Lost and Found

by A Damned Scientist

For 7 years, John has been stranded on Earth. He's lost his mind, but is he alone? Sequel to Picture in The Paper.

3. Chapter 3

So, to chapter 3. Thanks once again for the feedback and great ideas: Where I haven't incorporated your ideas, it is simply because I have so much of the entire story already written that I couldn't work out how to put an idea in without throwing almost everything I have already written away. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the ride, regardless.

As this story goes on, it is getting increasingly non-linear. Hence I am putting in some more directions as to when a scene is set in order to reduce confusion. I'm sorry if you don't like these, but I hope they help some people follow the story.

Lost and Found, Chapter 3

Aeryn had to concede that the humans on the real Earth had given a lot more thought to how to hold her prisoner than had those on the false Earth. But then, the humans on the False Earth had been based only on the imaginations of John and the Ancient, Jack. Both of them were innocents compared to Holt and the agencies at his disposal. These real humans never let their guard down, never allowed themselves to be alone with her, never gave her even a chance to escape. And, true to Holt's word, as long as she had cooperated with them, they had not been cruel to her, even though they had not really been kind, either: certainly not to begin with, at least. Apart from the endless, sometimes painful, medical investigations, the boredom, the loneliness and the deprivation of not being able to shoot or fly or do almost anything by her own choice, Aeryn's life imprisoned on Earth almost compared favourably to her existence when she had been a Peacekeeper. She certainly doubted if she would be alive now had she stayed a Peacekeeper.

They had asked Aeryn about so many things: about the Moyans; about John, and their experiences together; about her own people and the details of Peacekeeper technology, intentions and strategy. They had asked endlessly about what she knew of other cultures and planets, even grilling her repeatedly as to what she thought of humans and Earth. Aeryn had answered similar-sounding questions time and again over days, weeks, and then months. She had been somewhat surprised as to how few actual interrogators she had met, but eventually she concluded that they were keeping her a secret, so the fewer people who knew about her the more likely the secret would be kept.

Eventually, Aeryn's throat grew so tired she felt as though she never wanted to speak again. Even though they had known she was just a Prowler pilot long before they had abducted her, many times Aeryn sensed, and sometimes even slightly suffered from, her captors' frustration that she was not something more important: She knew that they wished she was instead a tech or a diplomat or a disruptor or even a higher ranking PK officer. Regardless, she tried to answer most of their questions as best she could, and that gave her a little latitude, enough trust from them, to keep some secrets. She secretly treasured those small deceptions, more often for the victories themself than for the value of any information she withheld.

Aeryn was far from happy, but she coped. It was clear that at least one person in charge, most likely Holt, she eventually concluded, regarded her as too valuable to risk causing permanent harm to. As time had gone on, some of her captors even began to get to know her. More and more some of them showed her kindnesses and granted her privileges. And eventually, when they released the pregnancy, Aeryn found that her son gave new meaning to her life. She cherished the moments when her captors allowed her to spend time with him.

And then the questions started getting more serious again: After a just a few weekens of intense questions, one morning she was restrained, blindfolded and taken outside her prison. She was bundled into some sort of noisy, primitive aerial transport pod and, after about half an arn, unloaded again and escorted indoors. When they removed her blindfold, she found she was in an office, in some sort of tall building, which itself was evidently, from what she could see through the windows, located in a city.

And there, in the office, was Holt and a woman she knew as Kaminsky, who had been present through many of her interrogations and other tribulations over the years. Aeryn waited for them to tell her why she had been brought here. Holt indicated she should sit, so she did.

'Miss Sun,' began Kaminsky. 'Cast your mind back about nine years: After Commander Crichton began to go insane with the Peacekeeper neural chip, how did you help him to recover?'

'They worked out how to release the pregnancy about a year and a half ago,' continued Aeryn, barely in control of her own voice. John just sat, dumbstruck, as the meaning of her words washed over him. 'He has my black hair,' she smiled, 'And your eyes. He's beautiful.'

