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Rating: G
Setting: post-A Prefect Murder
Spoilers: Through A Prefect Murder
Summary: Chiana visits a doctor where she gains some information about her slow-motion vision, and along the way learns something about Aeryn and Crichton.
Chiana sat in the rear seat of Aeryn's prowler, wondering why she had agreed to come on this frelling pointless trip anyway. The medic wasn't going to be able to help her. And then she snorted, because she knew exactly why she had come.
When Aeryn had found her chatting with Pilot -- well, she was actually annoying Pilot, but it was better than being alone, or, worse, with Wrinkles or Sputnik -- the ex-PK had announced, "Crichton and I think you should see a doctor about your vision." And if Crichton and Aeryn had been talking together lately about *anything*, it bore investigation. No matter how much she *didn't* want to see a frelling medic.
Besides, Aeryn had a hint of suppressed excitement about her, and Chiana had sensed a good story.
But Aeryn hadn't exactly been talkative so far, despite all of Chiana's attempts to draw her out. Chiana wondered if Aeryn was still mad at her for the frell-up with the baby. You'd think she'd be over that by now, but with Aeryn, you never knew.... By the look of it, from what she could see out the window, Chiana knew that they are nearly there, and any chance at getting the very private Sebacean to spill whatever it was would be gone.
She cleared her throat to give it one more try, when the woman in the pilot's seat abruptly took the matter out of her hands.
"Chiana," Aeryn said, "I've been to see the doctor myself."
Chiana's ears perked up. Aeryn and a doctor? Baby news? Better yet, Daddy news? "Yeah?" she said encouragingly.
"Yes," said Aeryn, a smile in her voice, as she began her landing routine.
"And....." Chiana encouraged again, but Aeryn's happiness surely meant only one thing.
Aeryn actually chuckled. "And," she said, turning her head halfway around, "John is the father."
Drad! "That's frelling fantastic!" Chiana exclaimed, reaching forward and slapping Aeryn on the shoulder. That's gotta make Crichton happy, she thought. Happier, anyway.... "So, does Crichton know it's his DNA?"
Aeryn laughed. "No, Chiana, you don't understand. John *is* the father. In every way." She ran her fingers down a series of switches. "And yes, he knows."
Chiana cocked her head sideways, taking in this information. "You're telling me you and this John Crichton...."
"Mm-mmm," Aeryn all but purred.
Wow. Chiana was surprised. "I didn't think you two ever....you know."
"There's a lot you don't know," Aeryn said without turning around.
Chiana was surprised to find herself picturing a smirk on the Sebecean's face. She was beginning to wonder if Aeryn was toying with her. It wasn't like Aeryn, but....no one had been much like themselves since they all found their way back to Moya.
Aeryn relented a little. "It happened before the twinning," she said. "And that's all that you need to know."
"Right," Chiana agreed, thinking how she might get more dirt...but Aeryn was distracted with the final steps in the landing sequence. She brought the prowler in for a smooth landing and turned the engines off.
Aeryn removed her headset, then cracked the hatch, and the two climbed out of the prowler in silence. At the foot of the steps they stopped and looked at each other. After an awkward moment, Aeryn said, "Chiana, about John being the father...."
Chiana sighed. "I know, I know. If I tell anyone, you'll have my mivonks. If I had any." She giggled to show she got the joke. "My lips are sealed."
Aeryn's face was a study in skepticism. But she smiled softly. "No, you misunderstand," she said. "Thanks to you, everyone on Moya knows I wasn't sure who the father was."
Chiana winced, even though Aeryn was still looking uncharacteristically gentle, not fierce.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Aeryn said with a laugh. "I *want* you to tell the others."
"Shouldn't you and Crichton make the big announcement?" Chiana asked, puzzled. "It's your big moment, right? You're going to have a kid."
Aeryn's smile faded. "John and I, we're not exactly...together...right now." She paused for a moment, staring in the distance over Chiana's head. She shook her long, dark hair out, and began again. "There's still a lot we have to figure out. So he's not really prepared to just tell everyone over dinner, and neither am I. But we both think everyone should know." Aeryn sighed. "Maybe D'Argo will ease up on the righteous indignation on John's behalf."
