Zero-Gravity Route (Farscape fic)
Summary: He wakes up in Aeryn Sun's arms. Takes place after 2x15 ("Won't Get Fooled Again").
Pairing: John/Aeryn
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence and references to torture.
Notes: Special thanks to someidiot for the beta read.
-
John sits on the floor of the destroyed Scarran chamber and stares ahead at nothing. The broken machines, smoke and darkness have all coalesced into a mosaic of grays in his peripheral vision. His head swims with the fragmented echoes of Harvey’s departing words to him.
…Exit to your left, he remembers Harvey saying.
He lolls his head to one side and then the other. There’s the exit. Or is it that way? He can’t remember where “left” is. John would laugh, or at least smile at his own predicament, but a thick fog clouds his mind, denying him access to the controls of his usual bodily autonomy. Must be Tuesday.
Grit digs into the palms of his hands as he tries to heave himself up, but an invisible weight like an anchor pulls him back down instead. He lies flat on his back, cushioned by bits of rubble and shards of glass.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees flames flicker in the room’s various nooks and crannies. The only source of heat in this icebox of a room, just out of reach. His dazed numbness is broken by chills that clamber up his body as sweat seeps out of his pores. Hell of a time for the immune system to pick a date with the flu or fever or whatever alien sickness his feeble human body might’ve contracted. Should have gotten that check-up from Dr. Zhaan before coming to this planet to get his mind frelled to hell and back again.
He shuts his eyes in concentration as he tries bringing a shaky hand up to call his comms device.
Instead he passes out.
-
He wakes up drenched in his own sweat. The aching chills haven’t subsided. His body is still lying down, but now it’s drifting between stages of suspended weightlessness and heaviness. The sensation calls to mind his training days at NASA, except his arms are also dangling uselessly behind and his upper backside and backs of his knees are bolstered by what feels like a thick cable. Something or someone’s carrying him, he realizes as the wind blows against his face. They’re moving, and fast.
Maybe I’m still being tortured, John considers with an alarming sense of calm. Maybe Harvey and the escape route were another old Lucy-and-the-football-trick, courtesy of the Scarrans. That’d track with their methods--give him a little sliver of hope, yank it away, and lo and behold, another layer of John Crichton’s brain has been chipped away. Works like a charm.
Maybe that’s why his body isn’t responding as he tries sending signals to it to wriggle away--he’s finally let surrender take the reins.
If that’s what’s happened, then he has to admit surrender doesn’t feel too bad. His cheek is pressed against what feels like cool leather pulled over something both too firm and too soft to be a cushion; a lot like the cables, despite the difference in width and texture. It’s not a chair--thank God or whatever divine being is out there it’s not another chair--and its smoky scent invites a sense of familiarity, of comfort, even. He thinks it’s the source of whatever’s miraculously relaxing him amidst the torture. Scarran pheromones, he hypothesizes.
Drops of energy filter back into the nerves of his eyelids, allowing him to open them up. White blurs of light sting his eyes and he reflexively blinks out the moisture secreting from them. His vision gains clarity. Towering over him are a raised metallic ceiling, overhead lights and the source of what--who’s been carrying him: Aeryn Sun.
He blinks again to make sure he’s not imagining it. The sharp jawline, the hooked nose, the thick, always-furrowed eyebrows--it’s Aeryn, alright. Not Aeryn the nurse, not Aeryn the other kind of nurse, not Aeryn the party animal, not Aeryn with the tongue trick--not yet, anyway--just plain old Officer Aeryn Sun. Her gaze is fixed forward, and she doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s woken up. He wants to say something to her, but can only part his lips a crack.
The air stinks of gunsmoke and fried remains belonging to something reptilian, whatever that smells like. There’s the sound of a blast from a pulse pistol overhead. An inhuman screech that follows confirms it’s from a Scarran she’d just taken out.
His chest constricts. So they hadn’t escaped yet. There was still a chance he could be recaptured by the Scarrans. Hell, he could still be captured right this second. They’d already thrown one scenario of Aeryn coming to his rescue at him, why not another? This time being carried like a child swaddled in a blanket in her arms. Yeah, he thinks. Only in my dreams.
