Fic: SF 111: Time Travel, Genetic Experiments, and the Family Unit in Deep Space, Chapter 8a
Title: SF 111: Time Travel, Genetic Experiments, and the Family Unit in Deep Space
Chapter Title: Better Together, Part 1
Author: katiemariie
Artist & Beta: subluxate
Fandom: Farscape
Word Count: 4645
Rating: R
Warnings: Strong language, references to past non-con, violence
“There comes a time in a man's life that you cannot know. When he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and realizes he must change the world for her. For all children. It is for her that I am here.”
-Jarok, “The Defector,” Star Trek: the Next Generation
-
Crichton was oddly insistent that everyone stay just one more night, saying they were all too tired to do anything but hunker down for the night. Moving baby furniture out of the transport pods would wait for tomorrow. Staanz could've used the distraction. Setting up their happy home might have let her forget that her family could be torn apart by any two-credit slaver out to make a quick turn-around. Instead, she and Stark were confined to quarters to think about all that happened on the commerce planet.
“It's never going to stop,” Stark said, his head resting in Staanz' lap. “It'll happen again and again and again.”
“The Peacekeepers will be gunning for us now after what you did to Grayza.”
“I'd do it again. And again. And again.” He reached up, stroking Staanz' cheek. “I'd do whatever I could to keep us together.”
“So would I.” She kissed his palm. “There has to be someplace we can hide. Someplace safe.”
“From my time on Moya, I learned that nowhere is safe when the Peacekeepers are after you. They will always find you. And as long as my people are slaves...” He didn't have to finish.
-
“Are you sure now's the best time?” John asked.
“You acquired the DNA results. Triskel's Pilot unencrypted the data chip,” Scorpius answered. “I see no reason for waiting.”
“Sikozu said to wait.”
“And we did.”
“For twelve arns! You really think that's enough downtime to keep Braca's brain from going Chernobyl when Maury tells him Talyn Lyczac's the daddy?”
“Yes, and the longer we keep this from them, the more... hyperbolic their reactions will be. We cannot afford to allow their shock and confusion to redirected as anger towards us.”
“Right. For our mivonks' sakes.” John narrowed his eyes. “You do have mivonks, right?” He shook his head. “Don't tell me. I don't need to know. I don't wanna know.”
Scorpius didn't look inclined to tell, gesturing to the kitchen. “Shall we?”
“We don't seem to have much of a choice.”
They ducked into the kitchen and prepared to address their audience. “So.” John put his hands on his hips. “You're probably both wondering why we asked you here.”
Braca and Aeryn looked down at their plates and up at John with frighteningly similar “Crichton, you blithering Human idiot” expressions. “For breakfast,” Aeryn said.
“Yes, and...” John turned a chair round backwards and sat, leaning forward. “There's no easy way of saying this.” He sighed. “When we were in the genetic vault, I saw Braca's file-just for a microt-and it said something I couldn't believe, but it's true. It's freakishly, improbably, inconveniently true. Me and Scorpy have been running around these past two days trying to prove that it wasn't, but...”
“Am I dying?” Braca asked, like death was another tedious duty ordered by high command.
“You're not dying. You're not sick. You're... Aeryn's brother.”
“What?”
“You're joking,” Aeryn said.
“No. I wish I was.”
“How is that possible?” she asked. “Xhalax never mentioned him.”
“I am a genetic experiment,” Braca said, reassuring himself.
“Xhalax Sun and Talyn Lyczac were listed as your gamete donors,” Scorpius explained. “The embryo they created was implanted into a woman bred for command, Amil Braca. By implanting an embryo with pilot DNA into a command fetal environment, the genetic counsel hoped to create a pilot-commander hybrid. Their efforts appear to have been successful.”
“Xhalax and Talyn must have met during the experiment,” John said.
“They did more than meet,” Braca murmured, wiping his mouth. He stood from the table. “Excuse me.” He brushed past Scorpius on his way out of the kitchen. “Watch Mirwa. I'm going flying.”
Aeryn watched him leave, her face blank.
“Aeryn...” John said.
She blinked. “I need to...” She stood, wiping her hands on her pants. She staggered out of the kitchen. “I'll be in the gym if D needs me.”
-
“Thank you for coming,” Pilot said, truly meaning it. Stark and Staanz looked so depressed that they hardly seemed able to get out of bed, let alone walk down to his den. Of course, being largely immobile, Pilot was perhaps not the best person to judge anyone's activity level. “I would not have called you here if it wasn't important.”
