Fix the First Thing (PG)
Written for Schmacky, who asked for a baby-Deke-on-earth fic.
A change of pace from my recent fics, despite what the first 1000 words might make you think.
Setting and Spoilers: Future Fic, during Comic Canon. Aeryn is keeping tight-lipped as to whether this is AU or filler, she wont even tell me which it is. It's not UR, though. Set some time during the War For The Uncharted Territories, if only in order to have Little D'Argo as a babe-in-arms.
Warnings and rating: PG. Probably just a G, but I've given it a PG because there's a touch of Mild Peril, some Farscapian and Earthly bad language and a few mild sexual references. Oh, and a dangerously high level of A/J shippiness: A/J ship 'diabetics' should proceed at their own risk. I had originally planned a fairly gruesome ending because [spoiler]we all know what happens, sooner or later, to prowler pilots who go through wormholes, don't we? [/spoiler] but once I got writing I found I didn't have the stomach for it. Maybe I should write an epilogue? :devil:
You need to suspend your disbelief a few times in this story. You also need to accept that, in this AU, the Disney Cinderella Castle in Florida has a 'sleeping dragon' under it, like the one in Paris. Apparently this is not so in our reality. This is all wrong: It ought to have one.
Last waffling: Because Aeryn is looking back on her visit to Earth in TF, I've dropped in a number of references to other peoples' fanfics set during that ep. Have fun spotting them. I adore every fanfic I have referenced but if you think I've referenced one of yours and you're unhappy, feel free to moan at me (preferably by PM) and I'll do my best to make you happier.
Disclaimer: Not mine, wish it was. Actually, I wish it was real more than I wish it was mine.
Thanks: pdsldl for the beta, and especially for encouraging me to increase the Deke-content.
Fix the First Thing (PG)
Day One:
Aeryn barely had time to register the sudden appearance of the Kkore warships before they opened fire on her prowler. Her training and experience as a combat pilot cut in automatically as she immediately spiralled the prowler away from her enemy's first shots. The Kkore ships followed, latching onto her as best they could as she employed one random manoeuvre after another, steadily tacking her way towards the relative sanctuary of the nearby planet. Behind her, barely audible above the sounds of the prowlers systems, she could hear the sound of Deke stirring, her precious baby having been awakened by the sudden, stomach-churning acceleration forces acting upon both of them as a result of her manoeuvres.
Aeryn pushed the nose of the prowler violently down and engaged maximum thrust, diving into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, picking up speed both through gravity and from the fighter's powerful engines. If only she could loose the Kkore in the atmosphere, then she stood a chance to make it to safety. Or if only there had been only one of them, she might have taken the Kkore on in a fight, tried to destroy them instead of having to try to escape from them. She cursed in frustration as another shot from their pursuers grazed dangerously close to her prowler, causing extra turbulence she could well do without. More shots crackled around her even as the nose of her ship began to light up berry-red, as John might say, from the friction of atmospheric entry.
At that moment, Aeryn's already limited luck ran out. One of the Kkores' shots grazed the right hand side of the prowler, causing damage to several systems. Aeryn fought for control of her damaged ship, even as she struggled to assess the dozen damage reports now registering on the display of her flight computer. She had barely begun to do so, however, before her attention was seized by the new peril which had appeared immediately in front of her prowler. Somehow, she presumed, the last shot had provided the final missing piece of the puzzle that fate had been working on to frell her over. Or maybe it was D'Argo and his mysterious ability to warp time and space? What had caused the monstrous thing to appear didn't really matter. She had seen the blue, swirling maw of a proto-wormhole enough times to know exactly what she was heading towards. Wormhole or Kkore? It was not much of a choice, if it was any choice at all: She wasn't at all sure if she had sufficient manoeuvrability or room left to avoid the wormhole even if she wanted to. But then, who would be crazy enough to fly a prowler into a wormhole? She knew well enough what fate had awaited every pilot who had dared such a thing before. All she could hope was that the experimental modifications to the prowler which John had been working on would be enough to save her and Deke from the fate which had befallen those pilots.
Aeryn had never understood why John had insisted on performing the modifications, as there had seemed to be no possibility that they would ever be desperate enough to try them out. She'd been a little angry about it at the time that he had done the work, as it largely seemed to comprise of him removing some of the shielding and protection systems from around the cockpit. She recalled irritatedly reminding him that they were systems and components which were, after all, there to protect her from quite foreseeable threats. But now, as the wormhole swallowed her, she hoped that John had been right and she was grateful that he had at least tried. With the modifications, perhaps she and Deke had some hope of surviving transit through a wormhole? Without them, she was certain that they were both already as good as dead.
With a final wrench, the prowler pulled free of the wormhole, which puckered shut abruptly behind them like a sinkhole sealing itself. The prowler spun end over end for three rotations before Aeryn was able to stabilize it and ensure that they were in a viable orbit around the planet over which they had emerged and that no pursuing ships had followed them through. Ignoring the blinking warnings on her controls for a few microts, she released her harness and twisted in her seat to check that Deke was safe and well. Satisfied that he was unharmed, she turned her attention back to the state of her ship. At least she wasn't being deafened by alarms like she would have been in John's bucket of dren: superior Peacekeeper technology just didn't malfunction often enough to justify audible alarms, whilst if a Prowler was damaged in a combat situation, what did it matter? You fought on with what you had for as long as you were able. Audible alarms would just be a distraction with no obvious benefit.
The prowler's treblin side main engine was venting fuel – the fuel loss was easily fixed by accessing a few control protocols to cross-pump via an auxiliary system – but the engine was also delivering only about 40% of the power that it should, and even that was steadily dropping. The power loss could not be so easily fixed, and certainly not without landing. Aeryn was also well-aware that here was always the risk of a sudden fire or explosion with that sort of damage. Even more worrisome was life support: their primary air supply had been holed. Although the prowler's systems had automatically switched to the emergency back up air supply, that only gave them about an hour and a half of breathable atmosphere. Aeryn frowned and looked to the stars for inspiration. What would John do? It was then that she noticed something familiar about the planet she was circling.