He’ll give the Scarrans some credit, though--this scenario’s the closest to feeling like a dream rather than another nightmare. The arms hugging him to the rising and falling pressure of Aeryn’s chest soothe his body like a lullaby. He knows the Scarrans must have messed up his brain badly enough that he wants to drift off, right then and there. Scarran Stockholm Syndrome. The triple-S threat. He’s got it bad.
“Stay with me, John,” he hears Aeryn utter under her breath. He can’t tell if it’s irritability or concern or relief or all of the above that coats her voice and decides his final answer is all of the above. He’s just glad to hear her voice.
Aeryn hits something that buzzes and the sound of warehouse doors creak open as a siren blares out. More gunsmoke fills his nostrils. More sparks flash. More low rumbles of growls from Scarran soldiers can be heard. He can’t see very well where he’s being held with his head tilted back, but senses enough that he can fill in the blanks.
“You’ll surrender the human to us now,” growls one of the Scarran soldiers.
Aeryn of course doesn’t dignify that with an answer and secures her hold around him. The next moment there’s a blast, followed by a Scarran scream, followed by something crumpling to the floor. John’s nose catches another whiff of freshly charred meat that doesn’t leave much for him to deduce. They keep moving.
They don’t make it far before a force crashes into them like a wave. It radiates a smothering source of heat that causes Aeryn’s legs to slow into heavy steps as her hold on him weakens. A Scarran emerges from behind her and John wants to yell a warning but it’s quick to bring a claw down that rakes against her back. Aeryn lets out a pained yell, dropping him.
John’s body makes contact with the hard floor that leaves him in a rush of dizziness and aches. He turns his head with what little strength he has to see what’s happened to Aeryn. She’s still on her feet, steadying her weight against the floor and gritting her teeth while a Scarran holds a hand out, emitting heat projection to her face. John’s face grows hotter as he tries signaling his joints to move, dammit, to no avail.
The shuffling of boots surrounds him. His breath hitches in his throat as clawed hands hoist his body off the floor with no effort and sling him over a spiny, armor-covered shoulder. He hears an angered “No!” from Aeryn that she follows up with a series of untranslatable phrases John is certain are alien curses. Her voice grows fainter with each stride taken by his Scarran captor, and his stomach drops with each step.
“We’ve reobtained the human,” hisses another nearby Scarran. He sounds like he’s contacting a higher-up. “We have a former Peacekeeper in our possession as well. She appears to have no knowledge that would be of use to us. Shall we imprison or dispose of her?”
John’s mouth twitches. His mouth muscles can finally stretch to the point he can open his lips. Nothing comes out, not that he has anything to say that aren’t swears and empty threats. His vocal chords feel like they’ve been put through a paper shredder. He realizes now, of all times, how parched he is. Sweat continues dribbling down his face, the resulting cocktail of sudden illness, surrounding Scarran heat projections and Aeryn’s impending death on the horizon. The world’s most unsavory cocktail.
The creases of his mouth have grown moist. On impulse, he licks his lips. He’s struck with a disgusting idea. Sorry, body, he thinks as he mulls over the biological impracticalities of it. I gotta give you just a little more hell for now.
He lets droplets of sweat collect into his mouth and swallows with a grimace. The salt stings his vocal chords, but he doesn’t have time to wonder if he’s only helped drying them up further. He winces, voice hoarse, and yells out Aeryn’s name.
His effort is rewarded with the guttural chuckles of surrounding Scarrans.
“Good to see you on speaking terms with us again, human,” a Scarran--the same one that was contacting its higher-up--says. “Your Sebacean companion isn’t so lucky.”
John’s chin is seized by scaled fingers that tilt him up to meet the towering shadow of a Scarran figure over him. “We look forward to proceeding with our experiment,” the Scarran says. John sees the glint of its fangs in the distance. “Such a fascinating subject we’ve acquired.”
The muscles in John’s mouth have gone numb again. His eyelids are getting heavy, and his already-drooping body feels ready to slip back into a state of unconsciousness. He’ll wake up in the chair, or another scenario like this one.
The sound of thundering footsteps against the floor--too light to belong to a Scarran--suddenly fills his ears. An explosion follows, relinquishing the Scarran captor of his hold on him. Before John can fall to the floor again a different, thinner pair of arms scoops him up instead. The arms around him are tight and protective and John doesn’t need to guess who they belong to. He buries his face in Aeryn’s chest.
