Skull Candy

by feldman

 

The straw punches through his skull with a crack like a plane breaking the sound barrier.

John's too shocked to struggle any further, some kind of deer-in-headlights instinct freezing him on his knees, his body bracing for pain that never comes. Black comes first, flooding in from the edges with a slurping sound. With it comes peace, a true sacred stillness as he recognizes that his game is over, his quarter played out. No matter what or who he's leaving behind, he has no choice but to die.

He wants to cry as the soft comfort of the black shushes him and swallows him whole.

When he wakes up, he figures the worst part is over. Then he gets to the transport pod and finds another him.

~*~

The other man stares at him, watching from his bench across the pod as they head back to Moya. After the initial shock, they've been silent for nearly an hour. The other man opens the negotiations with, "You're hurt."

John sits up straight, pulling his hand away from his head. The spot is sore, and there had been blood matted around a lump the size of ping pong ball, but he can't feel a cut or scratch. He also can't stop prodding at it, can't stop hearing the echoed slurps and yummy moans of pleasure. "Got hit in the head."

"With what?"

John returns his crafty stare. "A banana cream pie--how the frell should I know? If I saw it coming I would have ducked."

The other man crosses his arms. If this guy really is another him, what the hell are they going to do? Someone gets to be John Crichton. Some *one*. John feels too concussed to think about it. He rubs his head some more and ponders what to call the other guy for the time being. Robert John? J.R.? J.? Bob? Silent Bob?

Silent Bob stares at John, looking just like him except probably half as pale.

~*~

Aeryn is in denial. Either that or she really doesn't see any problem with the situation. John's admittedly curious about why she seems so nonplussed (he wonders, for example, whether it's related to their previous discussion of fluid levels), but tonight isn't the time to explore Aeryn's thoughts on having Silent Bob as a back-up mechanic.

Aeryn's hiding out somewhere, in fact most of the crew are either shell-shocked or exhausted from their parts run gone bad. Jool stayed just long enough to diagnose his mild concussion and then scrammed before either of he or Silent Bob could rope her into a genetic assay.

Silent Bob keeps him awake all night playing rock, paper, scissors and John Crichton Trivial Pursuit. John doesn't do as well as he usually does, still rather scrambled from the knock on his head.

~*~

He wakes up alone in the room, the blankets on the floor next to the bed empty and cool. He may have given John the bed, but Silent Bob's up early, getting the jump on John's day.

The bastard took his better pair of boots.

~*~

Chromextin is a pink powder looks like someone mixed cherry Kool-aid with dishwasher soap, and it's a powerful medicine for Leviathans. Local politics aren't nearly as fun or useful, even when they're straddling your thigh and beginning to grind. Between the free drinks and free lap dances, these B-movie Medicis might have been entertaining if the soap opera weren't keeping Talyn from the medicine he needs.

She's deep into her soliloquy on local politics, her hand creeping up to his crotch as if it too were bored to tears by her speech. John wonders how he can remove this woman from his leg while still finagling the chromextin. He's almost relieved to sight the bomb at the corner of the empty club.

~*~

For the second time in a handful of days, the edges of his vision fade into soft black nothing, and he assumes he's as good as dead.

Silent Bob watches from the doorway for a long time, flaunting his hi-pro glow of health. John's already heard about the genetic testing Silent Bob bribed out of Jool, and heard about the inconclusive results. John was already nauseous and clammy, and the news did nothing to alleviate either. He turns his head away from Silent Bob, settling further into the cold and hollow feeling as his body fails.

When Silent Bob offers him blood on tap, it's John's turn to stare.

"Can't let you die, can I?" Silent Bob explains sullenly, as he flexes his grip like the Red Cross taught him.

John's gaze follows the red line out of that robust arm, through the little pump, and into his own vein. Even with the heat loss over several feet of tubing, the blood is so hot he can feel it suffusing his own arm, warming his chest and then his head. He can taste a meaty smokiness in his mouth. His stomach rumbles, and the stitches in his leg itch.

Silent Bob isn't breaking a sweat, so how can his blood be so blistering hot?

~*~

Aeryn spends a lot of time on Talyn as the chromextin takes effect, and John shadows her like a hunting dog. Silent Bob is rather vocal about how much he hates that arrangement, but John's still limping and he's more useful on the smaller ship. They've divided their belongings for the time being, flipping a coin for Winona and the coat.

