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Rating: G
Setting: post-A Prefect Murder
Spoilers: Through A Prefect Murder
Summary: Somewhere in Tormented Space -- Aeryn makes a deal with Chiana.
Emotions in turmoil, Aeryn checked out her prowler one more time after the return from the planet where she'd been used as a tool for political murder. Running through the routine helped her control the completely irrational hope that John was ready to let her back into his life.
Autopilot, disengaged and cleared.
But John loved her. She had to believe that much.
All settings, "off."
He'd fought as hard not to kill her as she had to avoid killing him.
Mud and ashes removed from the atmospheric intakes.
He had reached for her hand.
And he had come to let her lean on him in the graveyard....
She stood up suddenly and let out a loud exclamation of "Frell!" when she knocked her head into the underside of the wing.
When the DRD at her feet waved its eyestalks and beeped curiously, she shook her head in disgust. She really was nearly out of control. The prowler was her second home. She'd spent half her life in ships just like this one. She knew the size, the shape, every frelling dimension of it....and she'd just given her head a good whack as if she *didn't*. She stood rubbing the sore spot and thinking.
John wasn't ready.
That much was obvious, despite the connection they'd made today.
She would have laughed at the irony of her being the one who was ready for a loving relationship with this man, when *he* wasn't -- if it didn't make her want to cry instead.
All right. Frell this. Take a cue from John. Wait. And find something else to engage your mind.
But the prowler was in perfect running order. She'd been over the controls and the propulsion and weapons systems three times in the arns since she had returned with the rest of the crew who'd been on the mission to collect drinking water. And the outside surface of the ship was pristine as well, because she'd had a crew of DRDs cleaning off any traces of planetside contaminants.
If she didn't think about John, and she didn't think about work....she knew she was going to think about seventeen people who had died because she wasn't strong enough to overcome the influence of an evil man....and a child who was an orphan because of her.
And *that* wasn't going to be any more productive than thinking about John.
She sighed, and considered getting something to eat, but that would probably mean running into the old woman. Once Aeryn would have expected to find Chiana, more likely than not, in the galley at this time of day, but Noranti had somehow taken over the cooking and made the galley her own. D'Argo claimed he thought she slept there sometimes.
Aeryn did *not* want to see the old woman. Something about her, maybe that frelling third eye, was deeply disturbing. But Chiana -- Now, Chiana would at least be distracting. Maybe she could find out how the Nebari had managed to disengage the autopilot when they tried to send her back to Moya.
She closed the hatch on the prowler and sent the DRDs on their way.
* * * * * * * *
Pilot had told her the Nebari was in her quarters, but Chiana's cell was dark when Aeryn approached.
"Chiana?" she called softly. "Are you there?"
Chiana's voice came from the back of the room, a little too cheerful. "That you Aeryn? You alone?"
Aeryn puzzled over that one for a moment, and then it occurred to her that Chiana's eyesight had still been affected when they arrived back on Moya. Alarmed, she opened the grill and walked into the room, peremptorily turning on the lights.
Chiana was sitting cross-legged on her bed, hugging a pillow. She'd left her boots on the floor, but was otherwise fully dressed. The total effect made her look more like a little girl than the tralk who'd caused so much uproar on the planet only half a day earlier. Her face was turned in the direction of the door, but her gaze didn't seem to be focused.
Aeryn walked over and leaned over the bed, waving her hand gently in front of Chiana's face. "You can't see, can you?" she asked, all thoughts of the Nebari's earlier misadventures forgotten.
The girl shrugged, setting the pillow beside her on the bed. "Some. Some colors and shapes."
Aeryn let out her breath and sat down on the bed, pulling one leg up onto the bed and rotating her body so she could face Chiana directly, the other foot still planted on the floor. "Well then, that's good, right?"
"It's never lasted this long," Chiana admitted. "But, yeah, I think it's going to be all right." Her voice shook with the last vestiges of real fear that this time the blindness would be permanent.
Aeryn grabbed each of Chiana's hands in hers and said urgently, "Stop!"
"Stop what?"
"Stop using your power. Stop doing whatever it is you're doing that is hurting your eyes!"
"What, you *liked* being the size of a baby teska?" Chiana asked. "You and Crichton would have been totally frelled then. Or not frelled," she smirked.
Aeryn refused to be distracted. "No," she said patiently, "and I'm very grateful to you for that. But you were frightened then that your sight wouldn't come back, and this time it's even worse." Aeryn shook Chiana's hands up and down in emphasis and continued, "You don't know for sure it will all come back now."
"Gee, Aeryn, thanks for the support here."
"I just want to be sure you're listening to me."
"You're worse than Nerri," the girl pouted, pulling her hands free and dropping them in her lap. She continued, "Aeryn, it's something I can do to help. I frell up a lot," she said, cocking her head and trying to focus on Aeryn's face. "Hey, I think you're clearer! You've got your hair down, don't you?"
Aeryn smiled back, though she wasn't at all sure Chiana could see her expression. "Yes."
"You know you look good like that. It suits your face."
"Chiana," Aeryn warned, fighting a pang at the sudden remembrance of Crichton running his fingers through her hair, once upon a time. She could feel the warmth of his fingers.... She shook her head and sent her hair flying. Hoping her voice was under control, she said, "We were talking about you going blind in a foolish attempt to earn your keep."
Chiana stretched her legs out and flopped backwards on the bed, crossing her arms under her head. "It's gotten me into a lot of trouble since it mutated into this slow motion thing," she said. "But it's kinda special, you know? It lets me help," she said, stubbornly.
