Twist of Fate
Ann Brill White
Spoilers: Dog With Two Bones
Rating: PG
Archiving: just ask!
-----
As she drifts through our lives, tossing coins into the air,
Watch them twist, watch them fall, Turning hope into despair.
Watch them twist, watch them fall, then she suddenly revives
Every dream that we've had, and we find ourselves alive.
- "Fate", Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Beethoven's Last Night"
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" John muttered in disbelief as the wormhole took Moya and closed. Jool's screams and Pilot's frantic but garbled message were cut off abruptly. John stared into space, not quite comprehending what just happened. "Uh, Pilot? Pilot?" Dead silence. "PILOT!!!" he screamed into the dead comm channel. Then the reality of his situation sunk in. He was low on air, lower on fuel, and sitting in the middle of nowhere with no planets nearby. "Oh... my... God. I am so dead." He looked around him for any sign of life, anywhere. Nothing. Just a bunch of dead Leviathans floating in space. "Think, John... think..." he muttered. "Distress beacon..." He punched the button for his distress beacon, which he'd installed in his module shortly after he'd been stuck on that backwater planet for a quarter of a cycle. Then, he looked around at what he had stored in the module. Nope, no EVA suit, backup respirator, or survival supplies. He'd taken them out when he took Scorpy for a ride in the wormhole, and hadn't thought to put them back in yet. "Johnny, you really screwed yourself this time," he muttered. "Ah, maybe it's just as well I sit here and slowly suffocate. Maybe then Aeryn will love me, too, even though I didn't die a hero." His survival instinct took over quickly, and he set his life support to the barest minimum, so that it would last a few microts longer. Provided that he didn't freeze to death before he suffocated.
***
"Oh, frell," Aeryn Sun muttered to herself. She had just gotten out of comms range with Moya when a blinking red light on the control panel indicated a small leak in the fuel line of her Prowler. "I thought I'd fixed that," she said, remembering her conversation with Jool. "I guess I should have broken the tralk's finger instead of just twisting it. Then the patch would have taken." She checked her remaining fuel, then did some quick mental calculations. With the leaking line, she probably didn't have enough froonium to make it to her destination, and she didn't know of any Commerce Planets that she could stop at to refuel. Fortunately, she did have more than enough fuel to make it back to Moya's last location. IF she wanted to go back. "John will think I came back because of him," she said to no one in particular. "He's just arrogant enough to believe it. Frelling idiot thinks that the universe revolves around him..." Of course it did. At least to her, for the past three cycles. But she'd left. And now she had to go back. The solution was obvious, but she still didn't want to admit defeat. She sighed with resignation, made a graceful, leisurely 180-degree turn in her Prowler, then plotted a course back to the Leviathan graveyard and Moya.
***
The temperature in Farscape One was dropping rapidly. John could feel the cold of space leaching into his body, threatening to take over. If that happened, he'd be dead. He fought the cold by blowing on his hands and thinking of warm places he'd been. He used his daydreams to try to fool his oxygen-starved brain.
He thought of sitting around a blazing campfire with his Dad, when they were on a fishing trip the summer before John had started the serious work on the Farscape project. He thought of sitting by the fire with two fresh-caught trout frying in a pan, and a cold beer in his hand. He wondered what Dad was doing now...
But that thought was too depressing. He let his mind wander to another scene instead. This time, it was a beach somewhere on Cape Cod, where they'd spent the summer when he was a kid. He was wearing his favorite long, surfer-style swim trunks, the ones with the bright green and pink flowers. Instead of a surfboard, however, he had an excited child in his arms. The boy, his son, was about four years old. He had wavy black hair like his mother, but bright blue eyes which were focused on the ocean in front of him. The boy was wearing fire-engine red swim trunks, a white t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, and a white patch of zinc oxide over his nose.
He set the boy down at the water line. As the chill waves lapped over his toes, the boy squealed with glee. A well-worn white clamshell drifted in on the tide, and the child picked it up. "Whatcha got there, Jalyn?" he asked his son. He instinctively knew that the boy would be named after his father and Talyn.
"For Mommy," Jalyn answered as he held up the shell.
"That's great, Buddy. Why don't you put it in your pocket?"
"Okay," his son grinned, then they both turned back to look at the shore. On the other side of the sand dune was a beach house with a long covered porch. On that porch, Aeryn Sun stood at the railing and waved at her two boys. Even from a hundred-yard distance, he knew that she was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit - more athletic than sexy - a white gauze cover-up, and a broad-brimmed hat. She saw that they were waving at her, and blew a kiss.
"Hi, Mommy!" Jalyn called out. Then he turned to look up at John. "Why doesn't Mommy come down to the beach with us?"
John took his son's sand-covered hands. "Mommy doesn't like the hot weather. It makes her sick. But she doesn't mind you going out, as long as you don't get too overheated. Now, do you want to go in the water?"
Jalyn's eyes lit up with excitement. "Yeah!"
John bent down and picked his son up. The little boy squirmed, but John made sure that he stayed put as he walked into the ocean. Soon, they were up to his waist in the surf. Jalyn splashed, then made a face as the salt water hit his lips. "Ick!" John played with Jalyn a little longer, then took him back to the shore. As they sat
down on their beach chairs, Jalyn looked up at him. "This is fun, Daddy, but when are we going home?"
"We are home, Buddy."
