Memories - Part 1
TITLE: Memories
RATING: PG
AUTHOR: marieelise0928
Disclaimer: Farscape's not mine, although I remain in denial about that :P
Author's Note: This is an AU of an AU. It is based on the Farscape comic series "Gone and Back Again", in which baby Deke somehow zaps John into an alternate reality - one where D'Argo and Zhaan are alive, Aeryn never left the Peacekeepers, John is married to Princess Katralla, they have a daughter, and he has a ponytail! The comic series has John so driven to find Aeryn that he goes straight into Peacekeeper territory to find her - and then just when he does, he gets zapped back to his reality. I wanted to play with the idea of him hanging out a little longer. I changed some of the "facts" of the alternate reality to suit my purposes (like ignoring the fact that alt Aeryn had a baby) but the concept is largely the same.
Also -- Thanks to Vinegardog for the great beta!!
CHAPTER 1
It all began when she was in the med lab and John Crichton had walked in. The scourge of the Peacekeepers himself had simply let himself in and indicated that he’d come with the express purpose of finding her. She’d barely understood his wild ramblings - he was madder than even the legends made him out to be. He spoke quickly and frantically, about another universe… About her, and him. It was beyond comprehension. She’d simply stared at him for a long moment, as he rambled, seemingly anxious to make her understand something - and then the soldiers had stormed in, armed to the teeth and ready to take down Public Enemy Number One. Even as they set on him, he stared at her and continued trying to tell her something about realities and wormholes.
And wormholes.
“Lieutenant Sun… What should we do with him?” Asked the captain of the squadron that now had Crichton thoroughly subdued.
She looked to the captain, distracted, still grappling in the back of her mind with the things Crichton had been trying to tell her. “Put him in a cell for now... Then contact Scorpius. Wormholes are his project, he’ll want to know about this.”
The captain nodded and gestured at his men. They hauled Crichton to his feet and marched him from the room, but before they got him out of the door he looked desperately back over his shoulder, and she met his gaze one last time.
“Aeryn…” was the last thing he said before he disappeared from sight.
**
Later, Aeryn received a summons to the Aurora chamber. She’d seen Aurora interrogations before, and found them deeply disconcerting. She’d have preferred not to attend, but Scorpius existed in a strange place in the Peacekeeper hierarchy, and he was not easily disobeyed, so she did as she’d been bid.
When she entered the chamber, Crichton was already strapped in the chair. He had a limited range of motion, but when he heard the door open, he craned his neck slightly towards her. He locked eyes with her, a strange intense gaze, until, uncomfortable, she looked away.
She walked over to the others, Scorpius and a handful of officers. “Lieutenant Sun, so glad you could join us, I thought you might find this interesting.” Said Scorpius, with one of his chilly, thin-lipped smiles. “I know you are familiar with the… workings… of the Aurora chair. Once activated, Commander Crichton’s memories will be displayed on this screen. We’ll be recording them as well for more thorough examination. If the Commander does indeed know something of wormholes, as you seem to believe he was suggesting, we shall uncover it.”
Aeryn nodded brusquely, and Scorpius again smiled his frigid smile. “Crichton has indicated that he’s experienced the chair before in, mmm, his reality. So hopefully this procedure won’t be an undue shock to him. Well! Let us begin!”
Aeryn, Scorpius and the others turned to the screen as Scorpius’s assistant began operating the controls on the chair. Sudden guttural moans from Crichton indicated that it had begun. Memories began flashing across the screen, too quickly to really understand… Images of a strange world -- of Crichton’s home, Aeryn could only guess. On and on they flashed, until the screen briefly lit up with the intense blue of a wormhole and then the form of a Leviathan floating in space and then…
Scorpius held up a hand “Pause!” He commanded, and his assistant obeyed. “Play back a bit, if you would… Yes. There. Hmm.. Well, now this is interesting. Lieutenant, unless you’ve had some prior dealings with the Commander that you’ve failed to disclose, it would seem that John here might be telling the truth.”
Aeryn barely registered what he was saying. She stared up at the screen uncomprehendingly. Impossibly, it was an image of… her. Her, in her old prowler pilot uniform, helmet tucked beneath her arm, staring at John Crichton challengingly. She couldn’t begin to know what to think.
“Yes, this should be very interesting…” Scorpius looked over his shoulder at Crichton, who was sweating and shivering both, gasping raggedly for breath. “Commander, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve come. Pray, let’s continue…”
**
That night, Aeryn retreated to her quarters to watch the memories. They certainly seemed to support Crichton’s mad ramblings about another universe, another reality, where things were similar but… different. Where she, apparently, was different. The memories had been recorded and catalogued in at least a basic fashion and would now be scoured round the clock for information about wormholes and unrealized realities and all the other strange science that this John Crichton seemed to understand.
But Aeryn was focused on different memories than PK High Command. She looked at the vid chip in her hand, and hesitantly put it in the player in her quarters before sinking down onto the bed. She knew she shouldn’t watch them but she couldn’t help herself. She scrolled through to the scene that she was looking for - where John Crichton first came through the wormhole. She smiled slightly as she watched Tauvo’s prowler clip Crichton’s craft and careen into the asteroid. He always claimed he was a better pilot than she, this ought to shut him up for a while. She kept watching, Crichton’s encounter with the Luxan, the Delvian, and the Hynerian… Aeryn smiled again when Crichton got tongued by the infamous Ka D’Argo. A brief pause, then his eyes opened and he was on the floor of one of the Leviathan’s containment cells. He located his clothes and scrambled into them, while arguing with the Hynerian. Eventually Crichton’s attention was directed to the Peacekeeper soldier sitting ramrod straight against the back wall of the chamber. The Peacekeeper pulled off her helmet to confront Crichton…
Aeryn unconsciously started running her finger up and down the portion of her scar that ran from her cheek to her eye as she watched this other Aeryn’s “introduction” to Crichton unfold. She supposed she distantly remembered having seen all that unruly dark hair and that unlined, unscarred face in a reflection at some point in her long distant past, but truly… had she ever been that young? She laughed a little as the other Aeryn leveled Crichton and then crouched low over top of him to demand his rank and regiment… And though Aeryn knew she shouldn’t, she watched on.
*
John lay stretched out on the thin mattress of the cot in his cell, passing the time with worrying. Now that they’d gotten what they wanted from him in the Aurora chair, there wasn’t much to his days other than questioning from the ship’s scientists, and worrying. Worrying about his family - Aeryn and Deke - wherever they were right now. Had they been affected by whatever nightmare had brought him here? He had no way of knowing, he could only worry. And because he was a good guy, he spared some worry for the other John’s family… for Katralla and the little girl Katrana. He hoped they were safe and that his need to come to the Peacekeepers hadn’t endangered them - but he knew that even if they were physically safe, they were both probably still confused and scared about whatever had ripped the John they knew away and left them with this stranger looking out at them through a loved one’s eyes.