Hands continue to claw and grab at his legs, his arms, his shirt, trying to wrench him away from Aeryn’s hold. With every grab Aeryn whips over and socks or kicks them or blasts them away--or that’s what he guesses, from the sounds and blurs of movements edging out of his vision.
The snarling of Scarrans increases with frequency. The air grows hotter with their combined heat projections as they close in on the two of them. There’s a lot of them. A lot of “Kill her and take him!” mixed with Aeryn’s grunts as she’s hit by their attacks, reminders he could be dragged back to that chair at any moment now. The Scarrans would probably keep him alive as long as his body could take it--and his body could take a lot.
His cheek is splashed with the scent of copper and he darts his eyes up to look at Aeryn’s face. There’s a series of deep gashes that run along her blood-smeared face. Her eyes threaten to flutter close, finally at her limit from heat delirium.
A surge of energy pulses into one of his wrists now lying atop his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut and winces as he strains his muscles to lift a hand. He’s reminded of the sensation of returning to Earth from a space mission after being in zero-gravity for so long, but every part of him feels even heavier.
You in the mood to break the record for fastest physical rehabilitation? he thinks, trying to encourage himself.
He raises a shaking hand that lays to rest against Aeryn’s cheek, the most his body will allow him to do. The gashes are deep and sticky beneath his palm. Operating on nothing but instinct, he breathes what feels like his last breath and presses it against her.
Aeryn’s eyes flash open. She looks down, gives him a nod, and squares up her shoulders before barreling past the Scarrans. Strikes of claws tear at his arms and legs but he concentrates on his hand against Aeryn’s cheek.
They continue their way, pursued by growls and blasts, but now the air’s smelling cleaner. The crunching of leaves underfoot confirms they made it outside. Branches scratch against John’s face as Aeryn hightails it through a forested area, zigzagging in different directions. The chirps and clicks of wildlife do little to hide the sounds of heavy steps grinding down on sticks not far away from them.
Aeryn crouches down and stands still. The shadow cast over them signifies to John that she’s found a large tree trunk or rock to hide behind. Water trickles its way into a stream nearby. Aeryn’s managed to steady her breathing down to the point John can’t hear it, but still feels her chest heave against his cheek.
John looks up to get a look at her face again--the cuts across her cheek have been smeared with ash, an additional cut has made its way down her lower lip and scatters of bruises dot her face. His hand still hasn’t left its spot on her cheek.
The footsteps of their pursuers haven’t ceased but they’re getting fainter. John shivers against Aeryn’s chest and presses his hand harder against her cheek, as though it’ll provide some sort of relief for the both of them. She slides her hand over his and gives it a squeeze before bringing it down to his chest. A pang of sadness follows with a warmth that soothes his trembling body.
Aeryn stands up and creeps forth. The ripples of the stream grow louder, camouflaging her footsteps. John senses wherever the transport ship she parked is just out of reach but tries not to get his hopes up that they’re out of Scarran territory. He closes his eyes, tempted to drift off again.
“There they are!” a voice in the distance freezes the blood in John’s veins. “Surround the area! Kill the Sebacean woman! Capture the human she has!”
Frell his timing. As always.
Aeryn’s arms tighten their hold of him and wind whips past his face as Aeryn speeds her pace up. He presses a cheek to her chest and listens to her heartbeat drown out the sounds of blasts and the scent of her leather cover the gunsmoke. He shouldn’t be feeling as safe as he does now.
“Don’t worry,” Aeryn says between breaths. “We’re almost there.”
There’s the sound of something opening. He’s thrown in it and his fall is cushioned by a seat. Aeryn’s body follows in after, there’s the sound of switches being flicked and buttons pressed, the door closes, and the craft moves up. There’s some shaking along the way as they barely scrape past the firing of weapons, but it gradually steadies itself into a state of weightlessness.
Cool air blows against John’s face. He opens his eyes to see the stars in the windowed roofing of Aeryn’s Prowler over them. The cockpit is tight and cramped and should, by all means, be uncomfortable with the two of them in it. Instead it gives John relief. It isn’t just that they’re now safely secured away from the Scarrans; it’s that ever since being shot across the galaxy he’s found security in closed-in spaces to the wide open of the unknown. They remind him of the old days working on the module. Of home.