They had let her baby live and spend time with her, and had conducted no more medical investigations on the child than they had on her. It was more than she had dared hope for especially during her first years in captivity. She knew that she had had about seven cycles from conception for the foetus to be released. After that, it would be absorbed back by her body. And yet it had still been viable when they had released the stasis. That could mean only one thing: The foetus was most likely to have been conceived by her and the other John aboard Talyn. It had taken so many cycles, but at long last she knew for certain who the father was, that he was not the offspring of some Peacekeeper. But this John was fragile enough: she would leave any revelation about the most likely time of conception for another day.

And then another thought crept into Aeryn's head, unbidden, making her cheeks flush: Had it really been eight cycles since she had last recreated? By Cholak, she had some lost time to catch up on. But certainly not yet. She allowed herself a sad smile.

'Wh… what is he called?' John eventually managed to ask, mercifully breaking her train of thought.

'Oh, yes, name…..' Aeryn stammered, trying to regain her sense of the present. 'They insisted I give him a human name and, seeing as my experiences with humans on Erp haven't been so… good… Most of the human names I know, I wouldn't want to use. I called him Deke, after your friend. You remember, the one who died, that Christmas. I liked him, and he was your friend.'

Crichton swallowed hard. 'That's a nice name.' He whispered. Eventually he added. 'I'm so, so sorry Aeryn. If I'd have known, if I'd have know all of this would happen, I'd have done so much so differently.'

'You ruined my life,' she reminded him gently, with a hint of a smile.

He nodded, not able to return her smile. 'I should have made sure you were free on Earth, or safely back on Moya. But they told me you'd stormed out and gone back there, that you didn't want to speak to me. Then Moya left. I should never have trusted those bastards.'

She shrugged. 'No, you shouldn't have. But what is done cannot be changed now. It wasn't you who made me a prisoner. And it is good to see you again, John.'

'And you, Sunshine.'

There was a long silence before either of them spoke again. Eventually, Aeryn said, 'They told me that you seem to be a little better than you have been recently. They're keeping me here, in this building, and they want me to spend more time with you.'

'I'd like that. I'd like you to stay.'

Aeryn remembered back, all those years ago, to the Christmas eve in Jack's house. She had seriously been thinking of leaving him for good back then, although she would not tell him that now. Staying aboard Moya with him had seemed to be causing them both so much pain, and her leaving seemed like it might be a way to lessen their mutual suffering. And then the decision as to whether to stay or go had been taken out of her hands. If only he had asked her to stay back then: Maybe things would have been different? She sighed wistfully. John and his timing!

Some weeks before:

Holt took another headache pill and looked at the latest urgent message from the White House. His relations with all sorts of government agencies had not been comfortable in recent days, ever since events beyond his control had led to the truth about his operation to come to the attention of powerful people who were not his political allies. Some of those people and been none to pleased to find out what Holt had been up to for the last seven years. Not, he suspected, because they disapproved, per se. No, it seemed more likely to Holt that they were merely sore that they had not been informed or, better, involved. But he had needed to keep things secret: The more people that new, the more difficult it would have been to continue the project, his project.

Holt had worked tirelessly during the closing years of the previous presidency first to set up the shell organisations, covers and funding for his operation, and then to place himself in charge, and in a way which would not draw attention or cause him and cause him to be replaced when the inevitable change in administration occurred. Everything had worked out fine for the first couple of years. But now, the true nature of his well-funded but little-used veterans' clinic had come to the attention of what Holt regarded as the wrong people. And those people were making it clear that they were not happy.

Holt sighed. He had managed to ignore the demands of a growing number of people and agencies these last few days, but he could ignore the President himself: He was going to have to go to Washington to explain himself, and he was not sure that he could, at least not in the way that the President would expect.

Back to the present:

Several more days had passed, and with each visit from Aeryn, John had become a little less closed off. Whilst Aeryn, on the other hand, seemed little changed to John, that he was even thinking such thoughts was another sign that John, at least, was over the worst of his depression.

Once again, they sat by the window of his room, John sitting on the edge of his bed. Aeryn, her hands fidgeting nervously, was in her now customary position, sitting stiff and tense on a chair, almost brushing knees with him. John reached out a hand to gently calm one of hers.