It was Earth!
It had been a long fourteen monens since she had last been on this utterly insignificant, little blue-green planet, whose occupants thought that they were so clever, despite their ridiculous digital watches and reality TV shows. Her life and relationship with John had been very different on that last visit. She had seen the broadcasts from R Wilson Munroe, discovering and watching them one day when John had been off the ship on a supply run. It had been an educational experience for Aeryn. Although she was not surprised to learn that many humans seemed suspicious of her and her relationship with John, other humans seemed quite comfortable both with her and with the possibility that she and John might be mates. She had never told him she had looked at the recording, though. If John wanted to discuss its contents with her, including the fear that some humans seemed to have that she might be carrying John's child, then he would surely have mentioned it and shown her the tape.
But now she and her half-human offspring were in orbit around Earth and Aeryn had limited breathing space to think about the consequences or risks of returning to John's planet. She was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to make a wormhole and return home in the time she had. Besides, even if she did, would the Kkore still be there, ready to attack? She had to take a chance with the humans. The only important question in her mind at that moment was whether or not she had come through in the right time period? She knew from harsh experience that she couldn't risk the repercussions if she had emerged in her and John's past. If she had arrived at the right time then it should be early 2005 by the human calendar, she reasoned. A quick scan through some radio frequencies confirmed that, if she had drifted in the timeline, then she wasn't too far off from where she should be. She checked the damage to the prowler once again. The little she had to go on about the timeline would have to do – the risk of staying in orbit outweighed the apparently small risk that she was not in the precisely correct point in time or the risk that she and Deke would not be well-received by the humans.
Aeryn brought the prowler in steeply towards the Florida coast, dialling up the radio frequency she had used to communicate with the human space control centre on her last visit. After all, although she had her hands full flying the damaged prowler, she knew how paranoid humans could be and it wouldn't do to be mistaken for some sort of hostile, all for the sake of a call.
"Hello Canaveral, can you hear me?" she opened. Silence. "Fine. I'll speak, you listen. This is Officer Aeryn Sun from Moya. My prowler has sustained damage and I need to make an emergency landing." More silence. Why weren't they replying? It didn't matter, she knew exactly where she was heading anyway. "I'll be landing on the helipad next to hangar AQ, at Cape Canaveral….In about… two hundred micr….. two minutes….." No reply. Frelling humans, she didn't have time for this, she thought as the Florida coastline came back into sight through her canopy and she struggled to hold the damaged Prowler steady through heavy clear-air turbulence.
Aeryn's hands flew expertly across the controls, controlling the effects of the yaw, caused by the damaged engine and exacerbated by the turbulence and the need to scrub off speed. She stabilized the craft just long enough to allow her the precious time needed to activate the auto-trajectory guidance system and select the coordinates for the hangar AQ helipad from its memory. By the time her hand returned to the throttles, just a few microts later, her display was already showing a near 10-degree yaw once again. Masterfully, she pulled the nose back round once again and, at the same time, she eased her velocity below the speed of sound. The Cape was coming up fast now, too fast if she didn't scrub off more of her speed. She could already make out some of the larger structures in the hazy distance.
She had only a few more seconds of flight remaining before she overshot, and was already swooping in low across the spaceport. Aeryn pulled the prowler's speed down to just above where, in Earth atmosphere, it would probably stall. She did not want to risk pulling her prowler, with its damaged engines and limited natural atmospheric lift, out of a natural glide until the last possible microt. If the ship did stall and the thrusters were not working properly, it could be a very rough landing indeed. Only in the last couple of microts did she dare risk using her possibly damaged secondary thrusters, scrubbing off the last of her speed right in front of the hangar and setting the prowler down gently in a textbook, short, near-vertical landing.
She breathed a near-silent prayer of thanks to Yemahl before closing down the engines.
Sighing with relief, Aeryn took off her oculars and set them in front of her then began unfastening her harness for the second time that flight. She had managed to bring the prowler down without major incident, landing in exactly the same spot that the humans had asked her to use on her previous visit. But why they hadn't replied to her calls was a mystery to her – maybe her radio was out, damaged in the dogfight? Maybe they had changed their frequencies? No matter, everything looked pretty much as she remembered it and she would soon find out the reason for their lack of response. As she turned to unfasten little D'Argo, she noticed through the opaque canopy that a number of Earth vehicles were drawing up around her.
Time to look at the music, as John might say, Aeryn thought as she popped the canopy latch. It was a warm day, uncomfortable, but probably not dangerous to her or her son. She pushed herself up, out of her seat, to see five or six security guards nearby, loitering nervously around their vehicles, apparently uneasy about approaching her. Well, she couldn't blame them for being nervous – she hadn't been on Earth for about a cycle, and her arrival had been somewhat precipitous. She was relieved to see that they seemed to relax slightly at the sight of her. Perhaps this was one of those times when her predilection for head-to-toe black leather outfits might actually help people to recognize her? No, that couldn't be so: She was wearing one of her olive-green fabric shirts today, and was currently without a jacket.
"I have a child with me. Can someone give me a hand getting down?" she called across to the nearest knot of guards in her best, crisp English. A couple of the guards seemed to relax a notch further at the sound of her voice, although they still all looked a little nervous and on edge.
"Err, um, yeah, sure…" one of the older security guards called back, holstering the pistol he was holding and taking a step towards her. She beamed what John would call one of her full-wattage smiles back at him in thanks, noting with relief that the man briefly smiled back in response, albeit still somewhat nervously. She pulled her long black leather duster out from behind the seat and tossed it to the guard: It was too hot to consider wearing it today, after all, but she might want it later. She followed that act by lifting and passing down her small flight bag, mostly filled with accoutrements for D'Argo these days. Lastly came the thing she most feared showing the humans: D'Argo. Still, things had gone reasonably well so far, and it wasn't as though she could leave him in the prowler. The knot of guards had grown closer around her by this time, and one of the older ones smiled and held his arms up to her when he saw D'Argo as she lifted him out of his sling.
