Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 16
Physically Impossible
"You shouldn't have been able to do this."
The bespectacled doctor's office is of a higher temperature than most of the other areas she's allowed clearance to within the mountain, yet he stands before them, wearing a fleecy dark green sweater, his arms crossed over his chest in indignation as apparently they've broken some set of universal physical rules.
"Well, we did."
In the middle of his examination table, sits an empty pouch of Peacekeeper infant formula. The feeding mechanism still engaged, pablum crusty around the top. Two arns ago she held Deke in her arms, felt his familiar weight and became enamored all over again.
Now she has wet palms, a communication barrier, the constant pressure in her pelvis of another life that wants to be, and a group of frelling useless humans who refuse to let her aid in their quest home.
"But you shouldn't have been able to."
The doctor takes off his glasses, folding them neatly, and tucking them into the collar of his sweater. The heat is beginning to grip it's claws into her, slowing her mental processes, the words jutting less clearly from his mouth as he grimaces.
"Well, we have."
John stands to her left, they've split onto the other side of the table than the doctor, his arms remain crossed, the black t-shirt straining against his muscles. It's a welcome distraction from the pinch within her, the heat around her constantly trying to stray her mind from the content of the debate, the little mouth that gulped down food, and the little hand that held her own.
"But it's physically impossible. "
The doctor leans in, his eyes squinting at the pouch, probably intelligent enough to figure out the utilization of it, yet he hasn't reached to touch it yet. Stands with his hands tucked into his sides, wearing that sweater, and she has to look away from him. Has to move, lest she start to sway on her feet and be redirected away from one of the only conversations she's been allowed to partake in.
"But it's obviously not."
"I mean, I'm no expert in the physics of this, but when possessing someone's body, you shouldn't be able to bring things back with you." The doctor still stares at the pouch, leveling himself, bending at the hips so his eyes are even with it.
John's arms are still crossed and by the expression on his face, he's fighting straying the conversation on a tangent, which is big of him. "Didn't you and Vala bring back information when you were shot to that other galaxy."
"Yeah, but that's weightless, it's incorporeal." The doctor straightens, his arms no longer stable at his side, flying out in emotion, in what she wagers is offense. "Not tangible concrete things. Not permanent things."
"And you don't think the information you learned changes your brain, the structure of it?" Her husband remains tall, rigid, oddly unemotional. He's fallen into the stoic nature, where his belief is so serious, where something so drastic needs to be done, that he can't fall back on lost jokes and grand gestures. "You don't think the memories of what you've seen are permanent, at least until you go senile?"
"See Nile?" Scrolls her eyes up to his, immediately garnering his attention away from the conversation because the word isn't in her vocabulary, or if it is, it's in the portion of her being leeched away by the heat.
"Senile. One word." He takes a step towards her, holding out his index finger to indicate the amount. "It's when humans get old and forget things."
"Like heat delirium?" Her eyes dart away from his, towards the concrete ceiling, suddenly uneasy of her position. Of being underground. Of being buried.
His hand blankets her forehead, and she doesn't draw her eyes away from where they're tracing over the gray surface dotted with lights, something isn't right. Something is wrong, and she becomes infuriated with herself, because if she was of a typical temperature, she would have figured out what it was long ago.
"Kind of, but it's not reversible." Removing his hand, he brings it to his back pocket, shuffling around until he produces a hair tie for her. He taps it against her bare shoulder once, then two more times in quick succession, and when she doesn't react, he simply moves behind her, collecting her hair again, blowing against the back of her neck as he constructs not a perfect updo, but a much better one with four more days practice.
The doctor clears his throat, his glasses placed back on the edge of his nose as he snaps what looks to be rubber coverings over his hands. "I don't know what to tell you, other than by all laws of known physics, this shouldn't be possible."
"Well." He directs her slightly to the left, doesn't tell her to stop her examination because just as she knows him, knows that his time for jokes and dancing are over, he knows that there's a reason for her fixation. "Isn't that the same for us switching places?"
"No, there's a simple explanation using the long-range communication device."
"You said that normally you just get to ride shotgun in someone else's body." There's the sound of dragging, of clattering behind her, and then the soft click of a button being depressed before the relief of a cool stream of air hitting her back.