He shifted on the bed, still oddly uncomfortable in this body. He hated other John’s long hair, hated the ponytail always brushing against his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what could have happened in this John’s life to inspire him to grow it out like this. Even on their worst days on Moya, he’d managed to keep his hair trimmed fairly short, the way Jack Crichton raised him. Maybe alt John had more daddy issues? Maybe this look had been all the rage back on alt Earth? He’d probably never know…
He heard voices outside his cell, and the door opening. More questions? He sighed and sat up, preparing to face another clueless scientist asking the same shit as all the other guys had… but it was clear that that wasn’t what was happening when his visitor walked into the room.
“Aeryn - “ he began and ended, stunned.
“Lieutenant Sun.” She corrected. She stood stock straight in the doorway and someone who didn’t know her might not have seen the hesitation and the uncertainty.
But John did know her, in a fashion. “Well come on in, Lieutenant. Make yourself at home. Pull up a chair.” He said, gesturing to the only piece of furniture in the cell other than his bed. “Sorry I can’t offer more comfortable accommodations, all the cells with receiving rooms were taken, I’m told.” The initial frenzy he’d felt to find her in this reality had waned and it was a little easier to be glib.
Aeryn’s expression didn’t change, but she walked over to the chair and drew it a little nearer to the end of his cot before sitting down. John watched her all the way and when she dropped into the chair, he looked at her searchingly, the way that he’d wanted to when he’d first met her in the med lab. It was sort of fascinating, looking at the face of Aeryn Sun without the last five cycles of his time, without Moya, without John Crichton. He could see the differences. Not just the spiky functional haircut and the scar down her eye, but something less tangible… there was something sadder about this Aeryn, a sort of resignation. It moved him. He knew she wasn’t his friend, but she was still Aeryn.
“How’d you get the scar?” He finally asked, breaking the silence.
Her hand came up to touch the scar beneath her eye. “Three on one battle with some rogue Luxans. I won.”
John had no doubts as to that, but it didn’t leave a lot else for him to say, so he waited and watched.
“Did she ever want to go back?” Aeryn finally asked. “Aeryn Sun… in your world. Did she want to go back to the Peacekeepers?”
This surprised John a little. “Did she… well, yes? I guess, at first. But she was tossed aside by them, without a second thought.”
“Tossed aside by Crais.” Aeryn corrected, a little too quickly. “He’s the one who exiled her and he had a vendetta. He was hardly the united voice of Peacekeeper command…”
John just shrugged. “Yeah, well, he was when it counted. From what I gather, the system for appealing a Commanding Officer’s decision in the PK ain’t exactly fair and evenhanded. There was nothing she could have done. And in all fairness… by Peacekeeper standards, she was irreversibly contaminated. She’d been on Moya with us, unobserved, unshielded by her PK cronies. Crais coulda’ overlooked it, but once he called her on it, no way was PK Command going to step in to defend one lousy prowler pilot…”
John paused. “But I guess that’s not really answering the question you asked. So - did she want to go back?” He was silent for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I think… I think she’d tell you that there were things about the life that she missed. We didn’t really do structure and order on Moya, I know that got to her sometimes. Probably still does. And… she sometimes says there were things from that life that she took with her - honor, loyalty, duty, self-sacrifice. But ultimately, did she want to go back? No… She was… more… on Moya then she had been before, as a Peacekeeper.”
Aeryn’s eyes were guarded as she watched John. It was a moment before she responded. “You give yourself a lot of credit, John Crichton.
John grinned a little, but shook his head. “Nah, I give Aeryn a lot of credit.” He answered, watching her with a little smile.
Aeryn shrugged and stood, pushing the chair back slightly to where it had been when she’d entered the cell. “As you please. Goodbye, Commander Crichton.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant Sun…” He responded, as he flopped back down on the bed. He said it with at least a passable amount of respect, but she felt like there might have been the ghost of a fondly whispered ‘Aeryn’ behind the words.
CHAPTER 2
Aeryn did not plan to return to see John Crichton in his holding cell. She couldn’t have lived as long as she had as a professional soldier without a well-honed sense for trouble.
That being said, she could not resist returning to the memories on the vid chip. Weeks after they’d put Crichton in the Aurora Chair and discovered the information about wormholes and these strange branching realities, she was still struggling to process the concept of worlds on top of worlds with endless similarities and yet endless variations. As strong as her instinct was to reject the idea that she could have ever betrayed the Peacekeepers, defected from the life that she’d been born for, she could not deny that the memories had a strange draw for her. She was not unaware of the voyeuristic quality of what she was doing but truly, who could ever resist watching scenes from a life that they might have lived?
There were parts of this other Aeryn that she recognized. The earnestness with which she asked Crichton to kill her before the living death set in was familiar - in fact she’d made that very plea to a fellow soldier at what must have been about the same point in the timeline as this Aeryn’s brush with heat delirium. Her sharpness, her derisiveness, how frelling protective she was of her prowler. She saw that Aeryn’s Peacekeeper roots in, among other things, her disdain for the tech girl (really Crichton? A tech?)
Still, the differences were apparent, evermore so as she watched further on from that defining moment when Aeryn Sun removed her helmet and encountered John Crichton and the course of her life changed. She herself had no such defining moment. It was strange to think that her life, which had been spent in skirmish after battle after war still had lacked any truly explosive incident. In watching the way the other Aeryn’s life had in a single instant veered so wildly off track, it became clear to her that her life had progressed in a perfectly linear fashion, from birth right on through the Peacekeeper ranks. She could have stood on one end of her life and seen clear on through all the way to the other, without having to so much as crane her neck.
The fallout of the events with Namtar fascinated her. That Aeryn Sun was permanently altered by the encounter. It seemed that she carried some of Pilot’s DNA within her genetic makeup. Another branch in a different direction that moved the course of their two lives yet further apart. It was the memories from this incident that truly sparked her fixation on the concept of unrealized realities and their potential import. And it was because of this incident that ultimately, despite truly well-reasoned arguments with herself about why she shouldn’t, she went back to Crichton’s cell.
**
This time, he recognized the footsteps coming down the hall. He sat up quickly, anxious to see her. He knew it wasn’t the *right* her, but she was close. And he was lonely - she was as near to a friend as he’d find while locked in this cell.
The door opened and she walked in. She grabbed the chair, pulled it closer to the cot and sat down, just the same as before.
“We’ve been watching your memories,” she began without preamble.
“Yeah, I gathered as much after the first few rounds of questions about things from my memories. Wormholes being the big one… why does no one ever want to ask me about baseball?” He cradled the back of his head in his interlocked fingers as he leaned back against the wall.
Aeryn didn’t bother responding. “I find that I’ve been watching more… selective memories -“ She paused then, not knowing how to continue.
John stared at her for an instant and then broke into a bemused grin. “You’ve been watching my memories of Aeryn,” he said, understanding dawning on him.
She looked at the wall, slightly abashed. “I was - I confess - it is… impossible to resist viewing a life you might have led.” She looked back at him and shrugged, a little helplessly.
He laughed. “Hey, don’t have to tell me that. Try living one…” He said, gesturing around a room, indicating his current surroundings in their totality. “Seems a little non-Peacekeeper regulation though. Aren’t you guys prohibited from experiencing curiosity?”