"Here, ma'am, I'll take him for you, while you get down," the man said in what she now recognized as a Southern drawl, a bit like the one that John sometimes exhibited. She hazarded a crooked smile back before nervously handing over D'Argo. As she clambered out of the cockpit she wondered whether perhaps things were going to work out fine, for a change?
'~'
The small knot of people watching Aeryn and D'Argo through the one-way glass had quickly made their way from their various offices and labs around the huge base.
"Looks like we've managed to keep a lid on it so far, media-wise, thank God," a petite, pretty woman with a loose cascade of curly, auburn hair commented as another person joined their small group.
"I think it helped that it all happened so quickly," replied a well-toned, blue-eyed man, nodding in welcome to the newcomer, who was a much older man with the lithe build of someone who must have been athletic in his youth. "I mean, she just appeared out of nowhere in high orbit, and five minutes later was on the ground. Incredible."
"Plus we've managed to keep the military away. Again, maybe just for now. For her sake, and the kid's, it's damn lucky she chose to come in here rather than some military base," the woman continued. She wondered how much of the small craft's precipitous descent and landing had been observed by the air force or navy or whoever, and how long it might take for them to start asking the space agency what the hell was going on.
"True enough," said the newcomer, acknowledging that so far there had been few repercussions of the stranger's emergency landing. "And she speaks English?"
"Perfectly. With an English or maybe Australian accent, apparently. Well, that's what the guys who brought her in said. Looks completely human, too," the woman continued. "As far as they're concerned, that's what she is."
"But we're thinking she's not a Brit or an Aussie?" the younger man asked, semi-rhetorically.
"Well, even if they have developed a sleek, stealthy new space-fighter without us knowing, I'm prit-tee sure that a black leather outfit and a baby isn't standard equipment in the Royal Air Force," the woman bantered back.
"So is she an alien, or a human? And, if she's human, where the hell did she come from?" asked the older man.
"Or when?" added the younger, causing the other two to stare at him for a moment. He had a habit of making such peculiar and disconcerting remarks, but that didn't make them any easier to deal with when he made them. "Just saying…" he shrugged, almost apologizing.
"Well, let's find out…" said the older man, leading the way towards the door.
'~'
"Shhh," Aeryn soothed D'Argo, nursing and rocking him in her arms. She hadn't really known what to expect from the humans, hadn't really had time to think it through beforehand. In quick succession, there had been the Kkore attack, then the wormhole, then the urgent need to land the damaged prowler before or unless it suffered a critical systems failure, and then lastly the stress of the breakneck landing itself.
All things considered, things hadn't worked out too unexpectedly or disastrously. So far. The nervous and unprepared security guards had asked her to surrender her obvious weapons, her pulse pistol and commando knife, as they had wanted to on her last visit. This time, without John to argue for her, she had complied, handing over the two weapons shortly after retrieving D'Argo from the sling behind her seat and before locking the prowler's canopy. She still had a small, concealed pistol and another knife in her boot. She had then allowed the guards to escort her to a nearby building, and thence to this modest, but reasonably comfortable conference room. That had been about ten earth minutes ago and, since then, she had had been left entirely alone apart from the two wide eyed, nervous looking and frankly very uncommunicative security guards at the door.
Once it was clear that the guards were not going to answer her questions, she decided to ignore them and concentrate on Deke. She guessed that the suddenness of her arrival meant that the humans needed time to get their performance together, as John might say. She searched in her small flight bag, pulling out Deke's flask and began busying herself with letting him have a drink. She knew he didn't really need one, but it helped calm her nerves and make the time go quicker.
The door opened and three humans began to file in. The eldest, who unknown to Aeryn had been the last to arrive, was in the lead. Aeryn looked up to check them out, her face lighting up in a radiant smile as she saw the old man.
"Jack!" she exclaimed in happy recognition at seeing John's father. Jack almost stopped dead in shock at hearing his name, but hid it remarkably well. A pretty, leather-clad, possibly alien woman, who was totally unknown to him and was nursing a baby, had just called him by name as though they were long-lost friends. In his extensive experience Monday mornings rarely got any weirder than that.
"I'm sorry miss, I don't believe…" Jack began. But the woman's attention had shifted to the people entering the room behind him.
"John!" Aeryn gasped. Well that solved the question as to whether or not this was one of John's alternate realities, and also any question as to what might be the first thing she would notice which was wrong if it were. But that wasn't all. "Laura…..!" Aeryn exclaimed in horrified recognition, much to Laura Knox' evident surprise. Having a possibly alien stranger call her by name had not featured in Dr Knox' Outlook calendar for that week, either. But Laura's initial surprise was as nothing to that caused by Aeryn's next comment "But you're d….. Oh Frell…..!" Aeryn finished, at last turning as white and her face betraying as much shock as that now evident on the faces of all three humans.
The humans and the sebacean stared at each other across the room in silence for a few seconds, no one moving. It was Jack who finally broke the spell.
"Oh…Kay…. miss…. Sun, is that right?" Aeryn nodded slowly, trying to compute what her best strategy would be. It was clear that she had managed to get herself into some sort of unrealised reality and she remembered how afraid John had been of such things. 'Fix the first thing that seems wrong and get the frell out,' she remembered he had said of them. There was no time to dwell on how to do that now, though. Jack was speaking again, the words directed at her.
"Well, you look pretty freaked out, young lady. Suppose you tell us your story, starting at the beginning?" he suggested, his tone not unkindly but nevertheless commanding.
Aeryn took a deep breath. She knew now that she was well and truly frelled. Fate had bitten her hard in her small print, as she imagined that John might say. But, on the positive side, no one had threatened her or Deke and, of all the people in this planet she might trust, the two at the top of her list were sitting across the table from her. And the third person present wasn't exactly far down that imaginary list either. She pulled D'Argo close to her and licked her suddenly-dry lips.
