Spoilers: up through Dog With Two Bones
Rating: R (some difficult topics)
Summary: J&A angst, some Butch and Sundance.
Disclaimers: Blah, blah, blah. Not mine.
Huge thanks to my betas: Aeryncrichton and WalkingTheBeam
Special note: thanks for the feedback, Charlie. And hang on, tough times ahead.
DISPOSSESSION
PART 4a
*************
John could feel his muscles trembling with the sustained strain and redistributed the weight of Aeryn's body with a jerky movement that brought a moan from her lips and a further cracking of his injured ribs. She had not wanted to land on the planet at first, she had not even deigned to mention the planet's presence to him. Had he not happened to peer through a porthole as he was going through some repairs, he wouldn't even have known it was there and that she was taking them on a flying vector away from it.
She had avoided the subject in command, sending him curtly on his way to repair the ventilation system and for a fleeting second as he had stood there before her shaking body, he had considered emotional blackmail, wondering if losing consciousness before her would make her change her mind but then realized that that was the kind of bad joke she would never let him recover from. Before his insistence that they stop on the planet to find some help, she had argued that it was too dangerous for them to stop there, hardly two arns away from their escape, that their wounds were only superficial and didn't require a doctor's attention. He had left his repairs half-way done and had marched back to command in seething frustration, planting himself before her, looking at her feverish eyes shining in her face covered with sweat. She had started the same arguments again with her upsetting superior soldier tone and he had gone ballistic at her words, his mixture of anger and fear managing to scare her for the first time that he could remember. Or maybe she had just been already too weak to argue any further.
They had hidden the Marauder near the hills outside of town and trudged through the thick forest for over an arn, all senses kept in alert by the incessant creepy sounds coming from the forest's dark recesses, grateful for the pulse pistols they had found in the Marauder among all kinds of other weapons. He had offered to help her from the start but she had shaken her head and marched beside him with gritted teeth and a face drained of all colors until her knees had buckled beneath her and she had passed out. He had picked her up and pressed her body against his chest, too scared for her life to pay attention to his own pain, his heart beating frantically against her side, his mouth murmuring encouragements into her hair.
He spotted the first outskirts of the town with genuine relief, the sun was nearly set now and he didn't feel like spending the night in the forest. He proceeded along side streets and narrow alleyways, glancing inside buildings through back windows, looking for some sort of medical facility. He couldn't trust anyone to ask for directions, for all he knew, there could be a Peacekeeper outpost on the planet, even in this very town and he was not yet desperate enough to risk falling into their hands and ask for their mercy. Not yet, but soon.
His breath caught at the sight of what appeared to be a doctor's office. He propped her body carefully against the building's wall and raised himself on his toes to take a better look inside. Rubbing his arms to ease back the flood of blood into them, he examined the room carefully. No one was there at the moment but the place had the unmistakable feel of a doctor's office with what seemed to be an examination table, several ugly looking surgical instruments and a desk on one side. Wafts of that repulsively familiar medical smell came to his nose and sealed his resolve. Keeping his eyes on Aeryn's form lying against the wall, he approached the back door of the building and proceeded with a swift breaking of its lock that Chiana would have considered quite neat. Cracking the door open, he took a cautious peek inside and, satisfied with the absence of movement there, picked up Aeryn again with a muffled grunt.
He crossed the small and unlit storage room to the opposite door leading to the room he had seen from the outside. Pressing his ear against the cool material, he slowly pushed the door open. The room was still empty but he could hear voices in another room and unidentifiable noises from yet another one. On closer look, the medical equipment of the room seemed more technically advanced than it had seemed from the outside, the place even had a certain wealthy air about it that spoke of rich or numerous clientele, maybe both. If regular doctors on this planet were anything like human doctors, they would have fixed visiting hours and at this late time of the day, only the doctor, and an assistant perhaps, would be there. He carefully deposited Aeryn on the examination table and unholstered his pulse pistol, circling the table so as to be able to keep his eyes on the other two doors and protect her from whoever or whatever would come out of them while he approached the third one with the voices behind it, ready to point his gun at the first person to cross its threshold, hoping to find help. He heard the voices fade away and panicked for a fleeting second as he realized they could be going for good and he'd be left here alone with her. But then he relaxed, the light was still on in the office, someone had to turn it off unless... He was cut off in his thoughts as a door closed on the other side and one set of slow and heavy footsteps came toward his position. His fingers tightened nervously around the grip of his pulse pistol.
