Not as Easy as it Seems
(Three solar days prior)
"I just got the transmission; we're in range. We can't let this one just slip through our fingers, Aeryn. Even if there isn't much of a chance," He says in a quickened drawl, barging right into her personal space as he always does when trying to make a point.
"There was a time when a chance was all you needed to light your Prowler on fire and set you off on a mission, one track mind, consequences be damned!" John continues to rage without a breath, his voice rising just beyond the confines of calm. The tone and volume coming together to form a point, a string of small details and intonations Aeryn's picked up over the cycles.
She's learned to read his every move; his subtle changes in mood.
"I don't know if I can do this any more, John. It's not the consequences of our actions that bother me. It's been so long. Even if we find her at this point, who's to say she'll want anything to do with what we stand for, with us? They've been feeding her who frelling knows what kind of ideas for cycles now! She won't even know us. She's more than likely a soldier; trained for one thing and one thing only."
"So what, you just give up? That's not the Aeryn I know. Seven years is a long time, but she's still a kid. She needs us, and I'm sure as hell not going to leave her out there if I have another chance to bring her back! She is part of us Aeryn, she's part of this family and we made a vow to protect them and keep them safe the minute we decided to go at this together. D'Argo, Jack, and her. There is no difference. She's your daughter!"
"Don't forget who I am; don't forget where I've come from, John!" Aeryn growls with fixed eyes, anger clawing at the back of her mind.
"I know these people, you don't. You don't know what the hezmana goes on in a command carrier during training…" She stops herself before finishing the thought, wondering if this isn't maybe more about something within her than it is about finding their daughter. Something she knows she can't turn away from, no matter how long it's been.
She looks at John, realizing he senses the change in her posture, her stance, and her stubborn smirk.
Frelling scared.
She always reacts in a similar manner when fear makes itself painfully evident. But this is so close to his heart. SO close to both of them, that he apparently hasn't realized what he is saying. She's still learning about all of this, after so much time. Fear, sadness, guilt…love and family. All of it natural, none of it honed.
Even after almost 18 cycles together, knowing each other, she still has a hard time letting go of some of the rigidity that has gotten her through so much in her life as a Peacekeeper, as a prisoner, and as an outlaw. It's all she had known. He's still trying to show her the entirety of what's beyond that.
She doesn't need a savior, and she doesn't need a source of strength. But she does need him, and he's well aware of that fact.
John crosses the short distance left between them and takes Aeryn's small frame into his arms. He feels her shoulders lurch as she begins to sob quietly and he strengthens his grip around her, kissing her hair, breathing her in; the smell of flowers, fruit, air, of his wife.
"I know, I know. Shhhh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out like that. It's just; I can't turn away from this chance. There's still just a little bit of my sorry human brain that thinks we can find her; that we can make this right. They took her away. We'll take her back. And we'll end this…" John trails off.
Aeryn can't help but feel a small smile peak through her tear stained face. He makes this absolutely, frelling insane situation sound so simple she wants to laugh.
Maybe he is right. Maybe they can find her and take back some of that childhood she lost by no choice of theirs. She is scared. Aeryn Sun is scared and she doesn't know how to react. What if he is right? What if they do find her? She doesn't know how to raise a girl, let alone a girl that doesn't frelling know her, a girl that has lived most of her life without her mother.
She doesn't have time to follow that train of thought any further as their moment of slow dancing debate is interrupted by the fast patter of small boots and the noise of fake gunfire and warfare as it comes tearing into their quarters.
"Mommy, dad, check it out! Look what I made!" their youngest son chatters with pride. He turned seven two weekens ago, and the excitement of old age has yet to loosen its grip on his mind. He is all smiles and all his father.
If D'Argo had taken on more of her personality as he had grown older, Jack was his father through and through. From his mischievous, sincere smile, to his walk, to his penchance for humor even if the joke was only funny to his little boy brain. He's holding up a tattered, make shift, module of some sort. Sloppily painted and patched together. A piece of dren to most, but a treasure to him.
"What's this little man?" John laughs kneeling to his small son's height.
"Looks like the most awesome PK Prowler I've seen since, well…since the one you made last week, I think! Let me see that!" he says, taking the toy from the boy and looking it over, giving it a few test swoops and throwing in his own sound effects for good measure.
"Yup, this ones a keeper, J!" John laughs. "Looks like it could get more mileage than my first car, and it doesn't even have an engine."
Their son beams with pride; smile wide with a missing front tooth. His blond hair is in his eyes and Aeryn realizes she needs to cut it. She reaches a hand out and sweeps a loose piece from his eye and he instantly reaches to brush her hand away and laughs.