"Can I get something to drink? Water would be fine," Aeryn asked, partly playing for time so that she could marshal her thoughts and decide how she was going to play this.
"I think we can arrange that," John said with one of his sparkly-eyed, lopsided grins. That was something she hadn't seen in a little while. Somehow, it had the effect of helping her relax slightly.
"Thank you. And can you ask the guards to leave, please?" she added.
"Why?" Jack asked flatly, catching Aeryn out a little. She realised that she might have been relaxing a little too much. For his part, Jack wasn't going to risk anyone's safety.
"Because you might want to control who hears what I have to say, Aeryn answered. Jack considered it for a moment and nodded, motioning for the guards to leave. The door shut behind them and Aeryn took another deep breath.
"My name is Aeryn Sun, that much you already seem to know. I am from a distant part of the universe. And you have no frelling idea how much I should not be here," Indeed, she almost laughed at the very idea of how much she should not be in this particular reality. The humans, on the other hand, seemed to be having a little more trouble covering up their mirth at the very idea that she might be 'from a distant part of the universe.' Frelling humans and their frelling all-encompassing ignorance.
"You want to tell us?" John asked with a friendly smile.
"No, not everything…" Aeryn replied, trying not to look at Laura. There were things she was fairly sure it wouldn't be healthy to share. Her averted eyes didn't go un-noticed by the three humans.
"But you could?" Laura asked. Aeryn shrugged. "So, all the aliens up there speak English do they, like on the TV?" Laura challenged, trying a different tack.
"Of course not. Would you like me to speak my own language?" Aeryn snapped back in sebacean. The succession of clicks and swallowed consonants made them all sit up and take her more seriously. "You taught me English, John. You and Sesame Street," she finished in English with a wistful smile.
"Must've been last year, when you and Doug went to Vegas," Laura commented dryly. John was not amused: He didn't care to remember the lost weekend he and DK had experienced shortly after his final break up with Caroline. Actually, wasn't able to remember most of it was a little more accurate.
"OK, suppose we buy your story on the language for a moment…" John replied, changing the subject. "There's a few other things which don't make sense…"
"Such as how come you know our names?" Laura enquired bluntly, feeling a personal need to probe a little.
"And how come you look so human?" John added.
"I look human because…. Well, because my ancestors were human, we think. And I know your names because... because I've met you all before," Aeryn replied carefully and with some trepidation, deciding that there was no point in risking eroding any trust she might manage to build up by fabricating lies around key questions which she couldn't avoid answering. Lies were always dangerous, as you had to remember what you had said or risk exposure as a liar.
John simply laughed out loud at her answer, irritating her immensely.
"The hair. The leather. The whole hot-sci-fi-chick-with-gun vibe you've got going on. I think I'd have remembered all that…! How 'bout you, dad?" He protested through his laughter. Aeryn frowned and adjusted her hold on D'Argo.
"Will you just listen, John!" she hissed angrily. "Frell, you always did talk too much!"
"She's got you there, son," Jack put in with a smirk.
Aeryn fixed John with her best PK stare. She was gratified to see that he immediately calmed down and grew a little more serious. But she was still angry with him and that clouded her judgement. "I know that you understand something about alternate realities, John. Well, I am from a different reality. In my reality, I've met you, all three of you." Her claim about an alternate reality was so shocking, such a change from what the humans had expected, that they remained silent. Aeryn ploughed on. "In my reality, about a year ago, you found a wormhole and got us back to Earth…"
"What do you mean, I found?" John asked, his voice returning, but now visibly and audibly taken aback.
"Nothing, I shouldn't have…." Aeryn rapidly tried to backtrack. Frell. They had made her angry and she had slipped up, perhaps said too much.
"But you did. Now, what did you mean?" Jack insisted.
"It can wait…." Aeryn tried to buy time to think.
"I don't think it can," John insisted, backing up his father. Aeryn looked plaintively from one human to the next, seeking, begging with her eyes for the smallest shred of support. All three humans stared back at her with expectant defiance.
"Frell!" She snapped, angry more at herself than at them. Upset for allowing herself to get angry and give away more than she intended. "Look, I'll tell you, but only you, John. Then you can decide how much to share with the others." Damage limitation: It seemed the best way to go.
Jack, John and Laura exchanged questioning looks. Should they agree to this, to letting this strange, allegedly-alien woman speak to John alone? John nodded. Laura shrugged. Jack frowned.
"You sure you're OK with this, son?" Jack asked.
"Sure, I mean you guys'll be just outside. It's not like she's going to knock me over and sit on me or anything, is it?" John remarked, his attempt at lightening the mood turning to a frown as Aeryn laughed aloud at what he had said.
"What's so funny?" John demanded.
"I'll tell you in a microt," Aeryn replied, abruptly regaining her self-control.
'~'
"OK, missy, so we've got each others' undivided attention," John drawled. D'Argo gurgled something, which John thought sounded vaguely like "Daddy?"
"No, not daddy," Aeryn whispered to the infant, for reasons that escaped John.
"Excepting the little 'un, of course," John grinned. Aeryn smiled back weakly, unable to conceal how on edge she was. "Ain't nobody else here but us chickens, just like you wanted. So, spill…"
"In this other reality. The one that I come from. You and I…." Aeryn began, struggling to know how to say what she wanted to say. John leant back in his chair and uncharacteristically remained quiet, allowing her the time and space to say what she wanted to say in the way that she wanted. She took a deep breath readying herself to race through what she wanted to say, before she lots her nerve. "John, in my reality, I am married to John Crichton. D'Argo is our son."
John raised an eyebrow, then opened his jaw to say something. Then he changed his mind and shut his mouth. He stood, walked over to the water cooler that stood by the door. He poured himself a drink and swallowed it in one go. "Could do with something stronger," he muttered and poured himself another anyway.
"Well, are you going to say anything?" Aeryn asked sharply, her patience wearing so thin it might be beyond patching. "It's not like you to have nothing to say."
