Little Acorns

by feldman

Chapter Three

~*~

"Aeryn, you're awake." D'Argo approaches her up the corridor and turns to walk with her, his long legs easily matching her quick strides. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm still tired but I'll be fine. Where is John?"

"John is in the docking bay," D'Argo lays his fingers on her arm and eases her to a slower walking pace. "But now that you are up, Pilot would like to speak with you."

Aeryn hears the sympathy, the empathetic grief in his voice. It scrapes at the delicate shell she's formed over the pain and the imposition of it makes her angry. "I don't have a comm, he'll have to wait."

"Aeryn," D'Argo reaches for her arm again but she shakes it off.

"I'm sorry, D'Argo, I need to talk to John."

"Here, take mine." He pulls off his comm and presses it into her hand. "Talk to Pilot as soon as you can."

She nods and leaves him standing in the corridor, her mind racing around the task at hand.

She has to make John see that it's the only way, that they have to do everything they can, *everything* to get Zola back. She thinks her daughter's name, and is ambushed by a sense memory of blood heat and slick softness, the ghosts of tiny limbs and tough cord sliding in her palms, making them itch. She curls her fingers to dig the nails in, erasing the feeling, and shunning the sore paralysis of grief waiting for her beyond it. Any action, even engaging with wormholes, is better than the feeble immobility of mourning. If she stops and lets it happen, it becomes real, and Zola is lost forever. She walks faster.

How to begin?

She slows as she enters the docking bay because she still doesn't know what to say. The curve of his back looks both powerful and weary as he sits on the bench, bent over a thick book. She keeps walking, stamping down a small queasy flutter.

He hears her approach and closes the book, holding his place with a finger.

She has no set beginning in mind, she just opens her mouth and speaks. "I'm ready."

He sets the book on the floor and straddles the bench, making a space for her to join him. She continues to stand. He begins slowly, his voice raspy and delicate. "I don't know what kind of funeral rite you were raised with, but I wou--"

"No, I'm ready to go fix it."

He repeats with no inflection. "Fix it." His lips are parted and his front teeth meet on edge.

"Yes, we need to go back and fix this while we still can."

His eyes and mouth close, and his teeth click together as he swallows. He sits there for a moment, simply breathing as deeply and smoothly as he can. He speaks with his eyes still shut. "There is nothing to fix, Aeryn."

Her voice is like slate. "Yes. There is."

He finally looks up, taking in her red-rimmed eyes and her struggle to keep her mouth from twisting up in pain. She clings to the shreds of her disbelief, unwilling to acknowledge that for all he's risked in the past he could refuse to risk this for the sake of their child. He holds her gaze, his calm feeding her anguish, as if his lack of reply should be response enough. When he finally speaks, the word is less of a denial than a coup de grace.

"No."

She shifts gears and throws the emotion outward, shoving at his shoulders, "How can you sit there and choose to let her stay dead?" She strikes his shoulders again harder with the heels of her hands, powering the blow from her legs and sending him backwards on the bench. "Tell me, how?"

He catches his boots on the bench and curls back up, his calm equaling her desperate rage. "How do we save her, Aeryn?" He stands and closes the distance between them, his face right down in hers and his tone unmercifully methodical. "What do we do? How far back do we go?"

Tears spill unheeded, her coloring paler than normal and blotched with red. "As far as it takes."

"You choose, then. What do you want undone, Aeryn?"

"I want my daughter alive and safe. Our daughter."

His nostrils flare but he keeps his unemotional tone. "I'll ask again--how? We don't know why she died." He breathes around the catch in his voice. "I can fuck the whole universe sideways even when I'm just traveling aboveboard, never mind the inherent clusterfuck if I deliberately go backwards. Who are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to risk undoing?"

She's silent and pale.

"Rewind, erase, hit record. Where do you want to stop the tape, Aeryn? Before the wedding? Or before you popped the cork on her on Katratzi? How about," he slips the words into the air with a soothing and morbid calm, "...before her daddy died?"

She folds her arms under her breasts and tucks her chin down, her eyes looking to the side and at the floor.

"Some things can't be fixed, Aeryn." His voice is ragged and soft. "I wish she were here with us, our girl, our Zola. But I won't gamble everyone else I care about. God doesn't play dice with the Universe, because the odds on dice are too damned fair."

She lifts her eyebrows and then her gaze. "She's yours again now, is she? And not *his*?"

His reply is swift, escaping through a crack in his control. "Since when do you discern a difference?"

She presses the heels of her hands to her temples and turns toward the door. "I'm leaving."

"Aeryn, I'm sorry." He mutters 'asshole' to himself and follows after her. "I think it safe to say that we probably shouldn't discuss anything more important than dinner until we've had a chance to calm the fuck down."

"Please yourself, John." Her boot heels thunk on the keracrete floor of the docking bay, her thin voice barely audible above the sound. "Pilot needs to see me about something."

"About s--oh. Aeryn?"

She turns to glance at him, trying to pass off her brittle control as impatience.

"You don't know about it yet, do you?"

"Know about what?" Aeryn leans against the doorway, waiting for John to speak.

"Pilot wanted to tell you, he--" John pauses, then reaches for her hand.

"Wanted to tell me what?" His skin is warm as he lifts her hand and lays it against the skinsteel of a wall panel.

He watches her reaction intently. "What do you feel?"

Her eyes lose focus and her brow furrows. "Bad. Things are bad, but not frightening." Her hand slides against the wall, caressing, and she looks at John again. "We're not in danger, but what happened?"

"Let's go to Pilot--"

"No, you will tell me now."

He exhales. "The offspring wasn't healthy. Moya isn't pregnant anymore."

She pushes herself away from where she leans against the doorway and begins walking toward the Pilot den. He walks next to her and shares the silence until she speaks. It's a statement, and not a question. "This is because of me, isn't it."

"No it's not. That's why Pilot wanted to be the one to tell you, because he didn't want you thinking the two things were related."

"When did Moya's baby die?"

"It stopped responding to Moya's maternal hail a few days ago. Pilot says that growth had been slowing well before that."

"So it wasn't damage from the Peacekeepers."

"The baby was full Leviathan, just too much like Moya to handle Tormented Space."

The silence stretches all the way to Pilot's den.

Pilot watches her come up the walkway and slowly lowers his carapace to the side. "Moya and I are very sorry about your loss, Aeryn."

The words are dented by the time they escape her throat. "I'm sorry about Moya's baby, Pilot."

He extends an arm toward her and helps her climb onto the console. "We want you to know that despite the timing, what happened to you did not cause what happened to Moya."

Aeryn kneels and cradles the claw that Pilot rests on her leg. "But how can you be sure?"

"The offspring had been in distress for several days. We suspected that the interference of Tormented Space was causing problems in development, but Moya chose to postpone the decision to terminate until after the wedding ceremony."

John closes the distance and lays his hands on the console. "How long after?"

Pilot rears his head. "*After* Officer Sun took ill."

"I'm sorry, Pilot, I didn't mean to imply th--"

"I understand your concern, Commander Crichton." Pilot shifts his head back down and toward Aeryn, and taps his claw against her leg. "Moya and I were expecting difficulty. Even though this offspring was not viable, there was no evidence of Peacekeeper tampering. This has encouraged us that our problems will not be as great as we had feared. Moya is frustrated but determined."

Aeryn taps her fingers against the shell of Pilot's claw, the vibrations a gentle caress to the sensitive flesh inside. "Moya is also sad."

Pilot extends another arm and rubs that claw against her shoulders. "She is sad for you. She knows what it means to lose a loved child."

John draws close to Aeryn and rests his hands and head against her other leg. She mindlessly taps at Pilot's claw and runs her fingers through the hair at the nape of John's neck, as the fear that fueled her breaches through the containment field of anger. Physically caught between these two beings, held and kept still for the grief to capture her, she fractures and implodes, the sorrow finally spilling out on tears and ragged breath.

John curls an arm around her lower back and presses his face into her hip, holding tight against the shake in his own shoulders. She imagines sitting behind him in his ship as they tip down into a wormhole, risking everything for Zola, for one tiny being who never drew breath between birth and death.

They did well on Earth, fixed what was wrong and came right back, but the nurses at the memorial have screamed his name for hundreds of cycles. She understands why they are here instead of in his ship, even if it still hurts.

She wipes her wet face, bringing her breathing back under control. She cradles his head, rubs down his back and arm. He lays a kiss on the skin bared by the gap in her waistband.

Pilot telescopes his eyes out a bit, narrowing the eyelids. "Moya and I are concerned about your well-being during the next mating cycle."

Aeryn's voice is rough but freer. "Moya will try again?"

"Yes. We are confident that she will eventually conceive a healthy child with this male. The gestation chamber will be ready in three more days, and Moya will be fertile again after the next mating."

John stands straight, seemingly distracted by an internal thought.

Pilot dips his head and swivels his eyes to Aeryn. "We are aware of the difficulty that the mating cycle presents, and will delay it if you would like to evacuate into a transport pod for the duration."

"Unless Moya would prefer if I left, I would rather stay in my quarters while I recover."

***

When she gets there, Aeryn finds that her room has been straightened and all evidence of the wedding preparations erased.

She sets her comm on the table and lifts her holster from the hook on the wall. Her gun hasn't been fired since she cleaned it last, but she sits at the table and cleans it again, re-conditioning the straps and sheath of the holster before putting everything back in its place again on the hook.

She peels her clothing off, rubbing at the salt residue on the one leg of her leathers, wiping it away with the thin film of metal-oil clinging to her fingers. She gets into bed.

***

"Granny." John checks that no one else is in the kitchen before he sidles up next to Noranti. In the tone of someone trying to bum a cigarette or score a joint he asks her, "You got anything that will work for birth control?"

Noranti sips from her mug before answering cheerfully. "To ease labor pain or to hasten delivery?"

"Er," John rubs his hands on the tabletop, "to prevent conception in the first place."

Noranti sets down her mug. "That's completely different, then. Venikka. Oh yes, venikka will do nicely. Works in Sebaceans, and since you got one pregnant it should work for you as well. Strips the tools from your little sporecells." She wiggles her shoulders and then shakes her head, "They can't move and they can't open the door."

"What else does it do?"

"It will make you sleepy, but that will wear off in a day. The sporecells recover in a few monens. I'd recommend dosing every few weekens if you want to be certain that no life can be kindled when you..." Noranti smiles with all three eyes and gestures with her one hand as if she's a DJ scratching a record.

"Yeah, uh, that's good." John clears his throat. "Do we have any of that here?"

"I can make a decoction in a quarter of an arn. Give me two arns and it won't even taste bad."

"I don't care as long as it works."

An arn later she holds out a little salad bowl filled halfway with a muddy green liquid.

John eyes the concoction. "Venikka, huh?"

"Oh yes. I calculated the dose based on your weight. Then I added a bit more because the cuttings were a few cycles old. Not as strong as fresh."

The liquid smells like wet clay and new rubber-soled sneakers. He tips it back like he's draining the milk after a bowl of cereal and takes it in one gulp. He slams the bowl down, smacks his hand a few times on the counter next to it, and swallows painfully.

Noranti beams a satisfied smile, cup of water in hand.

"Holy frell, woman, that's *foul*." The water only serves to spread the taste around. "So when do I start shooting blanks?"