"No, not Erp-home. Moya-home. Up there," he said, pointing at the sky. "I like it here, but I miss Auntie Chi, Auntie Jool, Uncle D'Argo, and Pilot. I miss riding in Uncle Rygel's sled. Mommy misses Moya-home, too. She told me so last night."
John held his son close to him. Even at the beach, one of his favorite places on Earth, Aeryn wasn't happy. Of course she wasn't. She didn't like planets. They didn't move, didn't have engine noise, but they had variable weather. But she stayed, for the sake of John and their son. "Well, Buddy, I tell you what. We'll go back
to Moya real soon, okay?"
"Okay, Dad," Jalyn answered, and snuggled in his arms.
"This is a lovely fantasy, John," a new, but familiar, voice reminded him. John turned around to see Harvey, wearing hot pink flowered swim trunks and a clashing, loud Hawaiian shirt over his black leather, tiptoeing cautiously over the sand.
"Who's that, Daddy?" Jalyn asked, wide-eyed with fear at the imposing stranger.
"Run back to the house, and stay inside," John instructed, then gave his son a quick kiss and a pat on the behind. Jalyn took another frightened look at Harvey, then ran back to the house as fast as his little legs would carry him.
"Such a lovely fantasy," Harvey repeated as he looked disdainfully at the waves lapping around his boots. A piece of seaweed came to rest on his right boot, and he shook it off with disgust. "But it's not going to keep us alive."
"Go away, Harvey. You're scaring my son," John snarled at his unwelcome visitor.
"He's not your son, John."
Crichton grabbed Harvey by the collar of his tacky shirt. "Jalyn is the son of John Crichton. He has my DNA. I've raised him from his birth. So what if I wasn't there for his conception? He is still MY SON."
"Touchy about that subject, aren't we?" Harvey mocked. John released him with a shove and a warning look. "I didn't mean that he wasn't YOUR son. I meant that he represents a part of your subconscious. The part that is still afraid of me, and that runs to Aeryn for protection. Well, wake up and look around, John!" Harvey swept his arm toward the ocean. "Aeryn isn't here to protect you anymore. She LEFT you. They all left you. The only one that you can depend on is me."
"Jealous, Harve?" John snapped. "What the frell do you want me to do?"
"First of all, stop this ridiculous fantasy. It's not going to solve our immediate problem. It's making you retreat from the problem."
"I sure as hell don't want my last thoughts to be of you," John shot back.
From the direction of the beach house, he heard Aeryn's voice calling him. "John?" she called out. Her voice was distant, but audible. "John, can you hear me?"
He turned toward the house. Aeryn, a vision in black and white, was picking her way slowly across the hot sand towards him and Harvey. "It's okay, babe," he called out to her. "Nobody important. Go on back to the house." Aeryn cocked her head and shrugged, but stood her ground.
"I think you should listen to her," Harvey observed.
"What IS it with you? First you tell me that all of this is a figment of my imagination and that I should ignore it. Now you're telling me to listen to Aeryn. Just shut up and leave me in peace."
"JOHN!" Aeryn called to him. Her voice was more insistent this time. He started to reply to her, but Harvey cut him off.
"No, I'm being realistic. Right now, Aeryn is our only hope for survival," Harvey answered, then hit John in the left shoulder.
John was jolted out of consciousness by a sharp pain in the shoulder where Harvey hit him. A quick check of his instruments showed that the atmosphere was down to less than 2% oxygen. The cockpit was freezing. The windows were frosted over with carbon dioxide from his exhalations.
"John! Are you there? Frell you, answer me!" Aeryn's staccato, concerned voice came over the open channel. "Wake up!"
"A-a-aeryn?" he asked muzzily. Between the cold and the low oxygen level, he was having trouble forming words.
Aeryn's sigh of relief was audible over the radio. "What happened, John? Where is Moya?"
He tried to remember, but it seemed so long ago. "Mmm-moya...w-w-w-w-orm-hole..." he stammered.
"John, you're suffering from hypoxia," Aeryn said. "I want you to concentrate on my voice."
He shook his head to clear out the cobwebs, but they stayed. "S-s-sure th-thing, baby."
Aeryn smiled in spite of herself, and the dire situation. She found his pet name for her to be rather ironic. She didn't quite understand what happened to Moya, but her main concern right now was for John. "All right. Here is what I want you to do. Turn your oxygen level up all the way. Flood the cockpit with it. Don't worry about conserving it. Just turn it up and breathe deeply."
John complied with her instructions. He turned the oxygen meter to maximum, and inhaled and exhaled deeply. After several breaths, he was starting to think clearer.
Aeryn used the maneuvering thrusters on her Prowler to position it above John's module. Then, she pulled on her flight helmet and gloves. "Good. Now, I want you to unstrap yourself from your seat."
He did so, still shivering. "G-got it. N-n-now what?"
"Hang on for a few microts, and keep breathing. You need to get as much oxygen into your body as possible." She cut the airflow to her own cockpit and made a quick check of her rescue equipment. She put the nav controls on standby. "Now, I want you to take one more deep breath, then blow out as much air as possible from your lungs. Then, on my mark, I want you to blow your hatch. I'll be releasing a cable from the Prowler. Try to catch it, then clip it
onto your belt. Just like we did with you and D'Argo above the Gammak Base, remember?"
"I-I remember," he reassurred her - although he wasn't quite sure if this would work. He took one last deep breath, sucking in all of the precious remaining oxygen in the compartment. It would have to work, or he was dead one way or the other. Then, he put his finger over the hatch release and exhaled.