'They hurt you often?' he asked softly. After a pause, she nodded.

'Often enough, in the first few cycles.' he squeezed her hand comfortingly. 'It was never torture, not like with you and Scorpius. Just….. Medical things. And your human diagnosions are so primitive. They wanted to know about Sebacean bodies, how we're different from you. I don't really want to discuss it.'

John swallowed hard, thoughts of Nazi experiments filling his head. Thoughts of them trying to find Aeryn's tolerance for pain, for heat, for other things. He shuddered. But he knew Aeryn, now, she would talk if and when she was ready. There was no point in him pushing her. She took time.

'But mostly that wasn't so bad,' she continued. 'I was taught to deal with pain, and I knew they did not want to cause me permanent harm. The worst part was being on my own, not knowing when it would end, and not knowing when I would see a friendly face again.'

John nodded in understanding, 'It was the times without you that were the hardest for me, in the old days, in the Uts.' John suddenly felt overtaken by his own needs again, forgetting for a moment about those of Aeryn. 'You left me, over and over, Aeryn and each time I was lost a little more without you. Not knowing when, or even if, I'd ever see you again. That last time, when I was alone for monens on Elack, I decided I couldn't go through that again.'

'Then why did you do it? Why did you push me out of your life, John?'

'I had to decide whether to let you in or keep you out. When you came back, you wouldn't trust me, so…'

'Oh, don't give me that dren, not again.' she interrupted. 'I was ready to stay for good, but the more I tried, the more you pushed me away.'

'I couldn't trust you by, then: You'd left me so often, how could I trust you that you wouldn't leave again?'

'I wouldn't have, but before then I needed to sort things out on my own. Afterwards, it was you who ran from me.'

'It didn't seem that way to me. Besides, there was Scorpius…'

'I was dying, John. He saved my life. What else would you have had me do?' she snapped back.

John frowned. 'No, that's not what I meant. I understand….'

'Then what did you mean?'

'He was always in my head, trying to find out what made me tick. He was after the wormhole knowledge.'

'We all knew that, so what? He couldn't do anything.'

'If he'd have found out it was you, you were my key, you and the baby, he'd have used you to get that knowledge, and I wouldn't have been able to stop him.'

Aeryn thought for a moment. 'You're just being paranoid, John.'

'I was trying to protect you!'

Aeryn snorted in derision. 'Fine, what about Caroline, then, hen we got back to Earth? Why did you go off with her, when you had me there and there was no Scorpius? And why keep pushing me away when you'd decided to stay here? That was protecting me, too, was it?'

John nervously ran his thumb along his bottom lip. 'I… I wasn't thinking straight back then. Noranti had given me some drug to help me cope with everything that had happened. There were other things too, things that happened when you were away that time, finding yourself.'

'What things, John?'

John stopped avoiding her gaze and looked her in the eye, 'I'm going to ask you to trust me, Aeryn. There are some things it's just best to leave well alone.'

'Is this still some sort of game of yours?' she snapped, irritably, 'I won't break my promise to tell you about what happened when I was with the assassins, so you won't tell me about this?'

'No Aeryn, it's not like that.' he replied, shaking his head slowly. 'I'll tell you if you say you want me to, but I don't want to, I don't want to go back there. I'm asking you, please, don't make me tell you. Not right now, at least.'

'Later, then?'

'Maybe. For now, please believe me. Some really bad things happened back then, when you were away, and they screwed me up real bad.'

Aeryn thought for a moment then nodded. Crichton sighed in relief: she wasn't going to ask him to go back to the loneliness on Elack or worse…… Arnessk. At least not now. But she was silent now, waiting for him to make the next move.

'I'm sorry, Aeryn. I'm so sorry. About all of it.'

Aeryn got up, turning her back, ostensibly to get a glass of water, but in reality to try to recover her composure. John waited for her to sit again before he continued.

