John had spent most of the day in his cell, having neither the energy nor the inclination to search out anyone else on the ship. D'Argo had been kind enough to bring him food and get him drunk, and that was enough activity for one day. He was actually starting to sober up when he felt Moya buckle and roll. He looked up to catch Aeryn coming at him like a speed skater on nitro. The impact knocked them both back on the bed, both momentarily dazed and confused. They lay there, breaths heaving against each other while they tried to get their bearings.
John didn't dare touch her. He caught her like he'd just been sacked in a scrimmage and lay against the bed, arms at his sides, waiting for her to right the situation. Of course, at that moment for him, the situation couldn't have been anymore right. It was a horrible, deranged hybrid of fantasy and reality. He could feel her thigh between his legs, just enough weight to make him try to think of baseball and nuns. He could see the clear sutures in her chin, where she had taken off the bandage, thin and shiny against the angry red of the closed wound. The yellow tones of the bruise fading underneath her eye. The scent of her and her leathers foreign and familiar at the same time. It would be so easy to wrap his arms around her, to shift his weight and roll and feel her body beneath his, to feel her cool lips pressed to his own. To get himself killed.
It was barely a microt and a half before she tried to scramble to her feet, her boots still so slick with Moya's lubricant that she only succeeded in skidding and slipping against John. He grunted as he took a knee to the groin and reached out to grab her by her upper arms.
"Just. Hold. Still. A. Microt." He said through clenched teeth. Her eyes went hard and she turned her face to the wall as she complied.
John laid her gently on the bed, her feet still dangling on the floor. He sucked in his first breath and resisted the urge to puke as it felt like his testicles crawled out of his liver. He bent over her boots and unbuckled them, the effort of such a simple task seeming monumental for a dichotomy of reasons, the least of which being his current physical agony.
He set the boots on a cleaning rag and sat down heavily next to her. "There, now you can move without injuring either one of us." Without a word she picked up her boots and moved around to her side of the bed. Her side of the bed. God what a twisted universe I live in, John thought.
"I mean, I realize you have no use for them anymore, but I might sometime in the future." John continued to mutter under his breath. He sucked air heavily between clenched teeth and wiped the sweat off his face.
"The solvent is on the shelf," John called out, louder really than was necessary. He felt the bed shift as she got up and he heard the water in the shower running. "Next to the chakon oil cartridges," he finished, though his voice was now hardly above a whisper. Aeryn was currently naked in his quarters, and he had all the standing in her eyes of being not much more significant than a single headed tralkez.
John pondered his life for a moment, sitting cross legged on his corner of the bed, arms resting against his knees and running a finger nervously over his lips. Deciding it wasn't worth the effort, he checked the location of his side arm, slid out of his shirt and pulled his blanket up over himself. He didn't bother to com Pilot about the odd motion of the ship. If it had been serious the rest of the crew would have alerted him, and he didn't expect any sort of answer from Pilot until his and Moya's more esoteric needs were met.
Something caught his eye as he shifted in the bed. He looked at his hand. Two days later and the ink held fast. Lucky thirteen. The inkling of a thought started. It was like looking at a puzzle you knew you could put together, if you just had the time. Her hand on his on command. Her certainty at knowing his language. Had she bothered to learn to read to English? He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the number. She'd known. That meant he had taught her. The Other had taught her their language. His language. That made it now even more likely that his notebook was still in her possession. It's one thing to keep something that means nothing to you but you knew it meant everything to the absent lover. But if she could read the language now, she could sit and visit with him page after page.
Had he shown her Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Had he shown her his guiding star? The blanket that separated them drifted and he could smell the fresh scent of cleaning compound and water. Insomnia is the bane of the broken hearted. He was suddenly angry that she could know exactly how he felt about her, know every hope and dream he had for them and still be able to shut him out. Not only shut him out, but shut him down so coldly she was beginning to make Scorpy look like Santa Claus.