"Blanks, blanks..." Noranti mutters. "*Blanks*, yes, like ammunition. See? Love is definitely a kind of war, is it not?"

John nods distractedly, stealing her mug and knocking it back. The taste of honeyed coffee surprises him and actually kills the after-ick of the venikka.

Noranti blinks distractedly, but brings herself back to the topic. "You will start producing blanks in a few arns, and the venikka will also disable some of your live ammunition. But you still have a good supply of it, so, heh, discharge your magazine often."

John mutters darkly in a sing-song, "*This is my rifle, this is my gun, one is for fighting, one is for fun*."

"We should check your output in a few days to see how the disarmament is progressing."

"Oh joy."

Noranti gets up, refills her mug and pours another for John, then joins him again at the table. "I take it Aeryn is feeling better?"

"She's up and around. Still real tired. I think she was only awake for a few hours before she went to go sleep in her own room." He sips at the coffee, more to inhale the roasted scent of it than to taste it. "I just want to be safe with her."

Noranti nods and watches him yawn. "You should probably find a nice place to lie down before the venikka gets the best of you."

His 'yeah' turns into another yawn, this one flaring his nostrils and sucking his breath inward with a harsh vacuum sound. He pushes himself away from the table and stands, shaking his eyes open. "'Night, Gramma."

Noranti giggles even though she knows the next part phonetically by heart, "neitjonboi!"

***

The drowsiness is hitting him in waves, sloshing him down the corridors to Aeryn's room. She's already asleep and he's halfway there himself, flailing out of his boots and clothes and falling into bed.

She doesn't stir out of the balled-up position she's taken in the center of the mattress. He crawls under the covers and snugs his body around hers, against and slightly on top, like gerbils curled together in a sleeping pile.

***

Harvey sits on an exam bed and sings, his voice echoing in the space of the apothecary with the clean tones of a bugle playing taps. "*Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing*..."

Their uniforms are so small. They are laid out on every other surface, and the smell of soot and blood hangs in the air with Harvey's low tenor.

"*Where have all the flowers gone? Girls have picked them everyone. Oh, when will you ever learn? When will you ever learn?*"

They've been triaged, with the ones nearer to the door still alive, if barely. Two older kids hustle in with a stretcher. They lower it to the ground just inside the door, ease a younger boy off, and take the stretcher away.

"*Where have all the young men gone? Long time passing. Where have all the young men gone? Long time ago?*"

John makes his way toward the boy, whose arm and side are bundled in scraps of an adult's torn uniform coat, the fabric soaked dark. The boy's face is scraped and dirty, and his uninjured hand grips a pulse pistol that's still a little too big. He looks like one of the Lost Boys.

"*Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards every one. When will you ever learn? Oh, when will you ever learn?*"

The older kids bring in another casualty, scurrying past John and toward the back of the room where all the children are still. He follows them. They set the stretcher down and lift a girl.

Harvey slides from the bed to assist, cradling the girl's head and singing quietly. He eases her onto the padding of the exam bed as if she were only sleeping. Her face is dirty, her cuts bloodless, and her expression serene. She must have died in the first wave of destruction, without knowing she was hit, much less what hit her.

"*Where have all the graveyards gone? Covered with flowers every one. Wh--*"

"Shut up."

Harvey shrugs and hums a bit.

John lowers himself down onto the kneeler in front of the half-sized coffin, reaching out to lay his hands on the edge of the satin lining. Harvey kneels silently next to him. The bright thick smell of flowers tickles his nose like wormhole sign.

After a moment, Harvey speaks gently. "This is for the best, John. You know how much more painful this could have been, had we actually come to know her."

"You don't have to know someone to love them, Harv."

"Ah yes. And as we well know, acquaintance does not always equal love. Mutual benefit, however, naturally leads to mutual interest. Rest assured, our interests are always foremost in my mind."

"*My* mind, Harv."

"Exactly. And I was correct, was I not, that progeny would bring too much risk?"

John doesn't answer.

"What would you have done for this child, John?"

"Almost anything."

"Indeed. And that is an unacceptable level of sacrifice."

John lowers his head and says in the voice of a request, "Leave me alone, Harv."

Harvey stands and walks away.

John leans into the coffin and touches her soft cold cheek, kisses her smooth forehead.

"John."

Someone is shaking his shoulder.

"John."

"Wha-?" The room is over-bright and his limbs ache with sleepiness. He drags a hand out of the covers to clean the gummy lashes of his one open eye.

Aeryn is dressed, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. He yawns and blinks both eyes open. She's still pale, but sleek and well-rested. Everything has been put back into place, even if it doesn't fit the way it should. Her voice is muted and even. "I would like to have the memorial for Zola tomorrow morning."

He sits up in bed and takes her hand.

She returns his squeeze and continues. "Whatever your custom is, I would like you to follow it, and I will follow my own. She will have both."

He nods. "Okay."

Her eyes focus in on him. Her skin is cool as she brushes something from his cheek. "Are you feeling alright?"

"A little under the weather."

"You should sleep then. I will turn down the lighting before I go." She stands, and helps him straighten the covers around him.

A small part of him is surprised that he's just been tucked into bed by Aeryn Sun, without a word about inferior biology or malingering. "Thanks." He yawns again and watches through closing lids as she laces her boots and heads out of the room. He lets the comfort of the bed wash over him, the bed his wife just snugged him into. He knows he's a sentimental fool but there it is.

***

She regards him over the collection of teacups on the table, her high round cheekbones, smooth forehead and translucent skin making her look as if she were painted by Vermeer. She's college age, in an MIT sweatshirt, but grace and composure mark her movements as she drops a colored tablet into each teacup. She is blonde to the point where her eyebrows and lashes are a subtle dusting of gold, making her face all the more open and earnest. "With all due respect, Dad..."

"You're an idiot." The second girl is a few years younger, dressed in worn jeans and a ragged Metallica 'Ride the Lightning' t-shirt, her hair nearly black and her eyes colorless grey. The cast of her features and her expression of exasperation remind him of Livvy. She pops the cap open on the bottle in her hand and splashes vinegar into each of the teacups. "Since when did you buy into all that 'father knows best' crap?"

The blonde stirs the mixture in one cup. "It does seem rather high-handed and authoritarian of you to make this decision without consulting her. After all, isn't she with you because of your willingness to be a father to her child?" She wipes the teaspoon with a paper towel, staining it green, then stirs another cup.

The brunette agrees. "Mom's going to be pissed."

John shifts in his chair, squeaking it against the linoleum. "Nice language--you kiss her with that mouth?"

The blonde nods to the brunette. "And there it is."

John demands, "There *what* is?"

The brunette lifts a water pack from the floor, opens the valve, and carefully fills each teacup halfway as she speaks. "Your concept of childhood is culture-bound and irrelevant. You want your life to be childproof before you become a parent, when you should be asking yourself what you need to teach us to survive in your world. We can learn it."

"That's what I'm afraid of. You shouldn't have to do the kind of things I've had to do to survive."

The blonde sets the teaspoon down. "I will do anything to save my people, and you cannot protect me from the duty and honor of that sacred trust."

"He's not worried about you, Princess, he's scared shitless of me." The brunette pulls up a chair, turns it backwards and sits with her arms crossed on the back. John notices the pulse pistol on her thigh, black straps over faded denim. "One more psychopath loose in the universe, leaving the same trail of bodies and chaos as her old man."

John nods. "Something like that."

She smiles a wide Aeryn smile. "Guess it's your job to teach me good family values, then, ain't it?"

John ignores the hair lifting on the back of his neck and pointedly looks at the cups of dye waiting on the table. "Why don't we color a few eggs and talk about it?"

The blond shakes her head regretfully. "We have no eggs."

The brunette draws her pistol and lays the barrel tip between John's eyes. "Somebody broke 'em all. Wonder who?"

***

He's dressed in his wedding suit, with a white shirt and black tie, and the dress shoes he'd worn to the IASA press conference and never again since. Everyone in the empty storage bay stands somberly around a table where a stasis box rests on a white cushion. Stark has chanted and Noranti is burning something sharp and piney, Rygel's words brought tears out of Chiana, and D'Argo has wailed as the Luxans do.

It's another potluck ritual but this time John feels anxious and empty. He can't remember any kind of funeral prayer save 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust', which is false because she's still in there, suspended now and forever at the hour of her death, amen.

Aeryn is dressed in battle-worn clothing, her leathers stained and ripped, the broken zipper of an old vest leaving her midriff bare, a seeming testament to the loss. She inclines her head to John, but he shakes his, let's her take the penultimate turn.

She clears her throat but her voice is cracked. "I was not taught to believe anything about death except its surety and finality. The ritual that accompanies death is one of appreciation. Acknowledgement of the duty that has been completed." She unsheathes a knife from her belt and lays it on the table with the point facing Zola. "When a comrade sacrifices himself to save you, we honor them by taking a ceremonial wound. Zola had no duty, and her sacrifice was meaningless."

It isn't the first time John has watched her attempt to explain a Peacekeeper custom. It is the first time he's watched her examine the basis of a practice and translate it into something she's willing to keep. It isn't simply "what we do", it's a ritual to express appreciation, and he unexpectedly appreciates that the evolution she's gone through is no less dramatic than his own.

"The meaning behind the ceremony, is that if I could have, I would have been honored to take that wound for her." She turns away from the rest and faces the table. There's the sound of her zipper, and the vest loosens between her shoulder blades.

John closes the distance toward the table and watches as she takes the knife, sets the edge against the skin between her breasts, and draws it down. He grabs her wrist and pulls the blade away. Blood wells and runs toward her navel as tears run down her cheeks.

"How does this help?" He asks her, gripping her wrist hard enough to squeeze the bones.

She holds his gaze as stubbornly as the knife. "How does anything help?"

Through the shock, he thinks he might understand. He releases her wrist and, as if in a daze, pulls his tie loose and unbuttons the clean white shirt. When is he going to need the suit again, anyway? He feels a little sick and a lot deranged, but he holds his hand out for the knife.

Aeryn accepts with a nod, relinquishing the blade. "Shallow."

It's sharp enough that he only feels the pull and the cold of the metal, and when the pain comes it's sharp and clean. She takes back the knife, cleaning the edge on the lining of her vest and re-sheathing it. John leans down and kisses the burnished bronze of the stasis box. "Goodbye, Zola Sun."

Aeryn lays her own kiss on the same spot of the cover and rubs it silently. She zips her vest as far as it will go.

He carefully buttons his shirt, picks up the stasis box and slowly heads for the door.

***

Aeryn follows John to the cabinet in the infirmary where Zola will rest until they find a Diagnosan. He slides the box home and turns to her, his necktie hiding the stain on his shirt. "Let me see your cut."

She fights the zipper back down, breaking it in the process. He pulls her to the other end of the infirmary and pushes the vest open, looking the cut over grimly. She asks him, "How is your own wound?"

"It stings." He reaches for a small spray bottle on a side shelf. "Nothing I can't spare. Unlike you, who's already running a few pints low."

"I am nearly recovered. I stopped bleeding two days ago." She lets him tend to her, cleaning the cut and misting it with a sealant to promote healing. The wound should be left untended, hopefully to scar, but she needs to feel his concern more than she needs to feel the discomfort.

