For Kerne

[lifeonqueen]

Beyond tardy, nevertheless, one Aeryn ficathon story for kernezelda:

Title: While You Were Gone
Author: Me
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Natural Election"
Summary: Just who is it that needs to get their story straight anyway?
Word Count: 2,554
Author's Note: Sorry it's late. And that it's not the best thing I've ever written. But it's not the worst either, so I guess it will have to do. Hope you like it, Cranks.

PS - Pretty much un-beta'd; critical comment welcome.

---

When Pilot confirmed that Crichton was alone in the ventilation room, Aeryn knew she couldn't put off her 'talk' any longer. She'd have preferred to face him showered and changed out of the EVA suit but waiting another quarter-arn wouldn't make it any easier. Instead, she slipped out of the top half of the suit and tied the arms tight around her waist. It was a poor substitute for the solid weight of her gun belt around her hips—surely she had a few microts to slip into her quarters: she could sluice off the plant-stink and put on proper pants; grab her pistol...

Then she was standing in front of the hatch, pretending that the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach was pregnancy and not nerves.

The ring of metal on metal was clear through the hatch—John was clearing up. She had a sense that her chance could slip away at any moment: only so much time until someone came looking for him or the next crisis—or Chiana lost all semblance of self-control. And she needed to be the one to tell him about her pregnancy, needed to make him understand. So, swallowing down on her anxieties and clamping what she hoped was a conciliatory expression on her face, Aeryn grabbed the handle and swung the hatch open. ...


"Just come back... when you have your story straight," he said and walked out of the chamber without another word, leaving her alone with the mess.

It took a moment for Aeryn to process what he had said, like the time between the punch and the pain.

Come back when you have your story straight.

Aeryn rose to her feet, knuckling away a rogue tear, and followed him into the corridor.

"What does that mean?" she demanded. "John? John! Crichton!"

"What I said—figure out what you want to tell me and we’ll talk," he said wearily, stabbing at the lift's controls. She wondered, if not for the absent lift, he would have answered her at all.

"That’s not fair. I've never lied to you."

"No, you just left without telling me you were pregnant. It’s only maybe my kid? No big deal, at all, right?" he shot back with raw sarcasm.

"I told you—I didn’t want to tell you about the pregnancy until I knew whom the father was," she said, trying not to sound defensive, trying not to sound like she had something to apologize for.

"It matters that much to you," he said: a statement, not a question.

She answered it as honestly as she could anyway: "Not if the child is John Crichton's."

Disgust followed by wariness chased surprise across his face. "And if it isn’t?"

"I haven’t gotten that far yet." She slid her hands down to the waist of her EVA suit and yanked the sleeves tighter.

"I see." he said.

Aeryn would have bet he didn’t, although the disappointment in his voice was clear enough. It was hard to choke back a retort, to check the part of her that wanted to rage at Crichton—what did he know about it? About discovering that your body had been invaded, colonized by another organism? About learning that a universe of choices had been narrowed down to three: raise the child, give it away, or have it purged from your body. She’d chosen a long time ago never to have a child, not for the Peacekeepers to raise. She’d never planned for a pregnancy, never trained for it: it was never supposed to happen.

Maybe, once, John would have accepted that as a reason. But the man she knew and the man he’d become—Aeryn felt the weight of his expectations like heavy gravity, crushing down on her—he expected her to be more.

"I never wanted to hurt you," she said instead.

"Well," he stabbed the call button again, "You can’t always get what you want."

The lift was rumbling up to their tier and, again, Aeryn felt the moment slipping away. She reached for his shoulder as the doors swished open, meaning to force him to face her. Her fingers grazed the naked skin of his neck. Instead, he flinched violently and slapped her hand away.

"Jesus, Aeryn! Don’t." he shouted, rolling his shoulders under the tight material of the EVA suit and backing away.

Surprise, insult, hurt, anger—Aeryn didn’t know how respond. But the rejection was more than she could take. "Frell this."

She elbowed past him into the lift, lips pressed together in a tight line, and left him standing on alone. As the lift sank towards the centre tier, her composure cracked. She swept the tears away with furious gestures—this wasn’t how it was supposed to end.