She smiled a little at that. “I’m sure that your Aeryn has changed very much in the cycles that you’ve known her, thanks in no small part to your influence, no doubt. But you must allow for the possibility that I’ve changed a little in the last five cycles, even without the redoubtable influence of John Crichton…”
He inclined his head, point conceded.
“I’m not near so put out by a little bending of protocol as I once was. I’ve had experiences that have shaped me and met people who changed me, too, you know?”
He nodded. “Velorek?” He suggested.
She jerked her head back, surprised. “You know about Velorek?” She asked, eyes suddenly looking a little haunted.
He wanted to reach out to her, a gesture of support, but he couldn’t do that with her. Instead he just leaned a little closer to where she sat. “Yeah, I know. Guess you haven’t watched that far yet…”
She was quiet for a long moment. Contemplative, sorrowful. Finally she spoke again. “Do you think there’s a reality where that betrayal never happened?”
He nodded slowly. “Sure… infinite numbers of them, from what I understand.”
She huffed a little, rueful, sad. “I wish this was one of them.” She shook her head as though the quick motion could dispel her ghosts, then stood up quickly. “I have to go. Thank you for speaking with me. Goodbye, Crichton.”
“Bye, Aeryn…”
This time, she didn’t correct him.
CHAPTER 3
A return to Earth and the initial encounter with the Ancient species where they gave John the wormhole knowledge. Scorpius had watched the end of this encounter countless times, fascinated by this previously unknown species - their power, and their seeming fragility. Scorpius contemplated whether they lived outside of the separate realities as a single species, or within them, multiplied onto infinity like all the rest of them. Aeryn had met with him a handful of times since the Aurora chair. He knew that she’d seen Crichton in his cell, and she could tell the idea pleased him. He was a master of manipulation and she had no delusions about his willingness to use her to get to his end goal. He was brilliant, and dangerous, and she was sure he’d chase wormhole knowledge to the end of any universe he had to go to.
At times like this, where she was subjected to machinations and scheming, she missed being just an Officer and a prowler pilot. She missed the ease of having no concern about the end goal.
She felt a kinship with John in the memories - back on Earth, his home, and yet somehow lost in the one place where he had always belonged. She understood the way that he stood staring out a window at a familiar landscape grown foreign.
And then he sat down on the bed and rested his head so gently on Aeryn’s shoulder, like it was the one place left that he still knew how to be. As the other Aeryn turned her head to meet John’s lips, Aeryn stopped the feed. Some moments, she simply couldn’t intrude on.
She pushed off her bed, feeling agitated and unsettled. She could think of only one way to calm herself down.
**
He was pacing back and forth when the door to his cell opened. Aeryn stood on the other side. She didn’t come in, though, she just stood outside looking at him expectantly.
“Hey…” He finally said, curious as to what she was up to.
“Did you and your Moyans spend any time sparring?” She asked, fiddling with some wraps and gloves tucked under her arm.
“Yes…” He answered cautiously. “If by ‘did we spar’ you mean did D’Argo and Aeryn frequently enjoy an opportunity to whup my ass…then yes.”
She smiled at that, almost a grin really. It very nearly made her look lighthearted. Seemed that no matter the reality, his incompetence was a great source of amusement to Aeryn Sun. She cocked her head, indicating that he should follow. He did as she bade. As he exited the room, she’d already started down the hall and he had to trot to catch up with her. He noticed that his guard followed a little ways behind.
“Is this… allowed?” He asked “I mean - not that I don’t appreciate a chance to get out of that room that doesn’t involve parsing physics with a Peacekeeper egghead, but I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble on my account.”
She gave him a look he recognized well, a patented Aeryn expression that said “You sweet deluded man, you really think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
“Of course it’s allowed. Scorpius...wants your cooperation on his wormhole project. If you were truly a Peacekeeper prisoner, you’d already be dead for Crichton’s crimes. You’re not. You’re Scorpius’s. And for the time being, he wants to keep you happy.” Aeryn passed him a set of wraps and he began covering his hands as they walked.
“Why, though? He’s gotta know by now that I don’t have the knowledge anymore. I can’t just make him a wormhole ‘cause he lets me out to play every now and then.”
Aeryn shrugged, wrapping her own hands efficiently and expertly. “You’re closer to that than anyone else is. I think he hopes some of the knowledge will come back, that you can get him even a half-step closer. Without the information the Ancients put in your brain, even a neural clone can’t help him now. Believe me, I’m sure he’d try.”
“I don’t doubt it.” John answered ruefully, “I’ve known the guy a long time.”
They turned into the fitness room, no one else was around. The guard stood in the doorway, watching idly. Aeryn walked to the far side of the mat, rolled her shoulders back once and then waved her wrapped hands at him challengingly.
The first elbow to his ribcage felt like coming home.
CHAPTER 4
Watching her death unnerved her, but only because she found it so much easier to watch than her life. She saw it through John’s eyes, a strange flickering in and out of images - Aeryn looking at him tenderly then a flash and they were on an icy planet, looking at an endless line of bodies; then another flash, and he was in a cockpit soaring above the surface of the planet; a flash again and he was hearing Aeryn’s voice over the comms as he watched her ejected seat hurtling to the frozen sea below - and then she was gone.
Aeryn paused and leaned back against the wall by her bed. It was the sort of scene she’d witnessed a hundred times in her career, a soldiers final seconds. Frantic last words, and then an inevitable end. Peacekeeper soldiers were born to die, it was a simple truth. She wondered if that bred-in-the bone acceptance of death had made the other Aeryn’s final flight easier for her, or if the two cycles she’d spent on Moya had left her too far removed from that stoic acceptance - too attached to the act of living for her death to seem a nominal cost.
She resumed watching. The funeral was harder to watch than the death, but she couldn’t look away. It struck her as odd that they’d troubled to retrieve the body from the frozen sea, it couldn’t have been an easy task. Peacekeepers bore with no such sentimentality - the other Aeryn had explained the Sebacean view of death to Crichton when the two had been trapped in the flax; you’re dead, and that’s the end. The body held no special worth that would justify the effort of retrieval… yet Aeryn couldn’t help but be moved by the solemnity of the ceremony they held for their lost comrade. When John looked down, she could see he was in shackles, no longer to be trusted… but when he asked for D’Argo’s knife, it was provided to him.
The story continued. Crichton was strapped to a table while the Diagnosan investigated his brain. Then Scorpius appeared, then D’Argo, then a Scarran… D’Argo and John fled through the snow, trying to escape and then…
There she was. She watched through John’s eyes, she felt as though she could practically feel his beating heart and sense his disbelief. Or maybe it was just her own heart pounding
**
John sat up eagerly when he heard her voice on the other side of the hallway, conversing with his guard. He reached his leg out and hooked a foot around the leg of the chair, pulling it a little closer to the head of the bed where he was sitting.
The door opened, Aeryn walked in, and dropped into the waiting chair. “I can’t stay long,” she said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “I just - I can’t believe she frelling came back from the dead!” John couldn’t help but laugh. She looked almost… put out by the whole thing
“Believe me. Neither could I.”
“It’s a strange reality you live in. Here, in this one, dead is just… dead.”