"Noranti said you should give yourself a few months to recover before you go back to a full schedule of kicking ass and taking names." He blows on her skin to dry the sealant.

"I heard what she said." Aeryn's nipples tighten, and one peeks out from behind the bent teeth of the broken zipper. "And what Moya said about trying again."

John palms the eager breast and steps closer, leaning his forehead against hers. "Your vest is broken."

"So it is."

He rolls the nipple. "Seems awfully cold in here."

"You put out enough heat."

He chuckles and kisses her. "We shouldn't miss lunch. Noranti's got another piece of roast beast for you, and you need that meat more than you need mine right now. Here, take off that vest." He shucks his jacket and tie, and helps her put on his thin white dress shirt. He rolls up the sleeves and ties the stained shirt-tail into a knot at the level of her belt buckle.

She traces her fingers along the side of his cut, taking in the fact that he'd done this to himself like any honorable soldier would, because the action would mean something to her.

Even as days turn into weekens, as the wound turns into a pink scar hidden in the thatch of hair down his chest, she still wonders at it.

***

D'Argo brightens when he sees John coming up the corridor. "Stark wants to talk to you. He's accessed the navigation computer in the Scarran ship and he wants you to take a look at the information he's found."

"Sure, man, just let me drop by the infirmary and I'll meet you there."

"Are you feeling unwell? Aeryn said you've been sleeping a lot more the last few days."

"No, I'm fine, D." John unconsciously touches his hand to his pocket, to check that the vial is still tucked inside. "I just need to get something to Noranti."

"I can stop by the infirmary and drop it off for you. Stark is anxious to talk to you."

"Thanks, D, but I've got it."

"It's no trouble, won't take any time at all."

"No, I'd rather do this myself."

D'Argo stops and takes a long assessing look at John. "Are you sure you're feeling well? You look very red."

John chuckles and reddens even more. "D, I'm good, just drop it."

Suspicion flares and burns into a controlled authority. "No. If your health is compromised, for whatever reason, I need to know about it. We haven't been pursued lately, but that can change in a microt. I need to know the status of everyone on board."

John settles into a cold openness. "I'm not on the lakka, if that's what you mean."

D'Argo measures his friend, studies his eyes.

"I haven't been since Katoya's summer school."

D'Argo gestures without breaking his gaze. "What is in your pocket?"

"Listen D, you don't really want..."

D'Argo sighs like a high school principal.

"Alright, you asked." John pulls a glass vial out of his pocket.

D'Argo plucks the vial from John's hand. He unscrews the cap.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Dangerous?" D'Argo asks, but then he wrinkles his cheeks against the beak of his nose. "It smells like that window on LoMo--"

"Give it here." John yanks it out of D'Argo's grip and holds out his hand for the cap. "And the cap."

"John, that isn't what I think it is--is it?"

"Give me the cap. She was pretty specific about keeping it uncontaminated and I'm not up for running off another batch yet."

D'Argo hands him the cap, and walks with him up the corridor. "I think you are far too lenient in accommodating that old woman's bizarre whims. I would not provide her with *any* of my genetic fluid. She might want to cook with it."

John shoots him a look. "Dude, how can you eat her cooking if you immediately jump to a theory like that?"

D'Argo shrugs. "Still beats food cubes."

"Well, I'll keep that in mind, D, but don't worry about dinner. This is for something else." John slips the vial back into his pocket, leaving his hand in with it to keep it safe. He nods his head toward D'Argo without quite meeting his eyes. "And uh...thank you for the intervention back there, even if I didn't need it. I appreciate your eagerness to kick my ass."

"Anytime, my friend." D'Argo paces him for a while before speaking again. "I'm still curious about this errand of yours."

"You're gonna keep bugging me about this, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Noranti meets them just outside the infirmary and smiles when John hands her the vial. "Oh lovely--still warm!"

D'Argo snickers and John scratches the side of his nose, calling through the doorway, "I'll just get with you later on the results, okay?"

Noranti shouts back, "It'll just take a moment."

D'Argo gestures for John to precede him inside, smirking.

"I thought you said Stark needed to talk to me."

"You heard her, this will only take a moment. Stark can wait."

"Why do you look like you just found a peephole into the girl's locker room?"

D'Argo crosses his arms and looks smug. "I am simply fascinated that we are such seemingly different kinds of men, yet we are each willing to do anything, however mortifying, to father a healthy child."

"You think I...?"

"I understand your embarrassment, but as Lo'Laan eventually convinced me, there is no shame in it when the end result is life."

"What, are Luxans Catholic?" John shakes his head. "I've seen you man, you're randier than Captain Kirk, you'll tap anything with a nice ass and a smile."

"When I am lonely, I seek conversation." D'Argo tilts his head to indicate that it's not talking he's talking about. "I do not talk to myself."

"So Luxans don't...whack it?"

D'Argo shakes his head, a bit ill at ease with the newfound knowledge that there's a lot more masturbation going on in the universe than he'd imagined.

John crosses his arms and leans against the wall in pointed relaxation. "No wonder you guys get hyper-rage."

"Only Luxan males have hyper-rage."

"Heh. Then I'm thinking the ladies know something you don't."

***

The Scarran ship is not as impressive as Aeryn had expected, even when Stark shows her what he's found so far in the navcomputer. Once he leaves her alone with her Prowler, she settles quickly into the absorbing calm of working on her ship.

The fatigue hits only a few arns after the first meal, but by then she's nearly finished rebuilding the steering mechanism so she replaces stamina with will. She connects the last lead cable to the inertial dampener and slips the component into its niche with a satisfying click. She gives the steering lever a few test nudges and her smile is weary but genuine.

Once her Prowler is flight operational again she might just sleep for a few arns right in her cockpit. She only needs to refill the steering system with mechanoil, check the pressure, and make sure the seals are all intact.

The drum of mechanoil, however, is all the way over in the treblin side maintenance bay. She takes a deep breath and steels herself for the errand. After a few microts she pulls herself out of the cockpit and drops to the floor, losing her balance a little but remaining on her feet. She is stronger than yesterday.

***

John walks into the infirmary and notes with relief that Noranti is using some kind of visualizer to do the spunk-check. Her face is angled so that she's looking through the binocular viewpiece with one regular eye and one weird eye.

The other regular eye drifts unfocused while she speaks in a hushed monotone. "The results are mixed. Many of the sporecells are disabled, but there may be enough left with the tools to do their intended job. They look determined and angry."

"Thanks Grandma. What's the prognosis?"

"Tomorrow we will check again."

"Same time, same place?"

Noranti flutters her eyelashes and hands him a clean glass vial. He nods and heads out into the corridor, a solemn D'Argo by his side all the way to the docking bay.

Stark sees them approach and fairly skips across the bay singing, "Ka-tra-tzi! Ka-tra-tzi!" He hands a datapad to John and skips back to the Scarran ship.

John scrolls through the navigation coordinates and whistles. "He's right, this thing came from Katratzi."

D'Argo nods. "Look at the destination coordinates."

John walks slowly toward the ship with his eyes on the datapad, mumbling, "Why are these familiar?"

"Have you converted the time designation, yet?" D'Argo calls out to Stark, who pokes his head outside the ship.

"Oh, yes." Stark zips over to John, leans over the datapad, and strokes his finger delicately over the input square. Digits pop up on the screen and the picture clicks into focus. A time, a place.

"I gave them these coordinates." John looks up and runs his hand over the pitted hull of the ship. "More precisely, the Emperor did when we were wheeling and dealing on Katratzi. They shouldn't have gone into the wormhole."

D'Argo climbs the boarding stairs of the ship. "How did you determine that they came from Katratzi, Stark?"

"Aeryn told me."

John glances at the Prowler. "She was here?"

"Working on her ship, but she left."

"Ah."

Stark shifts from one foot to the other. "I heard that Moya is going to begin another mating cycle in a few arns, is this true?"

"Yea-ahp." John contemplates the probable nooner that lies ahead, and he's glad that he took the edge off this morning. He still isn't safe for her. If she responds to Moya the same way she did before, it may be a delicate negotiation to keep their marriage unconsummated until the venikka takes full effect. He works his jaw until it cracks.

Stark takes a deep breath, shaking himself out of his own thoughts. With a cryptic "More tadek, then," he heads out of the docking bay.

"Hey D, I've gotta get some tools out of the maintenance bay, anything you need while I'm out?"

D'Argo steps out of the ship. "Where's Stark?"

"Bugged out of here. I think he's looking for a safe place to hide out for Moya's date this afternoon."

"I think the heat bothers him. Well I'm done here. Stark is the only one who knows how to work the ship so far." D'Argo hits the keypad, retracting the stairs and sealing the door. "I can give you a hand if you'd like."

"Yeah, thanks." On the way, John outlines his current theory about how energy shielding might be the cause behind lethal wormhole travel, and they negotiate how much sampling he can do of the Scarran ship's hull without damaging its usefulness. They come to a workable compromise that makes neither of them happy.

***

Aeryn's body decides that if sleep isn't available, it will agitate for food instead. She pulls a cloth from her pocket, unwinds it, and eyes the shriveled strips of dark dried meat within. Djierki, Noranti had called it. Aeryn sniffs it, pleasantly surprised at the tasty scent.

She's still gnawing her way through the snack when she arrives at the maintenance bay, finds the correct drum in a maze of stacked shipping crates, and realizes that she doesn't have a container to carry any mechanoil back to her Prowler.

She sinks down onto the floor, legs crossed and back propped against the mechanoil drum, weighing whether to go searching for a container, or just go to bed. Right now she's going to finish her djierki and rest for a moment.

She doesn't realize that she's drifted off until she's awakened by the soft sound of clinking tools and D'Argo's purr of a voice.

"Lo'Laan and I knew that even if we succeeded in having a child together, we would never have grandchildren. It was a decision we had to make, the price of sharing a child. We wanted to become a family in flesh as well as in our hearts." D'Argo huffs a laugh. "Jothee ended up looking most like my father's sister, but when he's angry he has Lo'Laan's scowl."

"Family resemblance is a strange thing."

Hearing John's voice makes Aeryn dizzy, like a supple opponent pressing their thumbs against the arteries in her neck.

"Indeed. But I see now how selfish we were, denying our son the same chance to have what we had."

"You mean Jothee's..."

"Unable to sire children of his own."

"D'Argo, just because a person can't make a baby doesn't mean they can't be a parent."

Aeryn rubs a palm against her thigh. The resigned sound in John's voice brings back their fight in the docking bay. There are things she's afraid of hearing him say, about babies and obligations, but from the location of their voices she won't be able to leave without interrupting. She will have to wait until after they've gone.

"You thought you would have this chance with Zola."

Aeryn sets her head back against the mechanoil drum and concentrates on breathing like a sniper. Slow in. Slow out.

"I had a lot of dumb ideas, D. I knew they were stupid but I didn't care. Daughter, niece, Human, Sebacean, whatever she would have been, she would've had me wrapped around her little finger. A big red frayed Achilles heel for anyone who wanted to get to me, but I wouldn't have cared as long as she was alive and protected."

"You had already done as much for my own son. Do not think I will ever forget that. And one day you will have plenty of your own children, and they will give you just as much trouble. I know it."

There is a muted thump of cloth and John chuckles. "Thanks, man."