Later, John found Aeryn in her quarters, sitting on her bunk with her back to the door, cleaning her pulse pistol. The pistol was the only orderly part of her quarters: everything else looked like it had been tossed by a company of extremely surly commandos on stims, the result of throwing everything she owned into her duffle bag and then dumping it all out again just as quickly.
Realizing that running away was not an option, she was hiding in her quarters, compulsively cleaning her weapon because it was preferable to thinking about John, their "relationship"—she could learn to hate that word—or the possibility that their child was hovering in biological still life somewhere under her belt. If this were a battlefield, a dogfight, she would dig in, regroup, fight back. When did she become such a coward?

The pistol was nearly reassembled by the time she heard his boots in the corridor. Perhaps if she ignored him, he would keep walking. John didn't, of course—the footsteps stopped in her doorway: this is what they did. No fight, no discussion ever simply ended between them, not until it was picked cleaner than a budong carcass. Even she could see the pattern of their relationship, like a rut worn into a hanger deck.

"Why’d you come back?" he asked from where he lounged against the doorframe, one arm resting above his head.

Her hands stilled.

"I was dying. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go."

She carefully slotted the casing into place.

"I knew that, if I couldn’t… take care of myself… I knew that you would."

He chuckled bitterly, "You trusted me to kill you but not to tell me you’re pregnant. That’s beautiful, Aeryn. Just swell."

"I’m sorry."

"I know," and she believed him. "But that doesn’t make it any better."

Aeryn looked at the weapon in her hands—black, slick and deadly, pared to bare essentials, everything else stripped away. When had she stopped finding its elegant simplicity beautiful?

She slid the pistol home in its holster. "Do you want me to leave?"

"That seems to be your answer for everything these days."

She bristled at his sarcasm: she couldn’t help it. "Then what do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?"

Aeryn pushed herself off the bed, turning to face him.

"Tell me how to fix it, John," she demanded, "Tell me what to do."

He shook his head and stood straight. "It doesn’t work that way, Aeryn. A relationship… you can’t just replace the broken parts and move on."

"Why not? I love you. I want to be with you. Why isn’t that enough?" she demanded, standing toe to toe with him and looking him straight in the eye.

Could that be the first time she'd truly looked at him, really looked, since coming back? There were new lines around his eyes, new hollows: he'd lost weight, gained muscle; been stripped down, pared back; he was all elegant lines in black leather--slick and dangerous.

But still beautiful, still John, still the man she loved although not the man she had lost.

Aeryn wanted to kiss him, might have moved a hair in that direction, when John looked away, turned his shoulders and slid past her--away from her--into her quarters.

"Because it’s not enough," he said, breathing out, "I’m glad you got your ya-yas out and you’ve come to terms with the other guy’s death—" John snapped his mouth closed on whatever he was about to say and swallowed it back, grimacing. He spoke next with deliberate care: "I really am glad, Aeryn. But life didn’t stop for me when you left: I had to go on without you. Again."

He’d found someone else.

"’Go on’?" she repeated, waiting for him to confirm the fear she’d suppressed, the weak, immature, girlish fear that he would find someone else, that he wouldn’t want her anymore if she came back. She fought against a quaver in her voice: "You mean with someone else?"

"No. There’s no one else."

"Then why?"

"Because now I need time," he said, stressing the pronoun. "You left and you got your shit together and I’m not lying when I say I’m glad. I am. But it wasn’t like that for me: I spent my summer vacation waiting for my leviathan to croak and me with it, when I wasn’t trying to get Grayza and her Stormtrooper wannabes off my… back.

"Then I find you with Scorpius," he paused, clearing his throat and rubbing his eyes, "Jesus, why'd it have to be him?"

"It was…" she considered her words, "The only choice I could make. Under the circumstances."

But that sounded weak even to her.

"I’m sorry," she added.

"Yeah, we’re all sorry." He shrugged; "Doesn't change a damn thing."

And there they were, back where they started. She dug her thumbs into her gun belt, pulling the leather down, cutting into hips--a nervous gesture.

"So… time." Aeryn leaned back, unconsciously taking his place in the doorway, arms folded across her chest. Across the room, John dragged his finger through the gear haphazardly scattered over her table.

"What if I say no? What if I think we’ve wasted too much time already?" she asked.

"It’s not up to you," he said quietly.

"So this is my only option: wait for you to decide whether or not you want to be with me?" She frowned. "What if I decide that’s not acceptable?"

