Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 12
Kindred Spirits
She dreams of Deke most nights. She's not used to having dreams unless they're engaged by a third party. Rarely, she'll have the odd nightmare which she can not control. Her physiology, her genetic makeup predisposed her to sleeping for mere hours at a time, able to fall asleep with ease, and wake at any questioning sound. However, her genetic makeup has changed now. She's birthed a child, a hybrid offspring which remodeled her with more hormones that cause her to constantly be in tears at the first tick of frustration, that cause her to be more tender when remembering the fuzz on her son's head.
Hormones that set off her anger because, again, everyone is impeding her from getting him back.
John curls up behind her, his body hot and heavy in the throes of the last few minutes of sleep before the device beside the bed rings, and either Colonel Carter or Dr. Jackson calls them down to talk for hours because all humans do is frelling talk. The dialogue they hold lasts until they've unanimously agreed on the best course of action which they knew of in the beginning. As they discuss the planetary missions, they excuse her from the room because since she doesn't have leave clearance, she doesn't need to be informed of such things.
John is hot, but he slings his arm over her bare thighs and despite the hiss she releases from being uncomfortable, the action soothes her. She's enraged, has been slowly fanning her fingers for the last hour while thinking about the situation, and how once again, she's marginalized.
The medical doctor has absolutely no authority over her. Wagers she doesn't know how to use a weapon, and in hand-to-hand combat, believes she could take her down in the matter mere of seconds—less if it needs to be done fatally—yet in this world, that medical doctor has the authority to tell a military team comprised of colonels and learned personnel that she is unable to attend to their missions due to biological issues.
Causes uneasiness, that all the members of this team know of her weakness to heat, and if they choose to, they could simply turn up the frelling heat and let her become nothing. She's seen them dart their eyes away, the way the doctor scoffs when she needs to rest, or excuse herself to a nearby refrigeration unit, or return to the room for one of her three, nearing four, ice baths a day.
John shifts behind her again, his hand slipping from her hip to fall over her stomach.
He doesn't know.
There's no way he could possibly know and she's not going to tell him.
With Deke they sacrificed almost all they had, not only to have their son, but to ensure his safety. Were willing to give up their lives, his life, to secure the peaceful upbringing he required. But when she found out on the command carrier, when she knew she was carrying the child of a man who stood within arm's length, yet was dead, she didn't know what to do because she had never wanted to be a mother.
She didn't abort the baby because if either John were beside her, he wouldn't allow her to do anything so rash before they talked about it for monens first—a solar cycle to be exact. If either John were beside her, there would be no reason to abort the baby at all.
She didn't abort Deke because she wasn't ready to, and as she worked as an assassin, the small pin prick of pressure plagued on the back of her mind. How women sit with the pressure for up to seven cycles is ridiculous, because she barely lasted a cycle with the little bundle of cells pushing in her pelvis, not hard, just constant, just telling her that he was still here.
Lost that pinch on Katratzi.
Doesn't remember Katratzi, at least that's what she tells John if he asks, but she remembers every single part of it, the pain, the heat, the pleading, the breakdown. Knowing no one was on her side, knowing a dead man she loved more than she'd loved anything in her life's seed had stuck and that was why she was enduring such torture.
Knowing exactly what they wanted from her, so she would not, while she still held a breath left in her body, give them up.
When she woke in John's arms as he tucked her into her bed, and she flailed against him because she couldn't tell directions, couldn't tell feelings and truths and placements. Could distinguish that pestering pressure that had been in her pelvis once she was told she was with child, and she panicked and asked afraid to hear the answer, afraid to know if she had lost. At John's reassurance she found immediate relief, and he thought her wild, crazed from her time spent in torture, yet she was confused by the relief. Initially, she just didn't want the Scarrans to get what they wanted but being told the baby was safe offered a different level of relief.
After she and John were reconstituted, she couldn't feel the pressure then either. Left it for an arn or two while they got settled with the Eidelons, but the constant pinch never returned, and her stomach dropped as she tugged John aside and whispered with a cracking voice that she needed to see the Diagnosian. He agreed, happy laughing, holding her hand and swinging it, until she brought the pendulum motion to a halt. Her eyes explaining what words cracked her throat. Could only tell him that she felt different, that the little pressure they'd been so coy with, that they'd fought about for the last cycle, had depleted.
If she tells John about the baby, more so the baby-in-waiting, he's going to be as stupidly optimistic as he always is and attempt to find a way to release it when these humans know nothing about her physiology. All action and grins, and tearful chuckles, until she has to ask him, how exactly will they take this baby home? How are they going to raise this child and Deke, who would be born monens apart, when he doesn't help with Deke in the first place, and she knows why.