They don't flip for Aeryn. They don't talk about her at all. Silent Bob has the advantage of health, but John has her sympathy and he's not above milking it for all it's worth. He feels better than he looks, even if he's still a little foggy now and then. He can do most of the repairs on autopilot, and she's right there to jog his memory when he forgets something.

Silent Bob is aboard Talyn every chance he can get, bringing Aeryn food or supplies and making cracks about John: "Hey, man, still hung over?" or "Why don't you try some of the stew D'Argo made? It'll put roses in your cheeks." or today's gem, "Dude, you should hit the showers, you smell like a basement."

It's pathetic and obvious, and even though John feels sorry for Silent Bob, he can't help but lean closer to Aeryn whenever the jerk is around. It doesn't hurt that working in the close confines of Talyn's systems makes her warm and deliciously sweaty.

Silent Bob may have the health for now, but John has the girl. He doesn't even bother to follow their current conversation, Silent Bob bitching about flux conduits burning out on Moya. John leans his forehead on Aeryn's shoulder and savors the give as she supports his head. He inhales her luscious scent.

Silent Bob can stare all he wants.

~*~

At first Crais assumes it's the chromextin. but once Talyn begins to absorb the chemical, he can sense its structure and properties, he can even faintly taste the smooth tang of the drug whenever he passes any of Talyn's air vents. The odd smell he's noticed since yesterday is most assuredly not chromextin.

This scent is dry and flat, but familiar. Nostalgic. It makes him think of Tauvo, of his father, of being tired and dirty and itchy from sweat, but it also reminds him of being happy, of looking forward to something. It's a curious scent, and when he realizes that Crichton is the source of it, he's even more intrigued.

His second assumption is that the man has taken up Aeryn's oddly civilian habit of wearing scent, perhaps not in his hair the way she does, most likely on his skin or in his clothes. Even though the scent is faint, it irritates Crais because he cannot recall what it reminds him of. It isn't spicy or fresh or sweet or particularly good or bad, it just *is*--but *what* is it?

Crais finds himself sniffing both men, surreptitiously, doggedly. He discovers that it's only the injured Crichton who wears the scent. It becomes clear that Aeryn not only spends most of her time with the one man, but she has apparently marked her choice as well. Crais finds both men tiresome, but he wonders why she seems to have chosen the sickly one. He can't help digging at the one left behind, when he encounters him while looking for Joolushku.

Crichton kneels in a corridor and works a small fusing torch into a juncture box. "Haven't seen her, man. You've already tried the kitchen?"

"No, I have not." Crais fires a verbal shot across the bow. "I will ask the other Crichton, perhaps he is more knowledgeable."

"Right, you do that Bialar. Good luck getting him to talk."

Crais assesses the overly casual tone and the exaggerated interest the human now shows in his task. He crouches down to eye level and leans into the man's personal space. His manner is confidential. "Maybe if you had talked less, Aeryn would have anointed you, instead."

Crichton's eyes narrow, and he pulls the torch back a micro-dench. "What are you talking about?"

Crais's voice becomes a sardonic purr. "Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps he began wearing the fragrance on his own, to impress her."

The torch snaps off, the blue flame disappearng from the tool but flaring in the human's eyes. "Wearing what?"

"Wearing scent, like Aeryn does. Though I must admit, I prefer her choice of spices over his--that's it--" Crais forgets his tactical taunting as the memory clicks into place with a vehemence reminiscent of the Aurora Chair. Plowing season. He slaps his knee and stands. Why couldn't he remember it before?

"You okay, there, Cap'n Crunch?"

"I know what it reminds me of now; you're twin smells like plowing season--like fresh turned earth."

Crichton turns as pale as the sickly man in question, rising to his feet slowly. "Is it getting worse?"

"Worse?" Crais pulls back, recognizing a scattering of subtle cues that indicate the human is hatching a plan. "It's not a bad smell, well, I was raised on a farm, so--what do mean by 'worse'?"

"I don't think it's aftershave."

"Do you suspect that he's ill?"

~*~

Aeryn lays her hand on his head, his cheek, his neck. "You're running cold and you're still pale..." Her brow furrows in a way that makes him profoundly happy, knowing that he's the object of her focus and concern. "And so far you've asked me twice which direction tightens a bolt."

He catches her wrist and gently pulls her closer. "You grow up all your life with righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, you're bound to slip up when they change the rules on you."