"Mom stop it, I already brushed it today!" He's full of good humor and she knows that this is a white lie at best, but she doesn't nag; she never nags.
"Okay, okay…" she smiles at him. She feels love and pride swell in her chest, a feeling that still shocks her on occasion. A pang of something she barely recognizes pulling at her insides.
She made this little creature; she and John made this. And their three children were the best things they had ever accomplished.
An old and tired red, white, and blue DRD his father named 1812 all those cycles ago has slowly followed their son in to the quarters. Jack had taken him in as a pet, a playmate when they are away from populated areas, taking over where John left off. The DRD is run down and needs to be rewired so it can take on most of the tasks that were once simple and routine.
She has thought about fixing it up on several occasions, but when she sees the joy it brings her son, she decides that this DRD is serving its purpose just fine as is.
"Why don't you go show your brother." John suggests with a wink.
Jack has a knack for building and flying where D'Argo is more interested and comfortable with theory and numbers. They fit together like a pilot and his plane. Unless they are at odds, in which case they could fight like wild Trachnars regardless of the age difference, Jack's seven cycle old body a force to be reckoned with.
He spins on his heels and waits for his slow moving companion shouting, "C'mon 1812…" in that sing songy voice of impatience that must be instinctive to children before he finally becomes preoccupied with something flitting through his brain, and high tails it down the corridor towards Command where D'Argo spends his time studying during the afternoon hours.
John looks at Aeryn and smiles. "That boy wears me out sometimes. He's like a puppy on uppers."
She has no idea what the last part of his statement means, but she's grown accustomed to the confusion with his use of words over the cycles and it doesn't matter right now, anyway.
She has come to her resolve, frell the uncertainty; she steels her spine and prepares herself to tell him that they must do this. They have to look for her. They have to set out on this hard journey again, no matter what fear she has of failing. None of it matters, this time they have to come back with their daughter.
"We're doing this. John. We have to do this. I have to do this." She pauses with a deep breath, making sure she's ready to risk the heartache if this ends the way all of the other attempts have.
Disappointment.
Hopelessness.
Sadness.
Old wounds reopened like it was the very day they had lost her. John reaches out and brushes a stray strand of hair from her cheek.
"We have to do this. We'll find her this time. I have a feeling…" he trails off trying to hide the doubt in his voice from her as he rests his chin on her head, but they have known each other far too long for that to work.
She can sense it, and he can sense that she does. He grabs her hand and squeezes.
"I'm going to review the transmission again, see if I can't make out any more details. Then we'll do what we have to do to have Pilot get us in range to contact Jothee. We're going to move as fast as we can, and we're not going to let this one slip through our fingers. Not this time," A typical Crichton plan coming into fruition before her eyes.
The girl was his little princess and Aeryn knows that he means his words as much as she feels them.
Together. They are in this together, always together. And they would come out on the other side of it together.
Plus one, if fate has their backs this time.
She watches him palm the key pad and rush out the door, down the corridor, and she sits at the small side table gazing after him until he is out of sight.
The heavy knowledge of what she has to do causes her shoulders to drop. Going back is hard, now that she knows how to feel.
She will do it though; try and remember. To revive the Peacekeeper side of her brain that had long ago become less necessary, less prominent, and less something she longed to use. She needs that knowledge now more than ever and she will do what she has to do in order to recall it.
- -
John watches the transmission for the seventh time, trying to read into it, trying to find any information that might lie buried just under the surface. It all seems too easy. There must be something he's missing, or something that might make getting her back more difficult than it seemed it would be. Or, at worst, something that would put them in more danger than was already evident by the fact that they were doing this in the first place. He stares at Jothee's face projected in the air before him and rubs the hair at the nape of his neck roughly. If Jothee were right, if this were true, then this would be there best chance yet to snag their daughter before she was lost to them again. But he is no damn hero; that isn't his game any more, not that he was ever very good at it to begin with.
You'll be your own kind of hero, his father had said to him on that day, the day that would change the course of his life.
In a way, he supposed he was. He chose what to do with the knowledge he possessed, had unwittingly been given, but now his only concern was keeping his family safe and making up for being unable to do that with her all those years ago. He would do what he needed to do.
"Planet…with a stable atmosphere…PK planet side regime cadet training…She's there…Jothee confirmed it…" he mumbles out loud to himself. "Minimal security detail…with the backing of the Luxan camp…this is gonna be our best shot. This is it…it's now or never John. You wanna be a hero? Do it now."
