Keeping Doors Open
By Cranscape
"I choose door number four hundred and fifty nine." John muttered to the DRD as it turned to zip back to its work sector as quickly as its wheels, or whatever it used to move, could spin. They were kind of cute once you got over the little laser zappers.
When all was said and done it took him over an hour to find the correct door. Admittedly it took that amount of time because he had stubbornly insisted on being independent. He couldn't begin to put to words the frustration of suddenly becoming the most hillbilly species in the universe. Well, he could, but he didn't know the right words yet. He understood the meaning of 'frell' quite clearly after a week, but some of the other words were still vague. He definitely needed to find ways of blending in better.
"It will take time." The blue woman said just the night before when he did another particularly stupid, human thing. Zhaan. The blue lady he was already fond of, even if she did talk like a hallmark card at times.
Time. A sentiment he would heartily agree with had he been given it. Zhaan didn't get it. He caught her during his roaming more than once stark naked in her room zoning out, or consulting crystals with eyes that looked far beyond the golden wall she faced. Her view of time was not linear. That one, he thought, would have fit in nicely with Mother.
"It will take time, Johnny." The tarot cards had been stacked neatly next to the physics lesson she was outlining for her students later that day, her son's impatient eyes not noticing the odd joining of the two. Or even later yet, when he was in prep classes in junior high, separated from his friends and forced to make new ones. "Work with it, not against it. There is a reason in all of this despite what you feel now."
After being mocked for not knowing how to open a door, getting sick from a week long diet of food cubes, and finding a way to be on practically everyone's bad side on an hourly basis, he had enough. No one would respect him if he got in the way. He was going to succeed at least on that single front. Learn Moya. Get back on his feet so to speak. Wrong again. After getting lost in an abandoned maintenance bay on one of the lower decks, he called on Pilot and followed a rather bored looking DRD to his desired location.
Aeryn - the other one without any patience. It was what he calculated to be a week since they shot out of the carrier's sensor range and he could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen her out of her quarters. When she did venture out it was only to inspect her ship or collect more food. No one spoke of it, as though it was perfectly natural. At first he told himself it was because they were worried about another Peacekeeper attack and too busy to directly care. Their unconcern slowly revealed itself to be just that. Unconcern. If Aeryn wasn't there they'd feel safer.
He didn't announce his presence. He pulled out the tool kit he found in a maintenance bay and began to tinker with the circuitry on the door. This was the same cell he woke up in on his first day aboard Moya and the same cell door they had used the fork on to short out the door and make their first escape. Aeryn claimed it as hers by default more than anything. Her stuff was already there - why move it?
The lock was useless now. He sentimentally took those thoughts in, studying the handiwork he did on the door and what it would take to fix it. It was a strange mix of organic and metallic. He touched Moya's wall and felt slight warmth under his hand. He felt like Jonah in a very big fish.
"What are you doing, Human?" Aeryn's voice came from inside the cell, far enough away that he didn't feel the need to run from an attack. He had a feeling she'd hit before talking, and since she spoke first perhaps he was going to get away without any visible bruises, scathing remarks withstanding.
John made a show of riffling through the tool kit, selecting what he hoped was the tool Zhaan showed him earlier to be the Peacekeeper version of the Swiss Army knife. It could do everything except cut a tomato, but even with that it was a miracle.
"It's John, and I am fixing the door." There was what might pass as a laugh, and then silence as she considered her next remarks carefully.
"Put it on the DRD's work schedule. That is what they are here for. You don't even know how to open the door." Cold - precisely selected to cut.
"But I can fix it. Don't make me completely obsolete."
After he spoke he heard something click loudly in the silence. Peeking through the door for the first time he saw Aeryn sitting in one of the rib- like crevices, looking surprisingly vulnerable. Not so vulnerable, he thought quickly. She was still dangerous. Her hand was on the gun-like weapon at her side, gripping it tightly as though it kept her from disappearing completely into Moya's contour. One leg was folded under her and the other dangled towards the ground, toeing the floor nervously. She was looking across the room to her bed where the flight suit he first saw her in rested like a shell of a person. If there was anyone with a right to complain about being obsolete it was Aeryn.