John flashed her a half-hearted smile and, bearing both his own cup and a fresh cup of water for Aeryn, he returned to sit opposite her, offering her the water as he sat.
"So, suppose what you say is true. How'd we meet then? You and me. The other me. In your reality?" He asked, somewhat more casually than his emotions should have allowed, flicking his finger back and forth between them as he spoke. Might as well get it over with, the whole story, he thought. After all, after that bombshell, everything else ought to be fairly tame.
"About five years ago, the Farscape opened a wormhole in space, and you were pulled through, into my world."
"Where I bumped into you?" he snapped back with evident scepticism.
"Actually, I was the fourth person you met on the other side of the wormhole."
"So, what, then I suppose I swept you off my feet with my good looks, charm, and winning personality?" He grinned boyishly. If all this was her idea of a joke, he'd show her that he was quite capable of playing along and giving as good as he got.
"Hardly," she snorted. "I beat you up and sat on you. That is why I laughed earlier, just before the others left."
"No!" John's masculine pride could not concede that the willowy beauty before him would be capable of bettering him in a fight.
"John, I am…. I was… a special-forces commando. I was assigned to retake the ship, which took you aboard immediately after you went through the wormhole. You were lucky that beating you up was all that I did."
At that moment, D'Argo writhed and demanded Aeryn's attention. John watched carefully as she lovingly comforted the baby, lulling him back to peaceful rest with a stroke, a kiss, and a few soft words. Words, which, John noted, seemed to be in the strange clicking language she had used before and not in English, or in any other language with which John was familiar.
"There's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there Miss Sun?" he commented, growing more serious and taking another sip of water before absent-mindedly rubbing his lip with his thumb.
'~'
John and Jack stood behind the one-way mirror, watching whilst Aeryn fed, watered and changed the baby, whose name was apparently either Deke or D'Argo. She seemed to use the two interchangeably. She had not indicated why. Whilst John and Aeryn had had their one-to-one conversation, Jack had sent out for diapers, baby food and other supplementary accoutrements, as Aeryn didn't seem to have had very much with her to tend for her child. Apparently, she had not been expecting a long trip. Now, twenty minutes later, they had taken a break and the humans had given her a few minutes peace whilst they discussed the situation.
"So, let me get this straight, son: She's an alien, sort of, or so she says. Let's just say not from Earth. But not just that, she's from another dimension. Another reality? And in her reality, the Farscape project went wrong, and you ended up stuck on the other side of the universe, met her, fell in love, had a baby?" Jack asked, frowning with the disbelief of an old pilot with little imagination or understanding of the niceties of theoretical physics. "And this other you came back to Earth with her last year and that's when she met me and Laura?"
"That's about the size of it, dad," John replied, shaking his head in disbelief. He stared at her through the glass, trying to get his head around all that she had just told him. It was quite a tall story, but she had said it with such sincerity, such conviction, and most tellingly, such consistency that he could not fault her. Part of him wanted so hard to believe her, believe it was true. He longed to believe that somewhere, somehow, John Crichton could have been so lucky: She had not gone into detail regarding all of the bad things that had happened to the other him.
When John had first walked into the interview room and she had called his name their eyes met. It had almost knocked the breath out of him. He didn't really believe in love at first sight or that a couple could be just meant to be, not any more, not after Alex and then Caroline. They had burnt away a lot of his romantic notions.
But there had been something there between them, a connection he had never felt before. Or perhaps it was just his hormones, he half-joked to himself? It had been a long time since he and Caroline had ended it. A long, lonely time indeed: He hadn't had another serious relationship since.
"And you believe her?" The old man's voice brought him back. His tone and words betrayed an even more overt scepticism this time. "Sounds like a pretty unlikely story to me…"
"Yeah, I know. But she knows things about me, dad, she knows things even Alex or Caroline didn't know. And you've seen the kid – tell me, who does he remind you of?"
"Lots of kids have blue eyes John," Jack sighed. "Sometimes people see what they want to see when looking at a baby, they see family resemblances in kids that aren't at all related."
"I know, I know," John held up his hands, conceding the point. "But next time you're with her, look carefully at her left hand. She's wearing a ring… but not just any ring. It's the spitting image of mum's ring."
"Hell, son," Jack considered this for a few seconds. "Suppose it is? This could still all just be some sort of trick. If she's a spy, it could all be part of her cover. If she's an alien, who knows what they could do, read minds, make us see what they want to see…. We need to find out what she wants from us, assess what the risks are."
"Yeah, I know that too. But that's the thing, dad: Yes she wants to make a deal, but it's nothing fancy. She seems pretty clued up that we won't be able to keep her, the kid, and most of all her ship a secret for long and she just wants to get back."
"Back?"
"Back to her home, to the other me… her husband." He shrugged. "If she's telling the truth, then there's another me out there, wondering what's happened, worrying where his wife and kid has gotten too. I dunno about you dad, but if there's any chance that's true, I'm not sure I can live with not helping them… so long as we don't give her too much, y'know, anything secret."
Jack pursed his lips. The three of them, he, John and Laura, all held senior positions in the organization. Between them, they could probably pull it off for a few days, if they wanted to. But it was a big risk. "Well, I guess it's your call, son, I'll help you as best I can if that's what you want to do… So what's the bottom line here?"
"OK, here's the deal, we help her fix the ship, give her what help we can to guess when she might be able to catch another wormhole, and she'll tell us what she can about wormholes, what she knows of alien technology, the low down on who and what's out there."
"But she'd be expecting us to keep all this under our hats while she's here: That's a big ask…."
"Just a few days, dad, that's all she asks. Think of what we might learn in return."
"I'll see what I can do, son. I've already put out the standard holding story, to keep people off our backs. Anyone as asks is being told that the whole business today was just someone else's hush-hush project having a little technical difficulty. Thank God she looks so human, speaks English and her ship might pass for one of ours to a casual observer."
John nodded and smiled in appreciation. "One other thing, dad…"
"Hmm?"
"She wants to spend any free time she has with us…. You, me… and even Liv, apparently… she says in her reality you never got the chance to meet your grandson, he's never come to Earth."