He skittered a credit chip across the table with a finger and sighed. "I’ll love you until the day I die, Aeryn. I just don’t know if I can be with you."

Her gut clenched. "What does that mean?"

He waved her off, shrugging; "Nothing, okay? Let’s drop it."

"Now who’s lying?" she challenged, cocking an eyebrow.

John tensed like he'd been slapped, swinging his head to look at her directly.

"What did you say?" he asked, voice edged with venom.

"I said you’re a liar. This isn’t about me: this is about whatever happened while I was gone."

John stared at her.

"I'm not stupid, John. Even I notice that everyone stops talking when I walk into a room. What was it?" she asked, taunting him.

"Did you find another quivering tech to rescue on that leviathan? Or" she thrust an arm in the direction of the cells were Scorpius was locked away, "Sikozu? Chiana?

"Is that why she rushed to tell you about the baby? Because you’re together now?"

"I said there's no one else," he repeated stolidly. He held onto the edge of her table with a white-knuckled grip, like he needed it to stay upright.

Aeryn pushed away from the door, unaware that she was shouting; "Then what? What aren’t you telling me?"

"You want to know?" he asked, "You really want to know what happened while you were gone?"

"Yes!" she screamed at him.

"Fine," he said.

He sat down at the table but didn't look at her. Instead he picked up an old, faulty comm, one she'd been meaning to fix later, popped the casing off with a probe.

"I was raped, Aeryn," he said quietly, his eyes locked on the comm as he took it apart. "I went to Arnessk to find you and found Grayza instead. And boy, was she happy to see me.

"After a whiff of Heppel Oil, I pretty happy to see her, too." John looked up at her, his eyes shiny and cold like flecks of blue crystal, "Glad you asked?"

Aeryn bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from--what? She felt… not sick, not horrified but some new and terrible combination of both. Rape, she knew rape; knew stories of fellow cadets, the ones who moved a little slow in the corridors; the ones who couldn’t avoid the officers.

"She raped you?" she asked stupidly, knowing it was a stupid question, "Grayza raped you?"

"Did I stutter?"

"John, I—"

"You didn’t know? You’re sorry? I’ve heard it all before: D’Argo, Chiana, Sikozu, Scorpius—they’re all sorry. Everybody’s sorry: poor John screwed again--" he shrugged as he pulled the tiny power cell apart, "Just a little more literally this time."

"Scorpius knows?" The half-breed's snide comments, sneering allusions to John's 'personal' safety: it all made sense now.

"All God’s childrens knows, massa."

She closed her eyes. "I will kill her."

"No. No one else dies because of me. Promise me, Aeryn."

Now that was unacceptable. Aeryn had witnessed interrogation by Heppel Oil, part of her commando training; her memories colluded with her imagination and images of John writhing under Grayza assaulted her. She wanted to hit something. No, kill something.

She tasted blood.

"No." That bitch would not get away with what she had done--I went to Arnessk to find you.

"She deserves it, after all she’s done—to you, to Chiana and Rygel—" And found Grayza instead.

"I don't care: I'm calling in my marker. If I can live with Vlad the Impaler on board, then you can deal with this."

He set aside the comm and slid around on the stool to face her. John sat, arms draped on thighs, hands hanging loose in between. He spoke without looking at her; "This is a deal-breaker, Aeryn. You owe me this."

"Fine," Aeryn spat, hamstrung by her own sense of obligation and honour.

"Fine," John agreed. He stood up. "Good."

"Yes," Aeryn nodded without meeting his eyes.

Silence fell between them, sharp and uncertain. She could feel its current, feel its treachery, the sense that everything teetered on the next moment and an unconsidered word would pull them both under.

John shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot and Aeryn tugged on her belt.

"So," John said, "Nice weather we’re having."

"Yes, lovely," she said dryly.

She considered his bruised blue eyes. "Where do we go from here?"

He shrugged, "I don’t see as it makes any difference."

No, no difference at all. I went to Arnessk to find you and found Grayza instead.

He crossed the room to the doorway. He petted her shoulder as he passed; "Goodnight Aeryn."

Her hand covered the spot where his fingers had momentarily touched.

"John," she said and he stopped in the doorway, looking back at her.

"What?"

"I always came back."

He nodded and then he walked away, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

~ Fin.`