She offers a half-smile, still studying him. "It's the same as on Moya; hammond-round to loosen, treblin-round to tighten."

He circles his arms around her waist and lays his chin on her shoulder. He's found that she responds well when he doesn't ask, when he simply touches her. "Maybe you're right, maybe I just need some sleep."

"Sleep is good." She settles in his embrace, hands sliding down his back. "It's late in the duty cycle. And you look dead on your feet."

"Mm-hmm." He nuzzles her neck and hooks his thumbs in her gun-belt, fingers splaying across her rump. "Funny enough, though, I'm not that tired."

"No?" She works hot hands under his shirt, tilting her head to bare her lovely neck for his attention. "Well, if you're still fit for duty, perhaps we should take care of that pressure build-up on Moya?"

"Pressure build-up?" He suckles a line from her ear, under her jaw, to her other ear. He can smell the hot flush of blood under her skin as she takes two generous handfuls of his ass and grinds him close. "And where is this pressure build-up?"

"My quarters."

He licks from her delicious neck and runs his lips up to meet hers. Anywhere on Moya seems a long way to walk, and even though he's not up for anything athletic, he still wants to taste her. He steers her back against a bulkhead and finds the zip-pull for her vest. "Sure we can't access it from here?"

~*~

It's like a scavenger hunt in a way, collecting all the pieces for the game. Despite the green shirt bestowed on him by Aeryn, John is slowly winning.

The early bird gets the worm, or in this case, he got the boots and the gun, taking advantage of the deep sleep his clone had dropped into after his injury on Kanvia. Over the last few days, John has taken the best pieces of clothing and equipment and stashed them around Moya, squirreling the material detritus of his life whenever an opportunity presents itself. He even popped a circuit board out of the Farscape and stowed it behind a grate in the docking bay--the next best thing to hiding the keys. His journal is the last missing piece.

The copy has his journal and his girl. John tries not to dwell on this setback, rationalizing the amount of time those two spend together on Talyn. It's the best tactical use of the two men, an efficient distribution of their skills. And if Aeryn touches him a lot it's only because she's worried about him. He still looks like crap.

Even if Crais seems to think they're together. Crais gets off on needling him, that's all. It doesn't mean anything.

What worries John is that it's been days now, and his copy looks even worse than he did bleeding out in the medical bay. Equal and original is what Jool said, and John wonders if he's now as fragile as the other man, if the next injury is going to hit him that hard. Because it's only a matter of time before someone takes a crack at him again.

John watches his copy ambling up the corridor, eyes dark-rimmed and droop-lidded, mouth parted like he's surreptitiously talking to himself. He's heading toward the galley just like John, and more importantly, he's got the journal, riding in his lax hand like he forgot it was there.

John ignores it, greeting his clone with a grunt and a nod. As much as they each whisper and mutter when alone, neither of them enjoy talking to themselves in the flesh. His clone drains a big glass of water with thirsty gulping noises. John tears open a bag of food cubes, orange and pellet-sized, and offers dibs. His clone paws into the bag, obviously exhausted, then cheerily pops some of the pellets into his mouth like Cheetos. "Tired?"

"Busy day" His voice is gravelly, but there's a hint of a smirk. "Had to release an amnexus build-up."

John spots a fresh bruise on his clone's neck, and days of rationalizations fly apart like a scout ship hitting an asteroid. He can almost feel the bile surging in his belly. "Do tell."

"Nothin' to tell bro." The bruise looks like it has teeth marks. His clone sighs, rooting for another handful of not-Cheetos. "You know how it is. Repairs, repairs. Got to keep the Leviathans flying."

John's knuckles are white from gripping the edge of the counter. Doesn't mean a thing. The explosion was only a few days ago, besides, he's still running a quart low and maybe he bruises easily. Maybe it's a side-effect from the cloning, and he's been lucky enough not to personally find out how flimsy he is now? John watches the man seize another clumsy handful of food, like a drunk attacking a bowl of beer nuts. "Do me a favor, man."

His clone's eyes are bloodshot at the corners, weary and leery. "What?"

"I think Jool should take another look at us."

He draws another glass of water, and as he drinks, little rivulets drip from the corners of his mouth. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand. "Why?"

"Frankly? You still look like crap." And John wants to know why. "Maybe you need another transfusion."