At the same time, Aeryn opened her own hatch to space. She fired the emergency cable down and to the right of the module. "Now, John!" she shouted.
He blew the hatch open and floated free of the module. He could see the cable, but was unable to maneuver to get it. Venting the hatch had pushed it out of his reach. As he floated upwards, he tried to grab the cable, but it was too far away.
Aeryn saw the situation and unstrapped herself. She floated out of the cockpit and somersaulted down to the cable while keeping one hand on the Prowler. If she were to lose her grip, they could both wind up floating in space. She pulled the cable towards John, who was finally able to grab it and hook it onto his belt. Aeryn somersaulted back into the Prowler and hit the control for the cable. It didn't respond. "Frell!" she cursed and tried it again.
Still no response. She floated out of the seat again, and pulled the cable and John towards her. After about three strong tugs on the line, he was visible over the edge of the wing. She gave one more strong pull, and he floated into her arms. His eyes were glassy and vacant, and he was unresponsive.
Aeryn hauled him down, closed the hatch, and brought the environmentals back on-line. She strapped him into the second chair and put the respirator over his mouth and nose. "It's all right, John. Breathe." He wasn't responding, even with the respirator. She unstrapped him, pulled the respirator off, and laid him out as flat as possible in the rear compartment. Then, she pulled off her helmet, took a deep breath, and blew it into John's mouth. Then,
she knelt up and started compressions on his chest, just like she had twice before. "One, two, three..." she counted until she reached fifteen, then forced air into his lungs again. As she started the compressions again, she heard him gasp for air, then cough violently. Aeryn rolled John over onto his side facing her, and put his head in her lap. She placed the respirator over his mouth and nose again and caressed his face gently. "Just take deep breaths, John," she murmurred to him. His skin was like ice, and he was shivering. She pulled a thermal blanket out of her survival kit and pulled it over him. "You're going to be all right." She stroked his hair gently as he lay shivering in her lap, and she willed some of her own body heat into him. She remained like that foralmost a quarter of an arn, as his frozen body slowly returned to normal.
Satisfied that he'd recovered enough, Aeryn gently sat John upright and strapped him into the rear seat in the Prowler, then tucked the blanket around him again. He didn't say anything, but kept inhaling from the respirator. His blue eyes reflected his gratitude - and something else that she didn't want to acknowledge. The last time that he'd looked at her like that was in Talyn's airlock, after she'd given up her neural link with the Leviathan to convince him to let John back in. Only it wasn't THIS John - it was the one who she'd loved with a passion that surprised both of them, and the one who had died in her arms. She pushed that thought out of her mind as she
crawled back into the pilot's seat. She kept her back to him so that her face wouldn't betray her emotional turmoil.
John breathed deeply through the respirator for about a quarter of an arn more. He was slowly feeling more alert, but was still chilled to the bone. He shivered uncontrollably, and pulled the blanket tighter around him. The rustling of the thermal material drew Aeryn's attention to him.
"Feeling better?" she asked without turning around.
"Yeah," he replied. "Still frozen, though. I'm so cold that even you seem warm."
She ignored his jibe and kept focused on finding a relatively intact Leviathan to board. "Why were you out there by yourself? What happened to Moya?"
"After you and the others left, I got in my module and flew around for a while to think about things. As I was about to come back in, a wormhole popped out of nowhere and sucked Moya in. I could hear Pilot, Jool, and Old Three-Eyes screaming, but I couldn't do anything to help them." He closed his eyes painfully. "Then the wormhole disappeared before I could follow. I was all alone. And then you came back for me."
"Don't flatter yourself," she snapped angrily. "I discovered that the fuel line rupture that I fixed earlier re-appeared. It was leaking froonium. It was easier to return to Moya to fix the line rather than try to make it to the nearest commerce planet."
John burst out laughing, which led to a coughing fit. When he recovered, he shook his head in disbelief and said, "she's a real bitch, isn't she?"
"Who? Jool?" Aeryn asked. "Admittedly, I thought she was annoying and useless at first..."
"No," John chuckled, "I'm talking about Fate. She's the bitch." Aeryn sighed her "John makes another stupid Erp reference that I don't understand" sigh and shook her head. "Some ancient culture on Earth decided that Fate was a Goddess, because she's capricious and cruel, just like a woman."
"I don't find that a very amusing personification," Aeryn shot back. "Why do you say that Fate is a bitch?"
"Because you flipped a coin, and I lost. You left, saying that we were in the hands of Fate. Then, just when I'm about to kick it, you get a fuel leak and come limping back in time to save my ass yet again. So, now we're stuck together on a small ship that's leaking fuel, with no way of getting to a place to repair it. So, I guess we're stuck with each other after all."
"As soon as I get my Prowler repaired, I'm leaving again."
"In the meantime," John began more hesitantly, "Do you have anything that you want to tell me, Aeryn?"
She froze. "Like what?" she whispered.
"Like the fact that you weren't entirely honest with me about why you were leaving."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do know. I think you've known since before you got back to Moya, but were covering it up," he accused her. "Why didn't you tell me that you were pregnant? Why didn't you trust me, or anyone else, with this? Instead of you telling me, I had to find out from Old Three-Eyes, who must have figured it out somehow."