Aeryn has him sitting in her lap, head pillowed against her chest and legs curled inward as she manages the ship’s controls. Against the slow rising and falling of her chest is the warmest John’s felt. His bed on Moya isn’t shabby, or at least he’s gotten used to it compared to what he had back on Earth, but he feels like he could sleep a full solar cycle in her arms. If he’s still being tortured by Scarrans, then this has been his favorite scenario.
He wants to say something. A thanks, or at least Aeryn’s name.
He looks at her face again, sporting the fresh injuries of the Scarran attacks.
Sorry. That’s what he wants to say.
Something unintelligible spills out of his mouth instead and Aeryn shushes him. “Save your strength,” she says. “We’ll be back on Moya in a matter of microts.”
He scans his eyes blearily over the buttons and controls and roof of the ship. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a figure behind Aeryn, clad in black leather, looking him directly in the eye.
His body must have jolted involuntarily because then Aeryn says “Are you alright?” She shakes her head, more to herself than to him, he thinks. “Don’t answer that,” she adds. That was definitely for him.
The corners of his lips tug upward in spite of himself, and in spite of Harvey still in plain sight.
“Just rest, John,” Aeryn and Harvey’s voices say together.
And just like that he closes his eyes and drifts off back to sleep.
-
He wakes up to Moya’s bronze interiors towering over him, welcoming him back. Without looking he already knows he’s no longer in Aeryn’s arms because he’s not nearly as comfortable. The bedding is flat and the blanket wrapped around his body doesn’t provide as much warmth. At least it’s not another hospital bed.
The aches and chills are mostly gone. He’s been changed out of his sweat-drenched clothes into dry ones. His head feels a little clearer. He tests out his limbs, tries to sit up and doesn’t make it far before falling back against the pillows. He still can’t move his body much.
One of his hands is wrapped in the hand of another. He rolls his head to the side and sees Aeryn, sitting at his side, holding his hand. She looks like she’s fallen asleep, her other hand resting on a weapon she must have been tinkering with while he was out. Her cuts have been cleaned and bandaged, reminding him of how she fended off Scarrans while carrying him to safety.
John still wonders if maybe he didn’t get free of the torture, that maybe this is still another elaborate scenario concocted by the Scarrans.
He squeezes Aeryn’s hand, careful not to wake her up.
Still his favorite one.
Pairing: John/Aeryn
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence and references to torture.
Notes: Special thanks to someidiot for the beta read.
-
John sits on the floor of the destroyed Scarran chamber and stares ahead at nothing. The broken machines, smoke and darkness have all coalesced into a mosaic of grays in his peripheral vision. His head swims with the fragmented echoes of Harvey’s departing words to him.
…Exit to your left, he remembers Harvey saying.
He lolls his head to one side and then the other. There’s the exit. Or is it that way? He can’t remember where “left” is. John would laugh, or at least smile at his own predicament, but a thick fog clouds his mind, denying him access to the controls of his usual bodily autonomy. Must be Tuesday.
Grit digs into the palms of his hands as he tries to heave himself up, but an invisible weight like an anchor pulls him back down instead. He lies flat on his back, cushioned by bits of rubble and shards of glass.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees flames flicker in the room’s various nooks and crannies. The only source of heat in this icebox of a room, just out of reach. His dazed numbness is broken by chills that clamber up his body as sweat seeps out of his pores. Hell of a time for the immune system to pick a date with the flu or fever or whatever alien sickness his feeble human body might’ve contracted. Should have gotten that check-up from Dr. Zhaan before coming to this planet to get his mind frelled to hell and back again.
He shuts his eyes in concentration as he tries bringing a shaky hand up to call his comms device.
Instead he passes out.
-
He wakes up drenched in his own sweat. The aching chills haven’t subsided. His body is still lying down, but now it’s drifting between stages of suspended weightlessness and heaviness. The sensation calls to mind his training days at NASA, except his arms are also dangling uselessly behind and his upper backside and backs of his knees are bolstered by what feels like a thick cable. Something or someone’s carrying him, he realizes as the wind blows against his face. They’re moving, and fast.
Maybe I’m still being tortured, John considers with an alarming sense of calm. Maybe Harvey and the escape route were another old Lucy-and-the-football-trick, courtesy of the Scarrans. That’d track with their methods--give him a little sliver of hope, yank it away, and lo and behold, another layer of John Crichton’s brain has been chipped away. Works like a charm.