Aha! That was it! She was being used. She should have known. Hurt, Chiana said, "That's why you brought me down here. To tell me about the baby so I can be the town crier," she snapped without thinking it through.
"No, I brought you down here to see the doctor," Aeryn contradicted, eyes wide in annoyance. "We're worried about you, you know that," she snapped, and then paused and regrouped. "I'm worried about you," she said. "What will you do if you can't see?"
Chiana had no frelling idea. She hated the dark, and it scared her drenless to think of being blind permanently. But she wasn't about to say so to Aeryn, even if the Sebacean *had* seen her at her most frightened. So, she simply stared, her eyes two black holes, and waited to see what Aeryn would say.
Aeryn didn't ask for more than that. She smiled wryly and admitted, "But, we *did* think it might be a way to kill two birts with one stone. Get you to see a doctor, and get you to help with our problem."
Chiana considered. While she considered, Aeryn played a trump card. "You owe me, Chiana. You owe *us*."
Well, at least Aeryn thought there was an "us" for her to owe....and if Aeryn was willing to say so, then Crichton must think so, too. And she did owe Aeryn, and for that matter, Crichton, after breaking Aeryn's confidence about the baby in the first place. Even if she *did* only promise not to tell John. What the frell. She grinned, a big wide grin, and said, "All right. What do you want me to do? Throw a party for everyone but you and Crichton? Leave notes under their pillows? Have Pilot send a message to all comms?"
Aeryn laughed at that. "It's up to you. You know how to spread information around better than anyone I know. You'd have made a wonderful Disinformation Officer in the Peacekeepers."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Chiana said. "I think," she added, but her dark eyes were glittering with amusement.
Aeryn sobered and grabbed Chiana's hand briefly. "Thank you," she said sincerely. "I just can't do it myself, and...it needs to be done."
Chiana didn't understand being so repressed, but she saw the truth of it in Aeryn's eyes. "Done," she said, ducking her head, and then she changed the subject. "Look, where's this frelling medic of yours, anyway? Let's get this over with."
"Come on," said Aeryn, and led the way to the clinic, Chiana trailing behind.
* * * * * * * *
The clinic hardly deserved the name. It was small, obviously shabby, and in fact, the tiny anteroom was almost deserted, even though it was the only place in the settlement to get medical treatment. But Chiana had been in worse places, and she trusted Aeryn's judgment in this, so she smiled reassuringly at Aeryn and called, "Hey! Anybody home?"
"Take a seat and wait your turn," a voice called from another room, through a partially-closed door.
To be devilish, Chiana called back, "What if it's an emergency? Maybe I'm bleeding all over your carpet."
"You have enough breath to keep hollering at me, you can wait," came the reply. "And the carpet will probably look better with a little color on it."
Chiana laughed with delight. "I think I'm going to like this guy," she told Aeryn. It was just as well. At least she would get a few laughs out of the encounter. He was not going to be able to help her.
"Come on," said Aeryn. "Sit down."
Chiana complied, but fidgeted during the wait. Doctors reminded her of home, and the contagion. The memories weren't comforting, or even pleasant. Aeryn was no help, but unintentionally provided a small distraction when the medic came out to fetch his next patient. He looked at Aeryn in surprise, recognition and a question in his eyes, and Chiana wondered what that was all about. Aeryn shook her head imperceptibly and then nodded towards Chiana.
The medic told the gray girl she would be next, after a tall orange man of some unknown species who limped through the inner door into the actual medical portion of the clinic, wincing in pain every time his foot hit the ground. From her seat, Chiana examined the floor and the chair he had been sitting in, to see if he had left any blood to improve the décor.
Aeryn was quiet, brooding, a far cry from the happy woman who'd told Chiana the good news about her baby not so long ago. She could only be thinking about Crichton.
Frell relationships, Chiana thought. But she knew a life bond when she saw one. Those two would make each other miserable or gloriously happy for the rest of their lives, she was sure of it. She wondered if she would ever find someone to be the same for her.