Aeryn gripped the stick so hard that her hand shook, which cause the Prowler to waggle from side to side. She put her left hand over the right to stop it. The tears, which had threatened to flow since she found John's module floating dead in space, welled up in her eyes. "You're wrong, John," she whispered. "I didn't know when I got back to Moya. I found out when we were on the Command Carrier. I went to the Infirmary to get my birth control updated, and they found it from a routine test. I didn't tell you then because there was so much else at stake."
"Dammit, Aeryn, take your hands off the controls and look at me!" he shouted and grabbed her shoulder for emphasis.
She whirled around and slapped his hand away, pointedly not looking at him. She couldn't let him see the tears in her eyes. If she met his eyes, she would be lost. "I didn't tell you after that because I didn't want you to know. I was just going to find a Diagnosan and..."
"And what? Have an abortion?" John accused her. "Kill the last remaining link to him, er... me?"
"Depending on the outcome of the test, I might be forced to," she whispered. A tear ran down her cheek. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
John gave her an appalled look. He was searching for words, but for once, none would come. "I guess that's it, huh? You're going back to being the cold-hearted Peacekeeper, so much so that you'd kill your own child rather than have to deal with a half-Sebacean hybrid? What, does having a kid cramp your style so much?"
"Frell you, John," she snarled, "we are not having this conversation. You have no say in this."
"The hell I don't!" he shot back. "I may not have been there for his conception, but that kid's DNA is half mine. I think I deserve say in this!"
"Maybe I should ask Pilot as well?" she screamed out. "Some of HIS DNA is in this child, too!"
John's expression changed from anger to shock. "What?" Realization dawned on his face. "Oh, my God, Aeryn...," he whispered. "I-I'm sorry. NamTar's experiment on you..."
"...may be coming back to haunt us now," she finished his sentence as two more tears escaped her eyes. "When the Peacekeeper medic told me that I was pregnant, she also informed me that there was a genetic anomaly in the fetus, and that they would have to run more tests. Crais and Talyn blew up the Command Carrier before I could get the results back. It may be nothing, just the combination of your DNA and mine. Peacekeepers are fanatic about keeping our bloodlines pure. But, if some of Pilot's DNA that is still hidden in my body as a result of NamTar's experiment was transferred to the egg..." she stammered, not wanting to complete the sentence.
"So you left Moya to find a doctor who could give you a straight answer? Why couldn't you just ask Jool to do the tests?"
"I didn't want everyone aboard Moya to know my business," she replied. "Least of all Pilot."
John nodded sympathetically. "Then what about this former Peacekeeper unit that you were talking about?"
She looked up at him. "I was going to trade my skills as a pilot and soldier for medical care. I know it sounds horribly heartless, John, but I felt that it was better that you didn't know," Aeryn whispered. "There's more..."
John took her right hand in his left, and wiped a tear away from her cheek with his other hand. "Like what?"
"After the other John died, we stopped off at a planet, and I went on a drinking binge. I was trying to block everything out, but I'm afraid that I may have hurt my unborn child by trying to drown my grief. So, between the raslak and Pilot's DNA, the child may very well be defective."
John was very still. "I see..." he whispered.
"No, you don't," she shot back. "You don't understand at all! All you see are wormholes. Both of you, that's all you see! You go chasing wormholes, and I lose everyone I care about because of your obsession! This child, defective or not, is not going to be another sacrifice on the altar of wormhole technology! I would rather this child be raised as a Sebacean, without any knowledge of his genetically deficient father, rather than lose him to a frelling wormhole!"
John recoiled from her tirade, and closed his eyes in pain. "I'm so sorry, Aeryn. But Crais and Talyn made a choice. So did Zhaan. So did the other John. But I want you to know something." He bit his thumb nervously, a habit that Aeryn knew well. "You and the child you carry are the most important things in my life. Not wormholes, not Earth. You. I didn't realize that until after you were gone." He reached out and stroked her cheek. "I may not be
the man that you shared that half-cycle with, but I'm the man with whom you shared the three cycles before. I'm still the same man who you admitted that you loved back in Moya's neural cluster."
"Right before you bashed my skull in, then killed me," she snapped.
"And I regretted that more than you can imagine," he replied. Now the tears were starting to well up in his eyes. "The point that I'm trying to make is, that I think I know the other Crichton pretty well,since he's my clone. And I know that, if it was me that had died, I would want you to be happy. I wouldn't want you to shut off your feelings, and I certainly wouldn't want you to bear a child alone. Especially one that might have some problems. Aeryn," he
reached out and cupped her chin in his hand, "whatever the problem is, we can work it out together."
A button on the Prowler's console lit up and an ominous-sounding beeping pierced the silence, making them both jump. Relieved, Aeryn spun around and immediately began pushing buttons and cursing under her breath. "Well, the good news is that my long-range sensors have found a Leviathan that is more-or-less intact that still has life support on-line," she reported.
"Well, that's good to know," John said as he peered over her shoulder hopefully.
"The bad news is that the fuel leak has gotten worse. We may not have enough fuel to make it to that Leviathan. I'm setting a course now, but I'm not holding out much hope."
"Oh, for cryin' out loud!" John started laughing again. "There's that bitch Fate, making ourlives miserable again. Looks like you're stuck with me, sweetheart. I guess this is Her way of showing us how much we need each other. Or at least forcing us to talk about it."
"Fine. But my mind is made up, John. Once we get the Prowler repaired, I'm still leaving."
John smirked. "Not if Fate has anything to do with it," he chuckled, as Aeryn changed the Prowler's heading to limp
slowly towards the Leviathan.
