Title: Fearful Symmetry

Author: Cret Kid (aka cal, ck)

Email: rdcottrell@yahoo.com

Category: missing scene, "I Shrink, Therefore I Am"

Rating: R for language

Warnings: angst

Characters: John, Aeryn, minor Chiana

Pairings: none

Summary:

"Chiana backed out the door, watching both combatants stare each other down. And she wondered which one of them would she be helping pick up the pieces afterwards."

Author's Notes: Sleep deprivation is my friend; many thanks to Cranky for hashing out the details and Sheridan for the word help.

Story Notes: Spoilers for Season 4, up through "I Shrink, Therefore I Am", specific references to "A Bug's Life", "The Way We Weren't", the Princess Trilogy and "Dog With Two Bones" and a few others but they are really really really minor. And I don't own the pop culture references either.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, but boy do I want to be them.

Author's Website: www.oocities.org/rdcottrell/fiction.html

"Fearful Symmetry"

================

Even with eyes screwed shut, light seemed to bleed through her eyelids in sync with the pounding of her head. A Leviathan full of zeccan leaves would not be enough to alleviate the pain seated between her ears.

There were sounds, smells that were familiar and strange at the same time. Everything told Aeryn that, though not in her quarters, she was still on Moya. Absent in the air were the scents of chakkan oil, metal and ozone from spent weaponry. The drafts in the room were all wrong. If she had been in her quarters there would not be a caress of air near her face as there was in this room. The blanket covering her was different as well; the texture of it wrong, and it didn't smell of night sweats mixed with the lingering perfume of Zhaan's oils. To top it off, she was lying on her back. She rarely slept in any position other than on her side. Unless she was placed that way insensate, which could only mean --

-- she was in the infirmary. Frelling great. At least that meant they had beaten the Scarran. And explained why she hurt all over.

Limbs seemed to be intact. She could feel the heat of bruises radiating against the blanket and pillow. Her right side felt as if it was on fire, but at least it took her mind off the headache.

The last time she woke up on Moya from such a state, she had been strapped to a bed. No straps here, not that it would have mattered; she didn't think she could sit up if she tried.

It took too much effort to open her eyes. Needing to cough, she rolled to her side, the pain searing through her side as she moved. Something in the air changed; someone was nearby. She tried not to start at the touch of someone's hand on her shoulder.

* * *

Chiana felt Aeryn tense microts before contact between fingers and shoulder. The Nebari had been watching the ex-Peacekeeper sleep fitfully from a nearby perch, hoping that the woman would wake up already. Aeryn was never stationary; any modicum of activity would be better than watching her just lie so still. Chiana didn't like drastic changes like that.

Crichton talked. Aeryn moved. D'Argo growled. Rygel complained. Sikozu annoyed. The old woman puttered. Simple things.

But for hours, Aeryn wasn't moving. Crichton wasn't talking. It unnerved her.

She thought waiting for her eyesight to return took frelling forever. Watching over Aeryn with a silent, surly companion had taken an eternity.

When Aeryn showed signs of waking, Chiana jumped at the chance to do something, anything. Only she startled Aeryn, and turned to see if Crichton would do or say anything from his seat across the room. He didn't get up; just continued to stroke the frelling DRD from that dying Leviathan like it was some sort of pet.

Getting a firmer grip on Aeryn's shoulder, she crouched to eye level so the injured woman wouldn't have to move much. "Shh. Just me. About time you woke up."

Chiana felt resistance against her hand as Aeryn tried to move off her back.

"Infirmary?" Aeryn asked, finally succeeding in rolling to her side.

The grimace of pain on Aeryn's face before she settled made Chiana uneasy. She looked to Crichton again, wondering why he wasn't making Aeryn lie still.

"Yeah. You've got a nice bump on your head. Even bigger now that we're normal size again."

Her hand hovered over the large distension near Aeryn's temple, the discoloration disappearing behind the hairline. Chiana very carefully brushed Aeryn's hair away from the spot as if to show her where the offending area was.

Aeryn didn't seem to care that there was a fist sized bump on her head, and her eyes roamed the area closest to the bed for something.

Chiana watched as Aeryn's gaze fell on a water glass on a stand nearby. Chiana lifted it to her lips so that she could sip.

