This Was Such A Fantastic Read, And I Will Add This To The Fic And Credit You Properly! Unfortunately,

Spider being adopted by Tsen’tey and Ikeyni of the Tayrangi

A/n- Please forgive this bad format, tumblr has a limit and I am too impatient to make this into multiple parts.

I'm leaning more toward a Dark!Spider. Dark meaning: He's not evil, not misguided, and certainly not living up to everyone’s negative expectations just because he’s the son of a war criminal. This version of Spider is abrasive, sharp, calculating, merciless, and utterly unforgiving. The way the adults around him treated him taught him early on to rely on no one but himself. He grew up bitter and cynical, far too mature for his age, self-trained, self-taught, and sustained only by Eywa and the wilds of Pandora. He's even prepared in secret for the inevitable day Neytiri or Jake might decide to "get rid" of him to appease Quaritch’s victims. When that time comes, he’ll be ready.

This Spider is a mouthy little shit with a blade as sharp as his tongue, cutting others down with cruel, pointed words, a talent he picked up from Neytiri herself. Her past insults from his childhood were his first lessons in pain. He's learned from her coldness and backs up every word with skill. Fast, vicious, and precise, he knows how to leave deep cuts. Both literal and emotional. He moves like the Crannogmen from Game of Thrones, with total mastery of Pandora’s brutal terrain. He’s not evil. Just a hurt, traumatized kid using pain as armor.

Spider even calls himself the Forest Demon or just The Demon, wearing the insult like a crown, a warning, a defense. If that’s what they see, then that’s what he’ll be. And he lives up to it by terrorizing RDA soldiers without hesitation, without mercy, without guilt. Spider is everything the adults built him up to be and more. They will simply have to put up with it.

Here's a plot!

Spider dies on the Sea Dragon and wakes up in a world where Mr. and Mrs. Sully love him and adopted him when he was just a baby. In this alternate reality, many things are the same, except for this one change. Confused and wary, Spider can’t understand why they’re being so kind to him and assumes the worst. Haunted by the harsh truth of the life he remembers, he recoils from the love he’s offered, convinced it’s a lie or some cruel joke from the Great Mother. As he keeps his guard up, the Sullys are upset and confused, wondering why their son seems so afraid to open up to them.

...

So, I've been having thoughts about Spider wielding Chaos magic.

Crazy, right? In a galaxy where blue people exist and humans have found a way to colonize planets, red magic wouldn't be too farfetched.

That would be absolutely wild—Spider awakening as a Chaos witch in a moment of extreme pain and trauma, unleashing a force that he never knew existed. It would make him a terrifying and awe-inspiring figure on Pandora, a force of nature devoted to Eywa and the planet of his birth. Throw in Kiri, and you've got two overpowered siblings.

Anyway, here's a drabble:

Captured by the RDA, Spider endures days of torture as they demand the location of the Sullys. They push him past his limits—electric shocks, water deprivation, beatings—until something inside him snaps. It’s not just pain that fuels the transformation, but sheer, unfiltered rage. He had spent his entire life being nothing but a pawn to everyone. A demon to the Na’vi, a prisoner to the RDA, an afterthought to the humans of Hell's Gate. No more.

The air distorts. The room trembles. A deep crimson glow seeps from Spider’s fingers, crackling and sparking like liquid fire. He doesn’t think—doesn’t even understand what’s happening—before an explosion of red chaos energy erupts outward, flaying the RDA soldiers alive. Metal warps and melts, bodies twist and contort, their screams merging into a sickening cacophony of agony. Blood paints the walls.

Quaritch barely has time to register what’s happening before he bursts apart, his entire form breaking down on a molecular level.

Spider stands at the epicenter of the carnage, breath heaving, eyes glowing a deep, menacing crimson. His feet leave the floor as he ascends, floating weightlessly, surrounded by swirling tendrils of chaotic energy. He looks down at the ruin he has created, the shredded remains of his captors, the metal reduced to slag.

And for the first time in his life, Spider feels powerful.

He doesn’t run. He doesn’t hide. He flies, the red glow of his magic cutting across the Pandoran sky like a falling star of crimson.

The Omatikaya stare in shock as he arrives, his form wreathed in pulsing red light. He doesn’t wait for their judgment. He knows what he must do. The RDA has taken everything from him, from the Na'vi, from Eywa, from this world. Jake Sully had done what he could, but these demons were relentless in their pursuit for more. Never again.

With a single whisper, the forest bends to his will. The skies darken. The very fabric of reality trembles as he vanishes in a flicker of crimson energy, reappearing in the heart of Bridgehead City.

And then, with a single motion of his hand, he tears it apart.

Buildings collapse. Mechs crumple like paper. Soldiers scream as the very air around them shreds them into nothing. There is no mercy, no hesitation—only raw, undiluted vengeance. The Wrath of Eywa.