Ann Brill White
Spoilers: Dog With Two Bones
Rating: PG
Archiving: just ask!
-----
As she drifts through our lives, tossing coins into the air,
Watch them twist, watch them fall, Turning hope into despair.
Watch them twist, watch them fall, then she suddenly revives
Every dream that we've had, and we find ourselves alive.
- "Fate", Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Beethoven's Last Night"
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" John muttered in disbelief as the wormhole took Moya and closed. Jool's screams and Pilot's frantic but garbled message were cut off abruptly. John stared into space, not quite comprehending what just happened. "Uh, Pilot? Pilot?" Dead silence. "PILOT!!!" he screamed into the dead comm channel. Then the reality of his situation sunk in. He was low on air, lower on fuel, and sitting in the middle of nowhere with no planets nearby. "Oh... my... God. I am so dead." He looked around him for any sign of life, anywhere. Nothing. Just a bunch of dead Leviathans floating in space. "Think, John... think..." he muttered. "Distress beacon..." He punched the button for his distress beacon, which he'd installed in his module shortly after he'd been stuck on that backwater planet for a quarter of a cycle. Then, he looked around at what he had stored in the module. Nope, no EVA suit, backup respirator, or survival supplies. He'd taken them out when he took Scorpy for a ride in the wormhole, and hadn't thought to put them back in yet. "Johnny, you really screwed yourself this time," he muttered. "Ah, maybe it's just as well I sit here and slowly suffocate. Maybe then Aeryn will love me, too, even though I didn't die a hero." His survival instinct took over quickly, and he set his life support to the barest minimum, so that it would last a few microts longer. Provided that he didn't freeze to death before he suffocated.
***
"Oh, frell," Aeryn Sun muttered to herself. She had just gotten out of comms range with Moya when a blinking red light on the control panel indicated a small leak in the fuel line of her Prowler. "I thought I'd fixed that," she said, remembering her conversation with Jool. "I guess I should have broken the tralk's finger instead of just twisting it. Then the patch would have taken." She checked her remaining fuel, then did some quick mental calculations. With the leaking line, she probably didn't have enough froonium to make it to her destination, and she didn't know of any Commerce Planets that she could stop at to refuel. Fortunately, she did have more than enough fuel to make it back to Moya's last location. IF she wanted to go back. "John will think I came back because of him," she said to no one in particular. "He's just arrogant enough to believe it. Frelling idiot thinks that the universe revolves around him..." Of course it did. At least to her, for the past three cycles. But she'd left. And now she had to go back. The solution was obvious, but she still didn't want to admit defeat. She sighed with resignation, made a graceful, leisurely 180-degree turn in her Prowler, then plotted a course back to the Leviathan graveyard and Moya.
***
The temperature in Farscape One was dropping rapidly. John could feel the cold of space leaching into his body, threatening to take over. If that happened, he'd be dead. He fought the cold by blowing on his hands and thinking of warm places he'd been. He used his daydreams to try to fool his oxygen-starved brain.
He thought of sitting around a blazing campfire with his Dad, when they were on a fishing trip the summer before John had started the serious work on the Farscape project. He thought of sitting by the fire with two fresh-caught trout frying in a pan, and a cold beer in his hand. He wondered what Dad was doing now...
But that thought was too depressing. He let his mind wander to another scene instead. This time, it was a beach somewhere on Cape Cod, where they'd spent the summer when he was a kid. He was wearing his favorite long, surfer-style swim trunks, the ones with the bright green and pink flowers. Instead of a surfboard, however, he had an excited child in his arms. The boy, his son, was about four years old. He had wavy black hair like his mother, but bright blue eyes which were focused on the ocean in front of him. The boy was wearing fire-engine red swim trunks, a white t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, and a white patch of zinc oxide over his nose.
He set the boy down at the water line. As the chill waves lapped over his toes, the boy squealed with glee. A well-worn white clamshell drifted in on the tide, and the child picked it up. "Whatcha got there, Jalyn?" he asked his son. He instinctively knew that the boy would be named after his father and Talyn.
"For Mommy," Jalyn answered as he held up the shell.
"That's great, Buddy. Why don't you put it in your pocket?"
"Okay," his son grinned, then they both turned back to look at the shore. On the other side of the sand dune was a beach house with a long covered porch. On that porch, Aeryn Sun stood at the railing and waved at her two boys. Even from a hundred-yard distance, he knew that she was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit - more athletic than sexy - a white gauze cover-up, and a broad-brimmed hat. She saw that they were waving at her, and blew a kiss.
"Hi, Mommy!" Jalyn called out. Then he turned to look up at John. "Why doesn't Mommy come down to the beach with us?"
John took his son's sand-covered hands. "Mommy doesn't like the hot weather. It makes her sick. But she doesn't mind you going out, as long as you don't get too overheated. Now, do you want to go in the water?"
Jalyn's eyes lit up with excitement. "Yeah!"
John bent down and picked his son up. The little boy squirmed, but John made sure that he stayed put as he walked into the ocean. Soon, they were up to his waist in the surf. Jalyn splashed, then made a face as the salt water hit his lips. "Ick!" John played with Jalyn a little longer, then took him back to the shore. As they sat
down on their beach chairs, Jalyn looked up at him. "This is fun, Daddy, but when are we going home?"
"We are home, Buddy."