His eyes darkened slightly. “Yeah… well, her return didn’t come without a cost. There’s always a price to be paid.”
She nodded slightly, chin still braced in her hands. “The Delvian…”
“Zhaan,” he corrected firmly. “That was a hard loss. If there’s one good thing that’s come out of getting tossed into this reality, it was the chance to see her again… I really missed her. But God, that moment, seeing Aeryn alive again…” He leaned back against the wall, quiet, thoughtful. “That might be my favorite memory, you know? Aeryn standing there in the snow with her hair whipping around her, leveling D’Argo’s qualta blade at the Scarran. That moment, and the moment where I finally got her off Katratzi--”
Aeryn held up a hand to stop him, and he grinned at her. “Sorry, I’m giving the story away. I forget sometimes you weren’t there.”
She ran her hand through her hair, as she stood up to go. “Sometimes, Crichton, so do I.”
CHAPTER 5
Two Crichtons. It was almost inconceivable. Twice the madness. It was sort of bizarrely fascinating, watching Crichton watch himself. These memories were becoming something of a madness for her, in point of fact. When Aeryn left with the other John, fleeing from the retrieval squad and Xhalax Sun, she found herself wishing she could follow them, track both of the stories at once. But even though her double was gone, she watched this John’s memories. Her interest had progressed beyond simply wishing to understand her other, and had become a fixation upon the unfolding of the story of this other reality.
**
“Tell me about the other John,” Aeryn said as she sat down. “The one who was on Talyn…”
“The other John? Well, he was good-looking, had a rapier wit and a razor-sharp intellect. I think that covers all the major points.” A strand of hair from John’s ponytail had come loose and he tugged at it in annoyance. “Man, I hate long hair! Why in hell would John do this to himself?”
Aeryn’s lips quirked in amusement. “It really bothers you, does it? Hold on.” She stood up and walked over to the cell door. She knocked on it once and it was opened. She whispered some instructions to the guard, and then returned and sat back down.
“Now tell me about him for real - what happened while they were gone?” John couldn’t resist a little grin. His leonine, scarred up, tough as nails Peacekeeper was ready for story time.
“Well, let’s see… they got swallowed by a budong.” Aeryn raised her eyebrows at this. “Rygel and Stark were in a transport outside of the budong and somehow managed to, uh, get Talyn vomited back up.”
Aeryn’s expression was dubious at best. “You’ve got to be fabricating this…”
“Now you sound like Pilot when I tried to tell him what happened on Lo Mo! And you saw those memories. It was more or less the truth.” He held his hand in the air. “Scout’s honor. That’s what they told me happened. Talyn got puked back up, Talyn John and Aeryn became… closer. Then there was an encounter with some sun god-spirit thing. God like alien, you know? And then… then they met Xhalax Sun and her Peacekeeper retrieval squad, come to capture Talyn.”
At this, Aeryn sat back in surprise. “Oh, they met her? I knew that’s why they had left Moya, but… so she found them”
Crichton nodded. “She did. Wish I could say that it was a happy reunion, but, uh, it really wasn’t.”
“No, I don’t expect it was. Here, Xhalax Sun was killed several cycles ago, but I am familiar with what her reputation was. She was known to be infamously unyielding in the pursuit of an objective. She was… the consummate Peacekeeper.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Was your Aeryn glad of the chance to meet her?”
John thought for a long moment, but found he couldn’t answer the question. There were too many layers to those encounters. “She doesn’t talk about it very much. I think it was… important… for her. But I think it hit her really hard.”
“I can only imagine -“ Aeryn began, but before she could continue, there was a knock on the door. Aeryn leapt up and strode over to the entrance. The guard opened the door and passed in a small box. She nodded at the guard x and he pulled the door closed again. She opened the box, examining its contents as she walked towards the chair, but she didn’t sit down.
Instead, she stood behind the chair and tapped its back expectantly, holding up something that looked very much like a wicked sharp pair of scissors, as she tossed the rest of the box onto his bed.
“Come on then, don’t you trust me?”
“Well, no, not entirely…” John answered, but he complied with the directive. He got off the cot, moved over to the chair, and took a seat. He leaned back cooperatively as he felt Aeryn tugging at the leather tie holding his hair in the ponytail. “You think I should do this? I mean… technically it’s not my body. I’m just borrowing it.”
Aeryn got the tie loose and discarded it on the floor. She ran her nails lightly through his hair, getting it to sit more naturally before she began her work. John sighed a little. He was sure it was having the hair released from its confines that felt so good, and not the too-familiar hand that was gently combing it out. Well, he was almost sure.
“He’s not here, you are.” Aeryn said. Hand still in his hair, she turned his head slightly so he could make eye contact with her. “Ready?” She asked, a challenging look in her eyes.
Taking a deep breath, John turned back to face the front. “Do it. What the hell. Not like I’ll be around for him to get pissed at.”
“Tell me the rest about Talyn John?” Aeryn asked, as she gathered the hair back.
“Well, the Ancient version of my dad reappeared. He clued them in that somehow the information that I’d given Furlow on Dam Ba Da had gotten into the wrong hands. Someone was running experiments with Charrid test pilots. John figured it had to be Furlow, on Dam Ba Da. I’d - we’d - given her the information on the module the first time we were there -“ A single snip, and the irritating tug of too-long hair was gone. Aeryn ruffled her hand across his scalp again, figuring out how to proceed. He continued his story as she worked.
“Furlow betrayed them to the Charrids and the Scarrans. She killed the Ancient. There was a Scarran Dreadnaught, and it got ahold of Furlow’s data. But by then, John had figured out how to make a device that could destroy the Dreadnaught. He flew up in the module replica with the wormhole device and he opened a wormhole into a star. The Dreadnaught was destroyed, one more crisis averted.”
Aeryn was still hard at work, he could hear her clipping away, but he could feel how intently she was listening.
“The other John, though… he’d been exposed to some radiation when the device was opened prematurely, and - there was just nothing to do, I guess. He died on Talyn.”
John never found it easy to talk about what happened with Talyn John. He’d tried, sort of, when he’d been on Earth, and he apparently hadn’t improved at it since then. It always made him think of the ghostly image of the other John, matching him round for round in rock paper scissors.
“After that, they came back to Moya, except Stark. But Stark sent his mask back. It had a message on it… something that Talyn John had recorded for me. That’s how I know most of the stuff I do from that time. Aeryn’s never really been big on talking about it…”
Aeryn tossed the scissors onto the bed and then her hands were back in his hair, ruffling and smoothing. Then she brushed some clippings off of his neck and shoulders. Maybe he imagined it, but he thought she gave one of his shoulders a sympathetic squeeze before stepping back.
“All done…” She said. He turned to look at her, and she smiled a little at her handiwork. “It’s not even that bad. I confess, cutting hair is not at the top of my skill set.”
“Now you tell me,” John retorted, smiling back. He ran a hand across his head. It felt much closer to right. “Thanks.”
She shrugged as she moved to gather up the supplies and leave. “Thank you for telling me about the other John. It sounds like he was a brave man.”
“Yeah,” John said, acknowledging his sacrifice. “I think he was.”