Spider doesn’t stop until the RDA is gone. Until their machines are dust, their weapons are ruins, and the very land they corrupted is cleansed by his power. As the last embers of destruction fade, he stands amidst the wreckage, his red eyes burning like twin suns. He is no longer just a stray human, no longer the son of a demon.

He is the harbinger of chaos.

And Pandora is his to protect.

Spider, struggling with his spirituality and faith in Eywa as a human boy born on Pandora, a planet he cannot neurally connect to:

Varang:

Worst pain

Bonds That Bleed AU

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.

Seriously, some of the theories are just so bad or have been explicitly stated as false by the creators... some people are in for a rude awakening when Avatar 3 comes out.

Did I miss any other bad theories?

@cyren-myadd to answer your questions about this au.

Quaritch wouldn't know if the kid is his. Back in the day, he nearly beat the shit out of Phillip Shaw for messing around with one of his female soldiers. So when he sees this kid with blonde hair, exactly the same shade as Phillip's pansy ass, he jumps to the wrong conclusion, assuming Phillip is the father of this little twerp. He also mistakenly assumes that Miles Socorro must have died on Pandora, because in his mind, there's no way a human child could survive on this planet.

I don’t see the RDA being too interested in who Julian belongs to, either. They're only focused on getting information about Jake Sully’s location. I can still see Quaritch taking Julian out of there like he did in the movie, but it's a manipulative move, not paternal in any way. And even if he does find out Spider is his son, he’d keep that information to himself. That’s a lot to process. However, he does plan on telling him once the heat dies down and Jake is strung up by his feet. Quaritch needs Julian focused, and he doesn't have time for emotional conversations when he's supposed to be tracking down Jake. He DOES start being a little nicer to Julian, but is still being manipulative to keep Julian reliant on him.

As for Norm, he would fight tooth and nail to find his pseudo-nephew. He’d even go so far as to join the battle in search of Spider, which leads to a confrontation with Quaritch, who’s holding Kiri hostage on the Sea Dragon. Before Quaritch can utter a single word about Spider’s parentage, Norm body-slams him from behind. When I say he’s willing to sacrifice himself and fight to keep that secret hidden, I mean it.

Kiri is freed during the scuffle and scurries away. Then it’s an all-out brawl with Norm clawing at Quaritch like a madman, because he’ll be damned if this piece of shit spills the beans and ruins Julian's life. Norm is injured, but he wounds Quaritch badly, nearly tearing his throat open and even trying to rip out his tongue to silence him.

(Quaritch still manages to escape, but whether or not he succumbed to the injuries Norm gave to him is unknown.)

Norm’s uncharacteristic brutality raises suspicion in Julian, who has never seen his guardian act like this. Maybe even Jake starts questioning Norm’s extreme dedication to finding Julian and fighting Quaritch like a goddamned Thanator. Norm stays tight-lipped, but I have this idea where Mo’at eventually spills the truth. She’s not stupid; she’s known for a while that Norm was hiding something, and she bullied Norm into letting her accompany him to the Metkayina's territory so that she could talk to the boy herself and do some extreme mediating. She's allowed this to go on long enough. No more.

She would have a long, serious talk with Jake and Neytiri, urging them to see Julian beyond his bloodline. I’m not sure how that will play out, but questions are answered, and Norm’s relationship with Spider is put to the test…this isn't going to end smoothly, and tensions are high, especially with Neteyam seriously injured.

But I swear this has a happy ending!

After the truth comes out, there’s tension and frayed trust. Julian pulls away from Norm, confused and upset, not just about the lie, but about having the story of his BIRTH constructed and shabbily patched together like an infected wound, and making him believe for YEARS that he was someone else's son!! This isn't just something that can be washed away with a kiss and a hug.

Julian's life was built on a lie, and even though Norm did this for his protection, it still hurts and makes him feel like an impostor.

Jake and Neytiri are stunned too, especially Neytiri, who struggles with the idea of this child, a friend and brother to her children, being connected to the man who caused her family so much pain. Jake feels betrayed, and he and Norm have a huge argument. Norm feels guilty, but is largely unrepentant and says some hurtful things when their argument gets vicious. "So what if I lied! You lied, too, Jake! You lied, and hundreds died! I wasn't going to let Julian hold your bag AND Quaritch's! Everything I did, I did for Julian!" THAT almost has the two go to blows, and Tonowari is forced to step in.

But it doesn’t stay that way.

Norm doesn’t give up. Even with his injuries, he shows up for Julian, again and again, not asking for forgiveness but simply proving, with quiet consistency, that he loves Julian. Neytiri remains distant for a time, but Mo'at and maybe even Kiri bridge that gap. Once again, Neytiri's trauma is real, and some time away from Julian AND Norm is needed for her mental health. It's going to take a year or two (maybe three) until Julian and Norm and the Sullys can look at each other without flinching. Kiri is the only one not majorly affected because she's attached to Julian and sees him as her full-blooded brother. It's the same for Lo'ak and Neteyam, but this information puts them in a really weird headspace.

"He was like a stray cat."

Me, an intellectual: ... That's a child.