He was so used to feeling dwarfed by the tall aliens he kept meeting that his weapon pointed at empty air at first and he had to lower it swiftly to bring it level to level with the face of that particular alien, whose muscular bipedal shape towered at five and a half feet at the most. He, or so it seemed, had a dark brown skin and blinding white hair, his features bore a resemblance to the Luxans' leonine look and his dark eyes remained unfazed before the threat of John's pistol. John circled him swiftly, his pistol still trained on him and peered through the door to make sure no one else was there. Satisfied, he finished closing the door and circled back to face the alien.
"Is this your office?" He asked with a nod toward the desk and the examination bed.
The alien only blinked once in answer, his deep gaze boring unnervingly into John's.
"Good good," John sighed in relief, "then you can help." He stepped away from the alien and gestured toward the examination bed. "She's… she's wounded, shot with a pulse pistol about three arns ago," he started explaining as he approached Aeryn's form, waving his weapon around in his nervous babble. "She's been sweating a lot and then she lost consciousness about a half arn ago…" He stopped abruptly, wondering why the alien had not moved one inch and just kept looking at him with the same unfazed gaze. "What?? Am I talking too fast?"
The alien didn't reply. John licked his lips nervously and gave out a weary sigh. "In case you're wondering, we're not Peacekeepers." He finally realized that he still had his gun in his hand and clicked it back into his holster. He walked back to the alien with his hands held before him in a peaceful gesture. "I'm sorry if I scared you, I never meant to hurt you, it's just that…" He wished for a second that he had followed his own advice and stopped pointing guns at strangers' faces in the first place. He swallowed hard before the alien's impassive features and pressed his lips in a light grimace. "Please?"
He thought he saw sympathy in the alien's eyes for a fleeting moment but as silence continued to stretch between them, his shoulders sagged in defeat. His hand hovered on his pulse pistol, he unholstered it again but presented it butt first to the alien, doubting that threats of violence would work in Aeryn's favor. "Listen… kill me if you don't like me but please…please… take care of her," John finally begged him. "She's in pain… she's…" His voice broke and he had to press his hands against his sides to ease the pressure on his insides. He felt his eyes starting to fill in with tears.
The alien's features finally registered some emotion and he moved past John towards the examination table. "Pulse fire you said?" he asked matter-of- factly with a voice that sounded like a low growl as he lifted Aeryn's vest and shirt to take a look at the wound on her left side.
"Yes. One shot… I think," John supplied gratefully in-between shallow breaths, wincing at the alien's rough examination of Aeryn's wound. He watched attentively as the alien grabbed what he figured was some kind of scanner and ran it over the wound.
"Hmm," the alien mused aloud as he consulted the readouts. "It's not a grave wound, not for a Sebacean anyway," he stated in a clinical voice. "More blood than I would expect though…" He remarked, flipping her shirt back over the wound. "Could some of it be yours?" he asked as his eyes went over John's own bloody wound.
"Huh… maybe… probably…" John stuttered, somewhat relieved that, despite the apparent roughness, the alien seemed to know what he was doing. "I carried her for a while…"
"She has a fever too… interesting…" The alien mused again and pulled Aeryn's eyelids to check her pupils. "Within limits." He brought his scanner over Aeryn's head and started a slow descent. "Has she had any similar health problems before, any recent surgery or grave illness?"
"Huh… no but… the thing is… she's… " John swallowed hard, his constricted throat refusing to let the words through. The scanner came to a halt over Aeryn's lower midriff. "She's pregnant."
"I see," the alien stated tonelessly.
John felt a cold dread run down his spine. He heard a loud noise coming from the outside and reached for his pulse pistol right before the office door slammed open to let in a breathless and desperate looking younger alien.
"Don't!" The older alien warned John but too late.
The newcomer's eyes widened at the sight of John and the pulse pistol trained on him and he dropped his heavy bundle on the ground. A gross- looking critter fled from the blanket and went to hide in a dark corner of the room.