"Just finish your frelling tech work and leave." She said just as coldly as before, still absorbed in contemplating her flight suit. He knew she had exactly two outfits. Both black. If she decided to stay with them she'd have to pick up others, hopefully not black, but he doubted anything else would really suit her. He was pretty certain she hadn't given that a thought. She had much bigger problems at hand.
The features of her face tighten as he watched, lips a thin line. Her features were human, both comforting and alarming when he let himself think about it too long. Regardless of their differences her despair was mostly his fault. She had emotions. Whether she set the same value to them as he was redundant at this point. Blatant hopelessness and defeat marked every tense muscle, every white knuckle. He felt the same way at times. Usually when everyone was tired of telling him how things worked and left him alone with Farscape One. The wing still needed repaired. They said they'd stop off to get parts just to shut him up.
He let himself slip into his work, marveling every second or so at where he was, what he was doing, and the joy of doing it. He was good at fixing things. Even if no one else would recognize that or appreciate it he still felt the comfort of returning order to chaos. Fixing something. In this case something he broke himself.
"This isn't a cell. You can come onto command if you want. Center chamber. Anywhere. They don't bite." He surprised even himself at his forwardness. Speaking to someone already carrying a gun, someone who already had a track record for caving his face in, was suicidal at best. Still, he had been ticking people off all day. Why stop when on a roll?
When Aeryn didn't respond he looked into the room again. He was startled to see she was looking right at him this time, lips turned up into what could be construed as a smile. She tilted her head at him, unconvinced.
"Ok, it does look like a cell right now." He trailed off. "You can spruce it up a bit. Throw some knickknacks around. Football pennants. Shag carpet. Sofa. Big screen TV. Leopard sheets." He watched her stare waver a moment as her translator microbes filled her head with gobbledygook. She was clearly at the limit of her already limited tolerance for inferior species.
"Find somebody else's door to play with Tech." She looked more exhausted than angry. This detour was not in her travel plans. She said her job had been to escape and secure the ship and the fugitives for her superiors. For Captain Crais. That scenario was well known to her. That was what a Peacekeeper did when faced with a hostile situation such as one she found herself in previous to being irrevocably contaminated. He was pretty sure she had no plan in place for life after the Peacekeepers. No workable scenario.
He had a spark of insight. Knowing immediately what pain it would cost him he dove straight in anyway.
"You are mad at me." When he said it he could hardly conceal the humor in his voice. He, the cause of all her troubles, was roaming the ship freely, if randomly, and she was in a self-maintained captivity. Something was not right with that picture. Her eyes widened slightly, considering him as if she had just noticed him. Not only could the human speak, he could cut to the heart of the matter effortlessly. She was angry with him.
"Humans are weak." She shot back, after a moment of stunned silence. The color was slowly rising to her cheeks.
"I resent that!" He saw the opening and dug his feet in deeper.
"You -" She stopped before she could finish whatever she had ready to fling back at him. He wasn't a Peacekeeper. He wasn't even Sebacean though he looked it. Speaking to an inferior species was new to her. She appeared to struggle for an appropriate vile response, and when it finally materialized it came out as a flood. He took it in stride, nodding at a few. She did have a point. "You are useless. You can hardly speak. You don't carry a weapon." She punctuated it with the jerk of her chin, aloof. "You have no reflexes to speak of. You can't even keep down a plate of food cubes. And that ship of yours makes a Hynerian refuse pod look cutting edge -"
"Hey, those are fighting words!" He didn't really know what a Hynerian refuse pod looked like, but he was sure anything made by a Hynerian would smell bad at least. Wounded pride aside, he was happy to see some life come to her eyes, even if it was directed at him in less than friendly ways.
"Fighting words - " she quickly whispered to herself as though hearing it again would help. "What?" Her head tilted to the side slightly, wondering if this was some affront to her honor, or just another stupid human thing.
"This isn't the way to make friends." He amended. They were both standing then, separated by about six feet of tension.