Jack's mouth opened but no sound came out. In some incomprehensible way he had a grandson, and an alien daughter in law and perhaps just a few days to get to know them. For the first time, he truly began to understand that implications of Aeryn's story.
'~'
Jack stood in the shade of the hangar by the door as he watched John, Aeryn Sun and two handpicked mechanics moving the alien fighter craft inside the hangar. It was his first chance to take a really long look at the vessel. Jack was an experienced military pilot, and he had no doubt that the woman's ship was a fighter. The sharp, aggressive lines reminded him of a little of a Tomcat, the last combat plane he had flown, although it clearly wasn't engineered with the extensive lift and control surfaces that he would be used to: It didn't look as though it was designed to operate primarily in atmosphere. Under any other circumstances, all of his attention would have been wholly on the alien ship. But these were not usual circumstances. He smiled down at the child in his arms: Enquiring, bright blue eyes stared back at him from beneath a thatch of jet-black hair. A tiny hand reached out and pulled at his lapel with surprising strength.
He and John seemed to be the only two people that Aeryn Sun trusted to hold her child. That trust still seemed entirely unearned to Jack, but it helped verify her story in his mind. If the child's father really was some other version of John, divergent only because of some accident which had befallen him in the Farscape, and if she had know the other Jack as well, then maybe it all kind of made sense, even to an old man with limited imagination.
At that moment, DK appeared. "I got it…" he called out triumphantly to Jack, holding aloft a baby seat for a car. Then his head turned from Jack, staring deeper into the hangar. "Jeez, what the hell sort of ship is that!" DK exclaimed, catching his first sight of the prowler's sleek and deadly lines.
"Huh? That, son is you and Laura's project for the next couple of days," Jack said, enjoying DK's reaction and incomprehension. Deke gurgled and then chuckled, seeming to appreciative the humour in the situation. This could turn out to be a whole lot of fun, the old man decided. Just so long as things didn't turn south and they managed to keep a lid on what they were up to.
John and Laura looked on, sharing a coffee and a chat while Aeryn and DK wasted no time in methodically removing the scorched panels on the rear quarter of her prowler. Jack had left the four of them alone and gone off elsewhere, running interference, putting on his most sincere face and voice to try to convince anyone who asked any awkward questions that Aeryn's prowler was all part of someone else's top secret project which he couldn't possibly talk about. D'Argo was watching his mother work, gurgling quietly, now safely secured in the car seat or, as Laura had charmingly termed it, the baby bucket.
"Looks nasty…" John commented moving over to get a closer look at the damage to the prowler.
"Mmm hmmm," Aeryn replied, not really paying attention to him, but focussed on the damage and wondering how she was going to fix it without her John.
"Not seen anything like that before! What sort of propulsion system does this ship use?" DK asked, still as excited as a boy with a new toy and craning to get a closer look over Aeryn's shoulder. "Kerosene-LOX? Hydrogen?"
"I think we're going to have to tell him," John stated to Aeryn. "If he's going to help?"
"Tell him what?" She turned slightly, considering what John had said, her hands still lodged in the prowler's innards. "Oh, yes, I suppose so. But only DK…" she insisted, returning to her work.
"You wanna do the honours?" John asked Laura, although it wasn't really a question. DK and Laura were already pairing up, while John moved to stand beside Aeryn in the place vacated by DK.
"Give you a hand there?" John asked Aeryn a little too casually and a little too cockily.
"Hmm…." She replied absently, her attention buried once again in the prowler. "If you could just disconnect the chakkan oil feed line…?"
"Umm… well, I would if I had the first clue what that might be…" John replied, a little less confident now.
Aeryn stopped and looked at him carefully. She had forgotten for a microt or two that he was not her John, that he had no idea about the workings of a prowler. It had all been just too familiar, the pair of them working side by side, his voice offering to help her. But, of course, he was not her John. She resolved to be more careful in future, lest she make any more unfortunate oversights, cross any more lines.
"Of course, I am sorry John. I forgot for a microt." Forgot that her John was, well, somewhere else entirely, probably worried sick for her and D'Argo. She quickly wiped away the hint of a tear with the back of her hand before, she hoped, this John noticed that it was there. "You know, I do not think the damage is as bad as I thought, just a couple of punctured feed lines and broken wires…." She tried to force her thoughts back onto safer ground.
John opened his mouth, about to say something flippant, but never got the chance.
"Holy shit!" DK shouted at the top of his lungs.
"I think she's told him," John smirked. Aeryn turned, catching the amused look in John's eye as he grinned at her, but also noticing how that look turned to another look that she knew only too-well. She knew, but had never really understood, that John had always found her rather attractive with her hair in disarray, her face and hands dirty. She quickly cleared her throat and turned her head back away, not wanting to encourage this John.
"I guess she has," she replied, suppressing a chuckle at DK's reaction. She realized that she had to be careful just how much further she encouraged John. "Come on, we've got work to do."
'~'
"We're taking a big risk doing this," Jack reminded his companions as he drove them through the evening traffic towards his home.
Aeryn shrugged from her position in the back seat, Jack catching the gesture in his rear view mirror. "We all have to sleep and eat, especially Deke. And I am more comfortable being with you than alone on the base. Besides, it makes your cover story seem more believable and means that I can spend the evening briefing you."
John was not complaining. Any chance to spend more quality time with Aeryn and Deke, his alleged could-have-been-wife and child, was not something he was going to pass up.
"What have you told Olivia?" Aeryn asked, breaking John's train of thought just as he was about to reach out and touch her hair, as though to confirm that she was real.
"Huh? Oh, just that a colleague from out of town is visiting for a few days and could she come over…." John replied, blushing. John had moved back in with Jack the year before, after his break up with Caroline, as both men preferred the company to living alone. Although Olivia had her own apartment, it was not far away. She still maintained her old room at her father's house and normally needed little excuse to spend the odd night there.