When she glances back, John is beside a device, it's black a little over half her height tall. There's a round cage with rotating blades inside it generating the air pulsing over her, similar to the Scrubber Room on Moya. "With the exception of Aeryn and Vala for a three arn stint, we moved realities, not bodies."
"Yeah." In her peripherals, the doctor jabs a finger into Deke's formula pouch. Then again until the garbage topples over. "I don't know what to tell you about that."
"We're just full of firsts." The way John says it indicates that his words are directed at her. He presses a kiss into the back of her head, on her hair, over the bun he's just created and whispers, "Whatcha looking at?"
"Something isn't right." Stares at the concrete now growing black with the stationary position of her eyes, of the bright, fake luminescents humming from the ceiling, and she doesn't know how the doctor hasn't gone mad cooped up in such a dungeon, but she views him poking the food pouch again, and perhaps he has.
"Those aren't comforting words, Honey." John leans into the table beside her on his one arm, his body turned towards her, and his expression fallen from blankly stoic, to full of concern again.
Doesn't answer him because she's still trying to process what's posing a danger. She sets her hands palm flat on the table, not seeing any cracks in the foundation of the ceiling, no loose wires which could cause a fire, and her mind resets to Moya and staring out windows into multitudes of glorious colors in the face of stars, to being planetside and relaxing, staring up at the black expanse of an endless sky illuminated by millions of gleaming gems. Not the darkness of concrete over manufactured lights that pain her eyes.
"Aeryn, you can't throw out those words without—"
"Shhh," she snaps her head at him, and then resumes closing her eyes. Pilot's DNA still resides within her, and with it, her multitasking skills have only excelled over those ingrained into her through Peacekeeper training.
Now she focuses on sounds.
"Shhh?"
Trying to discern if the difference inhabits auditory factors. If one is specifically overpowering at the moment.
"Did you really just—" His cadence isn't offended, more playful, happy that she's adopted such a human vernacular.
"Yes." Gently covers his mouth with her hand to silence him, blankets half his face as he did to her moments ago. "Please, John."
Her casual descent into anger replaced with stoicism in the same manner he has implemented, and vaguely, part of her wonders when they adopted each others behavior so naturally? When, after four long years together, did they start to embrace the same methods of garnering each other's attention in a non-direct manner.
He only nods. Understanding.
When she closes her eyes again, all the sounds flood her. The humming of the fluorescents, the heavy breathing of the doctor, the crinkling of the jabbed pouch, John's heartbeat, her own stomach growling, the grinding of one of the electronic screened machines the humans have littered this complex with, footsteps walking down the hallway away from the door, the roar of the fan oscillating back and forth.
Distantly, the pinch in her abdomen distracts her.
"Can you turn that off?"
John's face tenses, his eyes following her finger to the fan, and he stands straight from leaning against the table beside her. "It's gonna get real hot in here for you, real quick."
"Just for a moment."
Hesitantly, he agrees, stepping and depressing the button again. Immediately, the sound of the motor, of the rotations ceases, and she strains her ear to listen further.
"What exactly is this stuff made—"
"Shhh!" She and John simultaneously shush the doctor, who has just noticed their preoccupation. His mouth, again, pulling into a grimace.
"What are you—"
"What part of 'shhh'." John places his index finger to his lips for emphasis. "Don't you get?"
As they continue to argue, because of what she knows of the doctor, and how well she knows her husband, neither man likes to remain silent for very long. But her abilities, her senses enhanced from a command carrier birth, from spliced DNA, allows her to focus in on what sounds like a weak click, a dissonant beep, an aggravated hiss.
Her arm shoots out, landing on John's shoulder effectively silencing him, and ending the nascent argument. "What room is located above your laboratory?"
"Uhh." The doctor thinks aloud, his eyes squinting as he tries to answer. "I'm not sure what's above us exactly, but it's the communication level. Mostly people typing up emails and press releases."
"What do you hear?" John spins her towards him, asking in a mumble, trying to shield the conversation.
"A clicking, a beeping, a hissing. It sounds like—"
"Oh, I think there's an engineering room up there too." The doctor points to the ceiling, and then carefully removes his gloves, making sure the exterior never touches his skin. "There's one every few floors to—"
A distant, but equally voracious boom extinguishes the rest of his words. The walls shudder, the horrible glowing lights blink off, and the ceiling opens up spilling in internals from multiple floors, dust, pipes, and large chunks of concrete upon them.