Aeryn takes a deep silent breath, wipes her cheeks dry and wonders how many children a Sebacean woman can have if she really puts her mind to it. Perhaps a full squadron? In a monen or two, she will begin applying herself. The smile feels wide and strange and very good.

"I am sorry about teasing you, John." The humor has left D'Argo's voice. "I did not realize you were seeking treatment from Noranti for infertility."

Her smile doesn't have time to fade before the next words shatter it entirely.

"It's okay D, it's...actually the problem is the opposite."

"The opposite?"

"I don't want to get Aeryn pregnant. I took something so I could be safe with her."

Aeryn reflexively grips at the crates on each side of her, as if explosive decompression were ripping through the compartment.

D'Argo clarifies. "A *preventive*."

"Yeah."

A bench scrapes back, and there's a sound of clinking metal and footsteps heading toward the doorway.

"So Noranti..."

"Was checking to see that it's started working."

"I see."

There is a pause, which Aeryn fills by waiting for the red-black haze to dissipate from her vision.

"D'Argo..."

"I have the feeling that I don't want to hear this."

"Don't tell Aeryn."

"My friend, I am in awe of your stupidity."

***

Aeryn sits, leaning against the mechanoil drum and balling and squeezing the cloth from the djierki into her fist. She waits until there is only the deep sound of Moya thrumming up through the floor, warm against her rear and through the sides of her boots.

She lets the feelings rage and tear inside of her, letting them ride her like the shiver of a fever, but she does not act on them. She considers.

First, she needs to clear her head.

She will not go to the exercise room, because she wants to hit something that will break. She will go to one of the storage bays where the Earth goods are kept, boxes and crates and shiny pretty things that will mangle nicely.

Aeryn rises, and walks calmly to her destination.

Her throat is raw and her hands scraped by the time she pauses to catch her wind and sees Chiana standing in the doorway, surveying the devastation. Torn cartons, ripped packing, the wooden chair that had been a delight to split apart. The excellent shard of wood she'd used to obliterate the feather pillows.

Chiana doesn't come in, just sings lightly, "*It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...*"

Aeryn drops the shard of wood and straightens out of the crouch, panting.

"You're covered with fluff."

Aeryn rasps, "I know."

"It's sticking to the sweat."

Aeryn wipes her forehead, grimaces at her hand, and begins picking a sliver out of the palm. Chiana steps inside and starts pulling feathers out of Aeryn's hair.

"You wanna talk about it?" Chiana's tone is perfunctory but genial, because it amuses her to ask even when she knows the answer is no.

"Yes." Aeryn flicks the sliver away and rubs the spot on her palm. "But I'd like to get drunk first."

Chiana covers her surprise. "I've said the very same thing a few times myself." She takes Aeryn by the hand and leads her deeper into the storage bay. "Come on, I know where the skahch is."

Aeryn follows, too weak to resist even if she wanted to. "What's skahch?"

"And the pulse pistol asked, 'what's chakkan oil?' Trust me, you'll like it." Chiana finds the right carton and tears it open, lifting an amber bottle. "Crichton said it's unblended and older than he is, which means it's good."

Aeryn scoffs.

Chiana studies Aeryn. "So this isn't about Zola?"

"No."

"This is about Crichton."

"Yes."

Chiana's voice starts normal and then wheedles higher. "So, are you sure you want to talk to me at all, I mean, you're probably going to regret telling me even this much, you know, not to mention what the skahch is going to wash out of you, and while I'm glad to help you out, you know, a shoulder or a laugh or whatever, I don't know if it's a good idea to talk to me about anything real personal or confidential because I remember the last time you got all touchy about spilling your secrets so maybe--"

"Too many secrets already." Aeryn takes the bottle from Chiana.

"So then, you're not going to tell me anything that you're not also going to tell Crichton."

"I'd tell him first if I thought I could talk to him right now without ripping off his mivonks and shoving them down his throat."

"Heh, trust me, that kind of thing wouldn't put him in a mood to talk anything over." Chiana pulls another bottle out of the carton. "Tell you what, we'll get Pilot to cool down Crichton's room instead, we'll lock him out, get drunk and watch movies all day."

Aeryn cracks the seal on the bottle and takes a swig. She swallows, shakes her head and blows out a breath.

"We'll take some time, figure the problem out, and then you'll talk to him. Okay?"

Aeryn nods and takes another drink. "This stuff is making my ears burn. I like it."

***

Aeryn sits on the kitchen countertop seemingly absorbed in the minutiae of cleaning her pulse pistol. Chiana asks all the questions and Noranti does all the answering, all three of her eyes fixed on the pulse pistol.

"We know you gave something to Crichton to keep him from getting Aeryn pregnant again. What was it?"

Noranti answers quickly, if not eagerly. "Venikka."

"And what does that do? How does it work?"

"It disables the male sporecells so they cannot move toward the female counterpart. Even if it *does* find her, it can't make it inside to mix the genetic component. No mixing, no life."

Chiana looks horrified. "So," she tenderly grips her crotch and whispers, "he can't *frell*?"

Noranti watches Aeryn slide the chakkan cartridge home and explains. "Oh no! He can *frell*. At least, he was perfectly able to do so when I saw him last. The venikka only affects one's ability to impregnate, not the ability to mate."

Chiana peers through her bangs. "Well how do you reverse it?"

"After a few monens the venikka wears off and fertility is restored."

"So as long as you leave him alone he'll recover."

"Yes."

Aeryn takes a long slow drink from the bottle next to her on the counter.

"Is there anything else I can do for either of you ladies?" Noranti bustles behind another counter and starts pulling out utensils and jars. "Something to eat perhaps, or--"

Aeryn slams the bottle down and aims at the old woman. "Stretch your hands away from your body where I can see them."

Noranti complies, revealing a tiny pouch tucked between her fingers.

Aeryn does all the talking from now on. "Chiana, take that out of her hand."

Noranti lets herself be disarmed, switching to an imploring tone of voice. "I was only going to help you get some rest, that's all. You're clearly very upset and could easily do something that you would later regret."

Aeryn lowers the pistol and slides off the counter, loose but still graceful. Noranti notices the feathers in Aeryn's hair and the blood in the wrinkles of her knuckles, as if she had come straight from sacrificing a brace of rodesh to Inali Palum.

Aeryn looms over the old woman and her voice is low and precise. "You will cease drugging John Crichton without my express permission. He is to only consume the same undoctored food and water that everyone else shares. If I find that you have disobeyed me I will kill you. Have I made myself clear?"

Noranti reaches out and pulls a feather from the lock of hair over Aeryn's ear. "Should I also cease to help Aeryn Sun as well? It won't help either of you learn to trust the other, but if it will make you feel better..."

From her vantage point Noranti can see how the wetness gathers in Aeryn's eyes and is quickly blinked away. "Make some popcorn."

***

The lighting dims slightly and John realizes that he's broken into sweat from reading. There's a feel to the air like a summer night when it needs to storm but it never quite does.

He saves his work and stretches the cricks out of his neck and shoulders. He runs through a nearly automatic series of grooming gestures as he makes his way to Aeryn's room.

The familiar wobble in the gravity tells him that the mating dance has already begun, but Aeryn's room is hot and seemingly empty. "Aeryn?"

He wonders why Pilot couldn't spare her quarters this time but he knows Pilot won't respond to comms at this point. He hopes Aeryn's already on a transport pod and out of the heat, but he worries that she's gone out alone. He taps his comm. "Hey, Aeryn, are you still on-board?"

Noranti answers instead. "Aeryn is busy at the moment."

In the background, Chiana is giggling so hard she's gasping.

"What's going on, is Aeryn alright? It's getting pretty hot in here."

"Aeryn is fine, just indisposed." Chiana's howl of laughter is muffled halfway through. Noranti continues, "And we are all cool and comfortable, thank you so much for asking."

"Let me talk to Chi." Johns listens to the open channel as Chiana catches her breath and takes the comm. He can hear Cary Grant in the background.

"Whatcha want, Crichton?"

"Hey Pip, is Aeryn there?"

"Yep."

"Can I talk to her?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

Chiana giggles again. "She's cooling off in the fresher."

"The heat's getting to her, isn't it?" John heads out into the corridor and starts running toward his own room. "Is she still conscious?"

"Settle down Crichton, Pilot turned the aycee on in here for Aeryn and it's cool as a cockember. We were in the middle of a movie when Moya started distracting her. She didn't want to leave the party to go hunt you down," now it's Granny who's giggling in the background, "so she's just taking a break to relieve a little tension."

John stumbles to a halt. "She's what?"

"You heard me." Chiana must have the comm right next to her mouth to pick up her throaty whisper. "She's pleasuring herself in your fresher."

John lets his mind wander into the shower with Aeryn; her skin wet, her mouth open, his new 15-setting shower massage cooling the heat between her thighs. Good clean fun.

His chuckle is breathless and his smile is sly. "I see. So uh, you guys are having girl's night out at my place, then."

"Something like that."

"I take it I'm not invited."

"Nope."

"Right." John turns around and heads back to Aeryn's room. He's got a hard-on and some free time, and every little bit makes him safer.

He tugs his comm off his shirt and brings it to his mouth, drops his own voice low and slow. "Well, since my wife has the situation in hand I won't disturb her. When she comes out let her know that if she needs me, for anything, I'm a comm-call away."

Chiana can't keep the dark giggle out of her sultry voice. "I'm sure she'll think of something you can do for her, Crichton."

***

Aeryn steps out of the fresher in a cloud of steam, dressed in black satin boxer shorts and a faded black t-shirt that's noticeably large on her. She twists the wet ends of her hair, wringing water onto a spot of floor that just happens to be covered by a sloppy stack of papers clipped into bundles.

She knows it's petty, but it's less damaging than breaking his nose. "What did I miss?"

"The husband found the broken bottle and the missing key and now he knows his wife is a spy, but they didn't confront her, instead they're poisoning her slowly, so it looks like she's dying from some kind of illness."

"The people she's working for?"

"No, the people she's spying on."

"Oh." Aeryn pads over to the bed and Chiana makes room.

"The poisoning was very neatly done." Noranti leans over the side of the chair and grabs the bottle of skahch from the floor, topping off her cup and handing the bottle to Aeryn. "Are you feeling better?"

"A little, yes." Aeryn snags a pillow and flops onto the bed, tucking it under her breasts as she lies on her stomach. "But it's not a long-term strategy."

Chiana sighs. "Never is."

"The problem is that Leviathans do not recreate." Aeryn rolls onto her side to tip the bottle back.

Noranti turns in her chair. "I beg to differ."

"What I mean is, Moya's whole experience of sex is tied up with mating. Moya wants a baby, and so Moya craves a male. And she will keep craving him until she gets what she really desires, which is pregnant." Aeryn sniffs the air suspiciously.

"So you have baby-lust coming from outside as well as from the inside." Noranti sips. "While your monogamous sexual partner is both infertile and infuriating."

Aeryn's sniffing leads her down to the pillow. She buries her nose, inhales and declares. "Frell."

Chiana reaches behind her. "Here, take mine."

Aeryn throws her pillow to the floor. "Won't make any difference, they all smell like him. The whole room does."

"Might be that t-shirt you're wearing. It wasn't exactly in the clean pile of laundry."

Aeryn rolls onto her back, her head at the corner of the mattress and her arms spread out over the floor, bottle still clutched in one hand. "I can't think straight."