He's is attempting to talk himself up, something he's always done when he feels that twinge of nerves twisting his stomach or a sense of fear gnawing at the back of his mind. Self fulfilling prophecy.
You make yourself or break yourself.
And even though his prophecy usually tended to be wrong, he sure as hell wasn't going to stop telling himself that he was a kick ass soldier, not just "John Crichton, astronaut from earth with no intergalactic skills to speak of," Hell, he'd surely learned a bit of something since he was thrown head first into this life.
Baptized by fire and damn did it hurt.
John is pacing now, following the same four foot path on the empty flight deck. He feels a cool breeze on his cheek from an air vent over his head and hears the soft whirring and beeping of some DRD's going about their business in the back of the bay, repairing some kind of tear in the outer lining of the hull, and as he watches the mundane activity he realizes how tired he is. Twelve hours straight he's been at this. No interruptions from Aeryn or either of the boys, from Pilot or Grandma (thank goodness for the small things); he needs sleep desperately.
He hits the control pad on the transmission deck, grabs the data chip from its slot as it ejects, and pockets it swiftly. He has to crash for a few hours at least, so he can attempt to navigate the most time sensitive course to their destination with Pilot and Aeryn.
He wanders lazily down the corridor, one foot slowly in front of the other. The lights are dim; it must have been later in the sleep cycle than he had thought. He stops for a microt outside of the boys' quarters, where he hears snoring from one and a slight mumbling from the other. He can't help but smile at the thought that their family might be complete again soon.
His little girl, the smiling, sweet baby with blond curls and bright blue eyes that looked at him with adoration as she clung to his neck and kissed his cheek, the girl to balance out his boys and keep her mother in check.
John's determination rises and he feels heat in his cheeks at the prospect of brining her home, a second wind coming and going in a matter of microts. He shoves his hands in his pockets and continues the short remaining distance, stopping to check and gauge whether or not Aeryn has fallen asleep.
Waking her in the middle of the night is never a good idea.
She may still be smaller than him, but she is also still a hell of a lot stronger, not to mention grouchy when woken unexpectedly. Something he has regretfully learned on one too many occasions.
All he hears is silence and all he sees is dark, so he proceeds to palm the door pad as quietly as he can manage. He sneaks into the corner and works his way out of pants and shirt, boots and holster, eager for the feel of the soft cloth touching his bare skin. It's dark, and he's not very good at navigating the blackness which is made painfully evident as he slams his big toe into the corner of the bed.
"Shit!" he exclaims before realizing his mistake and quickly clasping his hands over his mouth.
He stands deathly still, waiting for Aeryn to give him a good what for, but all he hears is the ruffling of sheets and a turn in the bed. Her breathing is still regular. After a few microts, he decides it's safe to continue the treacherous journey, finally pulling back the covers and sliding in next to her, savoring the feel of the cool fabric on his legs and his chest; against the contrast of his wife's warm back.
He curls as close to her as he can without disturbing her.
He can't remember life without her, but he remembers every moment of it with her. Every night crawling into bed beside her, every kiss, every hug, every tear, and every fight and he wouldn't trade a second of it. But he might change some of the details if he could. The moment they realized that she had slipped from their grasp would definitely be one thing he could do without. Many nights of tired, alcohol induced thoughts had proven that.
The thought sends his tired mind reeling, back to a time before all of that, all of those feelings that have become as real on a daily basis as eating, breathing, and pissing. Back to a time when he didn't have any guilt and he didn't have a child who was living a life somewhere else, taken straight out from under his fucking nose.
He shifts as quietly as he can and is barely able to make out the outline of Aeryn's soft face in the backlight from the corridor.
He thinks of her and her small, protruding belly.
God, she was beautiful when she was pregnant.
Even more beautiful than she normally is, if that's even possible.
She had finally fallen pregnant again four years after having D'. It had been a struggle, but they had both agreed to continue trying.
John wanted more children, and Aeryn had surprisingly taken to motherhood. She said that she wanted more children as well, if it were what he wanted. But he knew her better than that. He could tell that, even though she might not be saying it directly, she wanted it as much as he did, if not more. D' was four and she was itching to take care of another baby. She was damn good at it too.
Something else he found incredible about her, she was a natural.
She never ceased to surprise him.
This soldier, his wife, hard as a rock and mean as a snake if she wanted to be, was an amazing mother. She was gentle and patient, affectionate and loving, but not overbearing.
After the second year of trying they had almost lost hope that they would have any luck. Not that they stopped attempting, hell, the attempting was most of the fun, but their confidence in the baby making aspect of it was growing slim.
