couldn’t wake up with tears running down her face, warm as blood.

Being practical by nature, Trudy makes the best of her current circumstances. She has nothing to do, she's not injured, she's not having to navigate by sight through misty, moving mountains, nothing's trying to kill her, she doesn't have to deal with highly-strung scientists, she's not being shot at: Think of it as a holiday.

The kind of holiday with four walls, a hard bench and thin mattress for a bed, and absolutely nothing to do.

That kind of holiday.

As is normal whenever she finds herself in the brig, Trudy reflects that she really can't blame her older brother for choosing the Army over prison.

– –

Saying that she has nothing to do isn't quite correct. She has nothing she has to do. This is not the same as saying she has the freedom to do whatever she wants – she is, after all, in the damn brig – but within the limitations of her sentence, there is quite a bit of flexibility. She could, for example and should she wish, spend the entire time asleep.

(She has, for the record, done this in the past. Once.

The fact that she hadn't really had more than an hour or two uninterrupted sleep for the previous seventy-two – stims, war, and being eighteen does wonders for one's endurance – had quite a lot to do with that.)

What she actually does is this:

She wakes up according to her internal clock at the same time she does every day, be she in the brig, in the barracks, or in Carl's bed. She stretches out, twists her wrists this way and that, and then her ankles. She gets up, pulls her tangled mess of bedhair back into a rough ponytail, and starts to warm up. She stretches her arms, stretches her legs; she sits on the floor, touches her toes with her knees straight and stretches out her entire body. That done, she runs through as much of her normal work-out as she can. Add in the warm down, and it nicely fills in the time until breakfast.

After breakfast, she alternates between meditation (which she can do anywhere) and sketching (no one actually wants to see her go insane from boredom). She enjoys the discipline of the former, but it's the latter she spends the majority of her time on.

She sketches.

She draws.

She draws patterns and mazes that twist the eye in a way reminisce of Escher; she draws cartoons like the Moche and other ancient peoples of Peru painted on their walls; she draws in a kind of pseudo-realistic style that takes her hours of work.

It fills in the time, it keeps her sane and relatively happy, and it bleeds off her demons.

– –

Mostly, the drawing bleeds off her demons.

But that's all she can ever ask for.

– –

(Except for the night she wakes up screaming. Her fifth in the brig, ten more nights to go, and she wakes up choking on screams and blood. The blood is all in her head; the screams aren't. It takes her an hour to stop shaking, and she refuses to tell the Marine who has pulled brig-shift, what she saw.

Not that Mads presses her too hard – at some point, just about everyone on Pandora wakes up screaming)

– –

She misses:

Flying.

Seeing the sky.

Seeing the plants.

Talking to people other than the Marines on brig-duty.

Her bed, pampered thing she's turning into.

– –

And she's off-duty, so she's allowed to miss Carl.

So she does.

– –

By the ninth day, Trudy thinks that once she gets out, she's going to do the following:

Have a shower.

Change into different clothes.

Go to Milliways and sit in a tree for a while.

– –

On the tenth day, they bring someone else in. Jack Lee, Jackly, Specialist John F. Lee; he's in the cell across from her and one over, and he's screaming.

Stimulants and Pandora don't tend to mix well together, Trudy knows. It's partly why she can handle the thought of having to knock out Carl if he flips on her - she's gotten quite good at knocking out people who have flipped.

She's also pretty sure that whatever madness has taken over the other Marine is temporary (it normally is), but she really wishes he'd snap out of it sooner rather than later (or, at least, someone would give him some damn medication to knock him out).

She listens to Jackly kick the wall for over an hour, and she thinks, yeah, sitting in a tree for a while sounds real nice right about now.

Trudy has spent two weeks surrounded by walls. One was glass, but it had a view of the rest of the brig. She kept herself occupied as best she can, but four walls. Not flying, not running, not really walking. Four walls, when she's gotten so used to being outside on the science sorties.

When she arrives at Milliways (after going to her quarters, after showering and pulling on shorts and a t-shirt and washing her hair to try and get the smell of the brig out of it) Trudy doesn't stick around inside.

She heads straight for the back door, and climbs a tree.

Not very high, but it's enough.

She's outside, she has a few, and under her bare feet, she has bark. Not silky cement, not cold metal, but living bark.

(she can breathe, now)

part i

“Take them straight to the morgue,” Trudy says to the Marines unloading her Samson's cargo-hold, filling out the form on an e-pad and doing her best to ignore the smell. The smell of blood, at least – for once, she's concentrating on the smell of fuel and hot metal and rubber that permeates the hangar. She's also paying far more attention to filling out the form than she normally would.

There are a few too many bodybags for this to really work as a distraction, but dammit, she tries.

“This all of them?” Chief Warrant Officer Kapanadze – normally something of Trudy's ach-nemesis – is just looking queasy.

“Ye-e-ep.”

“There, uh. Aren't enough bags. For everyone.”

With a studied blankness to her voice, she just says, “I know.” Then she says, “Oi, Garcia! Remember to tell 'em that they got to sort who's who. We had to jumble them up.” In a lot of cases, just because there wasn't enough to justify an entire bag. In a lot of other cases, because they had no idea which part belonged to which other part.


She passes the e-pad over to Kapanadze, and tries not to notice how the blood makes her fingers sticky. “Hey, Kap? Could ya do me a favour?”

He just looks at her.

“Clean all the blood off my girl?”

“Sure,” he says, and walks off without cracking any jokes. She would have felt better if he'd bitched at her. And come to think of it, she doesn't remember hearing Garcia acknowledge her order, either. Which means that she should go down to the morgue and tell the med-techs herself.

For a moment, Trudy just stands next to her Samson, clenching her fist and watching the blood on her skin.

She really doesn't want to go down to the morgue.



“Fuck,” she says, softly, and then squares her shoulders to go down and do what is left of her duty to the fallen Marines.

underwoodnofive: Ashie, maybe the atmosphere is thicker and deeper than ours. Maybe there aren't the same cold temperatures at altitudes that would be considered high on earth.

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