RATING: PG
AUTHOR: marieelise0928
Disclaimer: Farscape's not mine, although I remain in denial about that :P
Author's Note: This is an AU of an AU. It is based on the Farscape comic series "Gone and Back Again", in which baby Deke somehow zaps John into an alternate reality - one where D'Argo and Zhaan are alive, Aeryn never left the Peacekeepers, John is married to Princess Katralla, they have a daughter, and he has a ponytail! The comic series has John so driven to find Aeryn that he goes straight into Peacekeeper territory to find her - and then just when he does, he gets zapped back to his reality. I wanted to play with the idea of him hanging out a little longer. I changed some of the "facts" of the alternate reality to suit my purposes (like ignoring the fact that alt Aeryn had a baby) but the concept is largely the same.
Also -- Thanks to Vinegardog for the great beta!!
CHAPTER 1
It all began when she was in the med lab and John Crichton had walked in. The scourge of the Peacekeepers himself had simply let himself in and indicated that he’d come with the express purpose of finding her. She’d barely understood his wild ramblings - he was madder than even the legends made him out to be. He spoke quickly and frantically, about another universe… About her, and him. It was beyond comprehension. She’d simply stared at him for a long moment, as he rambled, seemingly anxious to make her understand something - and then the soldiers had stormed in, armed to the teeth and ready to take down Public Enemy Number One. Even as they set on him, he stared at her and continued trying to tell her something about realities and wormholes.
And wormholes.
“Lieutenant Sun… What should we do with him?” Asked the captain of the squadron that now had Crichton thoroughly subdued.
She looked to the captain, distracted, still grappling in the back of her mind with the things Crichton had been trying to tell her. “Put him in a cell for now... Then contact Scorpius. Wormholes are his project, he’ll want to know about this.”
The captain nodded and gestured at his men. They hauled Crichton to his feet and marched him from the room, but before they got him out of the door he looked desperately back over his shoulder, and she met his gaze one last time.
“Aeryn…” was the last thing he said before he disappeared from sight.
**
Later, Aeryn received a summons to the Aurora chamber. She’d seen Aurora interrogations before, and found them deeply disconcerting. She’d have preferred not to attend, but Scorpius existed in a strange place in the Peacekeeper hierarchy, and he was not easily disobeyed, so she did as she’d been bid.
When she entered the chamber, Crichton was already strapped in the chair. He had a limited range of motion, but when he heard the door open, he craned his neck slightly towards her. He locked eyes with her, a strange intense gaze, until, uncomfortable, she looked away.
She walked over to the others, Scorpius and a handful of officers. “Lieutenant Sun, so glad you could join us, I thought you might find this interesting.” Said Scorpius, with one of his chilly, thin-lipped smiles. “I know you are familiar with the… workings… of the Aurora chair. Once activated, Commander Crichton’s memories will be displayed on this screen. We’ll be recording them as well for more thorough examination. If the Commander does indeed know something of wormholes, as you seem to believe he was suggesting, we shall uncover it.”
Aeryn nodded brusquely, and Scorpius again smiled his frigid smile. “Crichton has indicated that he’s experienced the chair before in, mmm, his reality. So hopefully this procedure won’t be an undue shock to him. Well! Let us begin!”
Aeryn, Scorpius and the others turned to the screen as Scorpius’s assistant began operating the controls on the chair. Sudden guttural moans from Crichton indicated that it had begun. Memories began flashing across the screen, too quickly to really understand… Images of a strange world -- of Crichton’s home, Aeryn could only guess. On and on they flashed, until the screen briefly lit up with the intense blue of a wormhole and then the form of a Leviathan floating in space and then…
Scorpius held up a hand “Pause!” He commanded, and his assistant obeyed. “Play back a bit, if you would… Yes. There. Hmm.. Well, now this is interesting. Lieutenant, unless you’ve had some prior dealings with the Commander that you’ve failed to disclose, it would seem that John here might be telling the truth.”
Aeryn barely registered what he was saying. She stared up at the screen uncomprehendingly. Impossibly, it was an image of… her. Her, in her old prowler pilot uniform, helmet tucked beneath her arm, staring at John Crichton challengingly. She couldn’t begin to know what to think.
“Yes, this should be very interesting…” Scorpius looked over his shoulder at Crichton, who was sweating and shivering both, gasping raggedly for breath. “Commander, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve come. Pray, let’s continue…”
**
That night, Aeryn retreated to her quarters to watch the memories. They certainly seemed to support Crichton’s mad ramblings about another universe, another reality, where things were similar but… different. Where she, apparently, was different. The memories had been recorded and catalogued in at least a basic fashion and would now be scoured round the clock for information about wormholes and unrealized realities and all the other strange science that this John Crichton seemed to understand.
But Aeryn was focused on different memories than PK High Command. She looked at the vid chip in her hand, and hesitantly put it in the player in her quarters before sinking down onto the bed. She knew she shouldn’t watch them but she couldn’t help herself. She scrolled through to the scene that she was looking for - where John Crichton first came through the wormhole. She smiled slightly as she watched Tauvo’s prowler clip Crichton’s craft and careen into the asteroid. He always claimed he was a better pilot than she, this ought to shut him up for a while. She kept watching, Crichton’s encounter with the Luxan, the Delvian, and the Hynerian… Aeryn smiled again when Crichton got tongued by the infamous Ka D’Argo. A brief pause, then his eyes opened and he was on the floor of one of the Leviathan’s containment cells. He located his clothes and scrambled into them, while arguing with the Hynerian. Eventually Crichton’s attention was directed to the Peacekeeper soldier sitting ramrod straight against the back wall of the chamber. The Peacekeeper pulled off her helmet to confront Crichton…
Aeryn unconsciously started running her finger up and down the portion of her scar that ran from her cheek to her eye as she watched this other Aeryn’s “introduction” to Crichton unfold. She supposed she distantly remembered having seen all that unruly dark hair and that unlined, unscarred face in a reflection at some point in her long distant past, but truly… had she ever been that young? She laughed a little as the other Aeryn leveled Crichton and then crouched low over top of him to demand his rank and regiment… And though Aeryn knew she shouldn’t, she watched on.
*
John lay stretched out on the thin mattress of the cot in his cell, passing the time with worrying. Now that they’d gotten what they wanted from him in the Aurora chair, there wasn’t much to his days other than questioning from the ship’s scientists, and worrying. Worrying about his family - Aeryn and Deke - wherever they were right now. Had they been affected by whatever nightmare had brought him here? He had no way of knowing, he could only worry. And because he was a good guy, he spared some worry for the other John’s family… for Katralla and the little girl Katrana. He hoped they were safe and that his need to come to the Peacekeepers hadn’t endangered them - but he knew that even if they were physically safe, they were both probably still confused and scared about whatever had ripped the John they knew away and left them with this stranger looking out at them through a loved one’s eyes.