Stark and Staanz stared at him silently as they leaned on each other, both keeping a careful hand on Zev. Pilot wasn't used to having this much space to talk. Typically, when people came to his den, they had urgent words and demands. He didn't receive that many social calls.
“I have been reviewing the energy anomalies that occurred while you and others had visions of someone dying. Upon closer study, those anomalies bear close resemblance to readings I took while you were practicing with Braca in the kitchen-specifically when you made the timer go backwards in time.” If either of them were feeling up to it, this would be the point in which Stark or Staanz would ask why this mattered or tell Pilot to get on with it. “I don't think you were having visions. I believe you were rewinding time involuntarily out of a strong emotional reaction to a person's death. They weren't visions; they were memories.”
“I didn't just have visions,” Stark finally spoke up. “Occasionally, I would just hear someone die. “
“How do you explain that?” Staanz asked.
“Well,” Pilot said, “perhaps, you needed to know how to manipulate time without seeing. How else could you teach Zev to do the same?”
“That doesn't make any sense,” Stark said. “How could I know that? I didn't know Zev was blind until yesterday.”
“Stark, you have an effortless control over the fourth dimension. I assume the normal standards of temporal linearity and casualty no longer apply to you.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Staanz said. “Say Stark is making backwards time bubbles to bring people back to life. Wouldn't they remember being in that bubble?”
“They do. I remember quite distinctly dying when Moya and Triskel collided.”
“But Braca doesn't remember me killing him,” Stark said. “And Scorpius doesn't remember trying to kill me after.”
“Good thing, too,” Staanz said. “He would've killed you all over again.”
“Perhaps that's the reason why he doesn't remember,” Pilot guessed. “Stark instinctively rewound time so that he wouldn't die. If Scorpius and Braca retained their memories of the time erased, they would have killed Stark, so Stark naturally did not being their memories back in time.” This really wasn't Pilot's area of expertise, but he tried his best to fake his way through the metaphysical dren. “Stark reset their consciousness to the point in time he returned to. This suggests that Stark can manipulate how bodies and minds experience time. He could possibly erase his own memory or even be in two places at once.”
“Two places at once?” Stark asked.
“Yes. As it stands, whenever you time-travel, your consciousness and body stay in a fixed position, either staying in one spot as time goes forward or sticking to a set of past events that have already occurred when you rewind time. If you master the manipulation of your body and consciousness through time, you could possibly move beyond these fixed positions and cross your own timeline.”
“I could change the past?”
“Conceivably, but if you altered the past too radically, you would risk erasing your present self-the you that traveled in time to correct something would never exist because nothing would need to be corrected.” Pilot thought for a moment. “You might have already done that several times by now. You could have gone back in time from a future that now doesn't exist and changed your past so that this present occurs. Your future self would have disappeared, but the version of you affected by that change would live on to reach this moment.”
“I doubt that. If I had changed my past, pre-determining the course of my life, I would not be here right now.”
“Did you just say that if you could change the past, you wouldn't choose to be here. married to me and father of my child?” Staanz asked waving a finger in Stark's face.
Stark grabbed her finger and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Of course not. I love you, I need you both. If I could do what Pilot says I can, I'd only ever use it to keep us together.”
“You might have already,” Pilot muttered.
“What?”
“You might have already used your power to keep you and your family together. A future version of yourself could have gone back in time to manipulate events to keep you from being separated.”
“How would he know when to go back or what to do?” Staanz asked.
“I assume he would know because those events already happened to him.”
“Whatever happened, happened?”
“Yes. Or from Stark's point of view, 'whatever happened, will happen.'”
“Whatever happened, will happen,” Stark murmured. “What happened, will happen.” He handed Zev over to Staanz like a sack of breadstuffs. “I have to go.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the door with more purpose than Pilot had ever seen within him.
“Babe,” Staanz called, “where are you going?”
“I have to go unlock a door.”
-
John knew Aeryn needed space after that bombshell he dropped with way less finesse and care than he should have. But D was hungry, and their expressed milk reservoir was tapped, and John knew Aeryn would wear out all their punching bags if he left her to it.
Before John could greet her, Aeryn froze mid-punch, having heard D's cries. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, centering herself. She stripped off her sports bra. “Give him here.”