Maybe that’s why his body isn’t responding as he tries sending signals to it to wriggle away--he’s finally let surrender take the reins.
If that’s what’s happened, then he has to admit surrender doesn’t feel too bad. His cheek is pressed against what feels like cool leather pulled over something both too firm and too soft to be a cushion; a lot like the cables, despite the difference in width and texture. It’s not a chair--thank God or whatever divine being is out there it’s not another chair--and its smoky scent invites a sense of familiarity, of comfort, even. He thinks it’s the source of whatever’s miraculously relaxing him amidst the torture. Scarran pheromones, he hypothesizes.
Drops of energy filter back into the nerves of his eyelids, allowing him to open them up. White blurs of light sting his eyes and he reflexively blinks out the moisture secreting from them. His vision gains clarity. Towering over him are a raised metallic ceiling, overhead lights and the source of what--who’s been carrying him: Aeryn Sun.
He blinks again to make sure he’s not imagining it. The sharp jawline, the hooked nose, the thick, always-furrowed eyebrows--it’s Aeryn, alright. Not Aeryn the nurse, not Aeryn the other kind of nurse, not Aeryn the party animal, not Aeryn with the tongue trick--not yet, anyway--just plain old Officer Aeryn Sun. Her gaze is fixed forward, and she doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s woken up. He wants to say something to her, but can only part his lips a crack.
The air stinks of gunsmoke and fried remains belonging to something reptilian, whatever that smells like. There’s the sound of a blast from a pulse pistol overhead. An inhuman screech that follows confirms it’s from a Scarran she’d just taken out.
His chest constricts. So they hadn’t escaped yet. There was still a chance he could be recaptured by the Scarrans. Hell, he could still be captured right this second. They’d already thrown one scenario of Aeryn coming to his rescue at him, why not another? This time being carried like a child swaddled in a blanket in her arms. Yeah, he thinks. Only in my dreams.
He’ll give the Scarrans some credit, though--this scenario’s the closest to feeling like a dream rather than another nightmare. The arms hugging him to the rising and falling pressure of Aeryn’s chest soothe his body like a lullaby. He knows the Scarrans must have messed up his brain badly enough that he wants to drift off, right then and there. Scarran Stockholm Syndrome. The triple-S threat. He’s got it bad.
“Stay with me, John,” he hears Aeryn utter under her breath. He can’t tell if it’s irritability or concern or relief or all of the above that coats her voice and decides his final answer is all of the above. He’s just glad to hear her voice.
Aeryn hits something that buzzes and the sound of warehouse doors creak open as a siren blares out. More gunsmoke fills his nostrils. More sparks flash. More low rumbles of growls from Scarran soldiers can be heard. He can’t see very well where he’s being held with his head tilted back, but senses enough that he can fill in the blanks.
“You’ll surrender the human to us now,” growls one of the Scarran soldiers.
Aeryn of course doesn’t dignify that with an answer and secures her hold around him. The next moment there’s a blast, followed by a Scarran scream, followed by something crumpling to the floor. John’s nose catches another whiff of freshly charred meat that doesn’t leave much for him to deduce. They keep moving.
They don’t make it far before a force crashes into them like a wave. It radiates a smothering source of heat that causes Aeryn’s legs to slow into heavy steps as her hold on him weakens. A Scarran emerges from behind her and John wants to yell a warning but it’s quick to bring a claw down that rakes against her back. Aeryn lets out a pained yell, dropping him.
John’s body makes contact with the hard floor that leaves him in a rush of dizziness and aches. He turns his head with what little strength he has to see what’s happened to Aeryn. She’s still on her feet, steadying her weight against the floor and gritting her teeth while a Scarran holds a hand out, emitting heat projection to her face. John’s face grows hotter as he tries signaling his joints to move, dammit, to no avail.
The shuffling of boots surrounds him. His breath hitches in his throat as clawed hands hoist his body off the floor with no effort and sling him over a spiny, armor-covered shoulder. He hears an angered “No!” from Aeryn that she follows up with a series of untranslatable phrases John is certain are alien curses. Her voice grows fainter with each stride taken by his Scarran captor, and his stomach drops with each step.
“We’ve reobtained the human,” hisses another nearby Scarran. He sounds like he’s contacting a higher-up. “We have a former Peacekeeper in our possession as well. She appears to have no knowledge that would be of use to us. Shall we imprison or dispose of her?”