He shifted on the bed, still oddly uncomfortable in this body. He hated other John’s long hair, hated the ponytail always brushing against his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what could have happened in this John’s life to inspire him to grow it out like this. Even on their worst days on Moya, he’d managed to keep his hair trimmed fairly short, the way Jack Crichton raised him. Maybe alt John had more daddy issues? Maybe this look had been all the rage back on alt Earth? He’d probably never know…
He heard voices outside his cell, and the door opening. More questions? He sighed and sat up, preparing to face another clueless scientist asking the same shit as all the other guys had… but it was clear that that wasn’t what was happening when his visitor walked into the room.
“Aeryn - “ he began and ended, stunned.
“Lieutenant Sun.” She corrected. She stood stock straight in the doorway and someone who didn’t know her might not have seen the hesitation and the uncertainty.
But John did know her, in a fashion. “Well come on in, Lieutenant. Make yourself at home. Pull up a chair.” He said, gesturing to the only piece of furniture in the cell other than his bed. “Sorry I can’t offer more comfortable accommodations, all the cells with receiving rooms were taken, I’m told.” The initial frenzy he’d felt to find her in this reality had waned and it was a little easier to be glib.
Aeryn’s expression didn’t change, but she walked over to the chair and drew it a little nearer to the end of his cot before sitting down. John watched her all the way and when she dropped into the chair, he looked at her searchingly, the way that he’d wanted to when he’d first met her in the med lab. It was sort of fascinating, looking at the face of Aeryn Sun without the last five cycles of his time, without Moya, without John Crichton. He could see the differences. Not just the spiky functional haircut and the scar down her eye, but something less tangible… there was something sadder about this Aeryn, a sort of resignation. It moved him. He knew she wasn’t his friend, but she was still Aeryn.
“How’d you get the scar?” He finally asked, breaking the silence.
Her hand came up to touch the scar beneath her eye. “Three on one battle with some rogue Luxans. I won.”
John had no doubts as to that, but it didn’t leave a lot else for him to say, so he waited and watched.
“Did she ever want to go back?” Aeryn finally asked. “Aeryn Sun… in your world. Did she want to go back to the Peacekeepers?”
This surprised John a little. “Did she… well, yes? I guess, at first. But she was tossed aside by them, without a second thought.”
“Tossed aside by Crais.” Aeryn corrected, a little too quickly. “He’s the one who exiled her and he had a vendetta. He was hardly the united voice of Peacekeeper command…”
John just shrugged. “Yeah, well, he was when it counted. From what I gather, the system for appealing a Commanding Officer’s decision in the PK ain’t exactly fair and evenhanded. There was nothing she could have done. And in all fairness… by Peacekeeper standards, she was irreversibly contaminated. She’d been on Moya with us, unobserved, unshielded by her PK cronies. Crais coulda’ overlooked it, but once he called her on it, no way was PK Command going to step in to defend one lousy prowler pilot…”
John paused. “But I guess that’s not really answering the question you asked. So - did she want to go back?” He was silent for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I think… I think she’d tell you that there were things about the life that she missed. We didn’t really do structure and order on Moya, I know that got to her sometimes. Probably still does. And… she sometimes says there were things from that life that she took with her - honor, loyalty, duty, self-sacrifice. But ultimately, did she want to go back? No… She was… more… on Moya then she had been before, as a Peacekeeper.”
Aeryn’s eyes were guarded as she watched John. It was a moment before she responded. “You give yourself a lot of credit, John Crichton.
John grinned a little, but shook his head. “Nah, I give Aeryn a lot of credit.” He answered, watching her with a little smile.
Aeryn shrugged and stood, pushing the chair back slightly to where it had been when she’d entered the cell. “As you please. Goodbye, Commander Crichton.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant Sun…” He responded, as he flopped back down on the bed. He said it with at least a passable amount of respect, but she felt like there might have been the ghost of a fondly whispered ‘Aeryn’ behind the words.
CHAPTER 2
Aeryn did not plan to return to see John Crichton in his holding cell. She couldn’t have lived as long as she had as a professional soldier without a well-honed sense for trouble.
That being said, she could not resist returning to the memories on the vid chip. Weeks after they’d put Crichton in the Aurora Chair and discovered the information about wormholes and these strange branching realities, she was still struggling to process the concept of worlds on top of worlds with endless similarities and yet endless variations. As strong as her instinct was to reject the idea that she could have ever betrayed the Peacekeepers, defected from the life that she’d been born for, she could not deny that the memories had a strange draw for her. She was not unaware of the voyeuristic quality of what she was doing but truly, who could ever resist watching scenes from a life that they might have lived?
There were parts of this other Aeryn that she recognized. The earnestness with which she asked Crichton to kill her before the living death set in was familiar - in fact she’d made that very plea to a fellow soldier at what must have been about the same point in the timeline as this Aeryn’s brush with heat delirium. Her sharpness, her derisiveness, how frelling protective she was of her prowler. She saw that Aeryn’s Peacekeeper roots in, among other things, her disdain for the tech girl (really Crichton? A tech?)
Still, the differences were apparent, evermore so as she watched further on from that defining moment when Aeryn Sun removed her helmet and encountered John Crichton and the course of her life changed. She herself had no such defining moment. It was strange to think that her life, which had been spent in skirmish after battle after war still had lacked any truly explosive incident. In watching the way the other Aeryn’s life had in a single instant veered so wildly off track, it became clear to her that her life had progressed in a perfectly linear fashion, from birth right on through the Peacekeeper ranks. She could have stood on one end of her life and seen clear on through all the way to the other, without having to so much as crane her neck.
The fallout of the events with Namtar fascinated her. That Aeryn Sun was permanently altered by the encounter. It seemed that she carried some of Pilot’s DNA within her genetic makeup. Another branch in a different direction that moved the course of their two lives yet further apart. It was the memories from this incident that truly sparked her fixation on the concept of unrealized realities and their potential import. And it was because of this incident that ultimately, despite truly well-reasoned arguments with herself about why she shouldn’t, she went back to Crichton’s cell.
**
This time, he recognized the footsteps coming down the hall. He sat up quickly, anxious to see her. He knew it wasn’t the *right* her, but she was close. And he was lonely - she was as near to a friend as he’d find while locked in this cell.
The door opened and she walked in. She grabbed the chair, pulled it closer to the cot and sat down, just the same as before.
“We’ve been watching your memories,” she began without preamble.
“Yeah, I gathered as much after the first few rounds of questions about things from my memories. Wormholes being the big one… why does no one ever want to ask me about baseball?” He cradled the back of his head in his interlocked fingers as he leaned back against the wall.
Aeryn didn’t bother responding. “I find that I’ve been watching more… selective memories -“ She paused then, not knowing how to continue.
John stared at her for an instant and then broke into a bemused grin. “You’ve been watching my memories of Aeryn,” he said, understanding dawning on him.
She looked at the wall, slightly abashed. “I was - I confess - it is… impossible to resist viewing a life you might have led.” She looked back at him and shrugged, a little helplessly.
He laughed. “Hey, don’t have to tell me that. Try living one…” He said, gesturing around a room, indicating his current surroundings in their totality. “Seems a little non-Peacekeeper regulation though. Aren’t you guys prohibited from experiencing curiosity?”