"Us. Friends?" She responded smugly. Her mantra, he thought.
"Teach me to fight." There. It was out. It was the solution. He was certain of it. He got through the threshold of the door, but he made sure he was out of striking range. He was all too aware of the danger signs he had ignored to get that far into the conversation.
"Don't be ridiculous." She looked him over again, assessing his physical qualities as though she hadn't noticed them before. For a moment she stopped looking quite so skeptical. He brushed it aside as a residual desire to beat his face in. Everyone on the ship seemed to have it.
"Teach me to fight." He repeated, seeing her skeptical look turn more despairingly by the moment.
"You can hardly be expected to learn. You can't even open doors - "
"Enough with the doors already." He tried to keep a stern expression, but he was insanely happy to be talking to someone who at least looked human and didn't have tentacles flapping around like D'Argo or smelled bad like Rygel. She smelled kind of nice he recalled. "I survived a few football brawls in my day. I can fight." Ok, so he escaped a couple brawls in his day. Details were unimportant.
"Impressive." Her sarcasm was thick, but not cold this time. Amused. As though her Jack Russell Terrier just started walking on its hind legs and began to tap dance.
"I know how to do a right hook pretty well. And I saw this move in a bar brawl back in my college days. Kinda looked like it hurt." He shrugged, smile escaping. "Not to mention what you did to me earlier. I still feel it, actually." She ignored him and continued her inspection. He had a feeling he didn't meet any of her standards, but hoped she'd at least take him up as a human punching bag.
"Can you use a pulse pistol?" She clipped off, finally meeting his eyes again.
"Your ray gun? I've had some training with the standard issue stuff. Mechanical. Shoots little balls of metal." He held up his finger and thumb to the size of a bullet. "I don't like using guns though." She blinked once and continued.
"Tactical training?"
"No. I make it up as I go along."
"I've noticed." Aeryn stood up, looking determined and slightly devious in John's opinion. The prospects of being able to actively do something, anything, was becoming tangible though.
"Don't hurt me too badly." John stepped back as Aeryn came closer.
"Fine. It won't be too intentional then." She said straight-faced. She brushed by him and out the door.
"Hey, where are you going?" He followed after her trailing form, trying not to appear too excited. Her stride was long and quick and he felt like he had to run to catch up.
"Equipment. Maintenance bay. Come." The tilt of her head lifted. She was going to do something she was good at, something she was trained for.
"Equipment? Really? Like punching bags and stuff? Lead on." He let himself smirk when he was certain she wouldn't turn around and see. It was going to hurt, but he solved both of his major problems. He hoped he hadn't created a number more in the process, but he'd deal with those things later - probably in a full body cast.
"Pilot." Aeryn said into the air.
"Officer Sun." Pilot's confused voice came over the comms. "What.may I do for you?"
"Have the DRDs bring the training mat out of storage and set it up in maintenance bay four."
"They have training mats for this sort of thing?" He was getting more worried by the moment. The full body cast image came to mind. "On second hand I think I might ask Zhaan to teach me yoga or something. I can bore my assailants to death and -" This time he could have sworn she laughed, or tried to softly. Or he had imagined it. "How do you find your way around Leviathans so easily? They all look the same and I don't see any road signs, not that they'd be in English anyway but -" He changed the subject before he lost her attention.
"Memorized." She said dryly. "Quite easy." After a moment of prodding she opened up further. "They are like veins in any other creature. Simple once you know the basic structure and age of the Leviathan."
"And you had to learn the layout of the ship?"
"Hundreds others as well. Basic training." Aeryn was proud of the fact. It reflected in her voice. Had he been a Peacekeeper who went through the same training he might have exchanged stories with her at this point. Perhaps talked of Prowlers and flight school or whatever training they would have mutually experienced. No such luck.
As it was, he only had questions. Aeryn didn't say much, only a few words to answer each question, and she didn't care about any of his primitive observations, but she didn't growl at him like D'Argo would. It wasn't going to be so bad. He needed to choose his allies, as she said previously that day they were flying free of the Peacekeepers, and he wanted her to be one of them.