"Frell!! Oh frell!!" The younger alien exclaimed in despair.
The older alien wrenched John's pulse pistol out of his grip and sent it flying across the room, freezing John into silence with a look of utter annoyance. He picked up the blanket on the floor and slammed shut the door leading to the outside. "What happened?" he asked the younger alien as he approached the corner where the critter was hiding.
"She swallowed Nuib," the younger alien replied a bit embarrassed.
"Again?!" The older alien barked, sending the younger alien's gaze to the floor. He sighed wearily. "Let's hope she swallowed her head first this time." He extended the cover between his two arms. "Get her moving," he ordered him, gesturing toward the corner as he readied himself to intercept the critter on its escape course.
John watched in fascination as the two aliens set up their trap. Frenzied growls escaped from the dark corner and were answered by a cacophony of weird sounds from behind the office's unexplored door. Oh God! Oh my God! John thought in horror as realization dawned.
"You're a vet?!" He choked out, looking at the older alien, cold sweat running down his spine.
"A what?" The younger alien asked as he crawled on the floor toward the hiding critter and then realized John wasn't looking at him.
"A veterinarian, a doctor for the animals," John stammered, not believing what was happening, his gaze fixed on the scene unfolding before his eyes. He had screwed up again, at the worst possible time.
"Oh yeah! And a frelling good one too," the younger alien exclaimed in earnest as the older one failed to reply. He lunged his right arm toward the dark recess sending the critter out, "best one this side of the planet."
The older alien neatly caught the fleeing critter in the blanket. "Wouldn't have to be if you people paid more attention to what I say," he rumbled in an even lower growl than before, grunting as the critter thrashed wildly under the blanket. He looked up at the younger alien who had come rushing by his side. "Hold her head."
"You! Don't stand there gawking like a frelling kimo," he addressed John, jerking him into a dazed motion. "Come here and grab her hind legs." John went to kneel beside him, trying to determine where and what to grab exactly under the blanket. He fumbled for a while until he finally caught hold of two tiny appendages that he hoped were the said hind legs.
The older alien pushed back the blanket toward John's end, revealing the critter as the younger alien followed his move to wind a muscular arm crisscrossed with fine-looking scars of various ages and lengths around the critter's 'neck', which as far as John could tell was somewhere around the middle of the body. His gaze followed the older alien as he got up to fetch some medical instruments and then went back to the critter. The thing looked like a three-feet long crocodile fed with dioxines. It had a scaly sickly-looking grey skin, six very short legs and one of the foulest smells ever in the animal kingdom. His eyes rose in disgust and met those of the half-turned younger alien, who gave him a shy smile.
"She's cute, huh?" The younger alien said with pride. He threw a quick glance toward Aeryn's form on the examination table and then pointedly stared at John's wound. "What kind of house animal do you and your mate have?" He inquired earnestly.
John gave him a blank look.
"They have a Pilar," the old alien supplied for John as he came back wearing a thick padding on his right arm and carrying a huge metallic rod, a rope and a bag.
"Yeah, that's regad! Pilars are so ruthless!!" The younger alien gushed. "Do you think you could let me handle yours for a moment?" He asked John haltingly, excitement lighting his eyes.
John's blank look tinged with worry.
"I don't use weapons myself," the younger alien reassured him. "I swear I'll be real gentle with him," he even stated solemnly. "Or is it her?"
"Will you shut up for a microt, Dabaroo!" The older alien admonished the younger alien testily as he knelt down and carefully placed the bag by his side. "Their Pilar has had to be fully chained," he stated grimly, staring hard at Dabaroo's excited face, which immediately crunched up in concern.
"Aw, I'm so sorry," Dabaroo apologized to John. "You must be so worried for your animal."
John's eyes flicked toward the older alien's face and he nodded numbly to Dabaroo at the older alien's silent urging.
"I had one too a couple cycles ago, a really strong one, nearly bit my arm off," Dabaroo whispered conspiratorially to John. "Uru patched me up real good," he added, nodding toward the older alien then made a pouting grimace, "though I'd rather he'd left me with bigger scars."
John's glance switched from the fine-looking scars on Dabaroo's arm to Uru's face.
"Let's do this," Uru only grunted in reply.