She smiled a little at that. “I’m sure that your Aeryn has changed very much in the cycles that you’ve known her, thanks in no small part to your influence, no doubt. But you must allow for the possibility that I’ve changed a little in the last five cycles, even without the redoubtable influence of John Crichton…”
He inclined his head, point conceded.
“I’m not near so put out by a little bending of protocol as I once was. I’ve had experiences that have shaped me and met people who changed me, too, you know?”
He nodded. “Velorek?” He suggested.
She jerked her head back, surprised. “You know about Velorek?” She asked, eyes suddenly looking a little haunted.
He wanted to reach out to her, a gesture of support, but he couldn’t do that with her. Instead he just leaned a little closer to where she sat. “Yeah, I know. Guess you haven’t watched that far yet…”
She was quiet for a long moment. Contemplative, sorrowful. Finally she spoke again. “Do you think there’s a reality where that betrayal never happened?”
He nodded slowly. “Sure… infinite numbers of them, from what I understand.”
She huffed a little, rueful, sad. “I wish this was one of them.” She shook her head as though the quick motion could dispel her ghosts, then stood up quickly. “I have to go. Thank you for speaking with me. Goodbye, Crichton.”
“Bye, Aeryn…”
This time, she didn’t correct him.
CHAPTER 3
A return to Earth and the initial encounter with the Ancient species where they gave John the wormhole knowledge. Scorpius had watched the end of this encounter countless times, fascinated by this previously unknown species - their power, and their seeming fragility. Scorpius contemplated whether they lived outside of the separate realities as a single species, or within them, multiplied onto infinity like all the rest of them. Aeryn had met with him a handful of times since the Aurora chair. He knew that she’d seen Crichton in his cell, and she could tell the idea pleased him. He was a master of manipulation and she had no delusions about his willingness to use her to get to his end goal. He was brilliant, and dangerous, and she was sure he’d chase wormhole knowledge to the end of any universe he had to go to.
At times like this, where she was subjected to machinations and scheming, she missed being just an Officer and a prowler pilot. She missed the ease of having no concern about the end goal.
She felt a kinship with John in the memories - back on Earth, his home, and yet somehow lost in the one place where he had always belonged. She understood the way that he stood staring out a window at a familiar landscape grown foreign.
And then he sat down on the bed and rested his head so gently on Aeryn’s shoulder, like it was the one place left that he still knew how to be. As the other Aeryn turned her head to meet John’s lips, Aeryn stopped the feed. Some moments, she simply couldn’t intrude on.
She pushed off her bed, feeling agitated and unsettled. She could think of only one way to calm herself down.
**
He was pacing back and forth when the door to his cell opened. Aeryn stood on the other side. She didn’t come in, though, she just stood outside looking at him expectantly.
“Hey…” He finally said, curious as to what she was up to.
“Did you and your Moyans spend any time sparring?” She asked, fiddling with some wraps and gloves tucked under her arm.
“Yes…” He answered cautiously. “If by ‘did we spar’ you mean did D’Argo and Aeryn frequently enjoy an opportunity to whup my ass…then yes.”
She smiled at that, almost a grin really. It very nearly made her look lighthearted. Seemed that no matter the reality, his incompetence was a great source of amusement to Aeryn Sun. She cocked her head, indicating that he should follow. He did as she bade. As he exited the room, she’d already started down the hall and he had to trot to catch up with her. He noticed that his guard followed a little ways behind.
“Is this… allowed?” He asked “I mean - not that I don’t appreciate a chance to get out of that room that doesn’t involve parsing physics with a Peacekeeper egghead, but I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble on my account.”
She gave him a look he recognized well, a patented Aeryn expression that said “You sweet deluded man, you really think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
“Of course it’s allowed. Scorpius...wants your cooperation on his wormhole project. If you were truly a Peacekeeper prisoner, you’d already be dead for Crichton’s crimes. You’re not. You’re Scorpius’s. And for the time being, he wants to keep you happy.” Aeryn passed him a set of wraps and he began covering his hands as they walked.
“Why, though? He’s gotta know by now that I don’t have the knowledge anymore. I can’t just make him a wormhole ‘cause he lets me out to play every now and then.”
Aeryn shrugged, wrapping her own hands efficiently and expertly. “You’re closer to that than anyone else is. I think he hopes some of the knowledge will come back, that you can get him even a half-step closer. Without the information the Ancients put in your brain, even a neural clone can’t help him now. Believe me, I’m sure he’d try.”
“I don’t doubt it.” John answered ruefully, “I’ve known the guy a long time.”
They turned into the fitness room, no one else was around. The guard stood in the doorway, watching idly. Aeryn walked to the far side of the mat, rolled her shoulders back once and then waved her wrapped hands at him challengingly.
The first elbow to his ribcage felt like coming home.
CHAPTER 4
Watching her death unnerved her, but only because she found it so much easier to watch than her life. She saw it through John’s eyes, a strange flickering in and out of images - Aeryn looking at him tenderly then a flash and they were on an icy planet, looking at an endless line of bodies; then another flash, and he was in a cockpit soaring above the surface of the planet; a flash again and he was hearing Aeryn’s voice over the comms as he watched her ejected seat hurtling to the frozen sea below - and then she was gone.
Aeryn paused and leaned back against the wall by her bed. It was the sort of scene she’d witnessed a hundred times in her career, a soldiers final seconds. Frantic last words, and then an inevitable end. Peacekeeper soldiers were born to die, it was a simple truth. She wondered if that bred-in-the bone acceptance of death had made the other Aeryn’s final flight easier for her, or if the two cycles she’d spent on Moya had left her too far removed from that stoic acceptance - too attached to the act of living for her death to seem a nominal cost.
She resumed watching. The funeral was harder to watch than the death, but she couldn’t look away. It struck her as odd that they’d troubled to retrieve the body from the frozen sea, it couldn’t have been an easy task. Peacekeepers bore with no such sentimentality - the other Aeryn had explained the Sebacean view of death to Crichton when the two had been trapped in the flax; you’re dead, and that’s the end. The body held no special worth that would justify the effort of retrieval… yet Aeryn couldn’t help but be moved by the solemnity of the ceremony they held for their lost comrade. When John looked down, she could see he was in shackles, no longer to be trusted… but when he asked for D’Argo’s knife, it was provided to him.
The story continued. Crichton was strapped to a table while the Diagnosan investigated his brain. Then Scorpius appeared, then D’Argo, then a Scarran… D’Argo and John fled through the snow, trying to escape and then…
There she was. She watched through John’s eyes, she felt as though she could practically feel his beating heart and sense his disbelief. Or maybe it was just her own heart pounding
**
John sat up eagerly when he heard her voice on the other side of the hallway, conversing with his guard. He reached his leg out and hooked a foot around the leg of the chair, pulling it a little closer to the head of the bed where he was sitting.
The door opened, Aeryn walked in, and dropped into the waiting chair. “I can’t stay long,” she said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “I just - I can’t believe she frelling came back from the dead!” John couldn’t help but laugh. She looked almost… put out by the whole thing
“Believe me. Neither could I.”
“It’s a strange reality you live in. Here, in this one, dead is just… dead.”