"You can't walk straight, either."

***

D'Argo sips from his mug and considers the stars. "What could they be doing in there all day?"

John sighs. "Well from what I've heard, watching movies and drinking heavily."

***

Chiana bends toward the foot propped on her leg and dabs the small nails with an even tinier paintbrush. "Know what I think?"

Aeryn's bent her other leg to bring the foot closer, spellbound by the sparkly rose color already gracing each of those toenails. After a moment she answers. "What?"

"What do you mean, what?"

"I meant; what do you think?"

Chiana shakes her head, careful to keep her wobbliness from spilling any more polish on the bed. "I don't remember. Hey, where's Noranti?"

"She left."

"Yeah I know, where'd she go?"

"I don't remember." Aeryn stares at the glowing television. "No wait, I do remember. She got hungry and left."

"But we've still got plenty of cop-porn."

"And popcorn."

"That's what I said."

"No, you said cop porn, and there aren't any police in this one."

Chiana turns around to peer at the television, which throws a shifting peachy light into the dim room. "How can you tell if they don't have any clothes on?"

"In the police one they were frelling on the front of that painted vehicle with the lights."

"Hey, yeah, I do remember that one. Let's watch that one again." Chiana slots the paintbrush back into the polish and screws it tight. She climbs off the bed and lurches toward the pile of DVDs.

Aeryn flops back on the bed, kicking her dangling feet to dry the paint. "Open up that other bottle of skahch."

Chiana crouches and roots through the DVDs, taking a moment to admire the sparkly blue-green color on her own toes. "We opened it an arn ago."

"Hand it to me, then."

"Noranti took it with her."

"Frell."

"Fuck."

"Yes, fuck."

Chiana stands, swaying. "You still want to kill him?"

Aeryn ponders this question.

"Hey, I remember what I was going to say." Chiana climbs back onto the bed and stretches out on her stomach next to Aeryn. "We figure he probably has your best interest in mind with the venikka, because of your health and this thing with Moya right now, and not wanting to get you pregnant because of what you just went through, right?"

"That was what Noranti said."

"So the real problem is that he didn't ask you or tell you he was going to do it. What you said this morning, you said there were too many secrets. So what I was thinking was that you already *know* his secret, dontcha?"

"I know this one."

"There could be more, fair enough. You and I could probably guess 'em, though. But if you want him to tell 'em to you, tell him yours."

Aeryn stops swinging her feet. "It's not that easy."

"Then don't tell him anything. Pretend you don't know about the venikka."

Aeryn shakes her head. "That would just make it worse."

"Way I see it, if you can't trust him, then he's kinda justified not trusting you. I mean, maybe he doesn't want to have a kid exactly right now, maybe he still misses Zola and doesn't want to run out and replace her just yet."

"I miss her too." The words have a cold blunt edge, in contrast to the heat of her glare at the ceiling.

Chiana stretches an arm out and lays her head on it, looking at Aeryn with sleepy eyes. "I didn't say otherwise. But last time you kinda sprung it on him, and maybe he doesn't want to be surprised this time around."

"How can it be different now than a weeken ago?"

Chiana slowly blinks a few times, trying to pin it down into words. "Choice, I think. This time he has a choice. And this time you're choosing him."

***

Her quarters are warm and the only light comes from the corridor outside, gleaming dim off the blanket and outlining the fine curly hairs on his legs and arms. He sleeps on his side and belly, one leg crooked up and his arms circled around the pillow mashed under his head.

It's not just his own pillows that smell like him now.

His expression is lax, mouth parted and hands open. He's kicked most of the blanket aside, offering his naked ass to the vent breeze like a radiator.

She stands and watches him sleep, the heel of one hand resting on the grip of the pulse pistol at her hip.

She doesn't want to kill him, or hurt him. She wants him to trust her and he just. will. not. Chiana's suggestion to tell him everything would be equivalent to feeding Rygel five courses of tannot root. Not a viable option.

***

Every handful of arns, Moya's normal functions--and therefore Rygel's work--are put on hold while she and the male wrestle. The matings are more frequent and lengthy than the last time, but Rygel takes the interruptions in stride. The sooner Moya is successful, the sooner they can leave this wretched and empty backwater and get to a place where Rygel can actually network.

Power flows into the long-range communications array and a status light catches Rygel's attention away from the view port, where he'd been watching the Leviathans school like deep-water oolnas.

He queues up the message and routes it to the main screen. The being has a face shaped like a wedge, with nostril slits high up between the small dark eyes and a soft beak of a mouth. The skin is bright green like apple-flavored taffy, the top of the head mottled and bumpy, and a cluster of pale circles grace each side of the head. The being tilts its head back and opens the nostrils wide in greeting.

"I am Nelet. I assist the Diagnosan Wiliansh. Do not let our rural location mislead you, the Diagnosan Wiliansh is quite familiar with the species Nebari and the species Sebacean."

Nelet has a way of clearly pronouncing her consonants that reminds Rygel of the pure tones of palace Hynerian. He decides that Nelet is female, and pretty in a severe but clean way.

"The Diagnosan Wiliansh has expressed an interest in the cases that you have presented. I would like to extend an invitation to you to visit our facility. If it would please you to enlist the expertise of the Diagnosan Wiliansh in these cases, please contact me through the communications routing code appended to this message."

***

The hushed sound of breathing stirs John from his light sleep. She sits on the floor, leaning back against the sloping leg of the bed near his head, one bare foot propped on the wall in front of her. He rolls toward her and touches her arm. "Aeryn?"

She leans her head to the other side as he lightly strokes her arm, sliding his fingers up under the loose cuff of her t-shirt. His eyes adjust to the darkness and he shifts closer to her.

"You okay, babe? Too much alcohol?" He leans his head over her shoulder, brushing the hair back with his cheek and letting the stubble graze the skin of her neck.

She takes a deep breath and the resulting scotch fumes scent the air with a faint smoky turpentine edge. "I'm thinking."

He nuzzles her neck, tracing the line of her ear with the tip of his nose. "Whatcha thinking about?"

"Frelling you."

He chuckles softly into the hair at the nape of her neck, because the way she said it sounded almost resigned and business-like. "And what conclusion," he brushes his lips on the delicate earlobe as he whispers, "have you come to?"

She drops her foot down from where it's propped against the wall, and she leans away from him. "That it's a bad idea."

He blinks into the near dark, before reaching out to cup his hand on her shoulder and pull her gently back. She still looks away at the wall, and it's starting to feel like one of those car conversations where one person grips the wheel and lays it all out for the other, never taking their eyes from the road.

"Talk to me, Aeryn."

"What," she huffs, "*now*?"

"You're wide awake and thinking, might as well talk while you're at it."

"Fine." She scoots around so that her back is against the wall. "We'll talk."

The collar of her t-shirt is stretched out and the cuffs askew, showing the curve of her pale neck and shoulders. Correction, his t-shirt, the old one that he sleeps in when he sleeps alone.

There's a component in his brain that's constantly trained on her, preoccupied with her, always trying to puzzle her out, and the sight of her in his oversized sleepwear and her own supple leathers slots into this component like fresh batteries. How can someone so dangerous be so vulnerable?

She speaks slowly, pronouncing each word with the deliberate care of someone trying not to slur. "I don't think it's a good idea for me to get pregnant again right away."

He can tell there's more, so he keeps his response short. "Okay."

"Perhaps not at all."

In the dark everything seems both intimate and unreal, and a sharp whiff of half-remembered dream cuts into his perception. Young women muses berating him about his fears, sirens in combat boots singing him into the shoals. Souls coaxing him, trying to convince him to let them into the world.

He sits up in bed, pulling the blanket to gird himself against the slight chill of the air and the turn of the conversation. "I thought you wanted to have a child."

"But it's not that simple, is it?" She squeezes her eyes shut and bangs her head back against the skinsteel of the wall, a loud thump in the quiet. Her voice remains calm. "We both have a choice now. I want to have a child, but what do you want?"

He'd been waiting for the right time to talk to her, after he'd figured out his own mind, what he wants and what he's ready to risk. Naturally, the subject got tired of waiting for him and pulled him out of bed in the middle of the night.

She continues in a dry whisper, her eyes closed and head leaning back against the wall. "Were you ever going to tell me about the venikka?"

He should be dressed for this conversation. It's not fair that she's wearing his shirt and all he has is a sheet. "Who told you?"

"I heard you tell D'Argo. Were you planning to tell me at all?"

"Yes." Should've checked behind the crates. Jesus, he's living in a fucking Three's Company episode. "You weren't exactly rational when I had to make the decision, so I figured safety first, talking later."

She doesn't stir, but does respond with the same snide heat. "So you decided you were more likely to frell me than to talk to me."

"I figured it the other way around. How was my shower massage?"

Her resignation returns. "An adequate substitute."

"Right." He scrubs his face. "Listen, whatever we decide about babies, Aeryn, we agree that you need time to recover your health, right?"

She nods, barely visible in the dark. He reaches his hand out, and when she finally grasps it he pulls her gently into bed with him.

"Once things return to normal with Moya, we can plan our own babies, okay?"

"You make it sound like a tactical assault."

"You've never been around a toddler." He coaxes her into his arms but she resists, sitting back on her heels.

"Noranti said you're still fertile."

"Yeah, a little--"

"And I'm still drunk. I can't sleep in this bed with you right now."

He crawls up behind her as she rises off the bed, snaking his arms around her to cup her breasts and pull her back against him. "You know, there are other things we can do besides the old in-and-out."

The words come out on an exhalation of scotch and arousal. "Stop that."

He rolls her nipples through the t-shirt and listens to the creak of leather as her thighs press together and slide. "Stop what?"

Her hand slips back between them, and when she wraps her hand around his hardening cock her back arches as if it's herself she's stroking. "Stop me from frelling you anyway."

"Yes, dear." He bats her hand away and concentrates on shucking her out of her leathers.

***

As much as he doesn't want to disturb her, D'Argo knows better than to try picking Chiana up while she's sleeping. The last thing he needs is a sharp boot in the mivonks. He lays his hand on her back and calls her name, letting her snuffle into the rumpled sheet of the human's bed. "Chiana, it's me, I'm going take you to your own bed now."

She rolls onto her back but her response is now muffled by her arm, thrown over her face to screen out the light from the DVD menu. "Where's Aeryn?"

"She's not here."

Chiana's eyes pop open then squeeze shut again. D'Argo notes the reaction, and takes it as confirmation that the Women's Evening Outside wasn't as innocent as John seemed to think.

Ever since he'd heard the women had hijacked this room, he'd been dwelling on his trip to the maintenance bay with John, wondering if the faint smell of Aeryn he'd noticed as they talked hadn't come solely from John's skin and clothes.

D'Argo hits the switch on the power strip with his boot, and the bank of audio/video equipment goes dark. "Are you too drunk to walk?"

Her body is boneless and immobile except for the slight motion of breath and the mouth that speaks. "No, I can walk."

He waits for her to stand, but she starts to snore instead. He gently grasps her by the forearms and levers her body onto her unsteady feet.

"Whoa..." Her eyebrows lift but her eyes don't open, so he sweeps her up over his shoulder and carries her to his quarters.