It was luck that Aeryn had come down with a nasty cold, or something of the sort, on their last docking on a Sebacean inhabited planet. He had forced her to the medical complex for some medicines, even if it was just something to help her sleep the sickness off.
Familiar species, familiar practices, and they had noticed right away that there was an embryo to release from stasis just based on the simple blood work. Four years and five weeks after the end of a war and the birth of their first son, Aeryn was pregnant with their second child.
Geometric pregnancy was still something of a shock to his system. Not that he knew anything about being pregnant of course, but damn; three or four weeks was not a lot of time to prepare to become a father…again.
Aeryn faired this pregnancy much better than the first, considering the fact that the baby developed fully inside of her this time around instead of in the belly of a little, sneaky, green toad. Before John knew it, he was holding a tiny, pink baby girl in his arms. She was loud from the start, crying and wailing. Trying to get used to the feel of harsh, cool, air in her lungs and on her skin as opposed to the warmth of being surrounded by her mother.
She was feisty and spirited, even as an infant, just like Aeryn.
They had both chosen D's name; it was a team effort. But this one, their little girl, he wanted Aeryn to choose this name.
It didn't take her long to decide, either. She was never much one to waffle around a decision and it seemed that maybe she had thought about this prior to the moment, something so uncharacteristic of her that he couldn't help but laugh as she held the little girl to her chest and kissed her soft cheek and he sat on the side of the cot, one hand on his new baby's head and one hand intertwined in his wife's fingers.
"I guess you would be laughing, considering the fact that I just did all the work." she had ribbed at him as their daughter enjoyed her first meal. He remembered it like it was yesterday.
Talyse'un Sun Crichton. A great Sebacean warrior, a princess of legend, and a princess she was. The little girl wore the name well. He would call her Taly, he had decided in the moment. It fit her perfectly. Besides, he wasn't sure if he could spit that mouthful out every time he needed to chastise her.
She grew so fast, he could barely keep track of her. From feisty infant in diapers, to feisty toddler with blond curls and an unceasing, jabbering mouth; to a small, feisty three year old running the show and owning her big brother. From the moment D' had laid eyes on her, he was a whipped puppy.
He was definitely his sisters' guardian and comrade, a relationship that grew into something so much like what he had had with Liv it was almost uncanny. D' would do anything for his little sister.
Who was he kidding; John himself would do anything for his little princess. So would her mother.
She pretty much owned them all.
Aeryn had fallen even more comfortably into the roll of mom the second time around. If she was good as a mother of one, she was brilliant as a mother of two. Always keeping things in working order, keeping the ship sailing and on course. Always giving enough attention to one without making the other feel neglected or replaced.
She was like a well oiled mother machine.
For the first few years of Taly's life, things progressed fairly normally. Normal for them that is. Traveling the uncharted territories with Pilot, Moya and Noranti, who had stayed aboard even after the war, something neither of them minded. He hated to cook, and Aeryn, well it wasn't her strong suit. It was always nice to have the extra body around, no matter how much trouble she could be.
They would stop at colonized planets for supplies and work. Both he and Aeryn had become quite the pair of traveling mechanics, having an advantage over even the locals thanks to their extensive knowledge of different crafts and modules, engines and drives.
They were an unstoppable team when it came to fixing up a ship of any kind, and they had garnered a name for themselves.
It was a way to make money and keep their family healthy and without need. It was also a very good way to stay the hell out of trouble and live their lives outside of the danger zone of any re-firing of PK versus Scarran politics or general bitching, wormholes, or running for their frelling lives.
He wanted nothing to do with any of it, and neither did his wife. They had this chance to be happy and he would do whatever he needed to do to keep them safe and out of the way of trouble. He'd had quite enough of that thank you very much.
It was on one of these planets, a short stop for clothing (seeing how their daughter was growing out of it faster than they could get it on her small body) and a few minor jobs, that things had all taken a turn for the worse. Fate had decided to bite him in the ass, and this time it took a large chunk of him with it.
Just like any stop, D'Argo and Taly were enrolled in the local schools. It was a good way for them to interact with other kids and they needed that, needed other friends. It was also a good way to expand their education beyond the schooling they got aboard Moya.
The day started out normally, and ended in hell. John had walked the kids through the small village to their schools just like any other day, daughter hoisted on his shoulders one hand on her leg with his son's hand grasped in the other.
It was nice to be on a planet. A planet with water and green things and a sun and sky.
