Disclaimer: Farscape and its characters belong to The Jim Henson Company, and not to me.
Setting: DWTB.
Rating & Warnings: PG.

Thank You: Em, Oleg, and misaditas, for the feedback and much needed ego-boos.


DISCONNECT

Aeryn gathers Talyn's remains and lays the fragile bones as close to his mother's heart as she can, but the hangar bay can never be close enough, and Moya moans, hollow in her grief.

"I thought there'd be more," Chiana says.

Pilot knows Chiana's nested in the shadows, but Aeryn startles when she speaks. Aeryn sinks – to her knees, back on her heels, into anger – her mouth a thin red line. There should be more, but she searched the debris field for arns and arns and found only these small pieces of Talyn, and nothing of Crais.

"Chiana, come here," Aeryn says. She softens when the girl hesitates; her hand flutters over her abdomen, settles on her thigh. "Tell me about Talyn. About his birth."

Chiana clambers down from her perch and closes the space between them, tilts her head to the side. She says, "You know…you know how Moya sometimes smells like a – a coin on your tongue?"

Aeryn knits her brows, then nods.

"Talyn smelled sweet," Chiana says. "Like syrup on a spoon."

Aeryn straightens her shoulders, her braid tumbling down her back, and lets Chiana's nostalgia wash against her.

"He was warm," Chiana says. "I thought it was gonna be too hot, in the vent, but it wasn't. He was warm and bright and he – he shone." She scuffs the toe of her boot against the floor and laughs, sudden and sharp. "I was scared he was gonna die."

Moya's ache thrums behind Pilot's eyes, and Aeryn says, "Tell me."

"Frell," Chiana says, "I was a wellnitz." But she crouches, a gloved finger tracing circles and lines Aeryn can't decipher in the dust, in Talyn. "Pilot forced an atmosphere so – so I could breathe, and I knew Moya could breathe atmosphere, but I wasn't sure if the narl could, or if he had to learn; and when I couldn't cut the seam I was scared he'd suffocate, because I didn't know what the frell I was doing."

Aeryn traces her own line in the dust, rubs it out. "Chiana…"

"Yeah?"

"D'Argo told me you're going to look for the Nebari Resistance." She holds herself as close as she can. "Ask Crichton to go with you."

Chiana's eyes open wide. "No."

Aeryn hadn't expected that, but then she hadn't expected to return to Moya, to find Crichton sleeping alone. "No? You don't want him to?"

"I want him to," Chiana says, and she shakes her hair, her shoulders. "I don't want to hear him tell me all the reasons he can't." She stands, steps back into shadow. "He'll never, never walk away from you, Aeryn. He loves you."

Aeryn says, "I know."