"No, not Erp-home. Moya-home. Up there," he said, pointing at the sky. "I like it here, but I miss Auntie Chi, Auntie Jool, Uncle D'Argo, and Pilot. I miss riding in Uncle Rygel's sled. Mommy misses Moya-home, too. She told me so last night."
John held his son close to him. Even at the beach, one of his favorite places on Earth, Aeryn wasn't happy. Of course she wasn't. She didn't like planets. They didn't move, didn't have engine noise, but they had variable weather. But she stayed, for the sake of John and their son. "Well, Buddy, I tell you what. We'll go back
to Moya real soon, okay?"
"Okay, Dad," Jalyn answered, and snuggled in his arms.
"This is a lovely fantasy, John," a new, but familiar, voice reminded him. John turned around to see Harvey, wearing hot pink flowered swim trunks and a clashing, loud Hawaiian shirt over his black leather, tiptoeing cautiously over the sand.
"Who's that, Daddy?" Jalyn asked, wide-eyed with fear at the imposing stranger.
"Run back to the house, and stay inside," John instructed, then gave his son a quick kiss and a pat on the behind. Jalyn took another frightened look at Harvey, then ran back to the house as fast as his little legs would carry him.
"Such a lovely fantasy," Harvey repeated as he looked disdainfully at the waves lapping around his boots. A piece of seaweed came to rest on his right boot, and he shook it off with disgust. "But it's not going to keep us alive."
"Go away, Harvey. You're scaring my son," John snarled at his unwelcome visitor.
"He's not your son, John."
Crichton grabbed Harvey by the collar of his tacky shirt. "Jalyn is the son of John Crichton. He has my DNA. I've raised him from his birth. So what if I wasn't there for his conception? He is still MY SON."
"Touchy about that subject, aren't we?" Harvey mocked. John released him with a shove and a warning look. "I didn't mean that he wasn't YOUR son. I meant that he represents a part of your subconscious. The part that is still afraid of me, and that runs to Aeryn for protection. Well, wake up and look around, John!" Harvey swept his arm toward the ocean. "Aeryn isn't here to protect you anymore. She LEFT you. They all left you. The only one that you can depend on is me."
"Jealous, Harve?" John snapped. "What the frell do you want me to do?"
"First of all, stop this ridiculous fantasy. It's not going to solve our immediate problem. It's making you retreat from the problem."
"I sure as hell don't want my last thoughts to be of you," John shot back.
From the direction of the beach house, he heard Aeryn's voice calling him. "John?" she called out. Her voice was distant, but audible. "John, can you hear me?"
He turned toward the house. Aeryn, a vision in black and white, was picking her way slowly across the hot sand towards him and Harvey. "It's okay, babe," he called out to her. "Nobody important. Go on back to the house." Aeryn cocked her head and shrugged, but stood her ground.
"I think you should listen to her," Harvey observed.
"What IS it with you? First you tell me that all of this is a figment of my imagination and that I should ignore it. Now you're telling me to listen to Aeryn. Just shut up and leave me in peace."
"JOHN!" Aeryn called to him. Her voice was more insistent this time. He started to reply to her, but Harvey cut him off.
"No, I'm being realistic. Right now, Aeryn is our only hope for survival," Harvey answered, then hit John in the left shoulder.
John was jolted out of consciousness by a sharp pain in the shoulder where Harvey hit him. A quick check of his instruments showed that the atmosphere was down to less than 2% oxygen. The cockpit was freezing. The windows were frosted over with carbon dioxide from his exhalations.
"John! Are you there? Frell you, answer me!" Aeryn's staccato, concerned voice came over the open channel. "Wake up!"
"A-a-aeryn?" he asked muzzily. Between the cold and the low oxygen level, he was having trouble forming words.
Aeryn's sigh of relief was audible over the radio. "What happened, John? Where is Moya?"
He tried to remember, but it seemed so long ago. "Mmm-moya...w-w-w-w-orm-hole..." he stammered.
"John, you're suffering from hypoxia," Aeryn said. "I want you to concentrate on my voice."
He shook his head to clear out the cobwebs, but they stayed. "S-s-sure th-thing, baby."
Aeryn smiled in spite of herself, and the dire situation. She found his pet name for her to be rather ironic. She didn't quite understand what happened to Moya, but her main concern right now was for John. "All right. Here is what I want you to do. Turn your oxygen level up all the way. Flood the cockpit with it. Don't worry about conserving it. Just turn it up and breathe deeply."
John complied with her instructions. He turned the oxygen meter to maximum, and inhaled and exhaled deeply. After several breaths, he was starting to think clearer.
Aeryn used the maneuvering thrusters on her Prowler to position it above John's module. Then, she pulled on her flight helmet and gloves. "Good. Now, I want you to unstrap yourself from your seat."
He did so, still shivering. "G-got it. N-n-now what?"
"Hang on for a few microts, and keep breathing. You need to get as much oxygen into your body as possible." She cut the airflow to her own cockpit and made a quick check of her rescue equipment. She put the nav controls on standby. "Now, I want you to take one more deep breath, then blow out as much air as possible from your lungs. Then, on my mark, I want you to blow your hatch. I'll be releasing a cable from the Prowler. Try to catch it, then clip it
onto your belt. Just like we did with you and D'Argo above the Gammak Base, remember?"
"I-I remember," he reassurred her - although he wasn't quite sure if this would work. He took one last deep breath, sucking in all of the precious remaining oxygen in the compartment. It would have to work, or he was dead one way or the other. Then, he put his finger over the hatch release and exhaled.
