Title: Home Again To Moya
Author: sassy_lion
Summary: Its been eleven cycles since John and Aeryn had been on Moya... but what kind of trouble will their daughter get into when she gets there?
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Thank you to: prowler junkie (about the SC trip, I'm working on it!!! I promise!!!) krissy, dawn (who I finally heard from since SC2002!!!!! did you want some more J/A J/C fics like at the con?) pinky (is your spelling better yet? :P) and my ever faithful betas Amy (the slap really didn't help that much... :P ) and martian_maren (Ben does look good in a dress, but not purple... maybe blue). Thank you all. Just to let ALL of you know, I'm working my best at the tidbits of Sebacean and other languages. So please don't critize me for it, cause it's very hard to learn any language, and this is an alien one at that. :) :P
HOME AGAIN TO MOYA
sassy_lion
(c) October 2002
I have been here before
But when and how I cannot tell
I know the grass beyond the door
The sweet keen smell, the sighing sound
The lights around the shore
And you have been mine before
How long ago I may not know
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death despite
and day and night yield one delight...
once more?
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(May 12, 1812 - April 9, 1882)
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Prologue
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"IASA has confirmed that the large blue spiral that has appeared over the Earth is indeed a "wormhole" and it is non-threatening. A team had been sent to the Internation space station to study the anomoly and IASA will start sending satellite probes through as early as next week. From FCN, this is Katie Hudsi reporting live from Cape Canaveral."
I turn off the TV and watch John innocently sleep on the couch next to me. It had already been three days since the wormhole appeared. John and I still hadn't done what we needed to before the wormhole disappeared. Sighing lightly, I pull myself from John's form and trudge calmly and silently head up the second floor of our small home. I open the second door on the right. Quietly stepping into the semi-small room and look around.
It was messy; as it always is, but it didn't worry me that much. My attention focused on the 13-year-old girl-- named Jearsa-- who lay asleep on the large bed that John had bought for her three cycles earlier. Dressed in a pair of white shorts, a multi-colored tank top and still wearing the pair of boots (that looked surprisingly like PK combat boots) she had persuaded me to buy for her three weekens ago. She looked so contented that I didn't want to wake her.
I looked around the room again as I hear a small tune coming from the other side of the room, noticing she had left the computer on again. I step over to turn it off, but stop when I heard a familiar voice filtering through the speakers. It was Chiana's voice. I knew by pure instinct. She was singing a song she once mentioned Nerri had taught her when she was little, even though I could not understand it.
I listened intently, remembering Chiana and the others on Moya. It saddened me to recall it had been so long since John and I had decided that the middle of a war was not the place for Jearsa to be brought up in. We had taken her to Earth with us, leaving the others to fend for themselves during the war. John had tried to avert the war, as he always tried to do, but every Peacekeeper and Scarran has know the day would come for nearly 50 cycles.
It also saddened me that Jearsa did not remember any part of her two cycles aboard Moya. That she did not know Pilot or D'Argo, Chiana, Rygel, Sikozu or frell even Noranti. What made me the most sad was that Zhaan had never shared in the joy of Jearsa's life.
Downloading the wormhole knowledge into a secure spot in Moya's memory banks would allow the others to retrieve us once the war was over. Pilot had promised along with all the others they would retrieve us sooner or later. That was almost 11 Earth years ago.
It had happened then, the wormhole we had been wanting to see for so long now, showed up in Earth's gravitational field two nights ago.
That was originally why I had come into my daughter's room. To explain what had happened and why they were planning on leaving. The only problem was Jearsa.
We hadn't tried to explain to her the uniqueness inside her. That she was not fully human. John and I had promised each other never to scare her with the secret of her birth and parentage. To only tell her when she was old enough, or if it needed to be done, as it must be revealed today.
How do you explain to a xenophobic planet that there are actually aliens and one of the girls who goes to school in a small town in Florida was actually only half human? Never mind explaining it to Jearsa, who had been on Earth since before she could remember, believing that aliens were only science fiction. It made me both sad and angry to not be able to tell our daughter the truth without frightening her or getting a disapproving snicker or look of insanity.
"Aeryn?" John's voice floated up the stairs, quietly. "Are you up there?"
I shook myself out of my reverie and walked to the stairs, careful not to wake Jearsa up in the process, knowing she was as light of a sleeper as I am. Stepping into John's embrace at the bottom, he nipped at my ear. "Are you ready to go? The module is as fixed as it is going to get with limited parts. Jearsa will..."
"I still haven't told her. She's asleep right now, but..."
"Aeryn, are you saying that you want to stay on this "primitive" planet?" He kissed me and flashed a smile briefly as he waited for my answer.
"As long as Jearsa can remember she has lived on this planet, and I think we should give her the decision to go or not. I do not want to abandon her, but if she doesn't want to go, she shouldn't be forced into it."
"Aeryn, Jearsa loves the stars and both of us know it..."
"John..." I molded myself to his front, trying to distract him. He knew I didn't like this conversation, we had it so many times before, just as I knew he didn't feel like he belonged on Earth anymore. Not after what he had seen, what he had done.
Before another of us could say a word or move again, our daughter came flying down the stairs. She looked at the two of us and knew immediately something was wrong. "What's the matter?"
I looked at John, shook my head and started to stalk out of the room. I turned back for a moment and looked him straight in his magnificently blue eyes. "She needs to make her own decision on this issue, John. You know that," I said softly before turning the corner into our bedroom.
"Make what decision on my own?" I heard her question as I stepped back to the side of the door frame and watched as John took her to the couch. He began to explain that the "natural phenomenon" that was being broadcast on every local TV station was actually for the three of us to go home. That we actually had another home in space, Moya, and that Jearsa had been born there and she was being given a chance to help them explore space.
I spared a glance into the living room and saw her mouth was open in shock. I really couldn't blame her, knowing what I now know of how this planet "operates". It was a little bit of a relief when she said yes, to know that we were all going back into space, going to see our "family", as John always called Moya's crew, and I was a little morose to leave this planet. It had been a home for nearly 11 cycles, and now we were to leave it.
TBC…