"Not enough blood in the system." He lets out a humph, and seems to come awake as he mutters, "…could explain..." He shrugs and nods in agreement. "Okay, let's go."

"After you, man." John waits until his clone heads for the door, then sweeps the journal from where he left it on the counter. He untucks the back of his shirt and slips it under his waistband. To think, the soft covers of the book used to annoy him. The scavenger list is complete, all that's left is the real prize.

That had better not be a hickey.

~*~

Not enough blood in the system. The relief makes him a little giddy. It makes perfect sense that a hydraulic function, even a biological one, would be adversely affected by lack of fluid pressure. His smile is hidden from Silent Bob, who trails behind him as they walk to the medical bay. Despite his own fluid level difficulties he'd managed to satisfy Aeryn, if the way she grabbed his ears and nearly crushed his head was any indication.

He was right, she did taste amazing. Really, nothing Silent Bob can do right now could possibly harsh his mellow, so why not humor the poor bastard?

~*~

Jool stretches to reach her comms on the floor, her body a sinuous rolling curve of cream silk on the red fur of his bedspread. She leans over the edge of the bed, "What do you want, Crichton?"

He tries to tune the human out, running his fingers through her ringlets. They're losing their hot color, cooling to orange as her breathing returns to normal. No one is injured, it's just another one of the human's games--let him distract someone else. He slides his hand down her waist and hip, pulling her back against him firmly.

She whines into the comms, "Alright, alright. I'll look at him tomorrow, okay?"

He whispers a command in her ear, "*After* breakfast."

She passes it along to John. "After breakfast."

"But what if he's--"

Crais disables the comms as he takes it from her, and then tosses it to the floor. Her hair flares brighter as she grins at him.

~*~

John shrugs. It's not like he feels bad or anything, just a little tired and a lot hungry. He leaves Silent Bob to his brooding and heads back to the galley, To his pleasure, he finds Chiana there with a bowl of grolak batter.

"Hey old man, you hungry?"

"Starving, Chi."

"Good." She hands him the bowl. "Stir this while I heat up the oil."

"Can do." He watches her dart around the galley, letting her words pelt and soothe him like sitting in a shiatsu chair, while she gathers utensils and plates for a late night snack. She must have come right from the fresher, her hair is still damp and falling over her eyes in chunks that remind him of sweet creamy coconut. Not real coconut, but coconut filling, like you'd find in a Mounds bar.

Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't. It's been years since he's tasted chocolate or coconut. He'd kill for a real honest-to-God candy bar.

~*~

John tries to shrug off the apprehension like a dog shaking off water. So what if Crais is right? He does smell a little strange, but it's not sweat and it's not the smell of sick, either. Maybe it is some kind of cologne, something Aeryn likes. Girl was raised in space, maybe dirt smells exotic to her.

He didn't ask his clone. He doesn't like hearing that voice when it doesn't come out of his own head, can't stand the deep bland monotone of it, the raw quality that sounds like someone driving down the highway on bare rims.

Tomorrow, he's going to get Jool to test everything. The boy's not right, and John needs to know what the hell's happening to the man. Just in case it starts happening to him.

John pulls the journal from under his shirt, unbends a fold in the soft cover, and flips through to the last entry he remembers writing.

Bastard wrote in it after that.

At first, John doesn't want to read the new entries. He thumbs through to the blank pages and grabs them, about to tear them from the book like forgetting a bad dream, but his eye catches on the last written page.

~*~

When Aeryn strips for bed, she realizes that the top fastener of her leathers is still undone from earlier. She smiles, then her brow furrows as she realizes that if she'd run into the other Crichton he probably would have noticed. She removes the rest of her clothing quickly, pausing to prod at the recreation bruise on her shoulder. Teeth marks. Damned territorial males.

Humans must be as bad as the dogs Crichton told her about back on Dam-Ba-Da. Little wonder he fit right in with the bounty hunters

The last thing she needs is to find herself in the middle of another bad-tempered argument between that man and himself. She doesn't want to have to injure either one. How could she choose? It can't be a choice, because it's the same man, even if he doesn't see it. There has to be some way to put him back together again.

She tries not to let the stab of chagrin ruin her relaxed mood. Hopefully when he's recombined he won't talk so much, having learned better uses for that tongue.

~*~

D'Argo is clearly humoring him, but he takes the journal anyway and studies the pages with a sigh. "What am I looking for, again?"