His arm curls around her stomach, dragging her back to him, and she rolls her eyes though he can't see them. He's awake, radiating heat, and adjusting himself against her so she's well aware of his arousal. He drops a kiss to the base of her neck, his nose nuzzling behind her ear, and a fragment of her is still surprised at the gentleness he exudes when the majority of her previous recreation partners were forceful, greedy—the way she was until she spent half a cycle on Talyn.
"Morning Baby." His voice is a low grumble in her ear rolling up from the back of his throat. His fingertips drag over the exposed skin on her stomach, making her shudder, as he kisses her shoulder. "You're getting hot."
"You're already are hot." She twists, resting on her back, viewing his face through the highlighted panel on the wall meant to simulate natural light. He looks green and gray and drops a kiss to her collarbone, his tongue tracing, making her shudder again.
His hand falls to her thigh, tracing the inside upwards until he finds the band of her undergarment, stopping abruptly, fingering the stitching while leaning up on his free arm. "What happened to the ice baggie?"
"It melted in the middle of the night from your nuclear body heat." She shoves him, partly wanting away, feeling the sweat at the base of her skull, down the back of her neck and the small of her back, but he grabs her hand instead, placing a kiss on the palm, and most of her is happy he does.
He keeps her hand against his lips, holds it stable while he glances up at her with those innocent eyes that always make her anger sieve a bit. She sighs, taking the hand and drawing a finger over his chin, pushes her fingers into his hair to clear where it's settled in his sleep. "I put the baggie on the floor so if it ruptured, we wouldn't be sleeping in drenched sheets all night."
He slants himself into her touch, eyes closed and happy as she pets him like a domesticated animal. That too, makes her smile. "Why didn't you go get another one?'
"Because I was tired, John."
Her hand drops and he reopens his eyes.
"Fair enough."
He crawls over her to grab the device from the side table just as it rings, his body so hot, so heavy, so hard as she twists to get away from him without wanting to but needing to. He speaks grunts and single words into the phone before depressing a button and tossing it to the mattress. "I've got to be in debriefing in two arns."
"You'd best be getting ready then." She stands, stretching, rolling out her shoulders, shifting her neck, bending at her hips, knowing what her body is doing to his from feeling the weight of his gaze upon her. She glances up from where she's positioned bent to her feet. "You get fussy when you don't have breakfast."
"I—" The bed squeaks as he shifts to her side, to the edge, walking on his knees, his eyes never leaving her. "I was thinking about taking a nice cold shower."
"I think a cold shower is exactly what you need right now." She stands throwing her hair back over her shoulders in a swoop, knowing it's enticing to him, knowing that he will be late in two arns—and part of her thinks of their son, on Moya, in the command room where they left him, their counterparts holding him, playing with him, feeding him, and she grows envious of something she was only allowed to have for a monen, grows irate because she spent so long birthing that child, was in such excruciating pain, and yet someone else now cares for him.
"I wasn't thinking of going into that shower alone." John lowers himself to laying on his stomach on the mattress, his eyes level with her behind, still enamored.
"And I think that—" His hand smooths it's way over the back of her thigh, upwards until it rests on her ass, warmth exuding through her, yet also arousing her. "John."
"We can be quick."
"That's not very enticing."
"I'll wash your hair."
"You know that's for your pleasure, not mine."
She busies herself collecting his dropped clothing from off the floor as he watches her with the same gaze, using it as a scheme, trying to get her to relent. "Aeryn, Baby, come on."
"I will recreate in the shower with you right now if you promise me I will see our son in the next solar cycle."
"I promise you'll see Deke by tomorrow morning." Speaks the words so quickly, she isn't sure he understands the gravity of them, doesn't realize what she's asking from him.
"John."
He snags her by the hips as she walks by the bed, holds her in place as she tries to continue to tidy up her husband's mess. "Aeryn." He jostles her hips, and his thumb is almost directly over the pinch, like he knows, like he can sense it as well, yet she knows he can't. "Aeryn, look at me."
Rolls her eyes before giving him the contact he's requested, and sighs deeply so he knows he's on the cusp of an argument with her.
"I have this feeling—"
"Every time you have a frelling feeling it's either wormholes or—"
"Just listen." He laughs shimmying her hips again and when she moves to smack him away, he tugs her closer. It is entirely too warm now. "I have this feeling that we're gonna see Deke real soon. I don't know why, it's just a hunch."
"You and your hunches."
"You love my hunches."
"I also love our son."