His eyes darkened slightly. “Yeah… well, her return didn’t come without a cost. There’s always a price to be paid.”
She nodded slightly, chin still braced in her hands. “The Delvian…”
“Zhaan,” he corrected firmly. “That was a hard loss. If there’s one good thing that’s come out of getting tossed into this reality, it was the chance to see her again… I really missed her. But God, that moment, seeing Aeryn alive again…” He leaned back against the wall, quiet, thoughtful. “That might be my favorite memory, you know? Aeryn standing there in the snow with her hair whipping around her, leveling D’Argo’s qualta blade at the Scarran. That moment, and the moment where I finally got her off Katratzi--”
Aeryn held up a hand to stop him, and he grinned at her. “Sorry, I’m giving the story away. I forget sometimes you weren’t there.”
She ran her hand through her hair, as she stood up to go. “Sometimes, Crichton, so do I.”
CHAPTER 5
Two Crichtons. It was almost inconceivable. Twice the madness. It was sort of bizarrely fascinating, watching Crichton watch himself. These memories were becoming something of a madness for her, in point of fact. When Aeryn left with the other John, fleeing from the retrieval squad and Xhalax Sun, she found herself wishing she could follow them, track both of the stories at once. But even though her double was gone, she watched this John’s memories. Her interest had progressed beyond simply wishing to understand her other, and had become a fixation upon the unfolding of the story of this other reality.
**
“Tell me about the other John,” Aeryn said as she sat down. “The one who was on Talyn…”
“The other John? Well, he was good-looking, had a rapier wit and a razor-sharp intellect. I think that covers all the major points.” A strand of hair from John’s ponytail had come loose and he tugged at it in annoyance. “Man, I hate long hair! Why in hell would John do this to himself?”
Aeryn’s lips quirked in amusement. “It really bothers you, does it? Hold on.” She stood up and walked over to the cell door. She knocked on it once and it was opened. She whispered some instructions to the guard, and then returned and sat back down.
“Now tell me about him for real - what happened while they were gone?” John couldn’t resist a little grin. His leonine, scarred up, tough as nails Peacekeeper was ready for story time.
“Well, let’s see… they got swallowed by a budong.” Aeryn raised her eyebrows at this. “Rygel and Stark were in a transport outside of the budong and somehow managed to, uh, get Talyn vomited back up.”
Aeryn’s expression was dubious at best. “You’ve got to be fabricating this…”
“Now you sound like Pilot when I tried to tell him what happened on Lo Mo! And you saw those memories. It was more or less the truth.” He held his hand in the air. “Scout’s honor. That’s what they told me happened. Talyn got puked back up, Talyn John and Aeryn became… closer. Then there was an encounter with some sun god-spirit thing. God like alien, you know? And then… then they met Xhalax Sun and her Peacekeeper retrieval squad, come to capture Talyn.”
At this, Aeryn sat back in surprise. “Oh, they met her? I knew that’s why they had left Moya, but… so she found them”
Crichton nodded. “She did. Wish I could say that it was a happy reunion, but, uh, it really wasn’t.”
“No, I don’t expect it was. Here, Xhalax Sun was killed several cycles ago, but I am familiar with what her reputation was. She was known to be infamously unyielding in the pursuit of an objective. She was… the consummate Peacekeeper.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Was your Aeryn glad of the chance to meet her?”
John thought for a long moment, but found he couldn’t answer the question. There were too many layers to those encounters. “She doesn’t talk about it very much. I think it was… important… for her. But I think it hit her really hard.”
“I can only imagine -“ Aeryn began, but before she could continue, there was a knock on the door. Aeryn leapt up and strode over to the entrance. The guard opened the door and passed in a small box. She nodded at the guard x and he pulled the door closed again. She opened the box, examining its contents as she walked towards the chair, but she didn’t sit down.
Instead, she stood behind the chair and tapped its back expectantly, holding up something that looked very much like a wicked sharp pair of scissors, as she tossed the rest of the box onto his bed.
“Come on then, don’t you trust me?”
“Well, no, not entirely…” John answered, but he complied with the directive. He got off the cot, moved over to the chair, and took a seat. He leaned back cooperatively as he felt Aeryn tugging at the leather tie holding his hair in the ponytail. “You think I should do this? I mean… technically it’s not my body. I’m just borrowing it.”
Aeryn got the tie loose and discarded it on the floor. She ran her nails lightly through his hair, getting it to sit more naturally before she began her work. John sighed a little. He was sure it was having the hair released from its confines that felt so good, and not the too-familiar hand that was gently combing it out. Well, he was almost sure.
“He’s not here, you are.” Aeryn said. Hand still in his hair, she turned his head slightly so he could make eye contact with her. “Ready?” She asked, a challenging look in her eyes.
Taking a deep breath, John turned back to face the front. “Do it. What the hell. Not like I’ll be around for him to get pissed at.”
“Tell me the rest about Talyn John?” Aeryn asked, as she gathered the hair back.
“Well, the Ancient version of my dad reappeared. He clued them in that somehow the information that I’d given Furlow on Dam Ba Da had gotten into the wrong hands. Someone was running experiments with Charrid test pilots. John figured it had to be Furlow, on Dam Ba Da. I’d - we’d - given her the information on the module the first time we were there -“ A single snip, and the irritating tug of too-long hair was gone. Aeryn ruffled her hand across his scalp again, figuring out how to proceed. He continued his story as she worked.
“Furlow betrayed them to the Charrids and the Scarrans. She killed the Ancient. There was a Scarran Dreadnaught, and it got ahold of Furlow’s data. But by then, John had figured out how to make a device that could destroy the Dreadnaught. He flew up in the module replica with the wormhole device and he opened a wormhole into a star. The Dreadnaught was destroyed, one more crisis averted.”
Aeryn was still hard at work, he could hear her clipping away, but he could feel how intently she was listening.
“The other John, though… he’d been exposed to some radiation when the device was opened prematurely, and - there was just nothing to do, I guess. He died on Talyn.”
John never found it easy to talk about what happened with Talyn John. He’d tried, sort of, when he’d been on Earth, and he apparently hadn’t improved at it since then. It always made him think of the ghostly image of the other John, matching him round for round in rock paper scissors.
“After that, they came back to Moya, except Stark. But Stark sent his mask back. It had a message on it… something that Talyn John had recorded for me. That’s how I know most of the stuff I do from that time. Aeryn’s never really been big on talking about it…”
Aeryn tossed the scissors onto the bed and then her hands were back in his hair, ruffling and smoothing. Then she brushed some clippings off of his neck and shoulders. Maybe he imagined it, but he thought she gave one of his shoulders a sympathetic squeeze before stepping back.
“All done…” She said. He turned to look at her, and she smiled a little at her handiwork. “It’s not even that bad. I confess, cutting hair is not at the top of my skill set.”
“Now you tell me,” John retorted, smiling back. He ran a hand across his head. It felt much closer to right. “Thanks.”
She shrugged as she moved to gather up the supplies and leave. “Thank you for telling me about the other John. It sounds like he was a brave man.”
“Yeah,” John said, acknowledging his sacrifice. “I think he was.”