"Just look at it. I can write better than that with my left hand--I can write better with my feet. He's really messed up, man, I'm almost thinking he has some kind of brain damage."

"Well that much is obvious." D'Argo glances up from the journal. "But how does that make him any different from you?"

"Hilarious." John reaches over and pages backwards, pointing out a legible chunk of text from last weeken. "Seriously, D, take a look at the before and after."

D'Argo fingers the pages, comparing the smooth bouncing angles on the earlier page to the shuddering ruts carved into the last entry. Even if you can't read the language, you can tell a first grader's hand just by looking. "You think he injured his head in the explosion on Kanvia?"

"No, man." John shakes his head. "It started before that. It started on that damned ship where we buried one of you."

D'Argo closes the journal. "You buried me in bat dren, by the way."

"Yeah, well, at the time it felt like a Viking thing, tipping you off into the ether."

He slaps the journal against John's chest. "*Bat* dren."

"You were dead, what did you care?"

D'Argo sighs.

"Look, you got off easy, we didn't come home with another one of *you*."

"You say that like it would have been be a bad thing."

"Wherever you went, you'd've had to pick up twice as many girls."

"I already do."

"Already do what?" Chiana strides up the corridor with a nervous skip.

"More than his share." John mutters. "Where've you been, I was looking for you earlier and you didn't answer your comms."

"I didn't know which one you were." Chiana's shoulders creep up toward her ears. "I didn't want to talk to the other one. He, uh..."

John and D'Argo both lean in, and she cranes her head closer.

"He tried to uh...he, uhhh..."

D'Argo glares at John as he asks, "What did he do?"

Chi answers with a weird whisper, as if more embarrassed than anxious. "He tried to eat me."

D'Argo growls.

John steps away from D and closer to Chiana. "He fucking what?"

She pulls at the sleeve of her bodice, exposing her shoulder bruised blue and scraped. "I was making crispy grolack and some batter flicked on me..."

"And he attacked you? Because you had corndog batter on you?"

"Something like that." Chiana's head describes a few floaty curves as she avoids eye contact with them both. "Then next thing I know he's biting me."

Both men step away from Chiana and face off as they realize the scenario she pointedly isn't describing. The other John has crossed a far more serious boundary than a little gnawing between friends.

He's put the moves on his best friend's ex-girlfriend. The one who's decided she has more pleasant places to be than in the middle of this.

John holds his hands up, palms out. "*He* is not *me*--we're clear on that right, man?"

"You're right. He is not you." D'Argo simmers like stew on a low boil, chunks of dark things rising up and falling out of sight as he stands as breaths with false calm. "*He* is a dead man."

~*~

John shuffles through the doorway, looking as tired and worn as ever. Aeryn sets the cleaning rag and the pulse chamber down in the array of parts on the oilcloth spread out before her, "Are you alright?"

He grunts, "fine," and his pace quickens as he approaches her.

She stands and half-smiles, expecting a little playful wrestling followed by his inevitable subjugation, but instead he barrels into her clumsily, knocking her back against the worktable. He's graceless, but quick, pushing her arms down and leaning on her with a blank look on his face.

"What the frell are you doing, Crichton?" He doesn't respond, not even a flicker of expression. Her first thought is that the neural clone has taken control once again. But it's not supposed to happen now that the chip has been removed--and he was a lot more graceful, under the influence of the chip or not, than is today.

She pulls her arms free and shoves against his shoulders, barking his name like an order. His skin is the color of ash and cold to the touch. The chip never affected the way he looked, only what he did. Something else is wrong, something just as devastating as the chip.

He stumbles back a step. There's a glimmer in his eyes, a flutter of the lids as he murmurs, "Aeryn? I'm...I'm starving, I...how did I get here?" Then his face blanks out again, suddenly slack as if he'd been tongued, and he surges toward her once more.

The pantak jab feels perfect even as she executes it, the bang of her knuckles against the sweet spot of the human's jaw satisfying in a way that she'd forgotten about since she'd started kissing him far more often than hitting him.

He doesn't fall. In fact, he's so far from falling that he takes advantage of her pause to catch her wrists and pull them behind her. He pins her against the table, bending her backward, pressing down with his weight.

She'd knee him but he's stepping on the toes of her boots. She works at getting one of her hands loose instead.

