Title: To Have, To Take
Author: freak-pudding
Summary: "Rock-a-bye, baby…" Third season AU, John-babble
Disclaimer: Don't own it, don't have permission, not making any money off it.
"Rock-bye, little baby, on the treetop…"
He trails off and frowns, knowing the notes are wrong. Some of the words, too. Memories float past, waving nonchalantly before fading back. He flips quietly, watching, waiting for the signal. There.
- - -
"Frell…" The ironic sentiment, echoed by all, rang hollow in Talyn's blackened corridors. John scowled and waited for D'Argo to break out the three-footers. All they have now are tiny penlights. Can't see far in a death tunnel with only a Zippo.
"Yo, Cap!" John swung the larger flashlight around, grateful for Chiana's resourcefulness. She waited patiently by his side, watching for his body. They rarely needed to speak now. "Calling Captain Crais! Hello!"
The young ship was dead silent, and John tilted his head slightly to better hear his echo. All he heard was the sound of gentle weeping.
Yeah, it was a dead end. But, hey, it kept going to the left. John took the hint and turned slowly. Chiana reached around his body and pulled out the pistol. She was his only defense.
- - -
"Rock-a…"
John sighs in frustration and contents himself for the moment by reading the lines of her face. She's all wrinkles and folds and squinty eyes. His hardened heart melts, and she smiles. God, just like her mother.
He elicits another joyous laugh. The blanket slips a little, but he doesn't move to fix it. She'll have to get used to the cold. And the pain. John licks his dry lips.
He remembers now, but not the memories he was searching for. This happens sometimes. He'd rack his brain and be able to come up with nothing. Nothing but Harvey. Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub. John frowns. Scratch that; only two. And last time he checked, they were bailing out water.
- - -
"What happened?" The naïveté, fresh in Jool's voice, stung John hard. Chiana had shown him the door panel, and they hacked their way into the chamber. John coughed and sputtered as the warm stench of rotting flesh met his nose.
"Oh, God," he muttered, stepping back, more out of reluctance than he would later admit. The narrow beam of light in Chiana's hand roamed wildly around, cutting through the black. Thankfully, she refrained from focusing on anything specific.
Chiana covered her mouth and nose with a rag, giving him the other she carried in her pocket. God, she was great sometimes.
"D!" John called out. His voice echoed too loud on the blackened walls. He turned off the light, and his knees felt weak. Chiana wrapped both arms tightly around his body, anchoring him.
"Yeah, John?"
The Captain's voice is thick with his usual doom-and-gloom attitude. John grimaced, glad that he'd been the first to seem them.
"I think… I think I found them."
"Where?" D'Argo's voice was relieved. He thought the answers were finally coming.
"Where are we, Pip?" John asked quietly. She gestured with a jerk of her head behind them. John turned, again grateful for her perception of how much he did not want to keep looking in that room.
The figures were nothing but squiggly lines at first, but then John got it.
"Tier 3, Treblin Corridor 4, end of the hallway."
"Got it."
"Hey, D?"
"Yes, John?"
"Just follow the tunnel with a light at the end."
- - -
They are left alone for a time. The well-wishers were in a few hours ago, while he stood against the wall. They smiled and laughed and joked, but he only scowled. Can't even trust his friends anymore.
John glances around quickly now, surveying for danger. It's only the Med-Bay. He knows that. Only ever been the Med-Bay. And, if he can focus on that, maybe he can believe that it's only ever been the two of them. He never was a third wheel.
The others were kind and loving. Everyone smiled and laughed over the child, remarking on her resemblance to her father, and how she carries her mother's smile.
There is a choking noise, and John stares at her impassively. If she was going to die, she was going to die. He couldn't change that. He'd tried to once, but that'd just frelled it all up.
- - -
"Frelling dren."
"Well, now that we've got that out of the way…"
He'd meant it to be light and joking; she knew this. But the momentary hurt in the Luxan's eye quickly became irritation. He growled and shoved his way into the room. John was perfectly happy to stay in the doorway.
"Where are the frelling lights?" D'Argo muttered. He set his flashlight down on a table and turned it on. John wished he had closed his eyes, like his instinct had told him too. The scene was too gruesome, even for someone who'd seen as much shit as he had.
- - -
No one comes to bother them now. It is silent, and everyone is happy. At least, this is what John convinces himself of.
A child is crying in the corner of John's mind, but Harvey whips out the 9 mm, and the world is happily silent again.
"Sweet little baby, on the treetop…"
- - -
Captain Bialar Crais had died with one hand on his pulse pistol, back facing the doorway.
"Execution-style," John whistled low. He circled around the body slowly, examining the dried blood and rotting flesh. There was a gaping hole at the base of his skull, no doubt left by an unexpected pulse-blast.
They were in a strategy room of some sort; it was supposed to be used for planning and plotting courses. Crais had been sitting at the end of the center console, and he died face-down upon it.
D'Argo's massive fist wrapped around the thin metal spike sticking out of Crais's back. The lack of blood around this wound indicated that someone had been in here after all the killings were over.