Aeryn pursed her lips and thought. "Aren't you afraid it's going to change again into something even worse for you?"
She obviously hit a nerve.
"What is it you want me to do, Aeryn?" Chiana snapped, sitting up and snatching up the pillow again.
What *was* she suggesting? Aeryn sighed. "I don't know, Chiana. I just don't want to see you hurt. It's bad enough Crichton doesn't look out for himself." Of course, that's exactly what he was doing now, at least with his heart...and if she didn't quite understand, neither could she really blame him.... She wrenched her thoughts back to Chiana again. *Her* problem was physical. "Maybe we could find a Diagnosian, someone to check you out. Maybe it could be...I don't know...fixed, so you could use the power, and not hurt your eyes."
"Oh, and where are we going to find a Diagnosian or even some backroom clinic in this frelling place?"
"Tarsus 4 has a clinic," Aeryn began, and stopped.
Chiana stared at her. "Frell me dead! You've been here before."
Frell. She'd have been better off brooding over Crichton, or the dead.
Chiana's eyesight must have been improving rapidly now, because she apparently picked up the guilty look on Aeryn's face. "Crichton doesn't know," the girl said with a gleam in her eye.
"Everything always comes back to Crichton with you!" Aeryn snapped.
"Like it doesn't with you?"
"I told Pilot everything I remember about this place, anything that might help Moya find her way around here." When Chiana showed signs of wanting more, Aeryn said firmly, "I can't talk about why I was here, or what I did. But there is supposed to be a clinic on Tarsus 4."
Disappointed but not surprised at the lack of good gossip, Chiana changed tactics. "What about you?"
"Me?"
"Don't you think you should get your little hitchhiker checked out? See if it's okay?"
"You mean see if it's Crichton's."
"Don't you want to know? ‘Cos I sure do!"
Aeryn sighed. "I'm not sure we're ready to deal with that either way, Chiana."
"But--"
"If it's his -- and I believe it is, I'm just not *sure* it is -- then he may feel he has to accept me to have access to his child. And I will not do that to him. We need to figure out where we stand with each other first. Then we can deal with the child."
"Don't you think he deserves to know now?" Chiana demanded, pounding on the pillow in her lap in escalating enthusiasm for her cause. She had the good grace to wince when Aeryn glared at her.
"If it's Crichton's child," Aeryn said with more patience than she really felt, "it will be safe for cycles yet without my doing anything. If it's not...." She didn't actually say, "What does it matter?" because it did matter. It was her child, no matter who the father was. But it mattered in a completely different way. Frell. Her head was starting to ache.
"Remember this, Aeryn. He's a man. He wants to know if you're carrying his child, or if it's just some 'oops' from before you met him, or worse. It's going to make a difference to him."
Aeryn briefly considered screaming, "Do you think I don't know that?" The image of the expression on Chiana's face should she succumb to the temptation actually made her smile. She pressed her palms into her eyes and muttered, "I don't know any more, maybe you're right. How did I get myself into this frelling mess, anyway?"
"You fell in love," Chiana said simply. "Go fast with the body, slow with the soul,” she quoted. “It’s my standard advice. You should have followed it.”
It was just too much to take seriously any more. Aeryn stared at her and laughed out loud. “You *are* a tralk, you know that,” she said to Chiana, affection in her voice.
The younger woman gave her a lopsided grin and shrugged her shoulders. “Did I ever say I wasn’t?” she asked.
“No,” Aeryn acknowledged, still smiling. “But you needn’t go out of your way so often to prove it.”
"All right," Chiana said after a moment. "I'll make a bargain with you. If we find some kind of medic somewhere who doesn't look like more of a quack than Wrinkles, we both go. I'll see if they can do something about my...eyes...and you check out the kid."
Aeryn thought about it for a moment. The knowledge could be a two-edged sword if she and John hadn’t managed to reconcile before they found out if he was the father. Because there would be no hiding it from him once she knew. She *would* tell him immediately, either way. But maybe it would help, not hurt. And she knew Chiana would never let it go now. Besides, it was a way to make sure the headstrong girl saw a physician herself. She took a deep breath and agreed. “Fine. If we find a doctor, we both go.”
“Deal,” Chiana said, and impulsively threw her arms around Aeryn’s neck.
The ex-Peacekeeper shook her head, and hugged the Nebari briefly in return. “You realize,” she said in a low voice in Chiana’s ear, “that if I hear that any part of this conversation has been discussed with anyone else on board this vessel, you will not need a physician, because you *will* be dead.”
“Gotcha,” Chiana acknowledged. “Talk. Dead.” She gave Aeryn a quick squeeze and released her.
Aeryn stood up and looked awkwardly back at the girl on the bed. “I’d better go,” she said, but she really didn’t have any idea what she wanted to do.
Chiana seemed to sense her frustration, and cocked her head to the side and said, “Hey! My eyes are a lot better. You want to play some uska? I have a card set.”
Aeryn quirked her mouth into a smile. “Do you have some raslak?”
Climbing off her bed and beginning to hunt through her belongings, Chiana asked, “Is that okay? For the baby?”
“The fetus is in stasis,” Aeryn reminded her.
“Oh, right,” Chiana said, handing Aeryn a deck of cards. “Give me a minute, I’ve got a really good bottle tucked away here.”
Aeryn shuffled the cards while waiting for Chiana to find the raslak. It occurred to her that she just might have her first female friend since she’d been banished from the Peacekeepers. It was a good feeling, no matter how unsettled the rest of her life was. Somehow, her hopes for working things out with John didn’t seem quite so irrational any more.