"Everyone?" Aeryn croaked, even after the taste of water.

Chiana nodded, holding the glass to offer another swallow. "Yeah. Though, Crichton may have made Rygel's stomachs too big. His Frogginess is currently emptying our food stores."

Aeryn seemed to laugh at that, not so much a grimace marring her face as a genuine attempt at a smile. She looked directly into Chiana's eyes for the first time since wakening, and the Nebari felt an unaccustomed chill at the close scrutiny.

"Your eyesight?"

"Back to normal."

Relaxing at that bit of news, Aeryn sank back onto the bunk. "Good."

Chiana breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all. Then she saw the look of determination on the prone woman's face. She didn't need special foresight to see what was going to happen next.

Aeryn took a deep breath and tried to sit up, only managing to lever herself half way with her elbow. Chiana hovered nervously near the bed, glancing over her shoulder once again to the silent observer in the corner.

"Chiana, help me up."

It wasn't exactly a question, or a command. Chiana twittered between assistance and defiance and Aeryn must have noticed as her expression turned from ignored pain to annoyed betrayal.

"Chiana?"

A voice from the opposite corner broke the silent war of wills. "I don't think that's a good idea."

Aeryn grunted as she pushed herself into a seated, yet hunched, position on the bed. She glanced carefully over Chiana's shoulder to find the speaker.

Chiana stepped out of their direct line of sight to watch the tableau unfold. Crichton didn't move from his post, but his eyes locked with Aeryn's, leaving Chiana to feel like she had just walked in on an intimate moment.

"I'm just gonna… ah, I'm gonna check on Rygel," Chiana said, looking from one to the other and knowing they saw no one else in the room. "You know, make sure he leaves us something to eat."

She walked slowly, haltingly towards the entrance, hoping that maybe one would want her to stick around. Pausing in the doorway, she turned her head over her shoulder and asked, "You two want anything?"

"We're good, Chi," Crichton responded in monotone, never changing focus. "Thanks."

Chiana backed out the door, watching both combatants stare each other down. And she wondered which one of them would she be helping pick up the pieces afterwards.

"We're good, Chi," he heard himself say automatically. "Thanks."

John waited for the sound of Chiana's boots leaving the area altogether, knowing instinctively that she would give them privacy. Not that he knew what he wanted to say, not that knowledge of this … meeting, for lack of a better word, wouldn't be around the ship in less time that it took Moya to starburst.

No one's business but his own, so of course everyone would know about it.

1812 gently nudged the palm of his hand. John didn't know if he was simply anthropomorphizing the DRD or if the little machine truly did seek his attention. Apparently he had stopped his ministrations between 1812's eyestalks because the gentle prodding became more insistent.

Aeryn shifted on the infirmary bed and he looked away so as not to see the contorted expression he knew would mar her face. He dropped his eyes long enough to attend to the persistent machine. His right hand went back to its rhythmic petting. The other fell to just above his ankle. Pacified, the ancient DRD almost purred with a mechanical whirring sound.

"You're bleeding," he heard her say softly.

Eyes followed her gaze to the spot just above his left ankle and he realized he had absently started to play with the makeshift bandage there. Another nice thing about Granny's bug juice, it dulled pain-- any sort.

"I was," he replied. "One of the pumpkin heads got me." He felt a small tug on his lips and automatically affected an accent as he added, "It's just a flesh wound."

Aeryn's voice seemed to get over its initial coarseness with use. "You should have someone tend to it."

He watched as she straightened, a tentative hand probing her right side. "Pot, meet kettle."

The DRD bumped his hand again. John decided that somewhere along the way, he had lost the ability to multitask.

"How are Pilot and Moya?"

John almost laughed. Business as usual. Ask about Pilot, ask about Moya and avoid eye contact. "Fine. Moya's a little wigged out, but Pilot says she's calming down."

"You piloting a transport pod to ram the Coreshi ship probably didn't help matters much," Aeryn added.

"Lost the transport pod in the process." John shook his head. "Guess that means another supply run in the near future."

* * *

"Guess that means another supply run in the near future."

Aeryn leaned forward, bracing her weight against her arms. Though the tension across her shoulders only added to her head pain, it was the only position she could find that did not make it seem like her insides were being torn asunder. Definitely more than a few bruises, perhaps a pulled muscle.