***

Aeryn clutches at his forearm buried down the front of her pants, but her fingernails are soft from her earlier shower sessions and they don't pierce, just bend. There's not much room for him to maneuver in the tight hot space between lips and leather, but she insisted that a physical barrier remain.

He'd smirked at her demand, thinking that those pants have always been more of a turn-on than a chaperone, but he consented. "S'okay, you can trust me. I'm not going to get you in trouble."

She rubs her cheek against his and pulls his other hand out from under her shirt to fellate his thumb. She smells like his Earth soap and shampoo.

"It's too bad," he murmurs in her ear, "none of our care packages from Earth have any condoms."

"Hmmmmf?"

"Condom doesn't translate?"

She shakes her head slowly, swirling her tongue around the base of his thumb. He retaliates by slipping a second finger inside her and shaking the heel of his hand against her clit until she comes again, grinding back into him in a way that makes him glad he spent the afternoon beating off.

To be honest, a more effective check on his enthusiasm is a nasty suspicion about Aeryn's empathy with Moya.

She slides his thumb out of her mouth and sets her cheek in the palm of his hand, panting and finally at rest. She catches her breath, his fingers slow and soothing on the soft lips of her sex.

The Spanish Fly effect is much stronger this time around, and John is unpleasantly reminded of the power of pheromones, and the lure of things you can't explain or rationalize once your head clears. The body responds, overriding thought and will.

She's such a tiny being compared to this immense ship. An effect too small for Pilot or Moya to notice could have devastating consequences for Aeryn--hell, it may have had those already for Zola. What if Aeryn's body not only intercepted the signals to mate, but signals from the termination as well?

It's up to him to keep Aeryn safe and healthy while she rides this out, to take care of her when she can't take care of herself, to husband his better half.

***

Chiana waits until the game of tadek is finished, and Stark begins resetting the pieces on their home squares. Rygel notices her with a stately turn and incline of the head.

"This is for you." She sets a thermal carafe and a small sealed bowl on the table before him.

"What is this?" He squints in distaste as she unhooks a diminutive mug from her belt and fills it from the carafe.

"It's my thank you." She waits until the scent of the beverage steams up to his nostril slits and dilates them along with his pupils. "I know how hard you worked to find a Diagnosan for me."

He blinks up at her, obviously touched or maybe just gleeful. Whatever the motivation, the expression on his face makes the effort she's put into this gesture worth it. Well, almost worth it. She *has* spent the whole frelling day in the kitchen for this stuff.

Noranti wouldn't divulge the location of certain food stores until Chiana had not only shared some of the more esoteric knowledge that she'd picked up in her diverse travels, but also helped concoct and test the recipes involved.

Ten different hangover cures from liquid to solid are roiling in her stomach, and while she escaped having to wear any of the stinking plasters for headache, the suppository that she'd been forced to try (and then palmed and stashed down her bodice when Noranti turned her back) has melted and the skin itches like mad.

"This is very gracious of you." Rygel's fingers work as he determinedly forestalls grabbing the mug just long enough to serve the bare minimum of protocol. "I appreciate your gift and look forward to enjoying it."

Chiana lets him take a preliminary sip before she unseals the small dish and gathers a few of the tiny white fluffs between her fingers.

"Here's to successful negotiations." With great ceremony, she sets the small marshmallows floating onto the steaming surface of Rygel's cocoa.

***

Aeryn lies blood-soaked, the little girl with the gun and braid standing guard over her mother's body while John kneels down to rouse her. He kisses her as if to wake a princess, ignoring the sticky iron taste and willing the cold from her body and into his own. If only she'd told him about the danger, he could have prevented it.

"I can't leave you alone for a moment." Harvey's exasperated huff clashes with the tragic tableau before him. "Really, John, this is in bad taste even for you."

Harvey pulls him up by the back of his shirt and pulls him into another dreamscape, walking down a street planetside, a business district by the holodisplays floating in front of each shop.

"For a man who's spent the last few days servicing both himself and his wife in alternation, you're awfully dour. And I'm sick of the melodrama. Why don't you cease these morbid imaginings and go shopping instead?" Harvey shoves him up the street and leaves.

John turns around but there's nothing amiss behind him, and he's forgotten what he'd expected to see anyway.

She steps out of the shop in front of him, backpack loaded with produce. She's maybe seventeen and she looks like the fantastical lovechild of Aeryn and Olivia. There's a hint of Jack in the way her keen eyes assess the street.

John greets her with a broad smile. "Well that was quick. Hey, did they have any of those little--"

She yanks him by the wrist and shoves him into a niche between buildings. She hisses, "Shut the frell up!" and takes a position in front of him, to casually glance around the street. Satisfied that none of the passersby seemed to notice the dangerous albatross who is her father, she turns to him again.

"What was the point of those genetic modifications you went through if you keep speaking in your puen'dia native tongue?" She cuts his reply off with a wide-eyed glare and a curt, "Sebacean!"

"Lily!" Aeryn's voice pipes from both of their comms. "Stop dilly-dallying and come help load the pod."

John stage-whispers, "!'Dilly-dally' no es Sebacean!"

Lily squints at him as if trying to retain her righteous anger. "We're on our way." She smacks at her comm to cut off the transmission.

"!Tu madre hablando en Ingles!" John gasps, "!Que cojones!"

Lily sticks her tongue out at him, then pulls him up the street as if he were a recalcitrant dog. She teases him and leads him through dreamscapes until morning, and they never make it back to the pod where Aeryn waits.

***

Through her ragged breathing, Aeryn hears a shoe scrape against the floor. She lifts her face from her hands and blinks her eyes clear. She'd been coming to the natural end of the crying jag, so she welcomes the distraction.

"I...heard a noise, I didn't realize..." Stark bends in a bow and turns to leave. "I'm sorry."

Aeryn dries her face on her arm and hand. "I'm alright. Just sometimes I cry. Makes me feel better." She shrugs good-naturedly and stamps down the sob that wants to wriggle out of her chest. She saves it for the next time. "Clears my head."

Stark's glance is cast down at the tear-splattered datapad on the table in front of her, but there's nothing that interesting in the wiring schematic for a Prowler's atmospheric scrubber. "Grief is a difficult process."

Aeryn manages to nod politely, as she has done for all of the platitudes flung at her since her wedding.

Stark continues in the same pitying vein. "I wish there were something I could say..."

"What can be said beyond sorry? Nothing. But everyone keeps trying anyway." Aeryn scrubs her tears back into her loose hair and regains the shreds of her diplomacy. "I didn't mean to snap at you, I'm sorry."

"We make allowances for each other in times of loss," Stark murmurs, sitting on the bench opposite her. "Think nothing of it. Take your solace and release wherever you can find it."

Aeryn tries to put it into words, probing at the ache like a medtech examining an injury.

She'd been remembering her mother. Not the woman, but the image she'd lived with since childhood, less of a memory, more of a dream that her life kept reinterpreting for her. She'd been thinking about her own daughter, who never even had that much from her. "If I could have talked to Zola, even once…told her how much she was loved and wanted."

Stark shakes his head slowly. "This is not Valldon, and the dead do not speak to me anywhere else." He raises his eyes to meet hers. "But they do echo."

She watches him loosen the buckle on his neck. He pauses and she nods.

He lifts the edge of the mask.

Light bathes her face in warmth and soaks under her skin. Comfort and reassurance permeate her and it's like being held, like what she dimly remembers feeling before Zhaan wrenched her back into an awkward body stiff with cold. There is no place, and no time, and no pain.

She comes back to herself slowly. Stark regards her with an empathy that for once doesn't make her feel inadequate, but instead makes her feel sacred. She reaches her hand to his face and sets her fingertips against his cheek.

His palm slides down her wrist, hot against the skin of her inner forearm. She can smell a faint spiciness from his clothes. She realizes that 'stykera' is an old Banik word for 'bridge', spanning the chasm between life and death, an easy passage between.

His hand drifts up, fingers catching in her hair, the contact tingling her scalp and making her breath deep.

Death is gloriously indifferent to life, and life strives for the same indifference. She comprehends for the first time how Stark is both flesh and light, and never to be a whole of one or the other. His mask is loose, and his flesh infuses with the light that pours from his face, seeking her again as if to pull her to that place once more.

"Nice."

The voice slices through the haze in her head, bringing with it a wave of outside input that disorients her. The gravity is fluctuating and Moya is filling her with need. Stark's hand is tangled in her hair, his face denches from hers.

"I've been calling you but you shut your comm off."

She turns her head and the look on John's face clears through the remnant of fog.

It's unmistakable in the set of his mouth, his shoulders, his hands, the way he stares at Stark and can't look at her for more than a microt: he seethes with jealousy. She realizes what it must look like to him, and gently knocks Stark's arm away from her head.

"John." She pulls away from Stark and stands, her manner slow and still colored with the warm comfort of a moment before. "Stark was simply showing me something about the other side."

"Yeah." Cold mirth crinkles the corners of his eyes. "First stop on the tour I'll bet."

Stark surreptitiously buckles his mask and rises to his feet, his other hand held out in front of his body. "I should go."

Aeryn expects John to leave as well but instead he draws his pulse pistol. "You do that."

The barrel tracks Stark all the way out the door, and John stands for a moment, jaw clenched as tight as the arm that still aims the pistol into the empty corridor.

She's been here before with him, with the other him. Part of her is relieved that she's encountered something familiar, that she's finally making progress with him like working the codes of a sequence-lock.

Another part is frustrated. She remembers the way he closed himself off, pouted, refused to acknowledge that he had any claim on her affection or love. She steels herself for the delicate maneuvers of reassurance.

"John--"

The barrel swings in her direction, followed by his gaze. He lowers his arm and walks up to her, so close that Aeryn can smell dentic on his breath. He looks at her, bristling with a barely controlled anger that brings Aeryn up short.

This is not what she was expecting.

"You got a thing for bad boys, Aeryn." His voice is low and deadly. "First Scorpius, now Stark. You're gonna get in trouble one of these days."

Caught off-guard, she responds with heat. "'Get in trouble', that means falling pregnant, correct? Didn't you decide that I'm not to be trusted with your precious babies?"

"Aeryn--" He reins his control tighter. "You can't deny that Moya's affecting you, and I don't want to see you suffer any more because of it. That's why we need to be careful for now."

She unsheathes the unspoken assumption. "You think Moya killed Zola when she terminated the feeble offspring."

His hesitation proves it to her. "I just don't want to take any more chances. It hurts, Aeryn, that there wasn't anything I could do to protect her."

"You think I allowed her to die."

"That's not what I said." The response is immediate, but it takes him longer to clarify, arranging his thoughts while he rearranges his fingers on the pistol at his side. "I know you can't control what's happening to you."

"Which is why you're here." She tucks her arms across her chest and the sarcasm doesn't quite conceal the hurt. "To keep your rutting tralk out of 'trouble'."

He tries for a light tone but the teeth he bares aren't a smile. "Your orgasm, hot and fresh in five minutes or it's free."

"You needn't bother. There's no point." The last thing she needs is another soporific session of cadet-style recreation, honing the appetite but never satisfying it. "If I wanted a pale substitute I'd use your fresher."

"Gee, honey, that hurts." His face is right in hers, and all pretense of rational discussion is gone. "I thought *I* was your pale substitute."

"Frell you Crichton."