"Me too, and I know we're gonna get back to him soon, so a little hanky panky in the shower isn't going to mean boo—"
"If it isn't going to mean anything, then why—"
"Aeryn, I got ninety minutes left." He holds the back of his hand to her forehead and she tries to duck out of the way. "And you need to have an ice something to cool down because your short-term memory is going to go soon. Can we just win-win this thing and hop in the shower?"
She huffs, still holding two of his dirty socks in her hand, turning her attention away from him, but feeling him practically vibrate as he keeps hold of her free hand. "Go and start the shower."
It's not entirely giving in as she was going to have a shower, and she would enjoy a good frell before spending the day cooped up in the infirmary with an angry doctor who is still trying to persuade her to get the body scan, or Dr. Jackson's lab, as she's supposed to do research looking for the location of the stones, yet she doesn't know what they are officially called, and while her reading level of English is passable, most of the texts are written in an absurd language.
"Water's getting cold, Aeryn." He calls to her, flinging out his dirty undergarment, before proving his words with a loud yowl.
She will not see her son tonight, nor likely not tomorrow, she knows this because despite all her changes, she is still a soldier, she still remains pragmatic and realistic.
Yet, with John still shouting from the shower, freezing with no benefit as she's not there, she absorbs his optimism and pads toward the washroom.
"Hush. Hush."
She bounces the child in her arms as he slowly begins to wake. Pulled him ensconced and slumbering from his makeshift bassinet. Wrapped shaky hands around his small, warm body and tucked him against her chest because she can't be alone right now, and she can't be in the room with the others, so he will simply have to do.
"Hush. Hush."
Speaks to him though he is barely awake, slits of her own shade of blue eyes looking up at her in curiosity, in confusion, before closing again, and drool dripping out of a ruby red gummy mouth.
There was so much red.
Even more blue.
The sounds of the pistols, the jolt of Mitchell dragging her to cover, and sitting with her behind storage crates, asking for a bit of her luck because they could use it. The group—there was four she thinks, one with a very crispy face—firing on them, shooting through the crates, and when Mitchell threw his arm over her head to block it from a blast, to force her more into cover, the shot broke through the storage containers and burst directly into his shoulder.
He toppled, howled with pain, his pulse pistol dropping to the ground and his hand flying to his injured shoulder. The blast was bright green, acidic, burning through the clothes he'd borrowed and now can't return in any shape. His skin appeared fine at first until they were on the transport back to Mayo, when his skin started bubbling and burning, until the blisters started spreading.
She knows because she feels it too.
"Hush. Hush."
Chiana wasn't conscious enough to explain to them who these people were, or why they hated them so much, just showed up behind them on scheduled to reunite and leave—hopefully with a stone—and instead was fired upon. Hit twice, once in the abdomen, and once in the side of the neck, her blue blood spilled all over the marketplace ground, while shoppers screamed and ran for cover.
She froze, had reeled Mitchell back in, cradling his injured shoulder to her chest the same way she does with little Deke, and she froze, unable to plan a strategy, to think of what to do—knowing what she must do. She reached for the gun, ready to leave him, ready to leave Chiana, and Deke, and Pilot, and even that old woman who might have her trust. She stood, ready to draw the fire away so the injured could escape.
But he grabbed her by the bottom of her black t-shirt and yanked her back down, grumbling something along the lines of 'don't you dare.' He snapped the pistol from her and did something with the cartridge that caused it to become explosive after he threw it—
"Hush. Hush."
—the aftershock allowing him to haul Chiana up over his uninjured shoulder, getting blue blood all along his shirt and skin. He didn't have a free hand to reach behind for her, and while she trailed, she became distracted by the same person who had distracted her before, with the same dark brown eyes she doesn't know how she got.
She became distracted—
"Hush. Hush."
—and was fired upon.
Mitchell missed it, and she held in the howl which he so freely let loose, pulled her borrowed long coat closer to her body so he didn't see the piece of her t-shirt burned away at her side. Limped uphill after him through the central hub and back into the vehicle they call a transport pod that neither of them knows how to fly but was programmed to automatically return to Mayo.
Listened wide-eyed, staring at the bronzed interior while he contacted Pilot and explained their situation. Stood completely stationary within the pod and listened as his voice became further and further away, until he yanked her t-shirt down again, forcing her to deal with Chiana's wounds the best she could.
He carried Chiana to the infirmary where the old woman was waiting and she ran to the refresher to wash the blue blood from her hands, as she'd done several times as Qetesh, before Qetesh in a river by her home.
Changed her clothing and grabbed the baby because she was so scared—he must be scared. She was in shock and so the baby must be too. So in pain as her side bubbled—
"Hush. Hush."