"…but we will not act on it…" pain and passion in each other's arms. The frost of the chamber forgotten as they collapsed together under the weight of their burden. For them, love was a burden. Those arns when she had returned from the dead were the best he'd had since landing out here in the land of lost. They'd all thought Scorpy was dead, his clone was under lock and key, and he and Aeryn knew they loved each other. She was alive and he wouldn't deny it another microt the moment he could lay eyes and arms on her. Except he hadn't counted on her denying it. Denying him. What had he expected, for her to collapse in his arms and make love right there, under the frozen guardianship of the surviving Interons?
The punch line to the whole thing was that she had acted on it. But the universe had flipped a coin and this good ol' boy had come out on the losing end. Again. Except, he had to face facts, Aeryn herself was not Lady Luck either. The two men she had ever loved in her life had died horrible, tragic deaths. How was she supposed to act? He didn't know whether it was a good thing or not that she was, for all intents and purposes, acting normally given the situation. Normal. Oh God, what WAS normal anymore?
He wondered if she ever thought about that day in the cold cargo chamber. If she still thought about the night they shared on the false earth. If she still remembered their first kiss in a cold transport pod, their oxygen dwindling and their lives with it. Did she remember running blindly down corridors they'd never seen before, his sanity slipping wildly away, stopping to kiss her. He had needed her to anchor himself and it had worked. He had been desperate to tell her then how much he loved her, but she knew. Did she remember that moment? He closed his eyes, one tear slipping down to drown in the fabric of his pillow. No, she remembered other moments he had no recollection of. She remembered times and places he'd never know. She remembered making love with a man who had taken the time to teach her his language before dying. The man whose bed she shared now only bore his face, not his soul.
Johns dreams that night were full of ice and frozen kisses on clay lips.
"Where's Crichton?" Chiana asked.
Aeryn didn't look up from the landing strut on D'Argo's ship. The oozing streams of gelatinous goo had given way to a fine sheen of clear oil. This was, however, a far cry from any improvement as it made the previous material seem tacky in appearance and texture. Aeryn moved as if in slow motion.
"Did you hear me?" Chiana asked from her seat on the maintenance bench.
"I heard you, Chiana," Aeryn replied coldly. "It's not my job to be his keeper."
"Yeah, well, I know, it's just that," Chiana paused, chewing her lip as she tried to find the right words. "I just thought since you two were sharing quarters…"
"It's only a matter of circumstance." Aeryn decided Moya's lubricant hadn't penetrated the machine well and moved carefully to another landing strut.
"I realize," Chiana replied defensively, trying to assume a more casual posture than her voice would allow, "but--" Aeryn's look stopped her thought cold. Both women seemed to hold their breath until Aeryn relaxed and returned to her inspection.
"Chiana, let's just agree not to discuss Crichton."
Never a woman known to heed caution, Chiana took a deep breath, crouched low on the table so that her knees seemed to rest on either side of her ears and said, "You know what Aeryn, I think that's exactly what you need. I mean, the last time you wouldn't talk about it John ran off and got married."
Aeryn became a statue with her hand wedged into the machine well of the landing strut. Without lifting her head or bothering to remove her hand she said quietly, bitterly, "Chiana, do not presume to know what I need. All I need right now is for you to drop this discussion."
Chiana cocked her head and smiled. In the face of such a calm response she felt bold. "Aeryn, we have all been dancing around the subject since you came back aboard. I'm sorry you lost John, your John. We're all sorry. But this John is still alive and doesn't deserve to be treated like he's beneath your contempt. He's suffering too, you know."
Aeryn stood up slowly, using the body of the ship to guide herself towards Chiana's perch. Chiana coiled her legs underneath her, ready to spring and run if she had to. She watched the ex-Peacekeeper approach, her legs stiff and slow on Moya's slick floor. Her gait would have been comical if the intent on her face hadn't been so deadly.