He smiles, but the emotion wrinkling around his eyes isn't as pleasant. "You wanna frell?"

He cuts off her answer by slamming his pulse pistol onto the table and sending it sliding down to the other end. "Then frell your husband."

He catches her shoulders hard and kisses her, like the sparring kind of encounters she's only had with other Peacekeepers. It isn't sensual and tender. It's ruthless and willful. It sparks something in her.

She knocks his hands off and lets her lip curl. "What happened to 'safety first'?"

"Got the news today." He snatches her waistband and pops the fastener of her leathers as he jerks her body against his. "I'm as safe as they come."

She didn't want to make love anyway.

She drops her weight suddenly, pulling him off balance and then coming back up just as quick, shoving against his chest as her shoulder knocks against his mouth.

She ducks back to take her body out of his arm's reach but his fingers still clutch a front flap of her leathers. He yanks her down against the table and pins her with his weight.

Suddenly they aren't sparring.

Panting, he shoves her shirt up her back to bite and suckle at the skin, his weight pushing her belly and breasts against the table. The mound of her sex rides against the rounded table edge.

His hands slide under her loose leathers, grasping her ass, tugging the pants down to mid-thigh for access. She knocks the datapad to the floor as her hands search for purchase on the table.

This is going to be PK-style; intense, effective, every man for himself. Heedless single-minded sex, a pure expression of lust and nothing else. She's missed it.

She arches her lower back, angling herself against his hardness in offering. He braces one hand on the back of her neck and unzips his fly. She feels his knuckles and then the heavy heat of his cock against the cheek of her ass.

Yes. Her eyes close and she grinds back, rocking between the fingers gripping the base of her skull and the fingers slipping into her sex. She spreads her arms and catches the table edges in her hands, and anticipates the tightening of pleasure.

His fingers delve but any friction on her clit is accidental, only in the service of spreading her wetness. Her growl of frustration is answered by a fierce slap on her ass, his wet hand leaving a sting on the skin.

His grip on her neck presses, his weight shifts, and he's pushing inside her roughly.

The onrush of sensation hits her like a drug in the vein. She braces her legs, arches her back between the hands pinning her neck and hip, and lets him drive each thrust into her, balls deep and furious.

She's so wet it's nearly frictionless but she can feel the shape of him as if he were in her hand or in her mouth.

Ever since the first time she saw it she's been enamored with the emphasized ridge at the head of his cock. She's idly wondered if that flare was a human trait or a personal variation. Now she wonders if she can endure the sensation of it, each backstroke notching the sensitivity of her body ever higher.

Hand wrapped in her hair, shoving her face down, he frells her hard enough to shift the table. She has little leverage to thrust back but what overpowers her is the violent euphoria of pleasure. The approaching orgasm has the taste of impending doom.

Too much fuel in the pulse chamber; it won't burn, it will explode, but it's too late. She seizes with the brilliance of the orgasm, it flashes and consumes her, every nerve she owns catches the spark and burns bright and fierce. Her shouts become sobs as her body comes back from a state of overload.

His thrusts lose precision, gain emphasis and speed, and with grunts that whimper at the edge he grinds his orgasm into the ashes of her own.

If she weren't so exhausted she'd laugh. She was wrong about it being PK-style. Even a hard alleyway frell is all tied up with emotions.

He opens his hands slowly, releasing her bruised hip and the fistful of hair. His voice is hoarse and sick. "Oh God…"

She twists to look over her shoulder and sees that a sizeable chunk of her hair has caught in the ring on his hand and pulled out of her scalp.

"Aeryn..." He looks from the strands threading through his knuckles to her prone and ravaged body. His face is sweaty and flushed, the features twisted with self-disgust. "God, Aeryn I..."

Anger pours back into her and she grips the edges of the table.

Her thighs are hobbled by the leathers but she bends her knees and rolls them inward, rotating her legs at the hip to splay her calves outward. Did he really think that Peacekeepers could be used so easily against their will?

She slots the toes of her boots behind his weak legs and sweeps him off his feet. Arrogant bastard.

She stands. Her legs quaver from the orgasmic equivalent of starburst but her self-possession has returned. He's sprawled where she dumped him, staring up at her.

"So I take it that *was* consensual..." he lifts up on one shaky arm, "...just really fucked up."

She reaches down to clean the residue from herself, gathering the fluid in one hand before she tugs her leathers up with the other. The biochemistry is eerily similar, this Human stuff the same as that of a Sebacean man, same as that of the other John.

When chakkan oil degrades, the color darkens and the resulting pulsefire burns red. There is no difference that she can detect in the semen, no sign of the damage he's done to himself because he couldn't trust her.

She turns her study back to the man, currently bleeding from a split lip and trying to stuff his softening but obstinate penis back into his leathers.

He absently smears the blood from his lip and winces. "Aeryn, can you give me a hand up?"

She wipes her hand on his shirt before offering it to him. He sighs, grips her wrist and pulls himself to his feet.

He shadows her as she searches and finds the datapad, hesitating as he asks, "Aeryn, are you okay?"

Her gaze is on the wiring schematic but her brain is too full to take in the information. "I'm fine, just a little tired." When she looks up, the strangeness of him startles her.

He slowly reaches toward her chest, and with a tap she can barely feel, turns her comm back on.

"Oh...right." She clears her rough throat. "Thank you."

He examines the datapad in her hand, but if he notices the schematic or the dried tears marring the screen, all he does is murmur, "At least it's not broken."

"It's tough." She doesn't have the strength for this kind of coded conversation right now, all she wants is to go someplace quiet and figure out what the frell it all means. "I have things to do today."

He nods, looking down at his hand idly skimming the edge of the table. "Yeah, I do too. Laundry, for one."

"If I don't see you in the mess, I guess, I'll see you tonight?"

"Yeah, uh, definitely."

***

She eyes the module, the copy, scoured by sand and unstable anomalies and ravaged for spare parts.

She can sense Moya in her muscles and bones, and she knows that DRDs are even now transporting a newly conceived life toward the gestation chamber.

What if she had gone out on a transport pod while Moya reabsorbed the first offspring? Would she still have her daughter?

She touches the empty rack where the displacement engine had been bolted, runs her fingers over the solid drips of slag it had left on the hull.

Moya thrums with a reserved happiness.

Aeryn pops the canopy latch and climbs into the module, enclosing herself in the cockpit and dulling the input from the Leviathan. Sand grits under her heels so she brings her feet up and sits with her legs crossed. The humid scent of fresh sex drives away the memory scents of his acrid sweat and failing body.

She used to see this John as an excruciating echo of the one who died, a sensor shadow after a ship explodes but before the fragments have dispersed.

With time she merged that echo of the dead with the solidity of the living. This man, her husband, is John Crichton as much as the one before. As much as.

But not the same as.

For the first time in a very long time, perhaps the first time ever, she lets herself think of them as two different men. John and Crichton.

Whole boards are missing from the consoles above and below, bare wires springing up out of the holes. She aimlessly flicks dead lever switches back and forth. Such a primitive design, yet the click is somehow satisfying.

Her John would not have been so rough without asking. Her John died killing thousands of Scarrans, died content, and would not have wept over Katratzi.

She punctuates the quiet closeness of the module with the clicks of dead switches.

Her John was going to take her to Earth like bringing home a treasure. This John succeeded in going back home, but only pestered her to decide for herself whether she wanted to stay or to leave.

To be honest, she didn't much like either approach.

Her hip is sore, finger shaped bruises already blushing dark on the pale skin. A few days ago he'd clung to her and soaked that same spot with tears for Zola. Fierce emotions and cold logic and it makes no sense to her.

He can be ruthless, as if his mercy is reserved for strategic use. It reminds her of Scorpius, but that's a line of thinking she's too weary to pursue.

A fellip nectar would taste really good right now.

Aeryn admits to herself now in the confines of a space that smells faintly of sand and illness, more strongly of sex, that this man is not her John. He is John Crichton. The same adaptable Human with a slightly different life, and as a result, different responses.

Especially toward her, because she's left this man twice.

Her thumb plays with the ring on her finger. Evening meal will be soon, and she's very hungry.

***

Stark watches the text scrolling on the heads-up display. He looks like a street urchin, slumped back in a pilot-chair sized for Scarrans. John slouches in the chair next to him and opens his mouth to apologize.

Stark cuts him off with a distracted murmur. "Did you enjoy your lover's quarrel?"

John reminds himself that he'd driven Stark out of the workshop at gunpoint, and the man may have grounds to be peevish. John addresses his own behaviour first. "I over-reacted. I'm sorry, man."

"I guess," Stark's murmur is grudging, but he does pause the scrolling of the display to speak, "I should be grateful that you managed not to fire."

"Just so we're clear--if you touch her again, I will pull the trigger."

Stark acknowledges the statement with a tip of the head and a voice devoid of expression. "That's fair."

After a moment, he keys in a sequence and powers down the computer, then turns in his seat to face John, initiating a new conversation as if the previous one hadn't happened. "You've heard that Rygel found a Diagnosan."

"Yeah, he told me at breakfast yesterday." Though John had heard more about the Diagnosan's assistant, Nelet, causing morbid curiosity about the charms that had won the frog king's heart (or gonads, as it were).

"I suspect we will leave the Leviathan pod soon. Moya has conceived again and this mating cycle has concluded."

"With a bang." It's John's turn to murmur. He touches the tender bruise on his jaw and winces.

"*And* a whimper." Stark adds with a faded smile.

John rubs the back of his neck. "Have I told you lately how creepy it is when you do that?"

"Imagine my own discomfort, talking to you while hearing the echo of your brother."

"Brother." John turns pensive. "That'd make me, what, Onan?" In a microt he folds the thought inward and makes a joke to dispel the tension. "I thought of him as my evil twin."

Stark shuts his eye and speaks the phrase in Banik accented English, "Better half."

"Great. Now I'm haunted as well."

"He's gone, Crichton." Stark heaves a sigh and rises to his feet. "But souls leave a residue when they pass through me."

"You seem to have a lot of him sticking around."

"His residue is just particularly sticky."

John shakes his head and follows Stark out of the ship.

***

He pauses in the doorway but comes in without asking permission.

Each goes about their bedtime routine while keeping the other in their peripheral vision. He takes his time with his boots, giving her dibs on the fresher.

He strips but leaves his undershorts on. They exchange a sly accidental glance when she comes out of the fresher and he goes in.

The cut on his lip is a ragged maroon line, and he has to nudge the dentic to get it to clean the two teeth underneath the wound. It does a cursory job and skitters around to less frightening pastures. The bruise on his jaw is sore but experience tells him the swollen redness will fade by morning.

He gently takes the dentic between middle finger and thumb, petting it delicately with the tip of his index finger. "Hey, Doc."

Dentics are the closest thing to a pet he's had for years, a long line of periodontal caterpillars all named Doc. In truth they're more like a preferred brand of disposable pen, but they all seem to enjoy being stroked lightly on the back, and they respond in their own fashion. Doc curls against the pad of his thumb and cleans the grooves of his fingerprint.

Really it's Aeryn's Doc, Aeryn's room, Aeryn's bed. He rinses out the dentic cup and settles Doc into clean water. He finally catches his own eyes in the mirror by the door.

When his parents fought, Mom usually capitulated (too often and too easily John felt) and Dad always apologized (even when he won, sometimes especially when he won). No argument had ever lasted into the next day. 'Don't go to bed angry' and all that.