He's muttering her name but it's grunted and slurred. He knocks his forehead against her cheekbone, bouncing her head against the table and stunning her for a microt. She goes lax underneath him, and his grip on her wrists loosens as he concentrates on gnawing at her head.

His breath is stale with undertones of foul, and his teeth are scraping at her temple, pressing hard enough to make that eye ache. She slips her hand out and up. The pulse weapons behind her are all disassembled, and she can't reach her holster from here.

She reaches into the toolbox, grabs the heaviest handle her fingers find, and then brings it to bear on Crichton's head.

~*~

John surveys the man laid out on the floor, painfully aware of how many times he's been out like that himself. He looks more peaceful than John would have thought. "Pantak jab?"

Aeryn shakes her head, indicating the wrench on the table.

"Christ, Aeryn, you could've brained him with that thing."

"Pantak jab didn't work. It was either the spanner or the pulse pistol."

John grimaces, his hand absently rubbing his own jaw.

Crais clears his throat. "I wouldn't mention this, but he's going to rouse sooner or later and he's clearly a menace to the rest of the crew--"

"What are you suggesting, Blackbeard, that I put him down like a dog?"

Crais seems to wince with the effort of not rolling his eyes. "There is a perfectly serviceable set of restraints in the medical bay."

Aeryn crouches down to inspect the man, serene and unconscious for now. Her temple is grazed and raw. "He has a point."

John sighs as Crais pulls a wheeled cart from a corner of the bay and clears it of parts. John rolls his twin over onto his back and lifts under the shoulders. Aeryn takes hold of the legs and they heft him onto the cart.

Halfway to the med bay he starts moaning and moving around, and it takes all three of them to wrestle the man onto the prisoner's gurney and fix the metal braces over his arms, legs and chest.

Under the bright lights of the med bay, John takes an appalling inventory of his twin as he bellows and bucks against the restraints.

"I've commed Joolushko." Crais sidles up next to John. "She'll be here momentarily to look at you both."

John nods, watching his twin thrash and roar. He's grey like bad hamburger, his voice raw and his speech closer to the sputters and shouts of when their speech centers were broken on Hoth than real words. From the few words that make it through, he's hungry and angry. He's attacked two of the crew already, John glances at Aeryn across the room, cleaning the wound on her temple.

He put some kind of move on Chi and then bit her, and now he's bitten Aeryn. John adds "fucking moron" to the list of symptoms. He doesn't try to think about what rabid John might have tried with Aeryn before he got hungry. Before brains trumped tail.

John also refrains from checking his twin's vitals. He's cold, grey, and a biter. John's got a pretty good idea of what Jool with find when she gets here.

He doesn't say anything, not because he thinks he's wrong, but because it would sound more like jealousy than astute observation. As long as Dead John is kept restrained, John can bide his time. Mold will out.

~*~

Jool looks at the scanner display, a bumpy plane of dark blue roiling slowly as the human's heart and lungs plod along. Another reason why interons are superior--this level of circulation would signal the failure of deep portions of the brain, and would not be sufficient to fuel higher brain functions like thrashing and bellowing. The interon brain is a high-performance organ, requiring plenty of oxygen and sugars to run--if he were interon, he'd be dying or dead already.

When she looks at the same man standing before her, brow furrowed against the raging of the one on the gurney, the difference is startling.

"Well, you two might not be very intelligent, but I'll grant you this: you're robust and tenacious." Jool shakes her head, enunciating over the gravelly noise of other Crichton. "If respiration weren't a given, I'd suspect that the only reason he's breathing at all is to shout."

"You sure it's a given?" John gestures to the patient. "Take a good look before you assume anything."

She shifts her gaze. Despite the appalling stretch and pallor of the man's skin and the raw dry quality of his voice, it's ridiculous to think that he isn't alive. But it's sound scientific advice, to test every assumption. She looks from the normal specimen to the one strapped down, and she rubs the backs of her arms and grips her elbows tight. "I'll need some samples."

John squares his shoulders.

~*~

D'Argo suggests tonguing, but Jool wants a clean sample to work with. Aeryn hangs close for backup, but doesn't seem to want to touch the man if she doesn't have to.

Despite his twin's illness, what he's begun to think of as his 'delicate condition', they're still evenly matched. John has to lean his weight down on the wrist to bare the inside of the elbow for Jool. She clearly doesn't want to come near the man, but she bucks up and does her part. The blood in the tubing is inky and thick.