Dabaroo immediately straddled the back of the dioxine croco and heaved its cavernous mouth open with Uru's help. John had to put his knee on the croco's lower back to keep it still. Once Uru had managed to insert the rod vertically inside the mouth, he plunged his right arm inside and rummaged for a while before pulling out what John could best describe as a legless scorpion about a foot long with thick yellow fur. Uru immediately dropped it into the bag and closed the sash tight.
"Nuib!" Dabaroo let out in a relieved sigh as the new critter started to move wildly inside the bag. "Bad girl, Poatur, bad girl!" he admonished the croco lovingly.
Uru knocked the rod away and, as Poatur's mouth clamped shut, tied it tightly with the rope. John got up with them awkwardly as Uru helped Dabaroo get a good hold of Poatur. Uru then grabbed the bag on the floor, gave it to Dabaroo and forcefully shoved him toward the door. "Don't come back anytime soon," he ordered him.
"Thanks so much Uru," Dabaroo gushed. "Thanks sir," he added, looking at John, "About your Pilar…"
"Humpff," Uru growled and slammed the door to Dabaroo's face. "Young people!" He flipped one of the switches on the wall, generating the roll down of curtains on the windows then went to a sink on the side and got rid of his thick padding. He also removed his jacket, which had been thoroughly dirtied during the intervention and proceeded to clean his hands and arms meticulously with a pungent liquid.
"Huh…" John started as he came to stand between Uru and Aeryn lying on the examination bed still unconscious. The alien raised an expectant eyebrow and John shuffled nervously under his commanding gaze. "Huh…"
"Huh what?" Uru sighed irritatedly. "You have someone else you can threaten?"
John felt the cutting words stab his heart and then slowly shook his head and took a step aside.
Uru finished his cleansing, pulled on a pair of thin gloves and approached the examination table. He turned on a huge light, bathing Aeryn's colourless face in an even whiter glow then picked up his scanner and ran it over her one more time. John hovered by him, following his every moves and expressions, feeding his worry and hope from tiny flickers on the alien's face. Uru turned off the scanner and went to a cabinet, leaving a clueless John by Aeryn's side.
"Wait!" John recoiled at the sight of the huge syringe Uru was coming back with.
Uru sighed deeply again. "You don't want me to sedate her?"
"No! I mean yes, of course, I want you to sedate her," John stammered before Uru's patronizing stare but he couldn't help placing a halting hand on his arm as the imposing syringe neared Aeryn's neck. "I don't want her to feel pain."
"She IS most probably feeling pain now," Uru pointed out.
John grimaced and backed off again; Aeryn hardly stirred as the sedative was injected. He nearly stepped in again when Uru then proceeded to remove Aeryn's pants before his sickly fascinated stare. New blood started to cover Uru's gloves as he uncovered her once grey boxers, sending John into an escaping half-turn.
"Oh shit! Shit shit shit!" He exclaimed loudly, flailing his arms around in distress, pacing back and forth anxiously right by Uru.
He heard a slapping sound and a strong hand painfully clamped his shoulder. "Wait outside," Uru ordered him firmly, deftly discarding his removed glove in the sink.
"What?! No, I can't leave her!" John choked, turning back toward the table and then immediately averted his eyes, bile rising in his throat.
"You're disturbing me," Uru growled, "and that's not good for her," he added with a softer tone.
John resisted Uru's push toward the door, trying to force himself into staying calm but his body started to shake uncontrollably.
"She's heavily sedated now," Uru stated calmly, "She won't know you're here. All you're going to achieve is delay and impair my work. I've dealt with situations a lot worse than this, fighting time to save people's lives but I can not work properly without some peace and quiet."
John opened his mouth to speak.
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Uru interrupted him.
John swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat again. He had not gone on a leap of faith in quite a long time but there was something in the alien's calm gaze that tugged at his once trusting nature. His eyes travelled over to Aeryn's deathly pale face and slid back again to lock on Uru's unyielding gaze.
"You can do this?" He asked, his voice muffled behind the back of his hand.
"Yes."
"And she WILL be all right?"
"She will," Uru replied with the slightest emphasis on the pronoun.
John nodded wordlessly and walked away to leave the room but then stopped on the threshold. "Her name is Aeryn. I'm John… or Crichton… in case she asks for me."