He pushed off his post with exaggerated energy. They were all tired, punchy, him more so than the rest. She had taken note of John's recalcitrant mood while shrunk and stuck in the Coreshi hand-held prison. The last thing she wanted was to deal with him when he was manic. She closed her eyes. The maintenance bay, her prowler, or considering her bruised state, her quarters and no disasters for a few arns; was it so much to ask?

John made a derisive snort and she slowly turned her head in his direction and grimaced.

"See, this is where you make fun of my piloting skills."

Closing her eyes again, Aeryn tried to keep the sigh out of her voice. "I don't want to argue with you."

"Why not?"

His voice had a lilting quality to it. She pried open an eye against the too bright light. John was smiling, but it did nothing to pacify the cold steel in his eyes.

He cocked his head to the side as he continued, "It's what we used to do best."

Resigned to fighting a battle she didn't want to participate in, Aeryn decided that at least she'd make the battlefield more in her favor. "Pilot, can you lower the lights in here please? Three-quarters illumination?"

She didn't bother to look for Pilot's image in the clamshell.

"Head hurt?" John asked. There was no sympathy in his words. "'Cause, ya know, your head bounced off the deck a coupla times."

"I am aware of that fact, thank you," she replied, shifting again to get comfortable.

"That wouldn't be the case if you didn't let gate crashers get on board."

He was spoiling for a fight, on edge. Even the decrepit DRD that he salvaged from the dying Leviathan was backing away from him now, sensing the change in his demeanor. She was a convenient punching bag.

At least he was talking to her. She did miss his incessant chatter.

She gingerly slipped off the high bed so that her feet rested against the floor. The small of her back and the palms of her hands sought the edge of the bed. "So the Coreshi boarding us is somehow my fault."

"If the shoe fits…"

"They were bounty hunters. We all have bounties on our heads."

Her words didn't seem to register. He had that expression on his face she had seen countless times before. It usually prefaced him asking 'and your point is?' when he was in a particularly obnoxious mood. She shook her head, waved her hand in the air. "You're not even interested in how they got on board. You just want someone to blame."

A vein on his forehead started to pulse, the corded tendons in his neck marked in sharp relief. So, he wasn't expecting a sparring partner. "Blame me all you want, John,- but it is not the price on my head that's attracting the attention of the Coreshi, the Vorkarian blood trackers, or the Scarrans."

He laughed. He actually laughed. He had once told her it was called gallows humor, to laugh when the situation did not warrant levity. The wounds received from a war of words always cut more deeply. His laughter told her that was exactly what she was facing.

"Yeah, what is your bounty now? Think it might go up since you're pregnant? Or do you think they might appreciate a two-for-one sale?"

He paced the short distance between the crates and the door. Planting one hand against the bulkhead, he seemed to lean a significant portion of his weight against it. "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

* * *

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"

He wanted to pace, needed to move, but his feet were mired to the floor. His arm, leaden against Moya's bulkhead, refused to drop to his side. But he could feel his pulse quicken, the muscles of his face and fingers, arms and thighs twitch with adrenaline. The angel on his shoulder was losing badly to the devil in his gut and he really didn't care.

Aeryn shifted against the bed, leaning more into the corner than against the edge. He supposed she had a hard time finding a comfortable position. Well -- good.

She wasn't paying him any mind, in that annoying 'ignore the human and he will go away' manner to which he had been so accustomed during his first cycle aboard Moya. But he wasn't going to have that. Not today.

"What did you think you were doing, riding in like John Wayne?"

He watched as she straightened, squared her shoulders. "Preventing the Scarran's escape."

"As a Lilliputian!?"

"It was a sound tactical maneuver."

A sound tactical maneuver. Sound. Tactical. Maneuver. The words rang like bells in his brain. A maneuver. An exercise. A battle situation. Act first, think later. Or not think at all.

He nodded, pretending to agree. Imagining that the expression on his face mirrored that of his dad's when John was about to get the snot kicked out of his oh-so-clever excuses for doing something incredibly stupid.

"Did it occur to you that I might not be as effective in fighting off Mighty Morphin' Bounty Hunter because I was afraid of stepping on you?"

