A/n: ~So I did it! The last fic in my challenge :) Pretty sweet; haha, so after seven days, seven fics, a whole bunch of nice reviews and even nicer people, the success and accomplishment I immensely feel can only come from thanking myself, my iPod, and ultimately the readers who enjoyed my stories :) Thanks guys! You're all awesome. Now I'm off to finish the next chapter of Stirring, like everyone's been PMing me to continue, as well as a Youtube video that I'm gearing up for a mini-celebration on my channel. Heh, so now! Sit back and enjoy sweet, little #7. I hope it does you justice :) If you're a fan of the show like me, and have read that blurb about Piper in her character description that says she speaks 'five languages', then you're probably ticked off like I am that she has never said anything to confirm that fact. So as a thought from a long time ago, in reprisal to that pending trivia, I made this. :)~

Teacher

July 11, 2010

by: Her Head in the Clouds

"Vra nelva kyn ra' shano kica. Ict–"

"No, Aerrow. You're going too fast. And you've got to roll your tongue on the r's. Like this." Piper made a sound like a pigeon and crooned the 'r' verb excessively on her lips. Aerrow chuckled despite his better maturity. Piper stopped and rolled her eyes.

"You're not taking this seriously." Aerrow leaned forward onto the table between them. It was a nice afternoon and they sat comfortably beside each other in the kitchen between the table. It was a good time not to be disturbed as Finn took the time to take a shower, Junko was in his room taking a nap, Stork was at the helm blissfully steering his ship around for a place to land for the day, and Radarr had left them alone to their activity. Strewn atop the tabletop were many of Piper's texts and papers. The red head sighed.

"I'm sorry... It's just so much," he admittedly confessed to her. As a Sky Knight he was supposed to take his bearings and suck it. But on these rare occasions with Piper alone, he always found that he could tell her anything at all on his mind. It made what they were doing more worth it, as long as he got to have some peaceful moments with her. "I don't even know what I'm saying."

Piper smiled caringly and touched a hand to his broad shoulder. She felt how tight his muscles were; from this exercise or just in general with his duties she knew he thought about, she wasn't sure. She squeezed him gently.

"And that's why we're doing this," she said warmly. "You're gonna have to be an ambassador for this team when the times comes, you know. Now try again."

Aerrow sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair. He looked down to the text between them on the table and tried to recite the sentence she'd written in the foreign dialect for a third time.

"Vra nelva kyn ra' shano kica... Icta kyl ragravi …son mina vera tol sa bon kuvr…" he slowed to a halt before shaking his head and groaned. "Ugh, Piper? What am I even saying?"

"No, no! Continue!" she exclaimed. "You were doing fine. Granted you could've put more enunciation on your a's but still! You were good," she continued encouragingly before rubbing his shoulder again. "Did you even try to understand what you were saying?"

"No."

The answer was so blunt, Piper had to laugh and pull her hand away from him to cover her mouth to stop from teasing him. Aerrow made a face and furrowed his eyebrows together.

"I'm sorry," he went on to say. "It just-just sounds like gibberish. And I'm starting to think it's a dead language the more I keep trying to translate my words back and forth."

"Mmm," Piper argued with a shake of her head. Her voice was still gone from the giggling, so she went to reach over across the desk between them and pulled a newspaper out from beneath another textbook. She smiled as she showed him the front page.

"It's not a dead language, see? A lot of people speak Tovorian in Atmosia. They use it alongside English in everything that's got multi-lingual text," she said happily as she held up the paper for him to see.

Aerrow took the paper in one hand but didn't pull it out of her grasp. His green eyes flew to the column where her slender finger was pointing. Sure enough, he recognised the symbols on the newsprint to be exactly the same in the text they'd been reading through earlier. Aerrow raised an eyebrow and gave her a look of self-pity.

"But you already speak this language," he argued with a valid point. "Can't you just continue to be our translator?"

"Because you're a Sky Knight," she argued equally right as she put the newspaper back on the table. "You do things and will meet certain people more than the rest of us. Don't you think it'll come in useful to know what other people are saying? Besides," she smiled. "It'll look good if you're bilingual. The Sky Council might address you more."

"Yeah I guess, but that just proves how much better you are at it than I am, and how it would be better if you didn't bother to teach me," he stated. "Maybe you should've been the Sky Knight." Piper rolled her eyes again.