John passed D'Argo into his mother's waiting arms. “You wanna talk?”
“What's there to talk about?” D began to nurse. “I have a brother. And he's Braca. Just another cosmic joke at my expense.” She readjusted her hold on D. “I don't... I don't even know what it means to have a brother. To be someone's sister. I've just barely learned what it is to be a mother. And now I have this whole other person who I have to reconcile my life with. What good is a sibling to a Peacekeeper?”
“I guess that's something you have to figure out for yourself,” John said. “You can make that relationship whatever you want. It's up to you. You and Braca. Don't worry about what me and Scorpius are gonna think. I'm okay with whatever you decide... If you want to be in Braca's life, I'm right there with you. If you want Braca to be part of our family, D'Argo would love an uncle. If you want to tell Braca to go frell himself with a qualta blade...”
-
From navigation, Scorpius watched Braca run through defensive maneuvers in his prowler. Despite Braca's (deserved) reputation as a bureaucrat, the man was a rather skilled pilot. Scorpius supposed that he now knew why. Although, he didn't put much stock in genetic determinism. Or behavioral conditioning, for that matter. If people were shaped by nature versus nurture, Scorpius was frelled either way. So was Braca. Perhaps that was why Scorpius noticed him, picking him out of the ranks to be his left hand. It was not often one met another person raised in a single room as a genetic experiment.
Scorpius could feel a similar bond between himself and the girl-child currently resting on one of the consoles. They both knew what it was like to be born out of an unforgivable act of violence, but perhaps Mirwa could avoid wasting her cycles on a destructive and altogether pointless mission to avenge that act of violence. Hopefully, Mirwa would spend her young adulthood in a haze of rough sex and recreational drugs rather than turning in early to study wormhole mechanics. (Scorpius suspected that was an inappropriate wish to have for a monen-old child, who for all intents and purposes, was his offspring. Scorpius practically sired her himself, setting into a motion a series of unforeseeable events that resulted in her conception.)
Outside, Braca pulled out of a barrel roll and edged back into Moya's docking bay-even though he was only halfway through his exercises. Scorpius had never known Braca to stray from routine. Prior to that day, Scorpius might have said that Braca was pathologically incapable of deviating from the regimens hammered into him as a child. Of course, as of a few solar days ago, Scorpius would have also said that Braca was unlikely to steal a baby out of some paternal, protective instinct. Braca, apparently, had unknown depths.
Cognizant of one of those emerging depths, Scorpius grabbed Mirwa and hauled her down to the docking bay, getting there just in time to see Braca remove his helmet. Scorpius watched as Braca's face visibly brightened when he saw them.
“I assume this is what you came in for,” Scorpius said, holding out Mirwa.
Braca took the infant, cradling her closer than was purely necessary. “How was she?”
“Good. She slept. The pain medication is making her drowsy.”
“Thank you for watching her.”
“Your gratitude-” Scorpius slinked behind Braca “-while appreciated-” he pressed himself against Braca, chest to back “-is hardly necessary.” Scorpius reached around, resting a hand on Mirwa's head before biting down on Braca's neck-hard.
-
“Where was that door?” Staanz asked when Stark came back into Pilot's den. “You were gone for almost an arn.”
“Ektra. I borrowed the ship.”
“Ektra is two arns away at hetch seven,” Pilot said, “which is far beyond the capabilities of your ship.”
“I might have frozen time on Moya.” Stark mumbled as an afterthought, “Or the entire universe.”
“Don't let Crichton know you did that,” Staanz said. “You know he's none too fond of you messing with time and I do not want to sit through another one of his deranged rants.” She smiled self-consciously as Stark. “Not that I have anything against deranged rants. His are no way as good as yours.”
“I don't care what Crichton thinks. Crichton does not understand. Crichton never-never-never-”
Staanz interrupted, “That wasn't me asking for a deranged rant.”
Stark shook his head. “Crichton... This isn't wormholes. It's not science. I-I am not a man of science. This... this is power. I have the power. Me, my child. We have the power streaming from our fingertips.” Indeed, time was dripping from Stark's fingers like soap bubbles. Little temporal spheres hit the floor and popped. “I've had power my entire life-terrible, wonderful power-but I never used it. Not for anything that helped. Other people-it was everyone else who used my power-the slavers, the Scarrans, Scorpius, Zhaan, Crichton, Aeryn, Sikozu, the Eidolons. But today-it's different, I know now. Everything I can do. It's better. I am better. I have the power and no one is going to use it but me. And I am going to use it.”
