eleven:
the past is alive.
Miles

Silas.

She fucking said Silas.

She said our son's name.

Just before Nina Rodriguez had died, we had discussed baby names for the kids we wanted to have. Before she was admitted, she loved spending her days taking hikes or sitting in a field of flowers.

She wanted to name our son Silas Miles Quaritch.

As I sat in my dark room, I did not make a single sound. My tail did not move, and it felt like the air in the room was being drained out slowly. My hands gripped the bed's edge, and my arms felt like they were going to fall off my shoulders.

And a tear hit the floor.

"What the fuck? What the fuck?" I said to myself. In all my years, in my past and in this life, I did not know what to do or how to feel. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Tell a Na'vi I've never met that I loved her past life? Run away and just live on Pandora as one of the people I've tried so hard to kill?

It was driving me insane.

I don't know this woman. Yet she shares the DNA and attributes of the girl I swore to love for the rest of my life. The girl I loved so much that I made a vow on her fucking grave to never marry anyone else.

A girl who would hate who I had become.

"They're saying Pandora could be humanity's new home," I told her, but she frowned.

"People live there."

"So?"

"So? It's not ours to take. It's our fault for killing Earth, so we can't take someone else's home."

I have a mission: kill Jake Sully, kill the Na'vi, and make Pandora the new home for humanity. I knew it was my mission, even before I died, and yet she was here. Her fucking ghost or something was here, being reborn as the people I am sworn to kill. What would I have done if we met before, when I was human? Would I have known?

Would I have still tried to take her home?

If this is a higher powers way of saying "fuck you", then it's working.

I want to forget.

Forgetting her - forgetting that she's here would be so much easier than having my heart torn between a mission and a stupid woman that doesn't even like me.

"I do not care what happens to me, but I will kill you. I will not stop until your blood is on my hands."

She swore that to me. With the rage of a thousand suns, and the hatred of her people, she swore that to me. It was like Nina herself was swearing that to me after seeing everything my past self and my current self has done.

Past her eyes was a woman who grew up on Pandora, raised alongside Jake Sullys' batshit crazy wife, and one of the greatest warriors I have seen.

And she would rather die than be with me.

"Unless. . ." I muttered.

Unless this was a second chance. In my past life, I had drowned myself in my journey to Pandora and claiming it for humanity. I had died because of it. Who's to say that just because I have this body now that things will go differently?

Because things will end up the same, but this time with Ninat'ia killing me.

Unless I change things.

Unless I learn.

"God, whoever is out there, you're one sick son of a bitch."

///
Miles is conflicted on either completing his mission or taking this second chance at a possible new life.
This story is definitely a "He fell first but she fell harder" trope