Expects to wake in the same oddly glowing, warm-hued room, but when she opens her eyes, all she sees is darkness. At first she thinks it's a dream, because she still has them—night terrors about Ver Isca, about being pregnant and on fire and used up.
About feeling too full, and then far too empty.
But with a familiar snore, she places Mitchell somewhere to her left. Wagers that he fell asleep in the chair he was in before, afraid to crawl into bed beside her from their lingering injuries, and just before she calls him a coward in her head, her body twitches and the full fire of pain shoots through her side again.
"Cameron?" Calls through the dark, because the pain is too intense for her to try to navigate, yet no where near as powerful as before. She has more mobility in her arm, more rotation of her torso, yet every single breath feels like her last, feels like being buried in a pillar of flames.
His snoring ceases, as he probably thought she was beckoning him to shut him up, but when he doesn't respond more to her words, she calls again, more fervent than before, "Cameron?"
He stirs, she can hear him rustle in the chair, the sound of fur against clothing, against skin, and skin squeaking against metal, or whatever organic equivalent the chair is constructed from. His lips smack and when he speaks, she can hear him stretch his body in his voice. "I'm up. I'm up." The stretch elongates into a sort of grunt, and by the sound of friction, she guesses that he's rubbing his hand against his thigh. "My turn with the kid?"
"No, my side," she gasps, as she experiences the circulation of her blood, pulsating, heated through. "It hurts—"
Suddenly, he's awake with such fervor, that it works to distract her from her pain for a moment. There's the sound of the fur blanket being shed, and flopping to the ground, then of his feet slapping across the floor to the doorway where he turns on the light. Believes she might hear a few of his joints crack along the way.
The light blinds her briefly, causing her to flinch her face back into her pillow, hiding her eyes away as he pads back across the floor, snatching up a jar along the way, a bigger jar, hopefully full of more of that salve that works to numb the pain.
"Lay on your side," he commands, and she flops from her back, to face him. As she does, her own fur blanket falters from around her, dipping from her chest.
He remembers that he relieved the tension of her bra and shirt—which felt like it was bisecting her—before she does, uttering, "hey, hey, hey," before just reaching forward and dragging the blanket back over her chest, maneuvering it so that the injury on her side is accessible, while unmentionables are still covered.
"Always so modest," comments through strained teeth to hopefully alleviate the mood, because when he saw the state of her torso, he hissed in a breath.
"I try."
He scoops up a large amount of the salve and wipes it off starting at the jut of her hip. Immediately, relief floods through her, over her immolating skin, over the blisters seeping acidic and infectious fluids threatening to contaminate any healthy tissue. The smell of peppermint conquers the smell of burnt flesh and rotting skin.
His hands are very warm, and he continues to work in silence, large fingers caking on the salve in thick layers, massaging it into her muscles, and she knows he's trying his hardest to get every inch covered.
"How bad is it?" Can hear the relief in her voice, the edge and shakiness gone from the explosions of pain.
"Pretty bad." His face is stoic, consists of just straight lines as he continues to work.
Her eyes grow heavy, and she allows herself to close them, to focus on the movements of his fingers over her body. So dept, so knowledgeable, most likely from taking care of his own strained thigh. But she doesn't want to stop talking, doesn't want to fall asleep again only to awake in Ver Isca in a canopied bed all aflame.
"What does it look like?"
"Remember that old road we took into town in Auburn? How when it switched from dirt to pavement, it was all beat up and full of potholes?"
"The one you claimed had been on the docket to fix for the past two decades."
"Yeah that one."
"Yes."
"It sort of looks like that."
Her nose scrunches up, remembering the road which quite literally was molting itself off in chunks of tar and full of large holes seeping with collected rainwater. "How lovely."
"Hey, I'm no prized peach right now either." It's almost said with a chuckle as his palm presses flat against her ribs, kneading the flesh, tracing over each bone, and each groove.
"You must be quite the hero to continue on as you are." Had a pithier reply planned, but his hand travels from her ribs to her shoulder, finding and testing a knot.
His hands slip up the hub of her shoulder and down her arm, there's no active burns or infection, but the tissue could be compromised from contact. "I'm not gonna complain."