There was a sickening pop as the spike was pulled out, and John wanted to puke. He remembered hearing that homicide investigators sometimes dabbed Vick's Vapor Rub under each nostril, to block the smell. He wished for some now.
- - -
Pilot offers his congratulations over the clamshell, and she accepts for both of them. John says nothing, only utters a low growl of anger in his throat. He didn't like being disturbed.
He stares hard into the grayish eyes. There's something there that he wasn't expecting in a baby. She understands, he thinks. She knows that her life is predetermined to be crap. She knows that she'll die hating him.
John ducks his head in slight annoyance. There's a whirring kind of noise, coming from the walls, and it irritates him. Like when he would walk into his house, and know that DK was there, because there was that strange little whine that came with the TV being on. Sometimes he jokes that it was his own personal sonar, before he really needed it.
Because he needs it now. John doesn't trust his senses like he did before. They betrayed him that day, and John will never forget it.
- - -
There was a message John knew he didn't want to hear in that spike, so he wandered out of the room. Chiana followed a few paces behind. He wasn't really sure if he wanted her to be there now, but he would need her there soon.
Talyn's walls were belching wires and circuits like some half-gutted animal in a taxidermist's. Fluid oozed down the rusting metal walls. It smelled like piss, blood, and pus.
"Like college," John muttered, under his breath. Chiana didn't ask; she knew when to ask and when not to. It had been a hard-earned lesson.
They passed the galley, and John turned as if to go in. One whiff told him all he needed to know. He had no desire to see the Royal Pain-in-the-Ass's corpse or the resident psycho. He wasn't looking for them, anyway.
"Hey, D'Argo," Chiana said quietly. Good, she was going to say it for him. Always lifting the burden. "We found Rygel and Stark."
"Where are they?"
"In the galley, D," John called behind him. "They're dead. Just like this whole frelling ship. Dead, dead, dead…"
- - -
"Rock-a-bee…"
He feels like swearing, but can't. It might break the walls he's tried too hard to close those memories in.
He always feels like he's being watched now. Always being tracked. Maybe that's why the planets stopped fascinating him. He hardly leaves the ship anymore.
Harvey's muttering something now, but John pictures the Dumpster, and the voice stops. Eventually, Harvey will have finished with John's cautious tendency and take over again. But for now, he acquiesces.
The baby snuggles down, and John decides to give it one last try. Better now than never.
- - -
Chiana was the one who saw them. Tucked away into a far corner of their shared quarters. Her body was wedged between two of Talyn's ribs, and he was laying across the opening.
John stood ten feet away, surveying the Alamo. Their last stand. Chiana opened her mouth to call D'Argo again, but John held up a hand. She got the message and exited to the hallway.
He stood there for arns, they said. Just staring at the wall. Staring at her. Imagining the cry of death on her lips.
This room smelled cleaner than the others, John realized. They must have sent the distress signal Moya'd received. John grimaced and took another step forward.
The bodies were in near-perfect condition. Obviously, they were the last ones to die. There were chakan oil cartridges everywhere on the floor. Winona was locked in the other Crichton's grip.
John closed the gap at last, reaching delicately down to touch the precious pistol. It was cold, and suddenly John felt nauseous. The guy had died holding this. Probably while watching Aeryn die.
Fighting the disgust and anguish rising with the bile in his throat, John pulled at the other's arm, until he disentangled the two bodies. Rigor mortis had clearly come and gone because he could move his double's joints effortlessly. He laid the poor man on his back, and closed his eyes. He wasn't sure if he could touch this last body.
Aeryn was pressed tightly into the crevice between the two ribs. Her arms curled protectively around something in her lap, and the surrounding walls were splattered with sticky dried blood.
Promising himself that he could puke until his stomach came out back on Moya, John pried her arms gently apart. There, in her lap, was the prettiest and the saddest thing he'd ever seen. A little boy, wrapped in his dead mother's embrace, had died sleeping peacefully while pirates had murdered his father.
- - -
She sighs and folds her hands quietly. So long has she waited for this small opportunity to relish in the site of him. The other two are constantly occupied with each other, and she always longs for the ability to get away. Frell this ship, their former home. She wants to leave.
It is a stoic calm that meets his smiling face. He measures his emotions by hers now, and the joy is drawn back slightly from his countenance. She winces slightly at this extraction of beauty, but he needs to be reminded. Emotions can kill. And they all ready have.
She is a different woman now, quieter and reserved, completely changed. She'd fought well during the war, facing old friends as new enemies. She held his breath for him as he squeezed off the final shot into Scorpius's brain. She laughed with him at the pleasure of release after the fights were over. So long had their prayers been unanswered. She'd begun to believe that Zhann wasn't listening anymore.
It is a changed woman that reaches out a hand and caresses her mate's shoulder. He steals another glance at her and is delighted to find a smile. Give a little, take a little more. That is their delicate dance.
"Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top. And when the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come baby, cradle, and all."
John's perverse, silly song is greeted with laughter from their daughter. She smiles wider, and leans back. So he finally remembers. Perhaps her cynicism will be proven false.
Chiana sighs and watches her mate, wondering uneasily who he is really singing to.