“Baby, you're getting a case of the crazy eye.”
“Am I scaring you?” Stark growled.
“Naw. To be honest, I'm getting a little turned on.”
“Good.” Stark grabbed the back of her head, bringing her in for a kiss that made her see stars. Staanz wasn't sure if those were metaphorical stars or actual stars brought into her sight by a new superpower of Stark's.
Pilot coughed. “That's all very well, but you can't keep manipulating time like this. I must profess an academic interest in your abilities, but altering the flow of time is unethical. People have a right to experience time naturally.”
“People have a right...” Stark let go off Staanz and stalked over to Pilot's console. “People have a right. Where were my rights when I was torn from my mother? When I was sold again and again. Put in the chair-the chair!-again and again. When the people I loved raped my mind?” Stark grasped Pilot's claw. “Where were your and Moya's rights when you were forced to bond? When you were enslaved by the Peacekeepers? When Crais stole her child? When they led Talyn to the command carrier like a negnik to the slaughter?” He clasped Pilot's claw to his cheek. “Rights don't mean a lot to people like us. But we can change that. I have the power now. It's my destiny.”
-
Aeryn didn't know how being a sibling was going to work, if she was even going to give it a try, but she knew that she wasn't going to figure it out on her own. Now that she'd cooled off, she could appreciate that she and Braca were at least in this confusing mess together. She sought him out, at first over comms but when he wouldn't respond she tracked him down on foot. She found him sitting on the terrace surrounded by stars and datachips. On a holoprojector, a familiar video played.
“My name is Xhalax Sun. I'm your mother. But you mustn't reveal to anyone that I was here. Do you understand? I came to tell you something. Aeryn, your life was not an accident and it wasn't an assigned birthing to fill the ranks. Talyn-that's your father's name-he and I chose to have you. You were conceived in love. Our love. I wanted you to know this. It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you. Go back to sleep now.”
Braca rewound the clip.
“Aeryn, your life was not an accident and it wasn't an assigned birthing to fill the ranks. Talyn-that's your father's name-he and I chose to have you. You were conceived in love. Our love. I wanted you to know this. It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you.”
“It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
Unable to take Braca doing this to himself, Aeryn spoke up, “Braca.”
He flinched, surprised at her presence. “What?”
“I came to talk.”
“I don't want to talk.”
She walked closer to him. “Will you listen then?” Aeryn took Braca's silence as a yes. “I know that in the past we've had our differences.” That was putting it lightly. “You've tried to kill me and the people I love, but I'm willing to look past that because you're my brother and, as I understand it, if it weren't for you, I never would have been born.”
Staring down at a data projection, Braca said, “And as I understand it, if it weren't for you, I would have two living parents right now.”
Aeryn got the impression that Braca said that with the express intent of hurting her, but rose to the bait anyway. “And if it weren't for me, your daughter would be dead right now. So I guess that makes us even.”
“And I am grateful,” Braca said and the words seemed to kill him. “But not so grateful that I can tolerate you coming in here and acting like my conception was some miraculous event that gave rise to the radiant Aeryn Sun. Because it wasn't.”
“That's not what I meant. I was only saying that to-”
“Make me feel better? You've really gone soft out here.”
“And you haven't?”
It was a cheap shot and Aeryn wasn't surprised when Braca took one of his own, dragging her down the terrace's sloped deck by her ankle. He caught her head before it hit the ground, pulling tightly on her braid. “You have no idea what these past four days have been like for me.”
She could have just as easily freed herself (Braca was never that skilled at hand-to-hand), but needing somehow the closeness to him, she grabbed a fistful of his hair. “So, tell me,” she said like it was a challenge.
“What?”
“Tell me about it.”
Braca shook his head, glaring at her indignantly. “It's been dren. How the frell else would it be?”
“Why is it dren?”
“Well, let's see, Sun,” he snarked. “I found out I fathered a child with a woman I loathe and that she used me as her own personal frell toy for a cycle. I almost died. A giant frelling needle was shoved up my spine to save me. I stole a baby, became... attached to it, and then find out she's slowly dying. When I go to get her cured, I run into a former lover who betrayed me to the Scarrans who now knows what exactly went on while she and Scorpius were playing grab-eema in Tormented Space. And now-now-I find out I'm the unwanted offspring of the only Peacekeepers to ever procreate out of love.”