Fortunately, the medic returned to the waiting room sooner than she thought he would, so she didn't have to follow that line of thought. She watched the orange man, who was still limping, but no longer wincing in pain. Too bad pain killers wouldn't help what was wrong with *her*....
She left Aeryn behind to brood and followed the medic into the examination room. He was much taller than her, obviously Sebacean, and he towered over her as she sat on the edge of the examination table. She wouldn't have guessed it from his banter earlier, but now she saw from his posture and his movements that he must have been a Peacekeeper once. She hoped his time in this dump had been enough to burn the xenophobia out of him.
"So," she said brightly, "Got much experience with Nebari?"
"You're the first," he told her. "Most Nebari don't seem to like being outside of Nebari space," he added, then moved on briskly. "What's the problem?"
Great. She got to be the frelling experimental lab animal. Well, it didn't really matter anyway. She didn't expect there was anything at all anyone could do about this 'problem' of hers. "So, Aeryn didn't tell you?"
"No," he said, "She never mentioned you."
"Oh." Chiana looked at the floor, wondering why she didn't want to tell him about her frelling visions of the future, which never seemed to do much good anyway since they weren't all that specific, and how they had changed into a way to slow down the present -- at the cost of literally blinding headaches. "Well, it's like this, see," she started. "Sometimes I can't see. It's like there's a covering on my eyes." She broke off and looked up at him.
"When does this happen?" he asked.
Ah, frell, get this over with, she thought. She explained to him about the energy rider, and everything else about her weird power, and how it had mutated, up until now. "So, see," she finished breathlessly, "it takes longer and longer for my sight to come back, and Aeryn and Crichton, they're afraid one of these times it won't, and I'll be blind."
"I see," the medic said. "When your sight comes back, is there any deterioration? Do you see as well as you always have?"
"Sure," she said, too quickly. She *had* noticed some small changes, things she used to be able to see easily, that these days were just outside of clarity....but she'd been telling herself it was because she was way too tired and way too stressed, and she told herself the same thing now.
There was no indication whether the medic believed her or not. He had listened passively, and now he pulled out some kind of lens with a light behind it. He brought it toward her face and said, "Look at the water stain above the chair there, please."
She laughed a little, and looked where he said.
"No, don't turn your head, just your eyes." She complied, and he peered into the blackness. After a short exam with the lens, during which he directed her to look towards other spots and stains on various other walls in the room, he grunted.
"What's that mean?" Chiana asked, nervously attuned now to his every movement and comment.
"It means I can't see anything obvious wrong with your eyes just by looking," he said, turning away and looking purposefully through a cabinet.
"That's good, right?" she said, trying to keep her voice light, as the medic came up triumphantly with a scanner of some sort.
"Hmmm," he murmured, and ordered, "Look in here!"
The scanner resembled binoculars, and Chiana shrugged and brought her head forward as directed. As her face made contact with the eyepieces, there was a bright flash of light and she blinked and jerked her head back. "Sorry," she said.
But the medic told her, "That's all right, I got what I need."
"And?"
"It looks like there might be some damage to the photoreceptors."
"Damage?" Chiana said, cocking her head to the side and looking at him in alarm.
He looked down at the readings on his scanner again, and said, "As I told your friend, I don't have the best equipment here, but I believe if I could scan your eyes while you used this ability, I could get a good idea of what is causing it."
"You, you said there was damage. Can you fix it if I do that?" she asked, fearful even to start, considering how long the darkness has lasted lately.
"If we don't try," he said gently, "then I definitely can't help. But it's up to you. I don't know how much is too much. You might go blind permanently if we try this," he acknowledged.
Chiana considered. He had given her more hope than she came in with. He seemed to think he might be able to figure this out. She knew that the way they lived on Moya, she'd be using the slow-mo again sooner or later. It was worth the risk to do it here, she decided. "Well," she said aloud, "Aeryn's here. She can help me back to Moya if I can't see."
The medic nodded. "Let's keep the exposure short." He looked around the room for a moment, improvising. "Can you follow a drop of water in slow motion if I drop it past your face? That should be fast."
She said brightly, "Sure."