"You cannot do everything," she replied fervently. "You cannot defeat every one that tries to take control of Moya by yourself. You cannot take on the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers and hope to come out of it alive. And you cannot fix Chiana's eyes with an empty promise. Stop taking on impossible tasks."

He was shaking his head before she finished, stepping closer and hissing, "You're not the one with the wormhole tech in your head. You're not the guy that everyone and their second cousin wants as their personal guinea pig."

"No, I'm not."

He ran a hand through his sweat-spiky hair, unable to argue with that. Frustrated, he fell back on the old standby. "You could have been seriously hurt, or killed."

"Just as easily as you."

"Yeah, but I'm not pregnant."

* * *

"Yeah, but I'm not pregnant."

So that was this was about. It was only a matter of time before he picked that particular topic to obsess over. And obsess he would, she knew from experience. His stubborn streak rivaled only hers on the ship.

"The fetus is in stasis," she replied, mustering as much patience as she could. "No harm can come to it while it is in stasis."

He took another step closer. "Unless you're harmed."

"Yes."

"And you don't consider a concussion as harmful?"

Aeryn had never been afraid of John. For him, yes. Because of his actions, yes. But never of him. He was trying to intimidate, using his size, anger and quiet responses as weapons. However, he had yet to invade her space. He had yet to come within 2 arm's lengths.

But with each verbal attack, he was closing in on that invisible boundary, coiling closer like a Korghi Green snake.

He waved his hand erratically in the general direction of her torso. "How 'bout those bruises the color of Rygel's robes all over your rib cage and belly?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to wince has her wrist settled against one said bruise. "And how would you know that exactly?"

"Chiana noticed when she was checking for injury. She freaked. Asked D'Argo if he thought the baby might have been hurt, since he's the resident expert on Sebacean pregnancies. D told me."

She should have seen that coming. No one's business but her own, so of course everyone would know about it. "Frelling great! So how many people have seen me naked today?"

Belatedly realizing that raising her voice was not a good idea, she gingerly took a deep breath to calm herself.

"Well, I can account for the last 4 hours, but before that…" he drawled.

She closed her eyes, leaned against the wall more fully. "Frell you, Crichton."

"Now, ain't that what got you into trouble in the first place?"

She wanted the focus off of her, off the fetus, off the life that she wasn't ready to live or face. "How did you know about the fetus in the first place?"

"That's not the point."

"So you can be secretive and I can't?"

John finally did step into her space, his upper body tense as his arm blocked any escape. "The thing is, we never used to keep secrets. Not about something this important."

She didn't move. "We do now."

* * *

"We do now."

The tendons in his neck started to ache with the strain. The only movement in the room was the slight flutter of nostrils, the rise and fall of chests. Eyes locked, breathing synced.

Who would be the first to flinch in their battle of brinkmanship?

John wasn't sure how much time had passed. Ten, twenty, a few hundred microts? All he knew was Aeryn blinked first. He felt a flush of cold run through his chest and settled like a lead weight in his bowels.

He pushed off the wall, spun. Paced to what he had designated as his corner of the ring where 1812 was waiting patiently for attention. 1812, who had never abandoned him, a constant presence when he had no one, no person to talk with, who followed him around like a puppy on a leash. A true companion.

"You lied to me," he said, slowly turning away from the DRD.

"What? When?"

"Before." He turned to face her. She had not moved from her position against the wall. "In the atmospheric scrubbers. You said you wanted to find out who the father was."

She seemed to wrap her arms more securely about her midsection. "I did. How is that a lie?"

"Because I think you know who the father is. What I really think you wanted to know was how long you'd been pregnant."

Her right eye started to twitch. "I thought you didn't want to talk to me about this until I had my story straight?"

"Oh, no. No no no no," he replied, ignoring the fact that she parroted his words and tone right back at him in her response. "If I wait for you, Ms I-Made-A-Vow-To-Never-Speak-Of-This, I'll never hear it. Let's do this now. Let's go through possible candidates for Dad, huh?"

Waving a dismissing hand, Aeryn replied, "Please, enlighten me."

He had had over this conversation so many times in his head. With Dad at Canaveral's launch pad. With DK in the back of a pick up truck. With Alex overlooking the Stanford campus. His sisters, his mother. Even Harvey. But Harvey wasn't the bat in his belfry anymore. That place was held by another voice, another face. Feminine and sultry, a specter of the woman standing before him.