Aeryn loosened her grip on his hair. “You can't know that they didn't want you.”
Braca huffed, letting go of Aeryn's braid. He reached across Aeryn and handed her a datapod. “Read that.”
She released his hair and sat up. As she activated the datapod, Braca turned away from her, gazing out at the stars with his knees hugged to his chest. She scanned the datapod's projection for any mention of her parents. “After four unsuccessful attempts, gamete donors Lyczac and Sun (previously unknown to each other) were able to conceive,” she read. “Two solar days after their last round in the mating chamber, the viable embryo was removed from Sun and implanted into gestater Amil Braca. For their service, Lyczac and Sun both received commendations...”
Understanding now, Aeryn turned off the datapod. “Braca... just because they didn't have a choice in your conception... that doesn't mean they didn't want you or that they didn't love you. You should know that better than anyone. You took one look at Mirwa and...”
“They never looked at me. They never met me. They never tucked me in at night.”
“To be fair, you did grow up in a box.”
“True. They probably didn't even know my name for the same reason I never knew theirs. Information about the other participants would skew the results of the experiment.”
“For what it's worth, I met Xhalax-and Talyn, in a way-and there was nothing there for me. She told me that she loved me once and it killed both her and Talyn.” Aeryn felt strange saying the next part because she had wished so many awful things on Braca over the cycles. “I... I wouldn't want that for you.”
Braca leaned back, resting himself on Aeryn's side. “Still. It would have been nice to know that somebody...” He hovered around the word 'love.' “The way I... feel about Mirwa, no one is going to ever feel that way about me.”
This was as a good a moment as any. “I can't be your mother and I can't promise to love you, but I'm willing to try to figure out what it means to be someone's sister.”
“Aeryn... If you're looking at me for some small piece of your parents or yourself, you're not going to find it. I am, in the late Captain Crais' words, a 'consummate Peacekeeper' and you're Aeryn Sun. Whatever gene that coded for rebellion either passed me by or was conditioned-what?”
Aeryn calmed her laughter. “You recreated (rather flagrantly) with a half-breed. You stole a baby. I'm sure you've surpassed whatever rebellious standard was set by our parents.”
“And look what it got me,” he murmured. “Aeryn...” He looked over his shoulder at her, their faces mere intons apart. “You do not want to be my sister.”
She laughed. “I know.”
“You don't-” He sighed. “Aeryn, if the Peacekeepers learn that we are siblings-and I have no doubt that they're staging an inquiry into my genetic profile after our... heist-you and your offspring will be in grave danger.”
“Braca?”
He looked away. “My genetic experiment was discontinued retroactively. I was scheduled to be terminated, but Scorpius...”
“He rescued you?”
“We rescued each other. And Triskel and Pilot. We blackmailed Grayza into belaying my termination order and giving us a vessel. I imagine she didn't want us to have a ship with weapons. Now that she's dead, I'll be shot on sight. As my direct descendent, so would Mirwa. I don't know the policy about siblings and nephews, but given the Peacekeepers' fascination with genetic determinism, I imagine the total incineration order would extend to you and D'Argo.”
“Having the Peacekeepers after me and my people is hardly new.”
“This is different. You will not be captured. They will kill you.”
“Well, that's exactly what I needed to hear.” Aeryn reclined, slumping her shoulder against Braca's back.
“We should probably go our separate ways. Together, we'll draw even more unnecessary attention.”
“Frell, you sound like a character is one of Crichton's scary Earth films. Have you forgotten all of your training?” Aeryn recited, “'Together we're better.'”
“'Apart we're dead,'” Braca finished. “I never placed much stock in that until recently.”
“You found people to be better together with.” Like Crichton, like D'Argo, like Zhaan, Chiana, Rygel, Pilot...
“And now I'm apart from one of them and I do not like it. I won't do it again.”
“I know what it's like to lose people, but the answer isn't to stop being with them. I watched John die and it tore me apart, but-”
“You got another one.”
“I did. I risked losing him all over again, because being together for however brief a time is infinitely better than being apart.” If emotional overtures wouldn't work, then maybe cold Peacekeeper logic. “We're Peacekeepers. We're not meant to be on our own. Not ever. We're safer together. I watch your back and you watch mine. We'll be a unit.”
He pulled away from her. “I've never been much good at being part of a unit.”
