Fallen Angels 2/?
by Jaime
Part 2: Higher
Can you take me higher?
To a place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To a place with golden streams
So lets go there
Let’s make our escape
C’mon lets go there
Lets ask can we stay.
- Creed; HigherTo Aeryn’s surprise, John landed the Prowler without event in Moya’s docking bay. Still, she could not resist a few jabs at him as they were exiting. “Well, that was, what did you call it? Ah, dumb luck.”
At first, John was offended by her remark, he figured he’d impressed her. When he turned around to reply, he saw the grin on her face and the sparkle in her eyes and knew that her comment was all in jest. “Dumb luck, huh?” At her nod, he surprised her by quickly grabbing her while she descended from the prowler and flung her over his shoulder.
“What are you doing Crichton?! Put me down!” Her yelling was somewhat muffled by his shoulder, though.
“Well, as I recall, we were asked to go to command, so that is what I’m doing, going to command.” He knew she was probably going to kill him for this later, but he really didn’t care. He was having too much fun. Seeing the big, bad ex Peacekeeper flail her legs about while over his shoulder was just too amusing for him.
Aeryn stopped kicking her legs when he started running. She figured that the more she moved, the more likely she was to send him off balance, crashing them into a wall. She was spending her time on the way to command thinking of imaginative ways to get him back for this, as well as admiring the view. She had long ago admitted to herself that she found Crichton attractive, that she found him interesting. Only recently had she begun to examine the feelings for him that ran much deeper. Feelings that scared her, because such things had been considered evil and forbidden in her old ways of thinking. But now, she found that there were definite possibilities. She was slowly opening herself up to him emotionally, and she found that she enjoyed the comfort he was able to give her.
By the time they had gotten to command, everyone was there, and giving them very quizzical looks about Aeryn’s position.
When he finally stopped, she very calmly said, “Crichton, put me down or I will hurt you.” Secretly, though, she was glad that no one was able to see the small grin on her face while she said that. Hearing him chuckle in response, she was slowly lowered to the ground.
When they were both standing upright, she looked straight at him and mock threateningly said, “if you ever do anything like that again, I will give you a pentak jab and throw you out of the nearest airlock.”
Crichton could still see the remnants of a gleam in her eyes that told him that she was kidding, which made him smile in response. “Sure Sunshine, but you know you’d miss me.”
Just as Aeryn was about to form a retort, her attention was drawn just over John’s shoulder to a stranger standing in the shadows of command. “Who the frell is that?”
**********************
DK had been silently waiting for John to arrive. Zhaan had told him moments ago that they had docked and were on their way there. He had yet to receive an explanation as to who Aeryn was, but from what he heard it sounded like the voice on John’s recording. Could she be the woman he was referring to on the tape? She was certainly beautiful from what he saw, and he could see how she would attract John’s attention. His pulse quickened when he heard footsteps approaching from down the corridor.
His breath caught in his throat when John entered command, seemingly having the time of his life with the woman slung over his shoulder. He could tell, however, that this was not a normal situation by the confused looks of the rest of the crew. The woman, Aeryn he reminded himself, seemed to be issuing threats left and right at him, all of which John laughed off. He was upset because John had his back facing him, and he could not see his face. However, one thing did strike his attention, John was wearing leather, something he never thought he would see.
His thoughts were interrupted when Aeryn looked straight at him and said, “who the frell is that?” He didn’t even have time to ponder what ‘frell’ meant when John turned and looked at him. DK felt like the wind had been knocked out of him, it really was John. Sure, he had a different hair style and different clothes. Or, that as he turned around, he immediately reached for the weapon that was at his side, almost identical to the one in his room. It truly was John Crichton, albeit a very changed John Crichton.
*********
As soon as John turned around, he was assaulted with a myriad of emotions. Surprise at seeing his childhood friend aboard Moya, confused as to how he got here then anger at the imposter, because it could never really be DK. It was this anger that soon engulfed him as he started to interrogate him. “Who the FRELL are you?”
A confused look overcame DK’s once joyous features. “John, its me man, DK.”
Outrage at the continued deceit, John raised his weapon higher at the man, “no, you are not, the DK I know is back on Earth, there is no way that he could be here right now, and I am not going through these mind games again!” With that, he turned and stormed out of the room.
Aeryn’s initial reaction to John leaving was to follow him, but she decided to find out the truth first. She approached Zhaan and asked, “is it really him?”
Zhaan turned to her and said, “I ran a med scan on him, he is human. He also didn’t possess translator microbes, something unheard of in these parts. While I couldn’t be certain it was truly John’s friend, his reaction seemed to confirm that for us.”
“Right, I’ll go talk to Crichton.” As she turned to go after Crichton, she saw the other human about to follow him as well. “Let me go after him, this will be difficult for him to accept, and right now he doesn’t trust you. He might be quicker to believe if it comes from me.” And with that, she ran off.
DK, on the other hand, was quite confused. While this trip to wherever he was certainly wasn’t planned, this certainly wasn’t the welcome he had expected. His confusion must have been evident to Zhaan, who approached him and tried to comfort him.
“Please, do not take his words too seriously, he has been through too much in the past cycle for him to believe it is you at first glance. Let Aeryn talk to him, she will be able to reason with him.”
DK decided that some of his questions were going to get answered, “who is she? How did another human get out here?”
“She is not human, she is a Sebacean. As far as we can tell they appear to be the same species on the outside, but they have quite different internal systems. That is one of the reasons he doubts you are who you say you are, for all he knows, you could be a Sebacean in disguise as his friend.” Zhaan did not want to get into the whole false Earth story with the Ancients.