Rating: R (some difficult topics)
Summary: J&A angst, some Butch and Sundance.
Disclaimers: Blah, blah, blah. Not mine.
Huge thanks to my betas: Aeryncrichton and WalkingTheBeam
Special note: thanks for the feedback, Charlie. And hang on, tough times ahead.
DISPOSSESSION
PART 4a
*************
John could feel his muscles trembling with the sustained strain and redistributed the weight of Aeryn's body with a jerky movement that brought a moan from her lips and a further cracking of his injured ribs. She had not wanted to land on the planet at first, she had not even deigned to mention the planet's presence to him. Had he not happened to peer through a porthole as he was going through some repairs, he wouldn't even have known it was there and that she was taking them on a flying vector away from it.
She had avoided the subject in command, sending him curtly on his way to repair the ventilation system and for a fleeting second as he had stood there before her shaking body, he had considered emotional blackmail, wondering if losing consciousness before her would make her change her mind but then realized that that was the kind of bad joke she would never let him recover from. Before his insistence that they stop on the planet to find some help, she had argued that it was too dangerous for them to stop there, hardly two arns away from their escape, that their wounds were only superficial and didn't require a doctor's attention. He had left his repairs half-way done and had marched back to command in seething frustration, planting himself before her, looking at her feverish eyes shining in her face covered with sweat. She had started the same arguments again with her upsetting superior soldier tone and he had gone ballistic at her words, his mixture of anger and fear managing to scare her for the first time that he could remember. Or maybe she had just been already too weak to argue any further.
They had hidden the Marauder near the hills outside of town and trudged through the thick forest for over an arn, all senses kept in alert by the incessant creepy sounds coming from the forest's dark recesses, grateful for the pulse pistols they had found in the Marauder among all kinds of other weapons. He had offered to help her from the start but she had shaken her head and marched beside him with gritted teeth and a face drained of all colors until her knees had buckled beneath her and she had passed out. He had picked her up and pressed her body against his chest, too scared for her life to pay attention to his own pain, his heart beating frantically against her side, his mouth murmuring encouragements into her hair.
He spotted the first outskirts of the town with genuine relief, the sun was nearly set now and he didn't feel like spending the night in the forest. He proceeded along side streets and narrow alleyways, glancing inside buildings through back windows, looking for some sort of medical facility. He couldn't trust anyone to ask for directions, for all he knew, there could be a Peacekeeper outpost on the planet, even in this very town and he was not yet desperate enough to risk falling into their hands and ask for their mercy. Not yet, but soon.
His breath caught at the sight of what appeared to be a doctor's office. He propped her body carefully against the building's wall and raised himself on his toes to take a better look inside. Rubbing his arms to ease back the flood of blood into them, he examined the room carefully. No one was there at the moment but the place had the unmistakable feel of a doctor's office with what seemed to be an examination table, several ugly looking surgical instruments and a desk on one side. Wafts of that repulsively familiar medical smell came to his nose and sealed his resolve. Keeping his eyes on Aeryn's form lying against the wall, he approached the back door of the building and proceeded with a swift breaking of its lock that Chiana would have considered quite neat. Cracking the door open, he took a cautious peek inside and, satisfied with the absence of movement there, picked up Aeryn again with a muffled grunt.
He crossed the small and unlit storage room to the opposite door leading to the room he had seen from the outside. Pressing his ear against the cool material, he slowly pushed the door open. The room was still empty but he could hear voices in another room and unidentifiable noises from yet another one. On closer look, the medical equipment of the room seemed more technically advanced than it had seemed from the outside, the place even had a certain wealthy air about it that spoke of rich or numerous clientele, maybe both. If regular doctors on this planet were anything like human doctors, they would have fixed visiting hours and at this late time of the day, only the doctor, and an assistant perhaps, would be there. He carefully deposited Aeryn on the examination table and unholstered his pulse pistol, circling the table so as to be able to keep his eyes on the other two doors and protect her from whoever or whatever would come out of them while he approached the third one with the voices behind it, ready to point his gun at the first person to cross its threshold, hoping to find help. He heard the voices fade away and panicked for a fleeting second as he realized they could be going for good and he'd be left here alone with her. But then he relaxed, the light was still on in the office, someone had to turn it off unless... He was cut off in his thoughts as a door closed on the other side and one set of slow and heavy footsteps came toward his position. His fingers tightened nervously around the grip of his pulse pistol.