“I know. We were briefed, remember? But maybe you can learn.”
“And you'll be my teacher?” he scoffed.
“And you'll be mine.”
“That's not how teaching works.”
“You are so obstinate.” Don't make me beg; I need this. I need us. Aeryn looked out at the stars, wondering how far she would go for him, and decided to try a familiar approach. “Ever since he left Earth, Crichton has been working on a star chart. Everywhere we go, he adds to it. He even has his own names for the stars.”
“They already have names.”
“He knows. He likes his better.” She pointed out at the sky. “See that one? The brightest star. That one he named Aeryn. It's his point of reference. Everywhere he goes, he centers himself around that one star.”
Braca snorted. “How romantic.”
“The things is, and I've never had the heart to tell Crichton this, Aeryn is actually two stars, the Hitark system. Two stars born from the same interstellar matter, always together, constantly sharing mass, made the brightest in the sky because they're together.”
“Is that supposed to be a metaphor?”
“You can read into it what you will.”
“This is completely fahrbot.”
Aeryn shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“I'm not sure I can.”
“I can help. I know what it's like-”
A cough came from behind them. “Hi.” Staanz waved. “Hate to interrupt Peacekeeper bonding time, but Stark need to have a little chat with you all down in command.”
“Can it wait?” Aeryn asked. “We're in the middle of something.”
“No. It's sort of important. Maybe the most important thing ever.” Staanz grinned. “I'm excited. Can you tell?”
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Chapter Title: Better Together, Part 1
Author: katiemariie
Artist & Beta: subluxate
Fandom: Farscape
Word Count: 4645
Rating: R
Warnings: Strong language, references to past non-con, violence
“There comes a time in a man's life that you cannot know. When he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and realizes he must change the world for her. For all children. It is for her that I am here.”
-Jarok, “The Defector,” Star Trek: the Next Generation
-
Crichton was oddly insistent that everyone stay just one more night, saying they were all too tired to do anything but hunker down for the night. Moving baby furniture out of the transport pods would wait for tomorrow. Staanz could've used the distraction. Setting up their happy home might have let her forget that her family could be torn apart by any two-credit slaver out to make a quick turn-around. Instead, she and Stark were confined to quarters to think about all that happened on the commerce planet.
“It's never going to stop,” Stark said, his head resting in Staanz' lap. “It'll happen again and again and again.”
“The Peacekeepers will be gunning for us now after what you did to Grayza.”
“I'd do it again. And again. And again.” He reached up, stroking Staanz' cheek. “I'd do whatever I could to keep us together.”
“So would I.” She kissed his palm. “There has to be someplace we can hide. Someplace safe.”
“From my time on Moya, I learned that nowhere is safe when the Peacekeepers are after you. They will always find you. And as long as my people are slaves...” He didn't have to finish.
-
“Are you sure now's the best time?” John asked.
“You acquired the DNA results. Triskel's Pilot unencrypted the data chip,” Scorpius answered. “I see no reason for waiting.”
“Sikozu said to wait.”
“And we did.”
“For twelve arns! You really think that's enough downtime to keep Braca's brain from going Chernobyl when Maury tells him Talyn Lyczac's the daddy?”
“Yes, and the longer we keep this from them, the more... hyperbolic their reactions will be. We cannot afford to allow their shock and confusion to redirected as anger towards us.”
“Right. For our mivonks' sakes.” John narrowed his eyes. “You do have mivonks, right?” He shook his head. “Don't tell me. I don't need to know. I don't wanna know.”
Scorpius didn't look inclined to tell, gesturing to the kitchen. “Shall we?”
“We don't seem to have much of a choice.”
They ducked into the kitchen and prepared to address their audience. “So.” John put his hands on his hips. “You're probably both wondering why we asked you here.”
Braca and Aeryn looked down at their plates and up at John with frighteningly similar “Crichton, you blithering Human idiot” expressions. “For breakfast,” Aeryn said.
“Yes, and...” John turned a chair round backwards and sat, leaning forward. “There's no easy way of saying this.” He sighed. “When we were in the genetic vault, I saw Braca's file-just for a microt-and it said something I couldn't believe, but it's true. It's freakishly, improbably, inconveniently true. Me and Scorpy have been running around these past two days trying to prove that it wasn't, but...”
“Am I dying?” Braca asked, like death was another tedious duty ordered by high command.
“You're not dying. You're not sick. You're... Aeryn's brother.”