John wonders if shame and resentment are okay to sleep on, because if he waited until he was in a Ward Cleaver state of mind he'd go psychotic from lack of sleep first.

His parents had a system, incomprehensible to John until very recently, until he could see them through adult eyes. It was theirs, had been operating for years before his birth, and it worked. He doesn't know how to build anything close to that with Aeryn, where to even begin.

He begins with this: walking out of the fresher and lying in the bed next to her. She's left him a whole side, and enough slack in the blankets to join her.

She's on her left side and turned away from the empty space. A dim light remains near the fresher, and he touches a wall plate to extinguish it before he crawls under the covers, lying on his own left side behind her. She's also kept on her underclothes.

She shifts in the dark, a glance over her shoulder and then a slide backwards. He accommodates her body against his, her ass tucked against his belly and his hand under hers against the bare skin of her stomach.

On each side the movements are slight, spaced out over minutes, a low-key stretching, nestling, pressing dance as they not only fit their bodies together, but subtly grapple with limbs and hands as if tying themselves down for a hurricane.

He can feel her breath in the shift of ribs in his embrace, feel her pulse against the skin of his wrist, too slow to be his own heart beating. His knees draw up under hers, she slips a chilly leg between, and their feet hook them fast.

He slides his left arm under her head and burrows his face into the hair gathered at her neck.

If she notices his tears falling into her hair, she doesn't say. She simply slides her left arm out of the covers and curls the rest of her fingers in his.

***

Aeryn had carefully disassembled the cooling suit with an eye to preserving the tech of the thermal function, and was surprised at how remarkably simple it turned out to be. The genius of it was in the chemistry and the efficient circulation of the supercool fluid. Uncomplicated, and easily adaptable to her needs.

It's a more satisfying project than fixing the inertial dampener had been, and it gives her time to clear her head, time away from John--from this John. She'd told Chiana that there were too many secrets, and she still believes this, but telling them could be more destructive than keeping them.

*Dark women surrounded her, supported her and walked her into a smaller room. Gentle hands removed her flight suit and sweaty clothes. The microbes translated their Sebacean dialect easily, but her fogged brain made more sense of the tender murmur of their voices as they eased her body into a deep tub.*

She didn't have enough fluid to cool down a whole Prowler, but she didn't need it. She could adapt the circulatory system and use the chill of space to cool the pilot seat without having to send the ambient temperature of the whole craft down to dangerous levels.

*Distorted recollections of being caught by a docking web and pulled aboard a marauder that should have been decommissioned before she was born; of being pulled free from the pilot seat and medicated right on the docking bay floor; of seeing blue eyes cringe with concern; of being shifted to the jumpseat and launching again.*

Ideally, once the system was activated in the Prowler, the pilot's core temperature, her temperature, could be reduced without compromising the nimbleness of her fingers or causing her breath to condense against the canopy.

*She was too ill to voice her apprehension in letting anyone else fly her Prowler, but after they launched, the smooth skill of the pilot calmed her. The fact that he'd put on a flight suit for warmth and let the cockpit chill down gave her a reprieve from the fever that allowed her body to sleep. She trusts whoever this pilot is, because he flies the craft as gently as if his own body aches with fever, and because she has no choice.*

She remembers how hard it was to decipher the displays while burning with fever, how it rendered her helpless against the docking web. She salvages a set of those human lever switches from the spare module for the system controls. An easy flick, an obvious click, she installs them so that down equals on, up equals off. Even a limp hand thrown in that direction will activate the system.

*The shock of cold brought her around long enough to realize that the water was real, the women laying her in the tub were real, and most surprisingly, Scorpius was real.

She catches flashes of his black form between the bustling bodies of the women, and the memory of John arguing with the med tech on the docking bay floor of the Marauder shifts to something closer to reality: that of Scorpius making those demands and being reluctantly obeyed.

Then someone shook a large quantity of ice into the water with her, and she swooned in the merciful chill.*

***

When she came around again the first thing she noticed was the missing portion of his thermal suit, baring an arm from shoulder to hand.

"I've enlisted a technician to construct something for you to travel in." He shrugged his bare arm and rested it along his thigh. "She required an example to faithfully replicate the layering."

A wash of lighting from the windows threw the ropy muscles and knobbed joints into temporary relief, the skin so pale it fairly glowed. The hand was Sebacean but for the exaggerated curves of the fingernails. She started when she realized she'd been staring, sloshing the water in the tub and spurring another round of shivering.

His smile was faint but indulgent as he nodded to the limb. "If you are curious, I will let you."

She reached out and grazed her fingertips along his forearm. The skin was sickeningly hot to the touch, but instead of repulsing her, it made her want to cry. The muscles were relaxed and the skin soft except for flat patches that were tougher, like an enlarged pattern of pebbled freckles. Sparse hair grew between the freckles of Scarran, dusky blond and straight.

She pulled her hand back and rested it on the edge of the tub, not wanting to look as if she were trying to wash the contact off, even though her hand ached to slide into the icy water.

***

John leaned back against the wall behind her, thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans. He silently watched until only one woman remained, stationed on a chair by the door, absorbed in reading from a datapad.

He walked slowly to the side of the tub and crouched down. "He's read my journal, you know. And he knows it's the only impractical thing you've kept."

Tears mingled with the sweat on her face.

He rested his chin on the side, arm propped out over the water and lazily stirring the chunks of ice. "Do you think he's for real?"

She eats so that her body can heat the water and melt the ice, and eventually it will be warm enough for him to join her in the tub. She confessed, "I have no idea if any of this is real."

"You get used to it."

"Did you?"

His fingers circled in a vortex around a smooth piece of ice, to spin it without touching it. "What if he's telling the truth?"

"That all he wants is to save the Sebacean people."

"And skull-fuck the Scarrans while he's at it."

She clenched her teeth against the chattering. "And if he *is* telling the truth?"

"I don't know if you have any choice either way, Aeryn. At least for now."

"He wants amnesty."

"Like Crais." He chuckled. "Strange, how many of them have come to our way of thinking." His fingers slipped beneath the water and a cool hardness slid along the inside of her knee, his touch exerted through the random path of a chunk of ice.

"You think he can change?"

"It's up to him, whether he wants to."

***

John's voice is resolutely casual when he comms Aeryn. "Noranti wants to see you first, then she'll make the venikka. Apparently you two had a discussion regarding my medical care?"

Aeryn sets down the oilcloth and barrel, pleasantly surprised that the old woman not only remembers the agreement, but is also abiding by it. "Is she there?"

"She wants to see you in person. We're in her room."

"Tell her I'll be there soon." She assembles the rifle and closes the cleaning kit.

It's Aeryn's first time in Noranti's quarters, so her step slows to near stopping as she takes in the rich fabrics draped over the walls and spread over the floor. A pleasant stimulating scent makes her head feel clear, an odd contrast to the often musty-sharp smelling occupant. Both beds in the room are piled with pillows and screened with sheer fabric.

Noranti sits cross-legged on the bed at the back of the room, the bed-curtains open, a music player on her knee and human headphones lost inside her ears. She pulls them free with a grin. "Now the both of you are here!"

John rises from his seat at the side table to stand next to Aeryn. "And now I've got my signed permission slip."

"Good!" Tinny music issues from the headphones and seems to distract her for a moment. She brings her focus back to John. "But I still won't make you any more venikka."

"Are we out of it or something?"

"Oh no, no. We've got plenty for that purpose. I wouldn't suggest trying to prepare it yourself, though, the alkaloids must be sifted carefully to avoid the nastier side-effects."

Aeryn steps forward. "It's alright, I approve of it."

"I do not." Noranti switches the player off. "At least, not unconditionally."

"Right." John drops himself onto a fluffy seating cushion. He masks his anger in a weary tone. "And what conditions are you bargaining for?"

"Just one." Noranti gestures for Aeryn to be seated but she remains standing. "That you both agree to participate in mediation."

Aeryn takes a step forward to stand beside where John sits. "What kind of mediation?"

"Very simple. You will take turns, and each day you must tell the other person a truth, answer a question, or take my dare. As long as you participate I will provide you with the venikka."

Aeryn braces for the look she knows John will give her, but she asks it anyway. "What kind of truth?"

Noranti keeps her faint smile turned toward Aeryn while her eyes catch John's reaction. "Tell a secret, or answer a question. Or take my dare. I trust each of you to play fair with the other."

In her peripheral vision, Aeryn knows that John's eyes have been pinned on her since she asked for clarification. His answer is aimed at his wife. "Deal."

Noranti clears her throat and Aeryn doesn't need John's expectant "Well?" to know the ambush has closed shut.

Before she can speak, though, Noranti cuts her off. "Perhaps she'd like to discuss it with you first. Or maybe she's waiting to be asked. Quite possibly she's considering if this process will help her to understand you."

"I'm a simple guy, it's not that hard to figure me out." Aeryn's snort of incredulity brings him up short and straightens his back. He turns to look up at her, leaning out of strike range as a matter of habit. "You put her up to this, didn't you?"

"What? That's what I was about to ask *you*." Aeryn crosses her arms and studies the woman for a moment, reassessing the situation. "I agree."

John sighs. "Yeah, ditto."

"Very well!" Noranti untangles her legs and scoots off the bed. "You two go get started. The venikka will be ready after evening meal."

"Great. Dessert."

***

Aeryn offers her hand to help John up from the cushion.

He waits until Granny has left the room before turning back to Aeryn. "We could flip for it."

She grimaces but her laugh eases the tension. "No, I'll go." She steers him over to Noranti's abandoned bed and pushes him down. She remains standing.

He watches her left thumb play with the ring set, beautiful on her finger and laughable mere inches from her gunbelt. What does it mean to her to wear it? Chi says that Nebari don't pair bond, but neither to Peacekeepers. What does Aeryn even know about marriage?

Why hadn't he asked her that before?

Scratch that. He never asked because he didn't want to hear an answer that was different than what he wanted. Now they're playing by Noranti's rules and he has the feeling he's going to get an earful of things he doesn't want to hear.

"A secret, a question, or a dare," he prods. She looks like she's ready to spill a secret and each second she waits notches up his dread. "What will it be?"

Her body tenses as if ready to pace but she straightens her neck instead, settling her spine into parade rest. "I never planned to come back."

Not so secret, but it still hurts to hear her say it. When she doesn't continue, he asks, "To Moya or to me?"

"Either." She meets his eyes but her thumb still slides the joined rings round and round her finger. "Both."

"But he brought you back to Moya anyway."

She nods. "I didn't think I would live much longer. I came back to her because I didn't want to die alone."

"Best laid plans..." He clears his throat, shakes off the urge to say something cutting and cruel. They aren't here for that. They are here for the truth. "So why did you decide to come back to me? Because I showed up?"

"Because I didn't…I don't want to live alone, either." She turns on her heel and leaves him, just like that.

He wants to follow her, press her for more, make her admit that she's with him because it's better than being lonely. Make her break his heart completely. It would be easier, he thinks, if he was certain that she's only with him because he's the flesh and blood embodiment of a ghost.

But he is not unaware of how hard it was for her to confess that she needs someone, and so he stays put and doesn't ask her who it is that she really needs.

chapter four

little acorns home

home