"Vala."
His tone is different, not the frantic, demanding one he used aboard the pod, or to her behind the storage containers. His form is hunched a bit and he's mislaid his shirt, smelling like the refresher just as she did an hour ago, maybe two, maybe ten.
"I'm—I'm trying to get him to sleep."
"Well, then you're done."
"What—"
"Kid's asleep." He points to Deke as he perches on the edge of their shared three bed, grunting a bit in pain as he does.
"Oh." Glances down and Deke's eyes—her eyes—are closed, happily slumbering in her arms. Moves him slowly towards the bassinet because there's no reason for her to continue to hold the child, who looks like her, who looks like Mitchell, but is not their own.
Too many faces rivaling her own.
"I just didn't want him to be alone."
Mitchell nods, he has a container beside him on the bed, and he's trying to stretch out his arm to reach his wound. "I understand."
And something snaps in her.
Replaces where she is, in her surroundings, whom she's with. The pain her side pales, not longer boiling. She crosses the room, moving the container away from him, and gesturing for him to turn around. "How is Chiana?"
He appears surprised at first by her sudden revival, but does as she requests, turning his bare back towards her. "She's stable for now, that old woman is working some witchcraft on her."
"I'm guessing she's the one who's gifted you with this ointment?" Three of her fingers dip into the salve, it's cold, almost numbing, and smells vaguely of peppermint.
"It's supposed to help with the gunshot wounds." He hisses, whether it be from the temperature or the contact as she rubs a thin layer over his blistered skin. "Apparently, we were hit with special bullets that actually eat away at the skin like acid."
She knows that. She can feel that.
His hand reaches back to steady hers when she removes it. Their eyes catch and she sees all the panic he's feeling fill up behind blue eyes. He holds her wrist for far too long to be explainable, then adds, "that old woman said you gotta put on a thick layer of it."
"Yes." She agrees as if she knows this to be true, and spreads the salve thicker across his back, past the boarders of the encroaching wound, and onto his healthy skin in case the tissue is already compromised.
When she removes her hand, when his back is sufficiently covered in the ointment, he turns his head back to her again. "Vala?"
Wants to lie to him and tell him she's fine, when the wound along her flank is eating away at her, burning her to such a degree that she doesn't know why she isn't illuminated.
"Who did you see in the market?"
"What?"
She knows exactly what he's asked.
"You chased after someone on the planet before—" he pauses and sighs into his hand, before standing and marching to the pile of unused clothing, fishing out a black t-shirt "—who did you think you saw?"
"Noranti said that planet has a very strong spiritual energy—that it can sometimes dredge up hallucinations of those from our pasts." She wipes her hands off on her pants and begins to walk towards the door.
"Okay—" he lengthens the word, watching her, narrowing his eyes the same way Deke did a few minutes earlier. "Who did you see?"
She pauses at the door, raising her hand to engage the opening mechanism hurts, but she stifles the flinch. "I saw someone from my past."
Adria.
She saw Adria as she did the first time. The tiny child who healed her ailing abdomen too well and made her adequately infertile until an old woman in a different galaxy force fed her sludge and suddenly the fertility quite literally started gushing out of her.
Small, perfect Adria with the dark mysterious eyes she always loved. Not her own, not constantly sad and red from crying. Her pale little face, and a tiny hand beckoning her down an alley and she had to follow because she didn't when she was taken, and perhaps she could have changed her. Perhaps she could have been a real mother instead of a bystander.
"Vala—"
"I'm going to go check on Chiana."
It's a weak lie at best, but he's too tired to call her on it, probably even noticing that she heads in the wrong direction once out of their shared quarters. She holds her breath as each step becomes more excruciating—although sometimes she can accommodate the pain and it's not so much—until she reaches the room they arrived in.
As she crosses into the command center, or whatever vernacular they use for it, she rifles around in the pocket of her long leather coat, something she didn't discard with good reason, because as she was sweet talking the gentleman with the tentacle face—he really was quite a gentleman, and if given more time, she might have been interested in him—she swiped the stone clear off his table just before the gunfight broke out.
Before she was covered in red and blue and burning at her side.
They've marked the appropriate grooves as Noranti incessantly pointed at two of them for the three days travel it took to get to Valdun, shouting happily words even the translator bots couldn't correctly phrase, and the word swan.
The table wobbles as she leans into it, not hesitating for even a second, and the stone slips in easily, glowing blue, calming and enchanting.
Before she loses consciousness she notices for the first time a battle scar—what looks like an attack from a sword—across the tabletop.