The words poured as if by rote.

"Rygel's a no go 'cause he ain't fond of body breeders. He's made that abundantly clear. D'Argo, nah. He's got too many issues and you don't like issues. Stark was too hung up on Zhaan, so he was never a contender.

"Then of course there's Larraq, the Marauder Pilot. He was eyeing you from the moment he stepped on board Moya, and I'm fairly sure that if given the chance you both may have tried the horizontal mambo if we weren't busy hunting down Sparky and the intelli-virus. Or is it Peacekeeper style for it to be wham, bam, thank you ma'am? Plenty 'o opportunities for that. But then he had to go and stab you. Kinda puts a damper on the relationship. But then again, I killed you, so--"

He paused for the effect, took a moment to gauge her reaction. It would not do if she didn't fulfill the role his mind had already played out for her in this little scenario.

She was staring at the toe of her boots, eyes boring holes through the steel mesh and leather, mouth set in a fine, straight line. Aeryn looked up at his continued silence.

"You've certainly put some thought into this," she replied snidely. "Well, come on, now. There must be more."

John sputtered, his tirade derailed for as long as it took him to process her words. The fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench. She was expecting this. He shook his head to get back on track.

"Now, you did say this stasis thing can last 7 cycles, right? There's that guy Velorek, you were shagging him for what, 3 weekens? Sure, he could be the father. But then again, you are Little Miss Regiment. We're on a command carrier for no more than a day and you go in for a physical? So I'm thinking, between the time you handed Lover Boy over to be shaked and baked by Crais and you got shanghaied on this tub, you must have had at least one visit to the PK Chop Shop if only to find out that all your parts were in working order.

"And as much as I know you would love to deny it," he continued, noting with some satisfaction that she had stopped looking at everything but him in the room, "if you had been pregnant before we met, there's no way you could have kept it a secret from me."

"You think so?" she challenged.

"I know so. I KNOW you, Aeryn. Just like I know you never screwed Crais, the only serious contestant in this game show. See, you also have this thing with betrayal. Someone wrongs you and you won't go near them with a ten meter cattle prod."

Aeryn stared at the floor in front of her, stared at the space in front of him, and back to her feet again, as if judging the distance and making the conversion in her head. She brought her eyes forward, dropped her arms to her side. "Kettle, meet pot."

He couldn't have heard that right. The translator microbes didn't need to kick in. This was his ball game, and he didn't like curveballs.

"No, no no no. D-d-don't go speaking english on me."

She pushed herself off the wall, battle ready stance set in her hips and shoulders. "I've got more english for you. Fuck you."

He had to smile in spite of himself, if only for a microt. "I see my doppelganger taught you the fundamentals."

Aeryn didn't deny it. "But he needed more convincing than simple logic to believe I never recreated with Crais."

He sensed there was a story behind that statement, but John wasn't interested in hearing it. Ever.

"And just how did you do that? Fuck him till he forgot that it mattered?"

* * *

"And just how did you do that? Fuck him till he forgot that it mattered?"

The words burned in her ears to the point where Aeryn could only hear the roar of her pulse. There had been a time that she would incapacitate him with a pantak jab for such a comment without so much as a second thought. Even on her worst day, he was no match for her in hand-to-hand combat.

Her worst day was far better than today. Ironic that it had been John's influence that tempered her quick-to-the-punch reaction. She remembered the last time her head hummed with this much focused anger; it had ended with a nearly trashed maintenance bay and her alone in her prowler. It was also the last time she put any faith in fate.

She still didn't want to argue with him, but her hard-won patience was wearing thin.

John, however, decided to press his advantage. "Why did you leave?"

"For frell's sake! Didn't we do this already?!" Aeryn ranted, tolerance losing to fury. "Why didn't you make a wormhole and go home?"

"Because it's not that simple," John yelled in response.

"Yes, it is," she replied just as loudly, ignoring the stab of pain in her side with each breath taken. "Create wormhole, fly module through it. Simple."

John cackled, a crooked, scathing smile on his face. "Yeah. With a fleet of Scarrans hot on my ass. I don't think so. I can't go home."