The End
"I choose door number four hundred and fifty nine." John muttered to the DRD as it turned to zip back to its work sector as quickly as its wheels, or whatever it used to move, could spin. They were kind of cute once you got over the little laser zappers.
When all was said and done it took him over an hour to find the correct door. Admittedly it took that amount of time because he had stubbornly insisted on being independent. He couldn't begin to put to words the frustration of suddenly becoming the most hillbilly species in the universe. Well, he could, but he didn't know the right words yet. He understood the meaning of 'frell' quite clearly after a week, but some of the other words were still vague. He definitely needed to find ways of blending in better.
"It will take time." The blue woman said just the night before when he did another particularly stupid, human thing. Zhaan. The blue lady he was already fond of, even if she did talk like a hallmark card at times.
Time. A sentiment he would heartily agree with had he been given it. Zhaan didn't get it. He caught her during his roaming more than once stark naked in her room zoning out, or consulting crystals with eyes that looked far beyond the golden wall she faced. Her view of time was not linear. That one, he thought, would have fit in nicely with Mother.
"It will take time, Johnny." The tarot cards had been stacked neatly next to the physics lesson she was outlining for her students later that day, her son's impatient eyes not noticing the odd joining of the two. Or even later yet, when he was in prep classes in junior high, separated from his friends and forced to make new ones. "Work with it, not against it. There is a reason in all of this despite what you feel now."
After being mocked for not knowing how to open a door, getting sick from a week long diet of food cubes, and finding a way to be on practically everyone's bad side on an hourly basis, he had enough. No one would respect him if he got in the way. He was going to succeed at least on that single front. Learn Moya. Get back on his feet so to speak. Wrong again. After getting lost in an abandoned maintenance bay on one of the lower decks, he called on Pilot and followed a rather bored looking DRD to his desired location.
Aeryn - the other one without any patience. It was what he calculated to be a week since they shot out of the carrier's sensor range and he could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen her out of her quarters. When she did venture out it was only to inspect her ship or collect more food. No one spoke of it, as though it was perfectly natural. At first he told himself it was because they were worried about another Peacekeeper attack and too busy to directly care. Their unconcern slowly revealed itself to be just that. Unconcern. If Aeryn wasn't there they'd feel safer.
He didn't announce his presence. He pulled out the tool kit he found in a maintenance bay and began to tinker with the circuitry on the door. This was the same cell he woke up in on his first day aboard Moya and the same cell door they had used the fork on to short out the door and make their first escape. Aeryn claimed it as hers by default more than anything. Her stuff was already there - why move it?
The lock was useless now. He sentimentally took those thoughts in, studying the handiwork he did on the door and what it would take to fix it. It was a strange mix of organic and metallic. He touched Moya's wall and felt slight warmth under his hand. He felt like Jonah in a very big fish.
"What are you doing, Human?" Aeryn's voice came from inside the cell, far enough away that he didn't feel the need to run from an attack. He had a feeling she'd hit before talking, and since she spoke first perhaps he was going to get away without any visible bruises, scathing remarks withstanding.
John made a show of riffling through the tool kit, selecting what he hoped was the tool Zhaan showed him earlier to be the Peacekeeper version of the Swiss Army knife. It could do everything except cut a tomato, but even with that it was a miracle.
"It's John, and I am fixing the door." There was what might pass as a laugh, and then silence as she considered her next remarks carefully.
"Put it on the DRD's work schedule. That is what they are here for. You don't even know how to open the door." Cold - precisely selected to cut.
"But I can fix it. Don't make me completely obsolete."
After he spoke he heard something click loudly in the silence. Peeking through the door for the first time he saw Aeryn sitting in one of the rib- like crevices, looking surprisingly vulnerable. Not so vulnerable, he thought quickly. She was still dangerous. Her hand was on the gun-like weapon at her side, gripping it tightly as though it kept her from disappearing completely into Moya's contour. One leg was folded under her and the other dangled towards the ground, toeing the floor nervously. She was looking across the room to her bed where the flight suit he first saw her in rested like a shell of a person. If there was anyone with a right to complain about being obsolete it was Aeryn.
