Title: Here We Go Again

Author: Auna

Rating: K

Setting: About 24 cycles after PKW

Spoilers: none

Disclaimer: Farscape is not mine and I'm not making any money playing in their universe.

Author's Note: Thank you to Crystalmoon for her read-through and suggestions. All mistakes are mine. This is a bit of an experiment, to see if anyone is interested. This is something I'm thinking I might work on in my spare time, but I wanted to see if anyone was even interested first. For those of you who might vaguely remember any previous work I might have posted forever ago, this is not connected in any way with any other universe I may have created.

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D'Argo looked at his mud stained hands and sighed. He was tired... and sore, but mostly just tired. Nearly 24 cycles old, and he was in the same old trouble that had been following him from adolescence. His black hair dropped down in front of his eyes again, and he blew the clump out of the way in frustration. Where the frell were they? They were supposed to be here by now!

Crouching lower in the murky water, gagging on the putrid smell that surrounded him, he looked up in to the sky for the bazillionth time in a quarter arn. Nope, still not there. Sighing, he closed his eyes and listed his options. He could wait here in the lukewarm water, pickling his mivonks and hope and pray that they had seen the note he'd written and were able to sneak through the checkpoint; or he could swim away from the rendezvous coordinates he'd left and find his own way off the commerce planet, dragging her along with him the entire time.

Neither option was palatable.

Patience. He wasn't good at patience. That's what had gotten him in this mess in the first place. Casting blame wouldn't do any good now, so he deliberately changed the course of his thoughts.

"Do you see them?" Telorick whispered anxiously, her soft voice carrying up to him easily in the stillness of the afternoon. He'd drug her into this mess as well. She'd been the only one to believe him, and now she might die with him.

He looked down into her young, black eyes and saw her hopeful expression. Her grey hair tried valiantly to float around her face in its usual wisps, but the weight of the muck coating the ends dragged it down, making her look bedraggled. She hated to be bedraggled and the guilt gnawed at him.

"No," he answered. "Not yet."

"Frell. What are we going to do?"

That was the million dollar question. What were they going to do? "Come on, let's go dry off. Night sentries will be here any moment now."

"How will Moya find us?" she asked nervously, waving her grey hand in the air for emphasis.

"They aren't coming." He didn't believe that statement for a microt. "Yet," he clarified. Crichtons never abandoned each other; no matter how angry they were with each other. And they would be plenty angry. "We'll have to go find them."

"How the frell are we supposed to do that?" she asked crossly, accusingly.

"I don't know, Ricky. But we'll find a way. Trust me, all right?" He slowly waded through the waist-deep sludge toward her, where she hid in some waterlogged brushes.

"Trust you," she whispered accusingly. "Trust you. That's why I ended up on this dren-hole of a planet in the first place! You'd think I'd have learned along time ago, after the Brunactnict experience, but no not me-"

"Oh, come on," D'Argo argued quietly as Telorick climbed on his back and he began wading through the mud and guck to the only safe place to climb onto dry land. "You cannot hold that against me, that was fifteen cycles ago, and we were kids."

"Then there was that time you convinced me to go joy riding in your father's module when your parents were gone for their anniversary."

"He'd have never known if you hadn't thrown up all over the backseat."

She leaned over his back and hissed in his ear. "I wouldn't have thrown up all over the backseat if you hadn't tried to show off with all those barrel rolls."

"I wasn't showing off!" he insisted, just at the same time he realized they were right back at the beginning of a never ending argument that would never be settled. "I was-"

A loud crack interrupted his standard monologue and both their heads snapped up to see the end of a nasty looking firearm pointed right at D'Argo's forehead. "The Empress has been searching for you," said the creature with slimy purple skin. "She is unhappy with the condition you left her research lab."

"Frell," Telorick mumbled in his ear, hitching herself higher on his back, wrapping her legs tighter around his waist. He knew that she was thinking he was going to run, and she didn't want to fall off again.

Instead, he smiled. "Ghendor, Ghendor, Ghendor," he said with his most congenial tone. "You misunderstand, my friend. Let me explain."

"Explain to the Empress." Ghendor interrupted, unimpressed. "Now move!"

"Trust you, you said," the young Nebari woman on his back mumbled as he sludged his way onto dry ground. "Trust you."

"Shut up."

"You'd better have a plan, feck-face."

He would... soon. Very soon. If she would just shut the frell up!