At the same time, Aeryn opened her own hatch to space. She fired the emergency cable down and to the right of the module. "Now, John!" she shouted.
He blew the hatch open and floated free of the module. He could see the cable, but was unable to maneuver to get it. Venting the hatch had pushed it out of his reach. As he floated upwards, he tried to grab the cable, but it was too far away.
Aeryn saw the situation and unstrapped herself. She floated out of the cockpit and somersaulted down to the cable while keeping one hand on the Prowler. If she were to lose her grip, they could both wind up floating in space. She pulled the cable towards John, who was finally able to grab it and hook it onto his belt. Aeryn somersaulted back into the Prowler and hit the control for the cable. It didn't respond. "Frell!" she cursed and tried it again.
Still no response. She floated out of the seat again, and pulled the cable and John towards her. After about three strong tugs on the line, he was visible over the edge of the wing. She gave one more strong pull, and he floated into her arms. His eyes were glassy and vacant, and he was unresponsive.
Aeryn hauled him down, closed the hatch, and brought the environmentals back on-line. She strapped him into the second chair and put the respirator over his mouth and nose. "It's all right, John. Breathe." He wasn't responding, even with the respirator. She unstrapped him, pulled the respirator off, and laid him out as flat as possible in the rear compartment. Then, she pulled off her helmet, took a deep breath, and blew it into John's mouth. Then,
she knelt up and started compressions on his chest, just like she had twice before. "One, two, three..." she counted until she reached fifteen, then forced air into his lungs again. As she started the compressions again, she heard him gasp for air, then cough violently. Aeryn rolled John over onto his side facing her, and put his head in her lap. She placed the respirator over his mouth and nose again and caressed his face gently. "Just take deep breaths, John," she murmurred to him. His skin was like ice, and he was shivering. She pulled a thermal blanket out of her survival kit and pulled it over him. "You're going to be all right." She stroked his hair gently as he lay shivering in her lap, and she willed some of her own body heat into him. She remained like that foralmost a quarter of an arn, as his frozen body slowly returned to normal.
Satisfied that he'd recovered enough, Aeryn gently sat John upright and strapped him into the rear seat in the Prowler, then tucked the blanket around him again. He didn't say anything, but kept inhaling from the respirator. His blue eyes reflected his gratitude - and something else that she didn't want to acknowledge. The last time that he'd looked at her like that was in Talyn's airlock, after she'd given up her neural link with the Leviathan to convince him to let John back in. Only it wasn't THIS John - it was the one who she'd loved with a passion that surprised both of them, and the one who had died in her arms. She pushed that thought out of her mind as she
crawled back into the pilot's seat. She kept her back to him so that her face wouldn't betray her emotional turmoil.
John breathed deeply through the respirator for about a quarter of an arn more. He was slowly feeling more alert, but was still chilled to the bone. He shivered uncontrollably, and pulled the blanket tighter around him. The rustling of the thermal material drew Aeryn's attention to him.
"Feeling better?" she asked without turning around.
"Yeah," he replied. "Still frozen, though. I'm so cold that even you seem warm."
She ignored his jibe and kept focused on finding a relatively intact Leviathan to board. "Why were you out there by yourself? What happened to Moya?"
"After you and the others left, I got in my module and flew around for a while to think about things. As I was about to come back in, a wormhole popped out of nowhere and sucked Moya in. I could hear Pilot, Jool, and Old Three-Eyes screaming, but I couldn't do anything to help them." He closed his eyes painfully. "Then the wormhole disappeared before I could follow. I was all alone. And then you came back for me."
"Don't flatter yourself," she snapped angrily. "I discovered that the fuel line rupture that I fixed earlier re-appeared. It was leaking froonium. It was easier to return to Moya to fix the line rather than try to make it to the nearest commerce planet."
John burst out laughing, which led to a coughing fit. When he recovered, he shook his head in disbelief and said, "she's a real bitch, isn't she?"
"Who? Jool?" Aeryn asked. "Admittedly, I thought she was annoying and useless at first..."
"No," John chuckled, "I'm talking about Fate. She's the bitch." Aeryn sighed her "John makes another stupid Erp reference that I don't understand" sigh and shook her head. "Some ancient culture on Earth decided that Fate was a Goddess, because she's capricious and cruel, just like a woman."
"I don't find that a very amusing personification," Aeryn shot back. "Why do you say that Fate is a bitch?"
"Because you flipped a coin, and I lost. You left, saying that we were in the hands of Fate. Then, just when I'm about to kick it, you get a fuel leak and come limping back in time to save my ass yet again. So, now we're stuck together on a small ship that's leaking fuel, with no way of getting to a place to repair it. So, I guess we're stuck with each other after all."
"As soon as I get my Prowler repaired, I'm leaving again."
"In the meantime," John began more hesitantly, "Do you have anything that you want to tell me, Aeryn?"
She froze. "Like what?" she whispered.
"Like the fact that you weren't entirely honest with me about why you were leaving."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do know. I think you've known since before you got back to Moya, but were covering it up," he accused her. "Why didn't you tell me that you were pregnant? Why didn't you trust me, or anyone else, with this? Instead of you telling me, I had to find out from Old Three-Eyes, who must have figured it out somehow."