He was so used to feeling dwarfed by the tall aliens he kept meeting that his weapon pointed at empty air at first and he had to lower it swiftly to bring it level to level with the face of that particular alien, whose muscular bipedal shape towered at five and a half feet at the most. He, or so it seemed, had a dark brown skin and blinding white hair, his features bore a resemblance to the Luxans' leonine look and his dark eyes remained unfazed before the threat of John's pistol. John circled him swiftly, his pistol still trained on him and peered through the door to make sure no one else was there. Satisfied, he finished closing the door and circled back to face the alien.
"Is this your office?" He asked with a nod toward the desk and the examination bed.
The alien only blinked once in answer, his deep gaze boring unnervingly into John's.
"Good good," John sighed in relief, "then you can help." He stepped away from the alien and gestured toward the examination bed. "She's… she's wounded, shot with a pulse pistol about three arns ago," he started explaining as he approached Aeryn's form, waving his weapon around in his nervous babble. "She's been sweating a lot and then she lost consciousness about a half arn ago…" He stopped abruptly, wondering why the alien had not moved one inch and just kept looking at him with the same unfazed gaze. "What?? Am I talking too fast?"
The alien didn't reply. John licked his lips nervously and gave out a weary sigh. "In case you're wondering, we're not Peacekeepers." He finally realized that he still had his gun in his hand and clicked it back into his holster. He walked back to the alien with his hands held before him in a peaceful gesture. "I'm sorry if I scared you, I never meant to hurt you, it's just that…" He wished for a second that he had followed his own advice and stopped pointing guns at strangers' faces in the first place. He swallowed hard before the alien's impassive features and pressed his lips in a light grimace. "Please?"
He thought he saw sympathy in the alien's eyes for a fleeting moment but as silence continued to stretch between them, his shoulders sagged in defeat. His hand hovered on his pulse pistol, he unholstered it again but presented it butt first to the alien, doubting that threats of violence would work in Aeryn's favor. "Listen… kill me if you don't like me but please…please… take care of her," John finally begged him. "She's in pain… she's…" His voice broke and he had to press his hands against his sides to ease the pressure on his insides. He felt his eyes starting to fill in with tears.
The alien's features finally registered some emotion and he moved past John towards the examination table. "Pulse fire you said?" he asked matter-of- factly with a voice that sounded like a low growl as he lifted Aeryn's vest and shirt to take a look at the wound on her left side.
"Yes. One shot… I think," John supplied gratefully in-between shallow breaths, wincing at the alien's rough examination of Aeryn's wound. He watched attentively as the alien grabbed what he figured was some kind of scanner and ran it over the wound.
"Hmm," the alien mused aloud as he consulted the readouts. "It's not a grave wound, not for a Sebacean anyway," he stated in a clinical voice. "More blood than I would expect though…" He remarked, flipping her shirt back over the wound. "Could some of it be yours?" he asked as his eyes went over John's own bloody wound.
"Huh… maybe… probably…" John stuttered, somewhat relieved that, despite the apparent roughness, the alien seemed to know what he was doing. "I carried her for a while…"
"She has a fever too… interesting…" The alien mused again and pulled Aeryn's eyelids to check her pupils. "Within limits." He brought his scanner over Aeryn's head and started a slow descent. "Has she had any similar health problems before, any recent surgery or grave illness?"
"Huh… no but… the thing is… she's… " John swallowed hard, his constricted throat refusing to let the words through. The scanner came to a halt over Aeryn's lower midriff. "She's pregnant."
"I see," the alien stated tonelessly.
John felt a cold dread run down his spine. He heard a loud noise coming from the outside and reached for his pulse pistol right before the office door slammed open to let in a breathless and desperate looking younger alien.
"Don't!" The older alien warned John but too late.
The newcomer's eyes widened at the sight of John and the pulse pistol trained on him and he dropped his heavy bundle on the ground. A gross- looking critter fled from the blanket and went to hide in a dark corner of the room.
"Frell!! Oh frell!!" The younger alien exclaimed in despair.
