Understanding More (G)

Written for a Challenge by Arevhat over on the Terra Firma board.

Settings and Spoilers: All through S1 to PKW and afterwards. Once again, it is all about the hair.

Warnings: Tame stuff, with a mix of soppiness and angst.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Thanks: To Pdsldl for the Beta.

1: Boundaries

Aeryn had found the bathing chamber on her third day aboard Moya. She had heard of such things, of course, but had never seen one before. Such luxuries were implicitly forbidden to low-ranking PeaceKeepers like herself. She was fascinated and lost herself exploring the extent to which her former superiors had seemingly denied themselves no luxuries. When she finally resumed her patrol of the Leviathan, she was surprised to find that she had spent nearly an arn investigating the chamber.

The next day, having made the necessary arrangements with Pilot, she returned for a more in-depth study.

Slipping her face below the warm water, Aeryn could feel her hair billowing around her head and shoulders. She found herself trying to imagine what she might look like to someone standing over her, before the need to breath drove her back to the surface. She had scarcely ever wondered what she might look like before.

As she lay, trying to ignore the time slipping purposelessly past, she tried to ignore her pangs of guilt. She was a PeaceKeeper Officer. She had overstepped boundaries. There was no place for personal indulgences in her life. But still she remained, allowing the slowly cooling water to hold her in its embrace.

2 Touch

Aeryn stood in the hanger, Scorpius lurking in the shadows behind her. Heat delirium clouded her thoughts. She could not focus sufficiently even to remember how much time had passed since Pilot had told them that the others had finally found Moya. Her damp, sweat-slicked hair tumbled out of control around her face, obscuring her already fuzzy vision, as she stumbled further into the hanger. Through the distorting lens of her headache and her heat delirium, the touch of her own wet hair caused a memory to surface of when, cycles earlier, she had first found Moya's bathing chamber. How many boundaries had she broken since then, for good or ill, she wondered? Well, she'd broken some more today, that was for sure.

"Chiana, Aeryn needs help," John spat out between the gritted teeth of his anger and frustration.

Aeryn, her perceptions befuddled, could only guess that only a few microts then passed before she felt Chiana's hair, gently spiky, just like its owner, brushing against her cheek. Aeryn knew she had been home on Moya for some time, but now she could feel that the Moyans had come home to her.

3 Guilt

Chiana wasn't sure how long she had been curled up in the alcove in the dark cell, alone apart from the broken bioloid. She felt compelled to keep vigil over the body that looked so much like Aeryn. Nobody else seemed inclined to do so. How could she have let it happen, how could she have allowed Aeryn the chance to martyr herself back on the dead Leviathan? How could she have not even noticed that her best friend had been replaced by a…. whatever?

Chiana found herself wondering if this bioloid, this….. Aeryn had had feelings. Had it felt pain, fear… guilt for its part in the deception? Had it even known what role it was playing? Had it truly deserved death? The unknown possibilities made her shudder, and she pushed them from her mind. As though any of this would help, Chiana scolded herself. As though it would bring Aeryn back. Either of them.

Her solitude was disturbed by the soft footsteps of Sikozu entering the room and crossing to the bioloid's side. Chiana watched the Kalish without revealing her presence. What was she doing here? Chiana's own guilt was forgotten as she remembered her anger at what she saw as Sikozu's part in Aeryn's demise.

Sikozu lifted the sheet over the ruined face. Slowly, her other arm stole towards the wreckage. The arm pulled back twice, but Sikozu forced it back to its task each time until, finally, fingertips brushed the wound in a manner that seemed to border on the tender. Sikozu's expression seemed softened, in another person, Chiana would have said shocked. Guilty, maybe?

Sikozu gave a gasp, a single, sharp intake of breath, and then brushed back a few strands of the bioloid-Aeryn's hair before finally withdrawing her hand.

Sikozu lowered the shroud, bit her lip, and then strode from the room, her face back to a controlled mask, her head held high. Her behaviour was almost a reflection of how Chiana imagined that Aeryn might have acted under similar circumstances.

Chiana returned to her silent, solitary misery, never imagining that her shipmate had been grieving for not just one but two lives cut short, feeling guilty about two kindred spirits that she had been unable to protect.

4 Trust

As Sikozu followed Scorpius away from the others she glanced back and saw Crichton help Aeryn into the fountain. Why did she let him treat her like that? Why did Crichton now push back Aeryn's hair from her face? Surely if she wanted it done, she could do it herself? Except, of course, Aeryn's hands were occupied, clenched to her distended belly. Perhaps that was Aeryn's reason why she allowed herself to be treated so, so like a child? Sikozu frowned, trying to understand why the PeaceKeeper had so debased herself, made herself so reliant on this weak creature.

As the couple passed out of her sight, Sikozu found herself wondering what their child would have looked like, what it would have been like, had all of this not happened and it had had the chance to live? It seemed unlikely now that she or they would ever know.

5 Hope

Aeryn had not really appreciated the significance of her husband's request when, shortly after his return to consciousness, John had pressed her to cut a lock of the downy hair from baby D'Argo's head and to store it in her locket. The one that she had hidden John's picture inside. She had agreed in the end more in the hope that it would shut him up than anything else.

Now, mere days later, Aeryn found herself alone in her prowler, trying to fill a boring arn as she flew home. She stared out of the canopy at the stars. John and the baby were out there, somewhere in front of her, asleep in their quarters on Moya. She opened the locket and smiled down at the treasures within as she thought of her child, her life-mate, her home.

She clasped the locket tightly in her fist, a single tear welling as a wave of understanding washed over her as to how much more she had now become.