He collected everything he needed and then told her, "All right. I'm going to let a drop fall from about here." He indicated a position near the top of her head. "When you see it, slow it down, but don't follow it with your head. Look straight ahead. When it falls out of your vision, *stop.* Understand?"
Chiana nodded sharply. "Sure. Let it fall, when it's gone, stop."
"Let's do it," he said, and proceeded.
She watched in fascination as time slowed down and the pear-shaped drop fell through her field of vision, rounding up towards a ball even as it fell. It split the air, sending dust motes swirling. She followed a particularly interesting dust trail for a moment, then returned her attention to the drop. The wobbly globe of clear liquid acted as a lens, giving her a distorted view of the doctor and his equipment, the angle slowly shifting as the drop continued to fall. When it finally vanished from her field of vision, Chiana blinked, time flowed normally again, and her head hurt and her vision disappeared into a dark blur. Frell!
"Did you see it? Did you see it?" she asked almost frantically.
The medic put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly, and said, "Just a microt, let me finish with the analysis. How's your vision?"
"Not as bad as usual," she admitted.
"I think that's because you used it only for a very short time. I think I see what the problem is."
"You do?" Chiana was almost breathless.
"When you use your...ability...the photoreceptors in the back of your eye get oversaturated...bleached out."
"So?"
"Normally, the pigment in them is replenished relatively quickly. But I think your eyes are being stressed beyond the normal ability to recover. Most of the cells do, with time, but some are being permanently damaged. That's why your vision isn't quite what it once was."
She aimed a glare in the direction of his voice, because she hadn't told him her vision was damaged. "And that's why it's taking longer to get better? Because some of the cells are permanently....damaged?" she faltered.
He nodded, but before she could panic too much, he told her, "I think you can help things a lot. Regular doses of sehpurpur should help you regain your sight more quickly, and if you can take it before you use this vision, it might even keep the blindness from happening." She looked puzzled and he elaborated, "Sehpurpur is absolutely vital in regenerating the pigments in the photoreceptors."
Afraid to hope, she said "Where do I get this Suh-whats-is?"
"Sehpurpur," he smiled. "It's a common vitamin. I can give you a supply, and you should be able to pick it up at most establishments that sell food supplements."
"Thanks," she said. But she couldn't leave it at that. "Will it fix my eyes?"
After a pause the medic told her, "No. But it should keep you from causing any more damage to your vision if you don't abuse this gift of yours."
Chiana snorted. Right. Not abuse it. When she and her friends and Moya were all stuck here in Tormented Space with everyone from the Peacekeepers to the Scarrans chasing them. "I'll take it under advisement," she said. And then she looked around at the dark blurs she saw and decided that she just might be able to make her own way back to Aeryn.
Before she could get off the table, the medic gave her a tablet and a glass of water.
She swallowed the pill, hoping it would help quickly, if it was going to. Even partial darkness was too much.
He pressed a sealed bottle into her hands, and she paid him gratefully. She was even more grateful when he didn't try to take her arm or lead her to the waiting room.
But Aeryn wasn't fooled. She wordlessly wrapped Chiana's arm around her waist, and hers around Chiana, and they walked back to where the prowler was parked.
* * * * * * * *
On the way back to Moya, Aeryn finally broke down and asked, "Well? What did he say? Could he help?"
"He said I shouldn't abuse my gift," she snorted.
"What *else* did he say, Chiana," Aeryn asked, frustration in her voice.
Chiana relented and gave Aeryn part of the truth. "He gave me some pills he thinks might help. He said they're easy to find if we need to get more." She squinted at the road ahead of them. She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "I *can* see a lot better than I could when we left the clinic. I think it's helping."
"Well, that's good, then," Aeryn said with relief, not delving deeper just now. She had her own problems.
It occurred to Chiana that Aeryn looked on her as a little sister. Hey, that meant she was going to be an aunt one of these days! And that brought her thoughts back to her agreement with Aeryn. Better than thinking about her eyes....
This trip had turned out to be well worth it after all. She knew more about her eyes than she did before, she had something that might help keep the dark away, and she had learned a terrific secret she never would have guessed about her shipmates. Chiana smiled to herself, and began to plan how to spread the news about Aeryn and Crichton's baby....