He paused, tongue in cheek, literally. "Well, I guess we do have something in common after all. Besides the baby, I mean, 'cause I figure the kid is John Crichton's. Maybe not mine by the conventional means, but definitely got my DNA. And why not? I've already got one kid I'm never going to see in my lifetime. Why not another one?"

There was a touch of wistfulness in his voice that did little to thaw her cold countenance. John's weapon of choice was words. She used the only weapon at her disposal; stone silence.

"What if Wrinkles didn't let the cat out of the bag?" he asked. "Would you have ever told me?"

It took all of her strength to not answer him.

John threw his arms in frustration. "Fine, whatever."

He walked towards the door, and she couldn't help but notice the pronounced limp in his gait. She dropped her eyes in order to keep her resolve about her like a mantle. She didn't see him turn and stalk back towards her until his hand was held tightly around her wrist. Even as she tried to turn her forearm to break his lock, he held fast.

"No, it's not fine. Would you have told me?"

She stopped fighting his restraining hold. Just then he seemed to realize that he was holding her that tightly. Loosening his strangle-hold, he asked again, "Would you?"

"Yes."

With that simple word, the anger behind the blue steel in his eyes disseminated. The tic near his temple settled to an occasional ripple. She dropped her still captive arm, his hand following, adjusting for the new angles. The air of the room changed, the tension still present but lessened.

"Why did you leave?" he implored, quietly, cautiously, always keeping eye contact.

Aeryn tried not to chew on her bottom lip, another deplorable habit she had picked up from him. She wanted to tell him, but it was for the greater good that she not say anything, not commit.

"Because I had to."

His grip was still loose, but she could feel the slight tremor in his muscles.

He wet his lips, looked at their joined hands for a microt before turning his gaze back to her face. "It was a given the others were headed off on their merry adventures. Hell, D'Argo made it part of the deal in the first place. But you never said a word about leaving before we hit the carrier. Then all of the sudden you're talking about assassins and ex-Peacekeepers like it had been the plan all along."

She tried not to move, breath, or look away, knowing instinctively that if she gave any indication of confirmation or denial, he would use his intuition to connect all the pieces in their right configuration. And she wasn't sure either of them would survive the outcome.

"So something must have happened on the carrier," he continued, and she could see that more of the puzzle was making sense in his head. "Because the Aeryn Sun I knew doesn't run away. Something more important than finding out you were pregnant."

"I can't tell you what you want to hear," she admitted, the only thing she could say.

"Can't… or won't?"

"I'm asking… I'm asking that you… trust… that I know what I'm doing… in not telling you about what happened while we were apart."

He let go of her wrist, and she immediately felt the absence of the heat.

"It's not that I don't trust you anymore. I don't trust myself when I'm around you. I don't like the fact that the moment you step into a room, I forget that I want to hate you."

* * *

"I don't like the fact that the moment you step into a room, I forget that I want to hate you."

There was the slightest twitch to her eyes, a slight intake of breath. And for the first time since he walked into the infirmary he wished his low pass filter was in place, the one that kept the self-serving, inconsiderate remarks to a dull roar inside his head. Even when the remarks were not so self-serving and inconsiderate. Even when he felt she deserved brutal honesty.

"I can only say 'I'm sorry' so many ways," she replied softly. "There are things I would have done… differently."

"Why did you leave?" Persistence, the mother of resolution.

Aeryn closed her eyes and he had to wonder if it was to hide tears. "Because I had come to depend on you too much."

He knew it wasn't the real reason, but at least it was honest. "Is that so bad?"

"Yes," she replied, eyes still shut.

"Why?" John wanted to massage her eyes open with the pads of his thumbs but didn't dare touch her again.

"I lost you once. I don't think I could live with losing you a second time."

Aeryn took another deep breath, and it seemed as if his own respiration was tuned to hers. He willed her to let him see her eyes, hiding his shock when she did.

Her words were barely above a whisper. "And I needed to know if I could survive without John Crichton. Not you, not… him. John Crichton."

He stepped closer. "And?"

She smiled that half grin that had haunted his nights on more occasions than he cared to count. "I'm here now. "

Aeryn, queen of the dodge. If anything, he had to appreciate her consistency. He sucked in his lower lip, worried it with his teeth. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Because I don't think I want to know the answer to mine."

END