Aeryn stopped in front of the gray Nebari, cocking her head as though trying to see something she hadn't noticed before. The soldier lashed out faster than Chiana had ever seen her move and before she could bolt or scream Aeryn's fingers were around her throat. They did not constrict her air, but their implied restraint was clear.
"Listen to me, you little Nebari trelk," Aeryn hissed, "until you spend a monen of your life wishing you were dead, living with a ghost and reliving every moment you spent together hoping it'll be enough to put you back together, or tear you down to a place where it won't matter anymore, then you can talk to me. Until then, accept this fact: John is dead. He is dead and I have to accept that. Do you understand this?"
Chiana nodded her head carefully, noticing Aeryn's fingers had begun to grip dangerously as her voice progressed from a smooth and controlled whisper to a volatile hiss. The younger woman watched the thin veneer of a control slip from Aeryn's eyes and for the space of a microt she read such pain she hoped never in her lifetime to have to experience any of the same. Realizing she was nearly strangling the Nebari girl, Aeryn released her without another word and returned to her work as though nothing had happened, her Peacekeeper mask back in place.
Chiana eased her way off the work bench and tried to unobtrusively make her way out of the maintenance bay. She encountered Jool just behind the door, breathing heavy and eyes wide.
"What did she do to you?" The red head asked.
Chiana gingerly touched her neck. "Nothing I didn't deserve."
Jool frowned at the cerulean blue bruises forming on the perfect alabaster Nebari skin. She grabbed Chiana's jaw and tilted her head roughly to get a better view. "What did you say to her?" she asked in a rough whisper.
Chi jerked her head out of Jool's hand and started walking, holding onto the wall for support. "I pushed and I shouldn't have, is all. I just…I just feel bad for John taking the brunt of her bad mood. He deserves better than that."
"Chiana," Jool said, struggling to keep up with her shipmate, "I don't deny that. But keep in mind what Aeryn is going through."
"What?" the other girl asked, her voice taking an edge, "I mean, when I thought Neri was dead if someone had bothered to tell me 'oh, by the way, his exact double is right over there' do you think I would have tracked him down just to treat him like it was all his fault in the first place? How many second chances does the universe give you?"
They came to an intersection and Jool jerked her head, indicating they should move towards the medical bay.
"It's not a second chance, Chiana. It's not like she woke up one morning and had another chance to start over with the same guy on Talyn. Now she has to get up every day and look at our John and relive every minute with a dead man."
Chiana smiled wickedly as they entered the medical bay. "I don't know…from what Rygel said those memories don't seem that bad to relive. I wouldn't mind having a few of them myself."
"The other Crichton died from radiation sickness, right?" Jool motioned for Chiana to get up on a table.
"Yeah, so?"
"Have you ever seen anyone die from massive radiation poisoning?" Chiana noticed Jool's voice take on that superior quality it had when she went into full doctor mode.
"I can't say that I have." Chiana conceded.
Jool began mixing liquids in a small basin and continued talking. "Crichton probably suffered from massive internal bleeding. He had burns on whatever part of his body came in contact with the radiation source. From what little information I gathered about his species when he was wounded, he would have had nose bleeds, nausea, vomiting, each system in his body would have given out one by one within a matter of arns."
"Okay, okay, enough with the pretty picture." Chiana said, wrinkling her nose. "What are you getting at?"
Jool came back and applied a cool cloth to the bruises darkening around Chiana's neck. "Here, hold this here and they'll repair themselves shortly," Jool took Chiana's hand and put it over the cloth. "And what I'm getting at is the fact that Aeryn is not remembering playing comparative anatomy in every dark hold aboard Talyn, what she remembers when she sees Crichton is tending his wounds and knowing he was never going recover no matter what she did. If you had seen your brother die, if you had held him in your arms, would you be so quick to welcome a duplicate?"
Chiana removed the cloth from her neck and gingerly nudged at the fading bruises. "Like I said, she didn't do anything I didn't deserve."