The older alien wrenched John's pulse pistol out of his grip and sent it flying across the room, freezing John into silence with a look of utter annoyance. He picked up the blanket on the floor and slammed shut the door leading to the outside. "What happened?" he asked the younger alien as he approached the corner where the critter was hiding.
"She swallowed Nuib," the younger alien replied a bit embarrassed.
"Again?!" The older alien barked, sending the younger alien's gaze to the floor. He sighed wearily. "Let's hope she swallowed her head first this time." He extended the cover between his two arms. "Get her moving," he ordered him, gesturing toward the corner as he readied himself to intercept the critter on its escape course.
John watched in fascination as the two aliens set up their trap. Frenzied growls escaped from the dark corner and were answered by a cacophony of weird sounds from behind the office's unexplored door. Oh God! Oh my God! John thought in horror as realization dawned.
"You're a vet?!" He choked out, looking at the older alien, cold sweat running down his spine.
"A what?" The younger alien asked as he crawled on the floor toward the hiding critter and then realized John wasn't looking at him.
"A veterinarian, a doctor for the animals," John stammered, not believing what was happening, his gaze fixed on the scene unfolding before his eyes. He had screwed up again, at the worst possible time.
"Oh yeah! And a frelling good one too," the younger alien exclaimed in earnest as the older one failed to reply. He lunged his right arm toward the dark recess sending the critter out, "best one this side of the planet."
The older alien neatly caught the fleeing critter in the blanket. "Wouldn't have to be if you people paid more attention to what I say," he rumbled in an even lower growl than before, grunting as the critter thrashed wildly under the blanket. He looked up at the younger alien who had come rushing by his side. "Hold her head."
"You! Don't stand there gawking like a frelling kimo," he addressed John, jerking him into a dazed motion. "Come here and grab her hind legs." John went to kneel beside him, trying to determine where and what to grab exactly under the blanket. He fumbled for a while until he finally caught hold of two tiny appendages that he hoped were the said hind legs.
The older alien pushed back the blanket toward John's end, revealing the critter as the younger alien followed his move to wind a muscular arm crisscrossed with fine-looking scars of various ages and lengths around the critter's 'neck', which as far as John could tell was somewhere around the middle of the body. His gaze followed the older alien as he got up to fetch some medical instruments and then went back to the critter. The thing looked like a three-feet long crocodile fed with dioxines. It had a scaly sickly-looking grey skin, six very short legs and one of the foulest smells ever in the animal kingdom. His eyes rose in disgust and met those of the half-turned younger alien, who gave him a shy smile.
"She's cute, huh?" The younger alien said with pride. He threw a quick glance toward Aeryn's form on the examination table and then pointedly stared at John's wound. "What kind of house animal do you and your mate have?" He inquired earnestly.
John gave him a blank look.
"They have a Pilar," the old alien supplied for John as he came back wearing a thick padding on his right arm and carrying a huge metallic rod, a rope and a bag.
"Yeah, that's regad! Pilars are so ruthless!!" The younger alien gushed. "Do you think you could let me handle yours for a moment?" He asked John haltingly, excitement lighting his eyes.
John's blank look tinged with worry.
"I don't use weapons myself," the younger alien reassured him. "I swear I'll be real gentle with him," he even stated solemnly. "Or is it her?"
"Will you shut up for a microt, Dabaroo!" The older alien admonished the younger alien testily as he knelt down and carefully placed the bag by his side. "Their Pilar has had to be fully chained," he stated grimly, staring hard at Dabaroo's excited face, which immediately crunched up in concern.
"Aw, I'm so sorry," Dabaroo apologized to John. "You must be so worried for your animal."
John's eyes flicked toward the older alien's face and he nodded numbly to Dabaroo at the older alien's silent urging.
"I had one too a couple cycles ago, a really strong one, nearly bit my arm off," Dabaroo whispered conspiratorially to John. "Uru patched me up real good," he added, nodding toward the older alien then made a pouting grimace, "though I'd rather he'd left me with bigger scars."
John's glance switched from the fine-looking scars on Dabaroo's arm to Uru's face.
"Let's do this," Uru only grunted in reply.
