There's Nothing More Between Us
Notes: Season Four. This is an alternate version of either the end of Promises, or the end of Twice Shy; whichever you like. The nice thing about alternates is that you can keep the original, too.
He didn't look at her when she entered the room; lying on his back, screwing a metal piece back onto the console. He'd probably sheared it off himself, and couldn't wait for the DRDs to get to it. Or he'd completely reconfigured the system to work slightly more efficiently – Aeryn was always unsettled by his particular mix of clumsy competence.
She crouched down beside him, waiting.
"What's up?" John asked briefly.
"You told me to come back when I had my story straight. So I'm back. Perhaps last time the things I said seemed too complex. I've tried to make it clearer."
"That's not what I meant."
"Are you going to listen?"
He finished adjusting the last piece, and pulled himself up. Now he was standing over her, and she was staring at his knees. A certain kind of rage began to grow inside her, but she chose to focus herself instead, ignoring the emotion.
"Are you going to listen?" she repeated, waiting where she was. Either he'd come to her, or he'd walk away. He had to make the choice himself.
Eventually he offered her his hand and pulled her up to face him.
"Shoot."
She'd learned from him what that phrase meant; she liked its violent succinctness. "I'm pregnant. I don't know from where the baby's DNA originates. I didn't know how you'd react to the uncertainty. I wanted to clear up at least that part of the shock before I told you, but I wasn't able to do that, I haven't been able to do that yet. So what that means is that I'm pregnant, and I don't know whether that has anything to do with you or not."
He tilted his head in a characteristic movement which meant that he was processing information; so at least it meant that he'd heard something new. Whether it was straighter, clearer, to him; well, that she didn't know.
"So if you're pregnant and the baby isn't a result of us having recreated some time or another, then it's nothing to do with me?"
Aeryn's eyes widened in shock. "Recreated?"
His hand was on her wrist now. "Say we'd never touched one another. Say we'd never kissed, we'd never – frelled. And say you'd found out anyway that you were pregnant. To Velorak, or any of the other Peacekeeper shits who you'd fucked all those years ago. Would you have told me? Answer me, Aeryn, would you have come one day to my room and have said, Crichton, I'm in a fix, something unexpected has happened, I need to share it with you?"
"Crichton, I –"
"Or . . . you told me, I think, is this right, you told me that if you don't find a surgeon, then the foetus is dissolved back into your body. Would you have waited, waited those seven years, not said a word, not a word, carrying this half-child, tell me Aeryn – would you?"
"I –"
"Say that it is mine, say that you go onto your command carrier, you get the DNA test, oh congratulations Officer Sun, you've got a bit of human DNA in there mixed up with Sabacean and, looky here, Pilot as well, oh Officer Sun, you do need to make a few decisions now, do you want a baby, do you want a possibility, do you want a relationship with the father of this baby, do you want, what do you want, Aeryn, Aeryn, what do you want?"
The most frightening thing about Crichton was the clarity in those blue eyes. They didn't move. He didn't move at all. His hand was still on her wrist and she thought it was going numb. How strange that the place where he touched her was without sensation when the rest of her was pain, when he was all pain.
Then he dropped it, laughed a little, and that hurt most of all. He began to walk away, and then stopped. He turned back quickly and she could hear her pulse beating loud, loud in her ears, and she thought that if he spoke she wouldn't hear a word he said.
"I'm curious," he admitted to her. "If you've been up the duff – pregnant – for seven years, how is it you've just noticed it? I mean, are your periods that irregular? Do Sabaceans not suffer from morning sickness, or did you think throwing up was just the sheer nervousness of being on Moya? Are there signs that I don't understand, dizziness, spots, hallucinations, grey hair? Did you see a vision, did you have a dream? Or are you lying to me, and you know that last year you lay with John in Talyn and conceived his child and you can't bear, you can't bear to share that with me?"
Aeryn closed her eyes. "John."
"Come back when you've got your story straight. That doesn't mean simple. That doesn't mean clear. It means true. It means when you're not hiding details to protect me or protect you. It means when you're prepared to say everything. I want to know it all. Come back when you're prepared to say it all. When you can answer at least one –" he choked, lifted a hand.
"John!"
He kept walking, and she grabbed him, furious, whirling him around to face her. "It isn't fair!"
"No." He pulled her hand from him and turned back towards the door. She grabbed him again, but he spun around and shoved her back. "That doesn't work, Aeryn!"