John’s mouth twitches. His mouth muscles can finally stretch to the point he can open his lips. Nothing comes out, not that he has anything to say that aren’t swears and empty threats. His vocal chords feel like they’ve been put through a paper shredder. He realizes now, of all times, how parched he is. Sweat continues dribbling down his face, the resulting cocktail of sudden illness, surrounding Scarran heat projections and Aeryn’s impending death on the horizon. The world’s most unsavory cocktail.
The creases of his mouth have grown moist. On impulse, he licks his lips. He’s struck with a disgusting idea. Sorry, body, he thinks as he mulls over the biological impracticalities of it. I gotta give you just a little more hell for now.
He lets droplets of sweat collect into his mouth and swallows with a grimace. The salt stings his vocal chords, but he doesn’t have time to wonder if he’s only helped drying them up further. He winces, voice hoarse, and yells out Aeryn’s name.
His effort is rewarded with the guttural chuckles of surrounding Scarrans.
“Good to see you on speaking terms with us again, human,” a Scarran--the same one that was contacting its higher-up--says. “Your Sebacean companion isn’t so lucky.”
John’s chin is seized by scaled fingers that tilt him up to meet the towering shadow of a Scarran figure over him. “We look forward to proceeding with our experiment,” the Scarran says. John sees the glint of its fangs in the distance. “Such a fascinating subject we’ve acquired.”
The muscles in John’s mouth have gone numb again. His eyelids are getting heavy, and his already-drooping body feels ready to slip back into a state of unconsciousness. He’ll wake up in the chair, or another scenario like this one.
The sound of thundering footsteps against the floor--too light to belong to a Scarran--suddenly fills his ears. An explosion follows, relinquishing the Scarran captor of his hold on him. Before John can fall to the floor again a different, thinner pair of arms scoops him up instead. The arms around him are tight and protective and John doesn’t need to guess who they belong to. He buries his face in Aeryn’s chest.
Hands continue to claw and grab at his legs, his arms, his shirt, trying to wrench him away from Aeryn’s hold. With every grab Aeryn whips over and socks or kicks them or blasts them away--or that’s what he guesses, from the sounds and blurs of movements edging out of his vision.
The snarling of Scarrans increases with frequency. The air grows hotter with their combined heat projections as they close in on the two of them. There’s a lot of them. A lot of “Kill her and take him!” mixed with Aeryn’s grunts as she’s hit by their attacks, reminders he could be dragged back to that chair at any moment now. The Scarrans would probably keep him alive as long as his body could take it--and his body could take a lot.
His cheek is splashed with the scent of copper and he darts his eyes up to look at Aeryn’s face. There’s a series of deep gashes that run along her blood-smeared face. Her eyes threaten to flutter close, finally at her limit from heat delirium.
A surge of energy pulses into one of his wrists now lying atop his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut and winces as he strains his muscles to lift a hand. He’s reminded of the sensation of returning to Earth from a space mission after being in zero-gravity for so long, but every part of him feels even heavier.
You in the mood to break the record for fastest physical rehabilitation? he thinks, trying to encourage himself.
He raises a shaking hand that lays to rest against Aeryn’s cheek, the most his body will allow him to do. The gashes are deep and sticky beneath his palm. Operating on nothing but instinct, he breathes what feels like his last breath and presses it against her.
Aeryn’s eyes flash open. She looks down, gives him a nod, and squares up her shoulders before barreling past the Scarrans. Strikes of claws tear at his arms and legs but he concentrates on his hand against Aeryn’s cheek.
They continue their way, pursued by growls and blasts, but now the air’s smelling cleaner. The crunching of leaves underfoot confirms they made it outside. Branches scratch against John’s face as Aeryn hightails it through a forested area, zigzagging in different directions. The chirps and clicks of wildlife do little to hide the sounds of heavy steps grinding down on sticks not far away from them.
Aeryn crouches down and stands still. The shadow cast over them signifies to John that she’s found a large tree trunk or rock to hide behind. Water trickles its way into a stream nearby. Aeryn’s managed to steady her breathing down to the point John can’t hear it, but still feels her chest heave against his cheek.