'Aeryn, there's something else.' she raised an eyebrow in response. 'I don't know how to say this, but you have to know. I don't want to keep secrets from you. Caroline and I were married, six years ago. We had a daughter.' John watched as the PK mask once again fell over Aeryn's face, hiding the pain he knew she must be feeling. He pressed on, rushing to conclude his news and ease, if only by a fraction, the pain he imagined she must be feeling. 'But she left me.' he cracked a smile and raised an eyebrow, 'Too fahrbot for her.'

Aeryn slumped back down in her chair, shattered by the revelation. She swallowed hard before saying, 'So you've been frelling Caroline. And all the while, I was a prisoner here.' It was a statement more than a question. 'How nice for you.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't know, I really thought you'd left on Moya.' John seemed thoroughly beaten again, both by the revelation and by her reaction to it.

Aeryn pondered for a while in silence. 'John,' she said eventually, shaking her head as she reached her free hand out to lace fingers with him, 'We really frelled things up, didn't we?'

Holt sat in Kaminsky's office. Kaminsky had sent him daily reports about Crichton's progress which were very encouraging, astonishing, even. Thinking back, he had never got the impression Crichton particularly cared about Sun when they were together on Earth. Of course he was aware, even back then, of the intelligence reports that said that they had once been in a relationship. But everything he had seen with his own eyes had told him that, certainly as far as Crichton was concerned, that relationship was long over. Sun had confirmed as much during her interrogations, which had led Holt to doubt the value in letting him see her now. But Kaminsky, and more powerful voices, had been very insistent, and he had been out of better options and under pressure to get results.

Holt could not deny that he was very happy to see such progress, after all, they now had an urgent and unforeseen need to have Crichton in a functional state. A very urgent need: After the first few days of general discussions, the calls to him demanding to know when they could talk to Crichton had grown ever more frequent and abrasive. And that was before his little project with Aeryn Sun had been uncovered.

Holt was now immensely glad that he had resisted all pressure to allow more harmful or fatal investigations to be conducted on Sun. Originally he had argued that she was a unique and irreplaceable asset and that they could learn more from her healthy and cooperative than unhealthy or dead. As time had gone on, and the force of that argument had diminished he, and as far as he knew, most, if not all of his team, had got to know Aeryn. Their resistance to doing her permanent harm had become more personal. Although he'd never admit it even to himself, he almost felt protective towards the alien woman these days. He thus viewed the new situation, where she had suddenly become much more valuable again, but was also at immense risk and could even be lost completely, with somewhat mixed feelings.

The pressure to act, to deliver Crichton into others' hands, was becoming unmanageable. They were expecting an update on Crichton within the hour and had begun to threaten to take matters into their own hands. Holt could not allow control to be snatched away from him. There was too much to lose. He had accepted he would have to deliver Crichton, and Sun, to others at some time, and that most likely sooner than later, but he needed to do it on his own terms and with a meaningful quid pro quo.

Holt listened impatiently to Kaminsky's professional assessment of Crichton's state of mind: Hell, Holt was no psychiatrist, he just wanted it in layman's language:

'That is all very interesting, but what I want to know is do you think he is ready to deal with them?' Holt snapped, uncharacteristically. He knew the pressure of the last few weeks was making him less diplomatic, but, when all was said and done, Kaminsky was just an employee. His employee. She'd just have to deal with it.

'I'm really not certain. He has made extraordinary progress. I've rarely, if ever, seen such a dramatic turnaround in such a case. If only we had known before what the effect of exposing him to the alien woman would be…..'

'That wasn't going to happen, not before…..' said Holt flatly.

Kaminsky nodded acceptance. 'But I think we need to discuss some of the things they have talked about - I think it reveals a lot about his state of mind.'

'In good time: Now is not a good time.'

'When will be?'

'Afterwards.' Holt replied. 'I can see what state of mind he is in for myself when he gets here.'

'I hardly think that is a substitute for a more in detailed analysis, or a professional opinion.'

Detail, ah yes, that reminded him: 'And I want the surveillance tapes in full, not just the highlights….' He said, sailing over her concerns.