He savored the air on his cheeks and kissed his daughter goodbye as he dropped her at the little people school. It wasn't like preschool on earth because these kids were learning on a totally different level than he had. He just came to refer to it as "little people school." No matter how many times Aeryn tried to correct him with the proper Sebacean title, he just kept up with his name.
He liked it better anyways, and frustrating her was one of his favorite past times. She was nothing if not stubborn and head strong, and besides, it usually led to making up…among other things.
That was the last time he saw her. Aeryn had gone to pick them up at the end of the day only to be greeted by a confused Sebacean teacher and an empty classroom.
"Uniformed guards came to get her; they were official. They said they had clearance with you." The teacher had said, a hint of panic rising in her voice.
Three arns later, John found himself at the law offices picking up his distraught wife and his scared son, who were being detained due to, well, unnecessary roughness if you will.
Aeryn had made her anger and her fear known to the teacher, who suffered little more than a bloody nose and a black eye before the enforcers came to asses the situation.
Peacekeepers; they both knew it. A Peacekeeper battalion had found them and taken their child.
For testing, for information, for a damn wormhole?
It could have been anything. He was a curse and this was his fault. He never should have left her, never should have brought them here.
The guilt spun around and around in his head as they searched for information on where they might have taken her. Scouring incoming and outgoing vessel logs, breaking locked data transmissions, and contacting the few allies they had within the Peacekeeper system, sadly few.
John had never seen Aeryn like she was in the time after Taly's disappearance. She shut down, cried frequently, stopped eating and stopped showing attention to D', who was just as scared and upset as they were, if not more.
She wasn't herself, for the first time since he'd known her; she showed weakness for a long period of time. He didn't know what to do, except to try and comfort them both and search all day for any information on where she had been taken. Day after day of nothing, night after night of the terrible dreams and restless sleep.
Utter exhaustion.
Weeks spent running from one location to another, being thrown off one command carrier here and another PK enforced planet there until a year had gone by without their daughter. It was a year of fear, and tears, and a well of guilt that ran so deep he wasn't sure if they would ever drain it.
Aeryn blamed herself, blamed him, blamed anything and everything she could, but she eventually worked through her anger, sadness, and guilt until she came to the point of becoming as set on finding her as he was instead of lethargic and blank as she had been. Every day they continued to search, finding fewer and fewer leads until the second year passed with only four failed attempts at even coming close to finding her.
Each year bringing less hope, less opportunity, and the glaring reality that they might never see their daughter again.
Aeryn fell pregnant with Jack two years after Taly went missing. He was a blessing of an accident and just what they needed to remind them that they had a reason to live and to keep fighting.
They had two healthy sons after Jack's birth, and a renewed sense of hope that they could find their daughter if they just kept up the hunt. Aeryn never quite recovered and he wasn't sure that he did either, but they loved Jack and D' so much that giving up wasn't an option.
They would stay strong, for their sons. They came to the agreement together and slowly the patented Aeryn strength that he knew began to work its way back to the surface.
Two years of drought and three more years of false leads and several failed attempts, one almost costing him his life or his freedom, had brought them to this point.
Hope was like a beacon from a lighthouse, brightly shining in his eyes one moment and hiding on the other side of a cliff the next.
He is a damn fool if he gets his hopes up this time, but it is all he has.
They won't be completely whole again until they have their daughter back in the safety of their makeshift home. And even then, if they get to that point, he's not sure if she will even want to be there.
He never lost hope that she was alive, but he constantly lost hope that she could withstand whatever brutality the Peacekeeper command was throwing down on her and that thought scared the hell out of him. He would have done anything, ANYTHING to stop what he knew was inevitable after all this time.
Hell, he would have thrown himself into the fucking fire to save that little girl with the bright blue eyes, his princess, their daughter.
The daughter you don't even know.
"Shit…" he whispers as he rubs at his eyes with cool palms attempting to shut off his wandering mind. Aeryn rolls against him and her hand falls square on his chest, shaking him out of the jarring memories. He gently rubs her soft fingers and tries to be thankful for what he hasn't lost instead of being bitter about what he has.
He loves Aeryn more than life, she IS his life. And he loves his boys equally as much, if in a different way.
He would find her this time, they would find her. They would bring her back and they would finally fill the hole that has been lingering with them for seven long cycles.
Finally they could get out of this shadow and he could see the light in his Aeryn's eyes again. He will do this if it kills him. He will do it for her, for Aeryn, for his daughter, for D' and Jack; and for himself. Maybe none of that wormhole garbage, the war and Scorpius, was really his time to be a hero, maybe this is his time.
John Crichton, protector of this family that he loves more than anything.
John Crichton, husband and father.
John Crichton, human and hero.