Title: Peace Keeping
Author: HopefulNebula
K+ to T or thereabouts. Nothing worse than the episode itself.
Summary: Aeryn, the dutiful Peacekeeper. A coda of sorts to The Way We Weren't. (Takes on some information from Season 4, but no real spoilers for that.)
Disclaimer the First: If I owned Farscape, I'd be in Australia right now, where it's summer.
Disclaimer the Second: Yes, I know that if this had happened in canon, there wouldn't be all that fourth-season tension regarding this subject. But who's to say Aeryn just didn't want to talk about it, even to Crichton?
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Aeryn hated physical exams. She hated even more having so many of them in such quick succession, but it was a requirement for her return to Prowler duty, so she bit her cheek and answered the med tech's questions as politely as pilots ever spoke to techs.
Pilots... she had to hide a wince every time she heard that word now. She knew now what it cost to be a Peacekeeper, to live to one's duty. As a pilot, space put a comfortable distance between herself and the universe. It kept her apart from her fellows, her adversaries, other people; so much easier to destroy a ship or abandon a captured Prowler than to turn in a gentle, kind--
Traitor. She had to remember that. She had done her duty, had stopped the saboteur. Aeryn reminded herself for what must have been the hundredth time that if the traitor had been someone she hadn't known, hadn't recreated with, she wouldn't be regretting her decision now. That's what she was: a Peacekeeper who had turned in a traitor and been rewarded for it. There was nothing to feel guilty about.
"May I have a moment to speak with you about these test results, Officer Sun?" the med tech, a rather skittish-seeming young fellow with light hair and dark eyes, asked. Aeryn took a moment to shake herself off mentally before responding.
"Yes, of course." Whatever this was, it couldn't be good. Med techs never gave good news face-to-face.
"Officer, are you-- are you aware that you are carrying an embryo?"
Aeryn's face froze. Her body did everything in its power to keep itself stable without active input from her brain.
As Aeryn's brain started functioning again, she realized that the tech was still there, the command carrier around her was still there. They were waiting for her.
"No, I wasn't."
The tech nodded. "Do you want me to inform you of its father?"
"No," she replied. "I wasn't carrying during my last exam, and I've only recreated with--with the one person since then."
"I see. In that case, I don't have to explain what-- normally it would be quite straightforward. Leave the embryo until the end of your current assignment, then have a surgeon activate it. But when I ran its DNA sequence through the database, I found--"
"You found out that I recreated with a traitor."
The tech paused for a moment; though he was used to being interrupted by his superiors, it always threw him off when it happened.
"I assume you know Peacekeeper regulations with regards to situations such as this?"
"I do."
"Then--"
"Just give me the injection."
As the med tech turned to prepare the hormone injection that would end Officer Sun's accidental brush with treachery, Aeryn forbade herself tears for the future she had traded to return to her past.
Her voice was even when the sting of the injection had settled and she asked for permission to return to duty.