'There are things you and your spooks don't need to know about. Personal things….' insisted Kaminsky defiantly.

'I disagree… I will be the judge of what is and is not relevant.'

'We've had that argument..'

'And we will have it again, until you do as I tell you!' Holt leaned in close and smiled menacingly. 'I think you sometimes forget who is paying your salary, Dr Kaminsky.' Holt revelled in exercising what power he could, after having to put up with being the underdog so much in recent weeks.

They were interrupted by a call from Kaminsky's assistant. 'He's here.'

'Show him in,' Kaminsky replied.

John was led in by two armed and black-suited agents, rather than more usual white-clad nursing orderlies. The men in suits retired to the doorway where they lurked silently, lest they be needed. Looking at John, still hunched, shuffling and a little withdrawn, it was hard to believe he could or would cause trouble, for all the progress he had made these last few days. John eyed Holt warily whilst Kaminsky indicated that John should sit opposite them.

'I must say, I'm very pleased with the progress we've been making with our new approach,' she opened with a smile.

'Screw you,' John replied flatly, as he sat opposite them. 'Both of you.'

'Now, there's no need..' began Holt. John glared at him with pure hatred.

'Oh, I beg to differ,' John interjected. 'What you've done to Aeryn, to my son, is…. Unforgivable.' he spat.

'Everything that was done was for the protection of our people: Your people. Outbursts like that make people question where your true loyalties lie, Commander,' responded Holt.

John looked at him with contempt. 'You just don't get it, do you? What you did, what you're still doing, is wrong. Wrong.'

'In your, somewhat biased, opinion.'

John snorted. 'We could argue this all day, Holt. At least, I'm sure you could,. But I want to know when do I get to see my son?' John asked. Holt was astounded as to how much more animated John had become in such a short time. Kaminsky had been right: Talking to the alien woman really was having an extraordinary effect on him.

'I'm sure Ms Sun has explained to you how it really works around here,' drawled Holt. 'You want something from us, you give us something we want first.'

'You want to cut to the chase, huh, Holt? Aeryn thinks you want something from me, that's why you let us see each other. Why you let me know about Deke. So now's the moment you twirl your moustache and tell me: What is it you want so badly from me all of a sudden, that you didn't want before, for all these years?'

'Oh we don't want anything from you,' replied Holt, too casually. John snorted in disbelief. 'Someone else wants something from you, Mr Crichton, and has offered your Country a great deal in return.'

'What on Earth are you talking about, you piece of dren?' replied John angrily.

'T.R., this could cause him a severe relapse,' warned Kaminsky, tapping her pen on her note pad, clearly deeply agitated. 'I must….'

'Objection noted,' Holt interrupted and, ignoring both her and Crichton's insult, he picked up a remote control and aimed it at a large TV screen on a nearby wall. Holt pressed a few buttons, and the TV came to life.

'Two months ago, some unexpected visitors arrived.' said Holt flatly. A grainy image appeared on the screen, obviously shot from some distance.

'Moya?' breathed John. Grainy images of the Leviathan continued to play.

'We're not sure, but naturally, like you, we assumed it was your shipmates, returning for some reason,' continued Holt. 'So imagine our surprise when we discovered otherwise?' Kaminsky continued to frown and tap her pen on her pad whilst observing Crichton closely.

A face now appeared on the video, with the merest trace of a smile playing across his features.

'Braca….' hissed John, almost stung from his seat.

'Indeed,' confirmed Holt. 'After some initial misunderstandings, he gave us a very clear message as to why he is here.' Holt fast forwarded to a new section of video.

'….. Thank you Secretary of State. You are speaking to Commandant Miklo Braca, Peacekeeper Interplanetary Services. I have come to negotiate the extradition of two dangerous criminals who we believe have sought refuge on your planet: They are a deserter from our own forces, and her accomplice, who is one of your own people. We can supply evidence of their many crimes and are willing to handsomely compensate your government for your cooperation…..' Holt flicked the video off, watching Crichton's shocked expression with mixed feelings, but great interest.

'So, Mr Crichton, tell me, what shall we do next?'