"So listen, frell you! You're so angry with me because you don't understand what I'm saying, but I can't understand you. I can't understand you!"
They were both breathing hard, facing one another. "You think it's lies between us, or the other John, or the time we were apart, or grief. It's something else, John. I don't understand all the words you're saying, all the things you're feeling, and you don't let me ask you what you mean, you get angry and leave. You forget I'm not human. I forget you're not Sabacean. We're so different, John, you forget that it's bacteria translating our words, and we're saying completely different things. I don't know your past! I don't know your world! And I don't understand your language!"
Just as she said those words she saw the small lines at the edge of his eyes crinkle into affection, and she thought then that a microbe could reveal nothing to her that his face could not. It wasn't true, though; she knew it wasn't true.
"You want me to teach you English?"
It was one solution, anyway. Aeryn thought it would be easier than him picking up Sabacean; for some reason there were sounds in that language he just did not seem able to make. "I want you to keep in your mind that we're never hearing exactly what the other is saying; that maybe when you're angry with me, it's because you're misunderstanding what I say. Listen to me. I never recreated with you." She hesitated, then, thinking hard, and then looked at him directly. "Listen to me, John. I am not lying to you. I never, ever, recreated with you."
His lip actually trembled, and he lifted his hand quickly to cover his mouth.
"You say if we hadn't touched, if, if, those ifs aren't possible to think about, those things aren't possible to say. We loved one another, it was perfect, you and I – we were perfect," she said, and she looked at him with such sadness. "It was your arms, the arms I see now, that held me, on Talyn, on Moya, on the strange Earth that wasn't Earth. You held me; not my body, but me. I made a mistake, but not the mistake you think I made. You think I didn't love you enough to share this with you; that I underestimated how much you'd care. No, John. I thought I had hurt you enough by leaving. I couldn't bear to give you this child and then have to take away something from you at the same time. I wanted to be able to offer it all to you at once."
"You think – you thought you weren't enough?" he said to her incredulously. "That sight of you coming back to me, you back here on Moya, you think that wasn't enough? You thought you had to give me more?"
"You deserved more than me half-dead with Scorpius hiding behind my back," she said frankly.
"No, I didn't." He held her wrist again, and she didn't care what happened to it. "There can't be anyone in the universe who deserves more than that sight." He looked at her as though he saw her there again, with that same awed, even terrified joy, she'd seen in his eyes when he'd arrived back in Moya to find her there.
"So –"
"Two things." He slid his hand down, over her palm, and clutched her hand. "I love you. I love you. I love you –" he cleared his throat, and then shook his head. "Your child, I'd love your child because it's your child, and I love you. Even if Velorak or some other unnamed Nazi provided the DNA. Your child, Aeryn – "
"I know you love me." She pulled his hand up to her eyes, hiding her face behind their clutched fists. "I understand that. I don't understand the second thing that you said. You say it in the same way that you say so many things. 'Baseball', 'action movies', 'Kennedy's death', 'slickern'snot'." She pronounced the English words carefully, seriously. "A child, a little creature, a baby, a thing growing inside me, a person I don't know, a person you don't know, maybe made of you and me or someone else, you say because you love me, you say –"
"Aeryn, you've never –" His eyes widened, trying hard to see, trying hard to believe what he saw. "You've never held a baby? You've never known a baby?" He let go of her hand, placing his palm right above the place where her heart lay. "That – and you're carrying – that feeling, where – that hope, dream, your whole life that you have, where you're married and you have kids, and you – but you don't know that, you – and still you're carrying this child even though you don't know that –"
"I've never held a baby."
He placed both his hands gently on her shoulders. "Oh, Aeryn. I promise you. I promise you. It's going to be – it'll be – it'll be more. More than anything, more than everything. I swear."
"Maybe." Her eyes still narrowed, trying hard to imagine, trying hard to see something that was utterly unimaginable.
"I swear."
It felt like a long time, standing there like that; his palms resting gently on her shoulders, his eyes looking directly into hers. It hadn't been like that, it hadn't been like that for a thousand years, that connection unbroken by grief, anger, jealousy, fear, misunderstanding. They'd stood like this on Talyn, with the star outside bearing her name. They'd stood like this on Moya, swearing their love in the middle of the dead. They'd stood like this, wordless nonsense bearing full meaning during a battle in a shadow depository. They'd faced each other in the same open, delighted, utterly restful way in the middle of a nowhere which looked like a lot like Australia. It was entirely familiar. It was perfect.
"It's over, then."
"It's over," he repeated.