Aeryn gripped the stick so hard that her hand shook, which cause the Prowler to waggle from side to side. She put her left hand over the right to stop it. The tears, which had threatened to flow since she found John's module floating dead in space, welled up in her eyes. "You're wrong, John," she whispered. "I didn't know when I got back to Moya. I found out when we were on the Command Carrier. I went to the Infirmary to get my birth control updated, and they found it from a routine test. I didn't tell you then because there was so much else at stake."
"Dammit, Aeryn, take your hands off the controls and look at me!" he shouted and grabbed her shoulder for emphasis.
She whirled around and slapped his hand away, pointedly not looking at him. She couldn't let him see the tears in her eyes. If she met his eyes, she would be lost. "I didn't tell you after that because I didn't want you to know. I was just going to find a Diagnosan and..."
"And what? Have an abortion?" John accused her. "Kill the last remaining link to him, er... me?"
"Depending on the outcome of the test, I might be forced to," she whispered. A tear ran down her cheek. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
John gave her an appalled look. He was searching for words, but for once, none would come. "I guess that's it, huh? You're going back to being the cold-hearted Peacekeeper, so much so that you'd kill your own child rather than have to deal with a half-Sebacean hybrid? What, does having a kid cramp your style so much?"
"Frell you, John," she snarled, "we are not having this conversation. You have no say in this."
"The hell I don't!" he shot back. "I may not have been there for his conception, but that kid's DNA is half mine. I think I deserve say in this!"
"Maybe I should ask Pilot as well?" she screamed out. "Some of HIS DNA is in this child, too!"
John's expression changed from anger to shock. "What?" Realization dawned on his face. "Oh, my God, Aeryn...," he whispered. "I-I'm sorry. NamTar's experiment on you..."
"...may be coming back to haunt us now," she finished his sentence as two more tears escaped her eyes. "When the Peacekeeper medic told me that I was pregnant, she also informed me that there was a genetic anomaly in the fetus, and that they would have to run more tests. Crais and Talyn blew up the Command Carrier before I could get the results back. It may be nothing, just the combination of your DNA and mine. Peacekeepers are fanatic about keeping our bloodlines pure. But, if some of Pilot's DNA that is still hidden in my body as a result of NamTar's experiment was transferred to the egg..." she stammered, not wanting to complete the sentence.
"So you left Moya to find a doctor who could give you a straight answer? Why couldn't you just ask Jool to do the tests?"
"I didn't want everyone aboard Moya to know my business," she replied. "Least of all Pilot."
John nodded sympathetically. "Then what about this former Peacekeeper unit that you were talking about?"
She looked up at him. "I was going to trade my skills as a pilot and soldier for medical care. I know it sounds horribly heartless, John, but I felt that it was better that you didn't know," Aeryn whispered. "There's more..."
John took her right hand in his left, and wiped a tear away from her cheek with his other hand. "Like what?"
"After the other John died, we stopped off at a planet, and I went on a drinking binge. I was trying to block everything out, but I'm afraid that I may have hurt my unborn child by trying to drown my grief. So, between the raslak and Pilot's DNA, the child may very well be defective."
John was very still. "I see..." he whispered.
"No, you don't," she shot back. "You don't understand at all! All you see are wormholes. Both of you, that's all you see! You go chasing wormholes, and I lose everyone I care about because of your obsession! This child, defective or not, is not going to be another sacrifice on the altar of wormhole technology! I would rather this child be raised as a Sebacean, without any knowledge of his genetically deficient father, rather than lose him to a frelling wormhole!"
John recoiled from her tirade, and closed his eyes in pain. "I'm so sorry, Aeryn. But Crais and Talyn made a choice. So did Zhaan. So did the other John. But I want you to know something." He bit his thumb nervously, a habit that Aeryn knew well. "You and the child you carry are the most important things in my life. Not wormholes, not Earth. You. I didn't realize that until after you were gone." He reached out and stroked her cheek. "I may not be
the man that you shared that half-cycle with, but I'm the man with whom you shared the three cycles before. I'm still the same man who you admitted that you loved back in Moya's neural cluster."
"Right before you bashed my skull in, then killed me," she snapped.
"And I regretted that more than you can imagine," he replied. Now the tears were starting to well up in his eyes. "The point that I'm trying to make is, that I think I know the other Crichton pretty well,since he's my clone. And I know that, if it was me that had died, I would want you to be happy. I wouldn't want you to shut off your feelings, and I certainly wouldn't want you to bear a child alone. Especially one that might have some problems. Aeryn," he
reached out and cupped her chin in his hand, "whatever the problem is, we can work it out together."
A button on the Prowler's console lit up and an ominous-sounding beeping pierced the silence, making them both jump. Relieved, Aeryn spun around and immediately began pushing buttons and cursing under her breath. "Well, the good news is that my long-range sensors have found a Leviathan that is more-or-less intact that still has life support on-line," she reported.
"Well, that's good to know," John said as he peered over her shoulder hopefully.
"The bad news is that the fuel leak has gotten worse. We may not have enough fuel to make it to that Leviathan. I'm setting a course now, but I'm not holding out much hope."
"Oh, for cryin' out loud!" John started laughing again. "There's that bitch Fate, making ourlives miserable again. Looks like you're stuck with me, sweetheart. I guess this is Her way of showing us how much we need each other. Or at least forcing us to talk about it."
"Fine. But my mind is made up, John. Once we get the Prowler repaired, I'm still leaving."
John smirked. "Not if Fate has anything to do with it," he chuckled, as Aeryn changed the Prowler's heading to limp
slowly towards the Leviathan.