John meets the eyes of his double, pupils blown out black with only the barest rims of blue. He stills and then whimpers at John, pleading. John's still got a hold of his wrist, dry and cold, and he feels it bend back, feels the fingers brush against his own wrist. There's something in the eyes as his raw voice whines, but after a moment he lets himself fall back against the gurney. He shakes his head and snuffles, a gasping rictus between laughing and crying.

John squeezes the arm, then steps back, heading for Jool at the other end of the bay. "What are brains made of?"

She doesn't bother to look up from the equipment. "Oddly enough," her tone is chipper but the flick of her ringlets underlines the words with sarcasm, "*brain* tissue."

John gives her a blank glare which she doesn't see, but seems to hear.

She sighs. "Neural tissue, vascular tissue, fatty tissue."

"We have any of that kind of thing lying around?"

"Sorry." She looks up, her manner poisonous sweet like anti-freeze. "I'm fresh out of cousins."

John lets that remark cool before proceeding. "I was thinking of some kind of fatty concoction. D--I know I'm gonna regret this--where does lutra oil come from?"

D'Argo indicates something the size of a terrier. "An insect."

"Yeah, I was right. But it might work." John turns to Aeryn. "What was that little squawky bird, multiple heads, you eat the brains?"

"Trelkez."

"Right, trelkez. What does it taste like?"

Aeryn walks over to John, turning away from the man on the prisoner gurney. "You want to feed him brains?"

John flicks his gaze at the scrape on her head. "Ersatz brains."

Aeryn looks over her shoulder, and for a moment all that can be heard is his thick breathing, sluggish and suffocating. "Do you think it will help?"

"I don't know. Can't hurt, can it?"

Aeryn stares at the man, hand resting on her pulse pistol. Blood and fluid have weeped from her wound through the bandage at her temple. "Brains are salty. Meaty. Juicy, like mushrooms and blo--"

John stops her with a hand. "You think you can taste test, tell me if I come close?"

"Yes."

"That's all I need." He pulls her to the galley.

~*~

John squints against the bright light. The smell of food knots his stomach, making his whole body ache with hunger. He can't move, but he's trying to stay angry instead of giving into the fear. He's still home, that much he can tell by the ceiling and the occasional face he can see from where he lies. They look scared but they still smell friendly, even though Silent Bob has convinced them to tie him down and hurt him.

This won't last. Aeryn will come. She'll make them stop, and she'll free him. Then he can eat something. Food will clear his head. John closes his eyes against the light, grunts against the cramp in his belly, and waits for Aeryn to notice he's gone.

~*~

Aeryn comes to him, but she doesn't let him go. Instead, she feeds him where he lies, dipping her hand into a bowl of food and carefully dropping mouthfuls onto his tongue. It's some kind of pudding, salty sweet like butterscotch. He eats from her hand until the hunger abates. "Aeryn."

She sets the bowl down behind her, avoiding his gaze. She sucks the pudding from her fingers before she answers. "You attacked me. Do you remember?"

He shakes his head. The more he thinks on it, the more he realizes that something is very wrong, and that it's been going wrong for days. "What's happening to me?"

"We don't know yet. Jool's working on it." She finally meets his eyes. "How do you feel?"

John notices the bandage on her head and the bruise on her cheek. He can feel the distance between them in the way she holds her body. He went after her, and this time he doesn't have the chip to blame it on. "Like I might belong here."

"How's your head?"

"Fine."

She gives him a strange look, then scratches her shoulder.

John can feel his stomach tightening around a growl, and he seizes the opportunity to change the subject. "Is there any more of that pudding left? I'm still pretty hungry."

She feeds him with careful scoops and dollops, and even though she keeps her fingers out of his reach, her tenderness feels like a tentative forgiveness. The food is strange, but soothing, and she seems to like the taste of it as well, occasionally licking her fingers in between his own bites. There's a fleck of pudding on his chin that he can't reach with his tongue, and he's wondering how he can broach the subject with Aeryn when his twin strolls in.

Silent Bob eyes the bowl in Aeryn's hands. "How's he doing?"

"Much better. What does Jool say?"

Silent Bob clenches his jaw and avoids looking down. John wants to grab him by the throat and pull him down to his level. Aeryn's apparently just as sick of the melodrama, setting the empty bowl down and prodding him. "Well?"

"He's dead, Aeryn."