John looks up to get a look at her face again--the cuts across her cheek have been smeared with ash, an additional cut has made its way down her lower lip and scatters of bruises dot her face. His hand still hasn’t left its spot on her cheek.
The footsteps of their pursuers haven’t ceased but they’re getting fainter. John shivers against Aeryn’s chest and presses his hand harder against her cheek, as though it’ll provide some sort of relief for the both of them. She slides her hand over his and gives it a squeeze before bringing it down to his chest. A pang of sadness follows with a warmth that soothes his trembling body.
Aeryn stands up and creeps forth. The ripples of the stream grow louder, camouflaging her footsteps. John senses wherever the transport ship she parked is just out of reach but tries not to get his hopes up that they’re out of Scarran territory. He closes his eyes, tempted to drift off again.
“There they are!” a voice in the distance freezes the blood in John’s veins. “Surround the area! Kill the Sebacean woman! Capture the human she has!”
Frell his timing. As always.
Aeryn’s arms tighten their hold of him and wind whips past his face as Aeryn speeds her pace up. He presses a cheek to her chest and listens to her heartbeat drown out the sounds of blasts and the scent of her leather cover the gunsmoke. He shouldn’t be feeling as safe as he does now.
“Don’t worry,” Aeryn says between breaths. “We’re almost there.”
There’s the sound of something opening. He’s thrown in it and his fall is cushioned by a seat. Aeryn’s body follows in after, there’s the sound of switches being flicked and buttons pressed, the door closes, and the craft moves up. There’s some shaking along the way as they barely scrape past the firing of weapons, but it gradually steadies itself into a state of weightlessness.
Cool air blows against John’s face. He opens his eyes to see the stars in the windowed roofing of Aeryn’s Prowler over them. The cockpit is tight and cramped and should, by all means, be uncomfortable with the two of them in it. Instead it gives John relief. It isn’t just that they’re now safely secured away from the Scarrans; it’s that ever since being shot across the galaxy he’s found security in closed-in spaces to the wide open of the unknown. They remind him of the old days working on the module. Of home.
Aeryn has him sitting in her lap, head pillowed against her chest and legs curled inward as she manages the ship’s controls. Against the slow rising and falling of her chest is the warmest John’s felt. His bed on Moya isn’t shabby, or at least he’s gotten used to it compared to what he had back on Earth, but he feels like he could sleep a full solar cycle in her arms. If he’s still being tortured by Scarrans, then this has been his favorite scenario.
He wants to say something. A thanks, or at least Aeryn’s name.
He looks at her face again, sporting the fresh injuries of the Scarran attacks.
Sorry. That’s what he wants to say.
Something unintelligible spills out of his mouth instead and Aeryn shushes him. “Save your strength,” she says. “We’ll be back on Moya in a matter of microts.”
He scans his eyes blearily over the buttons and controls and roof of the ship. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a figure behind Aeryn, clad in black leather, looking him directly in the eye.
His body must have jolted involuntarily because then Aeryn says “Are you alright?” She shakes her head, more to herself than to him, he thinks. “Don’t answer that,” she adds. That was definitely for him.
The corners of his lips tug upward in spite of himself, and in spite of Harvey still in plain sight.
“Just rest, John,” Aeryn and Harvey’s voices say together.
And just like that he closes his eyes and drifts off back to sleep.
-
He wakes up to Moya’s bronze interiors towering over him, welcoming him back. Without looking he already knows he’s no longer in Aeryn’s arms because he’s not nearly as comfortable. The bedding is flat and the blanket wrapped around his body doesn’t provide as much warmth. At least it’s not another hospital bed.
The aches and chills are mostly gone. He’s been changed out of his sweat-drenched clothes into dry ones. His head feels a little clearer. He tests out his limbs, tries to sit up and doesn’t make it far before falling back against the pillows. He still can’t move his body much.
One of his hands is wrapped in the hand of another. He rolls his head to the side and sees Aeryn, sitting at his side, holding his hand. She looks like she’s fallen asleep, her other hand resting on a weapon she must have been tinkering with while he was out. Her cuts have been cleaned and bandaged, reminding him of how she fended off Scarrans while carrying him to safety.
John still wonders if maybe he didn’t get free of the torture, that maybe this is still another elaborate scenario concocted by the Scarrans.
He squeezes Aeryn’s hand, careful not to wake her up.
Still his favorite one.