"Oh, don't you even play that card," Piper waved a finger in his face and smirked. "You and I both know that being a Sky Knight is what you always wanted. And I'm perfectly happy with my own job thank you very much." Aerrow grinned and took her pointing finger with one hand and pointed it back at her until her index finger poked her on the nose.

"Yeah, yeah I know, miss crystal mage," he said fondly. Piper gave him a look and took her hand back and chuckled. She looked up to the ceiling as she counted the other jobs she had off her fingers.

"And first officer, and navigator, and tactics specialist…"

Aerrow chuckled.

"Okay, Piper."

"…not to mention a cook, a nurse, so I'm basically a mom…"

"Uh… Piper?"

"…and an occasional maid for Finn, and also a sanitary inspector when you guys don–"

"Piper!"

Piper shot him a look and stopped. She put her hands on her lap.

"What?" A moment of silence past between them, a silence so thick that it almost made them both want to get up and leave.

Aerrow didn't want to hear anymore. As he watched her name the multiple roles she had on this ship, it occurred to him just how much and how quickly Piper had thought about it and came up with her roles; and it alarmed him. He looked down to the steel plated floor of their kitchen, unable to come up with words to say to her. He felt guilty. and she was sitting right across from him with an increasingly tired look growing on her face.

'So, that's what Piper thinks she has to do for us all the time?' he thought uncomfortably. Immediately waves of self-remorse kept washing over him.

As Piper sat across from him, with her hands in her lap and a concerned look etched onto her beautiful youthful features, all Aerrow could see were flashbacks. Images of her walking/running around the Condor fixing crystal adapters, drawing up maps on the bridge, biting her lip as she pulled long-scale diagrams in her room, rubbing her forehead when a crystal experiment went wrong in her lab, cutting up vegetables in the very kitchen they were in now, carrying stock to the infirmary, nagging Finn about a washroom mishap he created, and seeing her fly her heli-scooter up the front of their armada yelling orders over the sound of the winds when he wasn't there to take command; it all hit him like so hard, so fast, and so painfully.

Here was Piper, pretty, dependable Piper with a million wishes on her list, and a million more things to do before she could even think of getting to them. It bugged the Sky Knight so much. She had more than the three notable roles she took on as a Storm Hawk officer/navigator&tactics specialist/crystal mage. She was much more.

And she was now his teacher too.

He bit his lip.

"Aerrow?" she called out to him in his daze. "You alright?"

Said Sky Knight blinked and looked back up to her face.

"Uh yeah, Piper… I just, uhm…" he tried to reply but settled with just rubbing the back of his neck, in a gesture that told her he was nervous. She tilted her head.

"Do you want to try it again, then?" she said softly and gave him a sympathetic smile. She assumed his brain freeze was do to all this language jumble. She didn't mind though; she wouldn't have him any other way if she could. Aerrow stared at her for some time before his smile came back shyly.

"Yeah, I'll… try again." She nodded approvingly and went to take his hands in hers as she waited patiently. Squeezing them softly in a friendly manner for support, she gestured with her head that he start.

"Take it slowly. Remember, we've got all day" she replied calmly and gently. He nodded.

So with a deep breath and a smile to her face again, he looked down tried again. As he spoke, he thought of nothing but Piper and how, depite what enormous workload he'd ungratefully shifted onto her, how lucky he was to have her with him. He'd have a talk with the boys in private later.

"Vra nelva ...kyn ra' shano ...kica. Icta …kyl ragravi …son mina vera …tol sa bon …kuvre …nomada trovno don." he finished before grinning awkwardly toward her. Piper was nothing but smiles.

"That's great, Aerrow," she exclaimed. "And you made the r's come out better–"

"Vul kyl na…kica mon terre…nahova...son… cel vrigav. Icta ...mon tove."

Piper lifted her hands out their hold on his and gave him a wondering look.

"What does that mean?" she asked curiously with a small chuckle. Aerrow returned it with a grin.

"You're the teacher," he told her smartly. "You tell me."

Piper only smiled, appreciation floating around her.

~You can guess what Aerrow says to her in the end :) I didn't really want it to be a mushy ending and it worked out perfectly with the aim of the story. Lol, and don't even try speaking Tovorian; I made it up :] I doubt I'll even use it for another bilingual fic but I hope you liked the establishment of bonding it was meant to built between them. Hah, so thanks again everyone :) Until my next work, catch you all later~

Much love, Abby~