She swallows so loudly it seems to echo in the room. She grabs the edge of the gurney near his arm. "What do you mean dead?"

"I mean three days dead. Give or take. Something's animating him, but he's not really alive. Cellular activity is barely detectable, and it seems to originate from some kind of foreign body inside the cell. Jool says it isn't an intellant virus, more like a kind of stimulating fungus."

John shudders underneath the restraints, shaking off the idea. "I can hear you, jackass."

"For now." Silent Bob looks him in the face, but the challenge John expects isn't there. Instead, he sounds like someone drowned his puppy. "But what happens when we run out of zombie snacks?"

"What the hell is your deal, man? Zombie snacks? What do you take me for?"

"That goo is the closest thing to brains we could make, and it's hitting you like fresh batteries, man." Silent Bob shakes his head, sanctimonious and morose. "You couldn't talk before we started feeding you the vegan equivalent of skull candy."

No one's avoiding his eyes now, and he feels the collected weight of their regard pressing him down like gravity. He attacked Aeryn and doesn't remember. He's felt odd ever since coming back from the decaying leviathan. He has a faint recollection of sucking sounds and screaming, leaching into his consciousness as his stomach grumbles around his meal. He rolls his head to focus on Aeryn alone, grabbing at the only objection he can think of. "But you were eating it too. Was that just to make me feel better?"

Silent Bob stares at her.

She shrugs. "I was hungry."

Silent Bob's voice is quiet and stale. "Let me see where he bit you."

She sighs but humors him, pulling the edge of her bandage up to let him peek at her temple.

John flinches, realizing that she didn't just scrape her head on a table edge, that he didn't just 'attack' her, he bit at her like a rabid dog.

Silent Bob is slightly mollified. "That the only spot?"

Aeryn blushes, and John can smell the warm smoky scent of her blood right through the skin. He's horrified at himself, but he can't look away. He has to know the extent of what he's done. She unzips her shirt partway and exposes her shoulder.

John remembers doing that, but it was a small thing. He didn't think he'd come close to breaking skin. But he must have.

Silent Bob makes a low wheedling noise in his throat. "It's infected."

~*~

Aeryn stands in front of the cooker in the galley, and rotates the metal bar she's placed against the heating element.

"Listen, it's not really necrophilia, is it? I mean, he's technically dead and all, but he's walking and talking, it's not like you really were with a dead guy, you know?"

"Shut up, Chiana."

Chiana persists, coming around the other side of Aeryn. "I'm just saying, it's not like you violated a corpse or something, you just didn't know he wasn't really alive. You can't blame yourself for that, I mean--"

"Shut up."

"Especially if it was kind of rough, you know? No way to tell he was dead, so it's not really necrophilia, just--"

Aeryn pulls the metal bar from the cooker and lets the red tip hang in the air between them.

"...just really icky."

Aeryn hands Chiana the bar, the far end wrapped in thermal cloth for a grip. "When I tell you, lay it on the wound for two microts."

"This is crazy."

"No." Aeryn unzips her shirt and tosses it on the counter. "Jool said this is the only thing that will kill the infection once it's set in."

She pulls her ponytail over her other shoulder and grips the counter hard, trying not to think of what's happening in the medical bay, trying not to cry.

~*~

D'Argo stands next to John in the doorway of the med bay, far enough away that they can speak above the bellowing. "John?"

"Yeah?"

D'Argo watches the dead man struggle against his restraints, the coherency that his meal brought him for the last few arns fading fast. "I'm going to remind you of something wise you said to me very recently."

John's expression is bleak, his grip on the Qualta blade stiff and tight. "What's that?"

"He's dead. What does he care?"

"*I* care, man." He shifts. "When he could speak, I think he cared, too."

"If we feed him again, he'll speak again for a few arns." D'Argo shakes his head. "But he will continue to rot."

"It's better like this. Quick." John rolls his shoulders. "You'll be here to help me burn the pieces?"

"I can see to everything, if you don't want--"

"No, man." John paces toward the gurney, hefting the blade in his hands. "I owe him this."

~*~

Silent Bob stands over John for a long time, one hand resting on the restraint plate over his chest. He waits until John becomes as quiet as he is.

In the hush, John can hear the beating of Silent Bob's heart. He can feel the warmth conducting through the metal into the cold of his own chest. He tries to speak, but his jaw is loose and his tongue thick.

Instead, he nods, and Silent Bob nods back.

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