“But why, why would the Sebaceans do that?”
Zhaan knew she was getting into another topic that might not be easy for DK to understand, but she was going to give him some semblance of an answer. “There is a group of Sebaceans known as the Peacekeepers who are a militaristic group. While we are in the Uncharted Territories, which is where we are now, we must constantly be on the lookout for them.” That answer seemed to satisfy DK for the time being, so she continued, “do not worry, Aeryn will get through to him.”
This brought back another question that DK had, “who is this Aeryn to him?”
Not wanting delve into John’s personal life, or give a false answer, because even she did not know the answer to this question, she simply replied “they are friends. They look out for one another whenever possible, and have saved each others lives on numerous occasions.” The entire crew had their suspicions that it was something more than that, but she felt it best not to voice these suspicions.
************
After checking his quarters, Aeryn went to the next most likely place where she would find him, the terrace. It had always been a place of solitude for John, and with his current state of distress, he would most likely seek comfort there. Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the floor, gazing up at the stars. She cautiously approached him and sat down right next to where he was, so close that their shoulders were touching.
They sat in silence for a while, neither quite knowing what to say. Finally, Aeryn broke the silence by asking, “John, are you alright?”
“No Aeryn, I’m not alright! It was bad enough when the Ancients screwed with my head on the false Earth, now they have to frell with me here on Moya!” The anger was audible in his voice.”
“John the man who impersonated your father on the false Earth, he couldn’t change his internal structure could he?”
“No Aeryn, he couldn’t, I pulled his chest right off and there was some weird musculature there, why?”
“Because, Zhaan ran a med scan on the man in command, all of his internal systems match yours completely. He has human organs, John.”
“Yeah, but they could have figured out how to do that, you know.”
“There’s another thing John, he didn’t have translator microbes, Zhaan had to inject them into him. No one on that backwater planet of yours has them. And the Ancients do have microbes.
“How do you know that?”
“Because, when we were on the false Earth, when we were saying good bye to who we thought was your father, I said something to him, I told him I would look out for you and make sure you were alright, and he understood me. He thanked me. It was then that I started becoming suspicious as to what was going on.”
“You really think he’s for real then?”
“I trust Zhaan’s judgment, and I think she’s telling the truth when she says that that man really is from Earth. The real one.”
“God, Aeryn, part of me prayed that it was him, and the other part prayed that it wasn’t. Because if he was here, that would mean that I could see him again, and that would mean a part of Earth, a part of my past would be here with me now. But the other part, the louder part, screamed that this can’t be happening. He’s stuck out here just like I am, and he has to start all over again just like I did. And with him being here, that means he has been dragged into the mess that has become my life. I mean, if Scorpius even gets a hint that someone else has been through a wormhole, he would be after him almost as much as he has been after me. I don’t want him to have to live that kind of life, I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.” Seeing a bit of hurt flash in her eyes at the mention of his dislike of his current life, he amended his statement. “Not that I don’t like my life right now, as crazy as it sounds, I enjoy it, the situations I’m in and the people I meet never fail to amaze me. But that first cycle or so was one of the most confusing times of my life, and I’m just now beginning to find my place here.” With that he hesitantly reached out and grasped her hand, and was pleasantly surprised when she twined her fingers through his. “I just don’t think I could handle seeing him being put in the kind of danger that I have been put in, and knowing that he is here in this situation in some small way because of me. I couldn’t live with that.”
Tightening her grip on his hand, she said, “He may be out here because of you, to come look for you. But you have to think of how lucky he got. I mean, what are the chances that the wormhole he came through would open up right in front of Moya, right where you are. As lost as he is going to be, he is going to have you to help him. You never had that, you didn’t have a friend to help you when you were lost and confused. What if he had emerged anywhere else in the Known or Uncharted Territories, he could have been killed by the first person he came across. What would happen if he wound up in the middle of a Peacekeeper force like you did? He would most likely be killed instantly. There were almost insurmountable odds against him ending up with friendly beings, much less you. But he did, and that’s all that matters right now. So I think you should go and see him, because he has got to be so confused right now, and I think seeing you will help him immensely.”
He turned to look at her and said, “you know you’re right about everything… everything except one thing.” He smirked when he saw her eyebrow arch in a silent question. “I wasn’t alone when I first got here, I had you. You, who’ve kicked my ass almost as many times as you’ve saved it. I don’t know what I would have done without the radiant Aeryn Sun to help me.” When he saw her smile in response, he leaned over and lightly brushed his lips against hers. Afraid of what her reaction might be, he leaned back and observed her response. He was nervously awaiting any sign of emotion to cross her Peacekeeper mask, and was relieved when a smile spread across her face. Then was pleasantly shocked when she grabbed him and pulled him towards her again. The kiss that followed was not one of frenzied passion like in the Flax, nor was it one of solemn want like it was on the false Earth. It was one that reassured one another of their place in each other’s lives.
Finally, breaking the kiss, John was able to collect himself enough to speak. “Thank you Aeryn, I mean, not for that, that was… what I mean was thank you for being there for me, now and any other time.”
With sincerity in her voice, she replied, “John, you do not need to thank me. Anything you feel you need to thank me for, you’ve done the same for me. But, if you do feel the need to thank me, I thank you in return.” She gave him a warm smile, that left him wondering what he did to deserve such warmth from her, not that he was complaining. “Now lets go, I haven’t been properly introduced to this DK of yours.”
He grinned at her and replied, “I think it’s about time that we fixed that.” With that, he took her hand and walked towards command.