"Just finish your frelling tech work and leave." She said just as coldly as before, still absorbed in contemplating her flight suit. He knew she had exactly two outfits. Both black. If she decided to stay with them she'd have to pick up others, hopefully not black, but he doubted anything else would really suit her. He was pretty certain she hadn't given that a thought. She had much bigger problems at hand.
The features of her face tighten as he watched, lips a thin line. Her features were human, both comforting and alarming when he let himself think about it too long. Regardless of their differences her despair was mostly his fault. She had emotions. Whether she set the same value to them as he was redundant at this point. Blatant hopelessness and defeat marked every tense muscle, every white knuckle. He felt the same way at times. Usually when everyone was tired of telling him how things worked and left him alone with Farscape One. The wing still needed repaired. They said they'd stop off to get parts just to shut him up.
He let himself slip into his work, marveling every second or so at where he was, what he was doing, and the joy of doing it. He was good at fixing things. Even if no one else would recognize that or appreciate it he still felt the comfort of returning order to chaos. Fixing something. In this case something he broke himself.
"This isn't a cell. You can come onto command if you want. Center chamber. Anywhere. They don't bite." He surprised even himself at his forwardness. Speaking to someone already carrying a gun, someone who already had a track record for caving his face in, was suicidal at best. Still, he had been ticking people off all day. Why stop when on a roll?
When Aeryn didn't respond he looked into the room again. He was startled to see she was looking right at him this time, lips turned up into what could be construed as a smile. She tilted her head at him, unconvinced.
"Ok, it does look like a cell right now." He trailed off. "You can spruce it up a bit. Throw some knickknacks around. Football pennants. Shag carpet. Sofa. Big screen TV. Leopard sheets." He watched her stare waver a moment as her translator microbes filled her head with gobbledygook. She was clearly at the limit of her already limited tolerance for inferior species.
"Find somebody else's door to play with Tech." She looked more exhausted than angry. This detour was not in her travel plans. She said her job had been to escape and secure the ship and the fugitives for her superiors. For Captain Crais. That scenario was well known to her. That was what a Peacekeeper did when faced with a hostile situation such as one she found herself in previous to being irrevocably contaminated. He was pretty sure she had no plan in place for life after the Peacekeepers. No workable scenario.
He had a spark of insight. Knowing immediately what pain it would cost him he dove straight in anyway.
"You are mad at me." When he said it he could hardly conceal the humor in his voice. He, the cause of all her troubles, was roaming the ship freely, if randomly, and she was in a self-maintained captivity. Something was not right with that picture. Her eyes widened slightly, considering him as if she had just noticed him. Not only could the human speak, he could cut to the heart of the matter effortlessly. She was angry with him.
"Humans are weak." She shot back, after a moment of stunned silence. The color was slowly rising to her cheeks.
"I resent that!" He saw the opening and dug his feet in deeper.
"You -" She stopped before she could finish whatever she had ready to fling back at him. He wasn't a Peacekeeper. He wasn't even Sebacean though he looked it. Speaking to an inferior species was new to her. She appeared to struggle for an appropriate vile response, and when it finally materialized it came out as a flood. He took it in stride, nodding at a few. She did have a point. "You are useless. You can hardly speak. You don't carry a weapon." She punctuated it with the jerk of her chin, aloof. "You have no reflexes to speak of. You can't even keep down a plate of food cubes. And that ship of yours makes a Hynerian refuse pod look cutting edge -"
"Hey, those are fighting words!" He didn't really know what a Hynerian refuse pod looked like, but he was sure anything made by a Hynerian would smell bad at least. Wounded pride aside, he was happy to see some life come to her eyes, even if it was directed at him in less than friendly ways.
"Fighting words - " she quickly whispered to herself as though hearing it again would help. "What?" Her head tilted to the side slightly, wondering if this was some affront to her honor, or just another stupid human thing.
"This isn't the way to make friends." He amended. They were both standing then, separated by about six feet of tension.