A hand slips to her neck, softly fans her hair across the pillow. Again, there are no active burns or pain, but the touch, the softness is calming. When his hand traces upwards, she leans into it, letting him cup her cheek, and her heavy-lidded eyes contact his, entirely awake, and extremely intense.
"How are you feeling?" His thumb strums over her cheek.
She feels completely relaxed, at ease, without pain, comfortable in a place that isn't home. The whole response is completely irregular, yet she welcomes it. "Far better than I have in a long time."
"Good." He grins at her, his hand stilling, but when he tries to stand, a wince crosses his face.
She should reciprocate the favor.
"Take off your shirt."
His hand retracts like he can feel the fire beneath her skin, like she's physically burned him with her words. "What? Why?"
She pushes herself to sit, very careful to continue to protect the modesty he's allowed her, the first man in some time to do so.
"So we'll be equal." He gives her a deadpanned, somewhat irritated expression, and she shakes her head at him, pointing to the jar, and adding with a grin. "So I can put some on your wound."
"Oh." He nods and she realizes for the first time that he's been kneeling beside the bed this entire time on his bad leg. "That would actually be good."
He tugs at the collar of her shirt, and something about the way Tau'ri men disrobe is far more attractive than any other method she's seen on any other planet. He pulls his shirt over his head, mussing a hair a little more than it already had been with his heavy sleep. Setting the jar on the bed, he turns his back to her, and she notices for the first time the map of muscles, the scars and indents from missions gone wrong, from combat training and crashed flights.
She dips her fingers into the salve, the peppermint scent overwhelming, yet familiar and swipes the initial layer over his injury.
"How's mine look?"
She rubs her thumbs over the broken skin, following his method and trying to knead as much of the curative into his skin, his muscles, as she can. His head dips forward as he relaxes in response. "Probably not as particularly gruesome as mine, but you've got quite a journey before I'd consider it fully healed."
His head sort of sways to the left, watching her momentarily over his shoulder. "Think it'll make a good story to tell any potential dates?"
"I think if you've gotten a woman this far, you're pretty much guaranteed a happy ending."
"Remind me to explain to you what that phrase means," he groans, then shakes his head.
Her hands stop against his shoulders and she leans forward, just so the fur blanketing her chest tickles against the bare skin on his back. "I know what it means, Mitchell."
"You know, you can call me Cameron."
"Hmmm," she hums, her thumbs now playing at the uninjured skin on his neck, as his head bows further and further forward.
"You say it differently than anyone I've met. It's refreshing," he sighs deeply, an exhalation that works its way through his body, as they both know this invigorating game of flirting is going to end soon.
"I'll have to remember that."
Her fingers slow against him, enjoying the exchange they had, the tit-for-tat situation that allowed him to play along to her whim for once. His chivalrous nature trumped by his need to satiate her pain.
When she removes her hands from him, he turns towards her, his eyes as intense as they were before despite all the effort she's put in to make him feel good. "Can I ask you a question?"
It hits her unprovoked and along with his stance, with his expression, she doesn't have a snarky remark ready to bat back at him. "Yes."
"Why do you always try to sacrifice yourself for the team?"
"I don't—"
"Yeah, Vala," he laughs but it's sharp, dry, like he shouldn't have to debate the subject with her. "You do."
"I filled in the Supergate, because no one would—"
"Then why did you hit Ventrell at the reunion, knowing he would hit you back."
"In all fairness, I was a tad inebriated—"
"Then what about when you ran after that dragon? Or when you let us plant fake memories in you brain? Or—"
"Yes. Yes. I get it."
When she glances to him, he's still watching her, waiting for an answer, and she doesn't know if he deserves one. Doesn't know if she entirely trusts him enough to carry the weight of her response, but she rolls her shoulder and finds no pain, stretches out her side and feels nothing but good.
So she stares into those eyes and speaks genuine words. "I've done many bad things in my life. Some as Qetesh, some as myself. If I could exchange my life for someone who has done more good, than maybe when being judged by my actions, perhaps all my misdeeds would be overlooked."
Expects him to nod and get up. To turn the light off and return to bed, issuing a warning to her to not forget she's topless under the blanket. He may even stay emotionless, quiet, before trying to talk to her of all the past lives she's lived. Maybe even become infuriated, tell her that each team member is special, and it takes all of them to succeed, blah, blah, blah.
But he doesn't.
What he does do, is lean forward, and press his lips against hers.