Dabaroo immediately straddled the back of the dioxine croco and heaved its cavernous mouth open with Uru's help. John had to put his knee on the croco's lower back to keep it still. Once Uru had managed to insert the rod vertically inside the mouth, he plunged his right arm inside and rummaged for a while before pulling out what John could best describe as a legless scorpion about a foot long with thick yellow fur. Uru immediately dropped it into the bag and closed the sash tight.
"Nuib!" Dabaroo let out in a relieved sigh as the new critter started to move wildly inside the bag. "Bad girl, Poatur, bad girl!" he admonished the croco lovingly.
Uru knocked the rod away and, as Poatur's mouth clamped shut, tied it tightly with the rope. John got up with them awkwardly as Uru helped Dabaroo get a good hold of Poatur. Uru then grabbed the bag on the floor, gave it to Dabaroo and forcefully shoved him toward the door. "Don't come back anytime soon," he ordered him.
"Thanks so much Uru," Dabaroo gushed. "Thanks sir," he added, looking at John, "About your Pilar…"
"Humpff," Uru growled and slammed the door to Dabaroo's face. "Young people!" He flipped one of the switches on the wall, generating the roll down of curtains on the windows then went to a sink on the side and got rid of his thick padding. He also removed his jacket, which had been thoroughly dirtied during the intervention and proceeded to clean his hands and arms meticulously with a pungent liquid.
"Huh…" John started as he came to stand between Uru and Aeryn lying on the examination bed still unconscious. The alien raised an expectant eyebrow and John shuffled nervously under his commanding gaze. "Huh…"
"Huh what?" Uru sighed irritatedly. "You have someone else you can threaten?"
John felt the cutting words stab his heart and then slowly shook his head and took a step aside.
Uru finished his cleansing, pulled on a pair of thin gloves and approached the examination table. He turned on a huge light, bathing Aeryn's colourless face in an even whiter glow then picked up his scanner and ran it over her one more time. John hovered by him, following his every moves and expressions, feeding his worry and hope from tiny flickers on the alien's face. Uru turned off the scanner and went to a cabinet, leaving a clueless John by Aeryn's side.
"Wait!" John recoiled at the sight of the huge syringe Uru was coming back with.
Uru sighed deeply again. "You don't want me to sedate her?"
"No! I mean yes, of course, I want you to sedate her," John stammered before Uru's patronizing stare but he couldn't help placing a halting hand on his arm as the imposing syringe neared Aeryn's neck. "I don't want her to feel pain."
"She IS most probably feeling pain now," Uru pointed out.
John grimaced and backed off again; Aeryn hardly stirred as the sedative was injected. He nearly stepped in again when Uru then proceeded to remove Aeryn's pants before his sickly fascinated stare. New blood started to cover Uru's gloves as he uncovered her once grey boxers, sending John into an escaping half-turn.
"Oh shit! Shit shit shit!" He exclaimed loudly, flailing his arms around in distress, pacing back and forth anxiously right by Uru.
He heard a slapping sound and a strong hand painfully clamped his shoulder. "Wait outside," Uru ordered him firmly, deftly discarding his removed glove in the sink.
"What?! No, I can't leave her!" John choked, turning back toward the table and then immediately averted his eyes, bile rising in his throat.
"You're disturbing me," Uru growled, "and that's not good for her," he added with a softer tone.
John resisted Uru's push toward the door, trying to force himself into staying calm but his body started to shake uncontrollably.
"She's heavily sedated now," Uru stated calmly, "She won't know you're here. All you're going to achieve is delay and impair my work. I've dealt with situations a lot worse than this, fighting time to save people's lives but I can not work properly without some peace and quiet."
John opened his mouth to speak.
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Uru interrupted him.
John swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat again. He had not gone on a leap of faith in quite a long time but there was something in the alien's calm gaze that tugged at his once trusting nature. His eyes travelled over to Aeryn's deathly pale face and slid back again to lock on Uru's unyielding gaze.
"You can do this?" He asked, his voice muffled behind the back of his hand.
"Yes."
"And she WILL be all right?"
"She will," Uru replied with the slightest emphasis on the pronoun.
John nodded wordlessly and walked away to leave the room but then stopped on the threshold. "Her name is Aeryn. I'm John… or Crichton… in case she asks for me."