"Are you not afraid that she will guess the truth? You sister is very perceptive," Aeryn continued. Deke reached out a grasping hand towards Aeryn. She offered him a finger to hold on to and a smile, which she hoped was reassuring and did not betray her own uncertainties. She was starting to wonder whether it had been a good idea of hers to ask to meet Olivia during her stay. She had really liked Olivia, but she was starting to remember how hard it had been to keep any secrets from John's incisive and persistent sister.
"What, that an alien chick has fallen from the sky, complete with my kid in her arms? I don't think even Livvy is that perceptive," John laughed off Aeryn's concerns.
Aeryn frowned for a few moments, then brightened a little as she gave a tart response. "You can be just as frelling annoying as my John. Of course she will not guess that. But she is bound to notice that something is not right."
"Well, too late now. Guess we'll get to find out," drawled Jack as he pulled into the street where he lived. "Looks like she's already home."
'~'
"Make yourself at home, Aeryn, take the weight off," Jack invited, motioning to one of the couches as they made their way into the living room.
Aeryn looked around her, taking in the spacious, inviting room. Apart from the absence of Christmas decorations, it was almost exactly as she had remembered it: The large TV in one corner and the even larger brick fireplace beside it, with the two white, leather sofas and their darker cushions set in front. Then there was the long fragile, wooden table and its matching chairs, although it was no longer set for a feast. There were the same pictures on the walls and on almost every small surface: Family, spacecraft and other things, which she did not understand. And of course, there was the low, glass table which the Skreeth had shattered by throwing her down on to it.
The last time Aeryn had been here, she had come intending to say goodbye and thank-you to Olivia, but had gotten herself into a confrontation with John and then into a fight to the death with the green assassin. She had also discovered that John had been using lakka to try to forget her. If she had not been there, would her John, or any of his family, have survived the attack? Or would she have subsequently confronted him over the lakka and his behaviour in the way that she had, so beginning the recovery of their relationship? She shivered involuntarily at all the possibilities that her imagination was constructing.
"Are you OK?" Jack asked, noticing her pensive unease and laying a comforting hand on her elbow.
"Yes, I'm fine," she smiled wanly back, not wanting to get into an explanation of the circumstances surrounding the last time she had been here or on what might have been. She could easily see how just one decision could change the future of a reality forever.
"Hi Liv, we're home, do you wanna come meet our guests…." John called out, his words trailing off as Olivia came through from the kitchen, a big, welcoming smile on her face.
"Guests? Oh, I see," beamed Olivia, seeing the baby in the arms of the curiously-attired young woman now settling on the larger of the two couches. People in her social circle, or those of her father and brother, didn't normally dress like that.
Aeryn resisted the urge to be initially over familiar with her old friend, much less acknowledge their friendship, knowing full-well that to do so might jeopardize the already shaky cover story that they had concocted.
Olivia seemed, to Aeryn, to be taking a good long, appraising look at her and Deke. "Now I understand why John asked you to stay over," smirked Olivia, with an exaggerated wink, making straight for Aeryn. Aeryn couldn't hide her embarrassment at Olivia's ready, suggestive familiarity. Her reaction only seemed to amuse Olivia the more so. "I'm afraid it isn't you honey," Olivia mock-whispered conspiratorially, plonking herself on the sofa next to Aeryn and immediately trying to catch Deke's attention. "It's the little 'un. John just loves kids…"
"I kn…." Aeryn began, catching herself almost as soon as she'd begun. Olivia raised an enquiring eyebrow but didn't press her by commenting.
"So, you going to introduce your new friends?" Olivia enquired with a sly grin as she began to play with Deke, walking her fingers up his arms and rubbing his nose.
"Sure. Sorry," John smiled, perching on the arm of the sofa behind Aeryn. "Olivia, my sister, meet Aeryn Sun. Aeryn's an astronaut from England, come to talk science with us geeks for a few days. And her son, Deke, who it seems you've already met."
"I see," Olivia replied, looking from John to Aeryn and back again in a way that implied that she thought she really did know and that what she knew wasn't covered by what John had told her. "How long you two known each other?" Deke had hold of Olivia's little finger now and was not letting go.
"A while," Aeryn answered at the same moment as John had said "Just met." Coughs and red faces were followed by a momentary silence and another raised eyebrow.
"It's not every visiting out-of-town astronaut that he asks home, you know?" Olivia continued, breaking the silence.
"Well, it didn't seem hospitable to make her stay at the Holiday Inn, what with the baby and all…" John blustered.
"And it just so happened that you offered to put her up, rather than one of the girls?" Livvy teased.
At that moment, Jack re-entered, carrying a tray of refreshments. "Actually, Livvy, it was me that asked Aeryn to stay. Besides, John and Aeryn have to work this evening. Having her to stay over seemed the most civil thing to do."
Jack put the tray down on the glass coffee table before seating himself on the other couch. "Now, what does everyone fancy for dinner tonight," Jack smiled.
As the adults finished the last of the take-out they had ordered for dinner, D'Argo stretched and writhed fitfully. "I'm sorry, he is tired. I really ought to put him to bed," Aeryn explained.
"Of course, where's my manners?" Put in Jack. "The guest room is up the stairs, third on the right."
"I'll show you," Olivia added, bouncing to her feet. 'C'mon, I'll take your bag for you," she continued holding out her hand and nodding at Aeryn to follow her.
Aeryn shrugged at Jack before handing Olivia up her small flight bag and standing to follow.
"Where's the rest of your stuff?" Olivia asked.
"Damn airline lost her bag," Jack put in, much to Aeryn's relief. She nodded enthusiastically to confirm Jack's story.
"And I don't suppose these two thought to take you to the mall, to pick up essentials?" Olivia asked.
Aeryn shook her head. "It's fine, I can just borrow what I need off John," she explained without thinking. It seemed a perfectly reasonable solution to Aeryn, but now she wondered how reasonable it might seem to everyone else when the two men erupted in embarrassed coughing and Livvy arched that questioning eyebrow yet again.
