Here are some more thoughts on my Neytiri/Spider mother-son relationship where she raises him to be her instrument and attack dog against the RDA and Quaritch. Bonds That Bleed AU ended ambiguously, so here are more headcanons that have been swimming around my brain.
-) Neytiri raised Spider with the ways of the Na’vi, but never let him forget what he was. A human. A creature of destruction. A son of the demon. Every lesson was laced with quiet loathing, every word a seed of hatred planted deep in his heart. "They are destroyers, Miles. They will never stop until our home is dust beneath their feet." She does not temper her words, does not shield him from the ugliness of truth because he must learn, must hate as she hates.
-) And Spider listened. He learned. He fought. He killed. It was easy to lie to him, to pretend to love him, to smile at his victories even when her Jake was deeply troubled by the boy's eagerness to kill RDA soldiers, even when her mother stared at her with eyes full of quiet disappointment. But somewhere along the way, something changed.
-) Oftentimes, Neytiri found herself reaching for him in the quiet moments, pressing her forehead to his like she did with Neteyam, Kiri, Lo’ak, and Tuk. She would find herself soothing his wounds, braiding his hair, smiling at his laughter, glowing with pride when he respected her customs and spoke her language fluently. The lines between tool and child blurred, and before she even realized it, she loved him. Her little blade. Her son.
-) But the damage was already done.
-) Jake had warned her. "You’re filling his head with hatred. This has to stop. You need to stop. He's just a kid." She ignored him. The little demon was hers. Hers to mold. Hers to teach. Hers to wield. He was hers.
-) Until the day Spider leaped on Quaritch's back like a starved animal, clinging onto his father in a death's embrace, blade flashing. The monster who once haunted Neytiri’s nightmares did not even get the chance to scream before Spider drove his knife deep into both of his own father's eye sockets. Once. Twice. Again. Again. Again. Again. A frenzy of violence. His face was expressionless, his hands steady, his body drenched in blood that should not have been on him. The blood of his own father. There is no hesitation. No mercy. He is everything she raised him to be and more.
And for the first time in her life, Neytiri felt fear.
Not for herself. For her son.
She had wanted this—had spent years preparing him for this very moment. So why did it feel like her heart was shattering?
Because in that moment, she saw him clearly—not as the boy she had raised and manipulated, not as the child she had grown to love—but as a reflection of her own hatred. And she knew, with cold, crushing clarity—
She had stolen his innocence just as the Sky People had stolen hers.
I have some thoughts about an au where Neytiri decides to adopt Spider, but with a twist. Neytiri starts off with a cold, calculated plan to mold Spider into her weapon against the demon who destroyed her family, only to genuinely bond with Spider over time and see him as her own.
-) From the moment Neytiri laid eyes on the squirming, pink-skinned demon, she felt the fire of hatred coil around her heart. He has his father’s face. The same features, the same blood in his veins—Quaritch’s legacy, staring back at her with wide, unknowing eyes and a gummy smile. Instinct screamed at her to cast him away, to have him banished to her mate's former planet, to spare her home from the cruelty of yet another sky demon. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
-) Instead, Neytiri shoved her hatred into the deepest, coldest part of herself and made a choice. She would raise him. Not out of kindness. Not out of pity. Certainly not out of any foolish maternal instinct. No, she would raise him as a weapon. An instrument of vengeance.
-) Quaritch had stolen everything from her—her father, her sister, her brother, her home, countless lives of her people. And now, she would take everything from him. She would mold his son into something unrecognizable, shape him into the very antithesis of the man who sired him. Spider would walk like the Na’vi, speak their tongue, fight with their weapons, and live by their beliefs. He would forsake the demon blood in his veins until nothing of Quaritch remained. And when the time came, she would watch the fear dawn in the demon's eyes as his own flesh and blood struck him down.
-) There are times when Jake watches her with wary eyes when she helps Spider take his first steps, when she shushes his pitiful bleatings, and when she cradles him in her arms and holds his little hand in hers. There is an unease in Jake’s stare, as if he sees the shape of her plan but does not know how to stop it—or perhaps, deep down, does not want to. It does not matter.
-) Neytiri is resolute. She has a path, and she will walk it to the end. She will strip away every trace of Quaritch’s legacy, reshape him, teach him to hate the sky people, to despise the blood in his veins. He will not be human. He will not be Omatikaya. He will be a blade—her blade. He will be hers. And one day, when the time is right, he will drive that blade into his father’s heart.
-) But like all well-laid plans, this one did not go as intended.
-) Neytiri had expected wariness. She had expected grudging respect, perhaps even a smidgen of pride that he was picking up her lessons with eagerness. What she had not expected was love. Spider is eager, desperate to prove himself. As he grows, he stumbles, falls, bleeds—but always gets back up. He grins at her when she corrects his stance, laughs when she gently tugs at his hair in reprimand, glows under her approval.
-) It should not matter. He is a means to an end. And yet, somewhere along the way, the pretending stops. She began to see him. To feel warmth towards him.
-) Not the reluctant duty of a mentor or the cold satisfaction of a hunter circling its prey, but the aching, unbidden love of a mother.
-) Somewhere between teaching him to string a bow and scolding him for climbing too high, between pressing healing paste to his scraped knees and watching him giggle as Lo’ak and Neyteyam drag him into trouble with Kiri chasing after them and Tuk toddling along, something in her heart shifts. She no longer sees Quaritch in his face and instead sees Miles—a boy as unpredictable and beautiful as the forest, as fierce as any warrior, as stubborn as herself. A child who saw her as a mother.
-) And when the day finally came that she looked at him and realized she could not bear to lose him, Neytiri understood the cruelest twist of fate:
In trying to make him her weapon, she had made him her son.