"Us. Friends?" She responded smugly. Her mantra, he thought.
"Teach me to fight." There. It was out. It was the solution. He was certain of it. He got through the threshold of the door, but he made sure he was out of striking range. He was all too aware of the danger signs he had ignored to get that far into the conversation.
"Don't be ridiculous." She looked him over again, assessing his physical qualities as though she hadn't noticed them before. For a moment she stopped looking quite so skeptical. He brushed it aside as a residual desire to beat his face in. Everyone on the ship seemed to have it.
"Teach me to fight." He repeated, seeing her skeptical look turn more despairingly by the moment.
"You can hardly be expected to learn. You can't even open doors - "
"Enough with the doors already." He tried to keep a stern expression, but he was insanely happy to be talking to someone who at least looked human and didn't have tentacles flapping around like D'Argo or smelled bad like Rygel. She smelled kind of nice he recalled. "I survived a few football brawls in my day. I can fight." Ok, so he escaped a couple brawls in his day. Details were unimportant.
"Impressive." Her sarcasm was thick, but not cold this time. Amused. As though her Jack Russell Terrier just started walking on its hind legs and began to tap dance.
"I know how to do a right hook pretty well. And I saw this move in a bar brawl back in my college days. Kinda looked like it hurt." He shrugged, smile escaping. "Not to mention what you did to me earlier. I still feel it, actually." She ignored him and continued her inspection. He had a feeling he didn't meet any of her standards, but hoped she'd at least take him up as a human punching bag.
"Can you use a pulse pistol?" She clipped off, finally meeting his eyes again.
"Your ray gun? I've had some training with the standard issue stuff. Mechanical. Shoots little balls of metal." He held up his finger and thumb to the size of a bullet. "I don't like using guns though." She blinked once and continued.
"Tactical training?"
"No. I make it up as I go along."
"I've noticed." Aeryn stood up, looking determined and slightly devious in John's opinion. The prospects of being able to actively do something, anything, was becoming tangible though.
"Don't hurt me too badly." John stepped back as Aeryn came closer.
"Fine. It won't be too intentional then." She said straight-faced. She brushed by him and out the door.
"Hey, where are you going?" He followed after her trailing form, trying not to appear too excited. Her stride was long and quick and he felt like he had to run to catch up.
"Equipment. Maintenance bay. Come." The tilt of her head lifted. She was going to do something she was good at, something she was trained for.
"Equipment? Really? Like punching bags and stuff? Lead on." He let himself smirk when he was certain she wouldn't turn around and see. It was going to hurt, but he solved both of his major problems. He hoped he hadn't created a number more in the process, but he'd deal with those things later - probably in a full body cast.
"Pilot." Aeryn said into the air.
"Officer Sun." Pilot's confused voice came over the comms. "What.may I do for you?"
"Have the DRDs bring the training mat out of storage and set it up in maintenance bay four."
"They have training mats for this sort of thing?" He was getting more worried by the moment. The full body cast image came to mind. "On second hand I think I might ask Zhaan to teach me yoga or something. I can bore my assailants to death and -" This time he could have sworn she laughed, or tried to softly. Or he had imagined it. "How do you find your way around Leviathans so easily? They all look the same and I don't see any road signs, not that they'd be in English anyway but -" He changed the subject before he lost her attention.
"Memorized." She said dryly. "Quite easy." After a moment of prodding she opened up further. "They are like veins in any other creature. Simple once you know the basic structure and age of the Leviathan."
"And you had to learn the layout of the ship?"
"Hundreds others as well. Basic training." Aeryn was proud of the fact. It reflected in her voice. Had he been a Peacekeeper who went through the same training he might have exchanged stories with her at this point. Perhaps talked of Prowlers and flight school or whatever training they would have mutually experienced. No such luck.
As it was, he only had questions. Aeryn didn't say much, only a few words to answer each question, and she didn't care about any of his primitive observations, but she didn't growl at him like D'Argo would. It wasn't going to be so bad. He needed to choose his allies, as she said previously that day they were flying free of the Peacekeepers, and he wanted her to be one of them.
The End