"Say what?" Olivia asked.
"Once you've put Deke to bed, how about I stay here with him and John and Olivia can take you to the 7-11, get some things? It's another few hours until they close," Jack rescued Aeryn from having to reply. "But you'd better get going," he concluded, waving the two women from the room.
A few minutes later, having changed him for the night into one of the fresh diapers which Jack had sent out for back at the base, Aeryn put Deke down in the big guest bed, framed and bolstered by a pillow to either side.
"Don't you have a sleepsuit for him….?" Olivia asked, once it was clear that Aeryn was putting Deke down in nothing but a diaper.
"No… I… ummm, lost it. My luggage," Aeryn answered. The truth, of course, was that she had not intended her trip away from Moya to include an overnight stay. She was relieved when Olivia did not pursue the point.
"Maybe we should try and get one at the store?"
"Hmm, yes. Maybe we should."
"He's so cute," cooed Olivia as Aeryn reached out to smooth Deke's hair. "Get's that from you I guess?" Aeryn did not respond to Olivia's subtle invitation to discuss the baby's father. Olivia tried another tack. "You're so lucky to have such a quiet baby. He hardly gave a peep all evening."
"Are some babies louder than Deke when they cry, then?" Aeryn asked, a little concern showing on her face, as she thoroughly misunderstood the details of what being a quiet baby involved. Olivia spared Aeryn a curious look but, when no immediate explanation presented itself regarding Aeryn's apparent ignorance about babies, Olivia moved on.
"He looks a little like John," Olivia mused absently, trying to lighten the mood with a light remark and a bubbly laugh. Aeryn froze, causing Olivia instantly to stare at her once again, wondering what was wrong. Olivia looked from Aeryn's now white face down to Deke, wondering whether it was something to do with the child. That was when Olivia noticed the ring on Aeryn's left hand. Olivia stared at it for a moment, frowning in confused semi-recognition. Her confusion was multiplied when Aeryn seemed to suddenly pull her hand back, shielding it from view with her right hand.
"What's the matter Aeryn?" Olivia asked softly, concern written over her face. She lifted a sympathetic hand to Aeryn's arm.
"N.. nothing. It's nothing. We should go back downstairs, or we will wake the baby. Besides, I know John wants to talk to me about work…." She finished, now blushing, as she hurriedly made her way to the door. Frowning, wondering what on Earth was going on, Olivia took one last glance at Deke and followed her.
'~'
John and Aeryn had been working non-stop for about an hour at the dining room table, augmenting their conversation with the occasional paper sketch or brief diversion on John's laptop. As they were clearly both superfluous and out of their depth, Jack and Olivia at first sat on the sidelines and eventually retired to the kitchen.
"They're like peas in a pod, aren't they?" Laughed Jack, nodding towards the living room where John and Aeryn were deep in an earnest technical conversation. He held up the coffee jug. "You want some?"
"Uh, no thanks." Olivia replied, biting her lip, wondering what to say regarding her brother and the leather-clad, raven-haired beauty he was ensconced with next door. "Well, she's not exactly his normal type, but….." She had seen the signs all evening: The way John had kept glancing at Aeryn when he had thought Aeryn would not notice; the way that Aeryn could only seem to tear her gaze away from John when he was out of the room or when she was paying attention to her baby. But there were details worrying Olivia.
"Look, dad, there's something funny going on, isn't there. I mean, she's wearing a wedding ring, right? So she's married? And she's over here for a visit, with her baby, but she's got nothing with her, not even a carry-on? I mean, what's all that about?" Olivia blurted out in one train of consciousness exposition.
"Airline lost her bags…." Jack put in, trying to think on his feet, but knowing that she would have had a large cabin bag to see her through a long flight with a baby. Livvy let that one pass and moved on to her next point.
"And when we were putting Deke down, I sort of asked who the father was and she went all weird on me for a moment." Jack blanched and fiddled with his coffee, piling in more sugar than was normal for him.
"I, ummm."
"You know dad, don't you!" Olivia accused him. Jack tried to turn away. "You do know something don't you…? Tell me or I might just march right in there and…."
"No Livvy!" Olivia was shocked both at the seriousness in Jack's voice and by the fact that he had swiftly moved beside her to grab her arm. "You mustn't. Look, I know what's going on, John knows too. Maybe we can tell you in a few days but not now."
"It is fine, Jack," came Aeryn's voice, unexpectedly, from where she had just appeared in he doorway with two empty mugs in her hands. She moved closer to Jack and Livvy, putting the mugs down on the counter. "It's alright. I know it must sound strange to you, but I know that I can trust you, Olivia. I will tell you what you want to know." Aeryn looked down at the mugs, sighed as she braced herself for another round of revelation, shocked disbelief, and interrogation. She laughed ever so slightly to herself. "You know, I was coming through to get some more coffee and tea, but maybe something stronger would be more appropriate?"
'~'
Aeryn had retired to bed, exhausted and John had shortly afterwards made his own excuses and retired to his room, leaving Olivia and Jack alone in the kitchen with their hot chocolate drinks.
"Wow…." Olivia breathed, clutching her steaming mug. Jack raised a questioning eyebrow to his youngest daughter. "I mean, it's just so much to take in. I mean, I want to believe her, she's so nice an'all, but…. Are you sure she's not just some crazy…?" Olivia's question trailed off: She didn't need to finish it for Jack to fill in a number of possible endings.
"Hell, Livvy, I know exactly what you mean," Jack replied, shaking his head. "It's one unbelievable story, that's for sure." He took a long swig from his own drink before continuing. "I don't reckon I'd be half so keen to believe it myself if I hadn't seen the ship they came in on. But now I've heard that story two or three times, it's starting to make sense even to your old man."
"It's all the little details… she seems to know us all so well, but John most of all…" Olivia remarked.
"If that woman isn't somehow close to John, she's one hell of an actress, and a well-briefed one at that," Jack agreed, before taking a last gulp of his drink.
To Be Continued (the three most hated words for any Scaper)