Crichton

"I was born a Peacekeeper. I was always part of a division, a cadre, a unit, a team." Aeryn said this to John so matter-of-factly, yet also so sadly.

"Ah… yeah," he muttered feeling his throat go dry as he said it.

"I was only…" she answered.

"Looking for more of your kind."

She ducked her head and looked away. "Now you know."

John had never seen Aeryn get quite so upset. The horrible experience of being turned into a monster, using Pilot's DNA, or whatever the giant crustacean had, had affected her deeply. Of course he'd seen her mad as hell and boiling mad, with her pulse rifle ready to blast a hole in something or worse, someone. But the look on her face was so different from the usual look. "You're upset. Perfectly natural considering what that mad-scientist tried to do to you."

Aeryn whirled on him and now John saw that if her hands had that pulse rifle ready she'd blast him into dust. She shot to her feet and a slim fist hit the table. "Crichton!"

Crichton found himself watching her disappear down the tier and while part of him appreciated the retreating female backside, another part felt a flash of fear. Aeryn was so mercurial, so damn mad - all the time - or at least in the process of mad - that he usually couldn't even have a meaningful conversation with the woman. They were usually bickering about, well, nearly everything. Almost like a human woman.

Woman? Yeah, thought John to himself. Woman. Aeryn looked like a woman, acted like a woman, heck, she even smelled like a woman. And oh my God he'd had any number of spicy thoughts about her.

"Okay, John, she's a woman." He blew out a shaky breath followed with a laugh. "A woman - and she'd probably like to punch your lights out, right this moment." He shook his head. "And… if she's a woman, you'd better go apologize."

D'Argo watched Crichton stomp past him and he sneered. "Don't waste your breath Crichton!" he barked. "You can't reason with a Peacekeeper!"

John yelled over a shoulder. "Shut up, D'Argo. Just shut up!" A DRD skittered away from his angry footsteps and made a plaintive electronic noise. John braked to a halt and looked down at the yellow mechanoid. He knelt down and peered into the dual optical sensors of the tiny machine. "Sorry, little guy." He tapped on the carapace and sighed. "I'm not mad at you."

John found Aeryn working out in the large room she had appropriated for herself as an exercise space. She had painted a large image of the Peacekeeper flag on the floor, a red triangle piercing through a white one. The raw sexual symbolism had jarred him when he saw it for the first time. Was that the way that Peacekeepers looked at the Universe - all smashing and raping?

Aeryn had shed shoes, heavy vest, and shirt and was wearing some leotard-like thing from her calves up to her waist with what was essentially a sports bra above that. Her jet-black hair was pulled into a rough ponytail and as she whirled, her hair lashed about like an angry snake, and while John watched she absolutely murdered a punching bag with a combination of flashing feet and fists.

She stopped with chest heaving and sweat running down her body, soaking her clothing. "Like what you see John?"

"What?" he exploded.

"You seemed to enjoy looking and touching Gilian." She stopped and wiped sweat from her face and chest with towel. "Or were you just putting on a show?"

"You are off your rocker, lady!" Gilian, John thought of her often; Gilian of the blonde hair and soft lips. Gilian was about as different from Aeryn as D'Argo was from Rigel.

Aeryn kicked viciously at the punching bag a few more times.

"Jeeze." John felt fear as Aeryn whirled about, and with a flashing left foot struck the bag squarely, tearing it right of the spring loaded post it was mounted on.

Aeryn looked daggers at the cowering human in the doorway. "One of Pilot's DRDs can fix it."

John stared at her. "That's not the point. Isn't that the fourth time you've destroyed that thing?"

Aeryn crossed her arms, and John could not help but notice how her breasts bulged when she did so. She licked her lips and grimaced showing all her teeth. The juxtaposition of sweaty female flesh and feral near snarl made the hair on the back of John's stand up while something else tried to rise. "God!"

"You're invoking this creator person of Earth." Aeryn chortled. "Has she answered you? You seem to call out to her often enough."

"Aeryn, we don't exactly think of God as being male or female."

"Oh? Seems to me that you need a female to create young. Unless this god of your is both sexes."

John laughed. "That would be weird."

"Makes about as much sense as waving a hand and then things just spontaneously happen."

"Uh, Aeryn, I didn't come down here to discuss Earth religions with you."

She threw down the towel and stamped towards him. "Oh? Well why did you?"

"I…" John ducked his head. "No. I, well… I…"

"Has a gatlic got your tongue?" She laughed. "Or do you have some parasite that's been eating your brain?" Her arms came back to being crossed and she took an angry stance. "That would make about as much sense as when you talking about baseball - that team thing you keep mentioning. Trying to get to first base, John?" she scoffed.

"Aeryn, you have no idea what you're talking about." He shook his head thinking that if she really knew what getting to first base meant, she squash him as viciously as the punching bag had been.

"Oh?" Aeryn took two steps and got nearly nose to nose with Crichton. "I'm not making any sense. Right."

"Aeryn," John started to hold out his hands and pulled them back when they got far too close to the very sweaty and all too human looking mammary glands under her brief black top. "I…" dropped his arms. "I don't want to fight any more, is all. And…"

"And?"

John could see anger in her face and something else just behind her eyes - something that was human - very human. He could see her lip quivering while a pulse in her neck leaped spasmodically. "Aeryn, I hurt you and I'm sorry."

"No, you haven't! Just shut up!"

John looked at Aeryn and he didn't see the angry Peacekeeper for he saw something that he'd seen when they used to play pickup basketball on the playground, long ago. And when picking team mates one by one, there were always hurt feelings - for someone was always picked last.

John raised his eyes to the overhead. "Lord."

"You and your god again?"

"No! No! Listen to me. Don't you think that I'm lonely too? The only human out here in the middle of frelling nowhere!"

"The Uncharted Territories aren't quite your neighborhood are they? Or mine."

"No. They aren't." They stared at each for a few seconds, until John spoke. "Ah…Aeryn, I… doubt that we can be friends… but maybe we can be team mates."

Aeryn snorted. "Team mates?"

"I know I'm not so hot in the gunplay department, and sometimes you're far too quick at shooting first and asking questions later, but…"

"Team mates. You want to be team mates."

"Maybe."

Aeryn sighed. "Like your baseball."

John nodded. "I suppose."

Aeryn laughed sardonically. "So you want to play your Earth game - baseball?"

"Not quite."

"You want to try and get to first base."

John laughed almost gleefully. "Not quite. No."

"But you want to play the game?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I'd like to try."

Aeryn bent down and picked up her wet towel. "Here team mate," and she flung it into his chest. "Clean this."

John was left holding the towel, smelling very much like Aeryn as she walked away and he could not help but notice the smirk on her face.