“What?”
“You're joking,” Aeryn said.
“No. I wish I was.”
“How is that possible?” she asked. “Xhalax never mentioned him.”
“I am a genetic experiment,” Braca said, reassuring himself.
“Xhalax Sun and Talyn Lyczac were listed as your gamete donors,” Scorpius explained. “The embryo they created was implanted into a woman bred for command, Amil Braca. By implanting an embryo with pilot DNA into a command fetal environment, the genetic counsel hoped to create a pilot-commander hybrid. Their efforts appear to have been successful.”
“Xhalax and Talyn must have met during the experiment,” John said.
“They did more than meet,” Braca murmured, wiping his mouth. He stood from the table. “Excuse me.” He brushed past Scorpius on his way out of the kitchen. “Watch Mirwa. I'm going flying.”
Aeryn watched him leave, her face blank.
“Aeryn...” John said.
She blinked. “I need to...” She stood, wiping her hands on her pants. She staggered out of the kitchen. “I'll be in the gym if D needs me.”
-
“Thank you for coming,” Pilot said, truly meaning it. Stark and Staanz looked so depressed that they hardly seemed able to get out of bed, let alone walk down to his den. Of course, being largely immobile, Pilot was perhaps not the best person to judge anyone's activity level. “I would not have called you here if it wasn't important.”
Stark and Staanz stared at him silently as they leaned on each other, both keeping a careful hand on Zev. Pilot wasn't used to having this much space to talk. Typically, when people came to his den, they had urgent words and demands. He didn't receive that many social calls.
“I have been reviewing the energy anomalies that occurred while you and others had visions of someone dying. Upon closer study, those anomalies bear close resemblance to readings I took while you were practicing with Braca in the kitchen-specifically when you made the timer go backwards in time.” If either of them were feeling up to it, this would be the point in which Stark or Staanz would ask why this mattered or tell Pilot to get on with it. “I don't think you were having visions. I believe you were rewinding time involuntarily out of a strong emotional reaction to a person's death. They weren't visions; they were memories.”
“I didn't just have visions,” Stark finally spoke up. “Occasionally, I would just hear someone die. “
“How do you explain that?” Staanz asked.
“Well,” Pilot said, “perhaps, you needed to know how to manipulate time without seeing. How else could you teach Zev to do the same?”
“That doesn't make any sense,” Stark said. “How could I know that? I didn't know Zev was blind until yesterday.”
“Stark, you have an effortless control over the fourth dimension. I assume the normal standards of temporal linearity and casualty no longer apply to you.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Staanz said. “Say Stark is making backwards time bubbles to bring people back to life. Wouldn't they remember being in that bubble?”
“They do. I remember quite distinctly dying when Moya and Triskel collided.”
“But Braca doesn't remember me killing him,” Stark said. “And Scorpius doesn't remember trying to kill me after.”
“Good thing, too,” Staanz said. “He would've killed you all over again.”
“Perhaps that's the reason why he doesn't remember,” Pilot guessed. “Stark instinctively rewound time so that he wouldn't die. If Scorpius and Braca retained their memories of the time erased, they would have killed Stark, so Stark naturally did not being their memories back in time.” This really wasn't Pilot's area of expertise, but he tried his best to fake his way through the metaphysical dren. “Stark reset their consciousness to the point in time he returned to. This suggests that Stark can manipulate how bodies and minds experience time. He could possibly erase his own memory or even be in two places at once.”
“Two places at once?” Stark asked.
“Yes. As it stands, whenever you time-travel, your consciousness and body stay in a fixed position, either staying in one spot as time goes forward or sticking to a set of past events that have already occurred when you rewind time. If you master the manipulation of your body and consciousness through time, you could possibly move beyond these fixed positions and cross your own timeline.”
“I could change the past?”
“Conceivably, but if you altered the past too radically, you would risk erasing your present self-the you that traveled in time to correct something would never exist because nothing would need to be corrected.” Pilot thought for a moment. “You might have already done that several times by now. You could have gone back in time from a future that now doesn't exist and changed your past so that this present occurs. Your future self would have disappeared, but the version of you affected by that change would live on to reach this moment.”
“I doubt that. If I had changed my past, pre-determining the course of my life, I would not be here right now.”
“Did you just say that if you could change the past, you wouldn't choose to be here. married to me and father of my child?” Staanz asked waving a finger in Stark's face.
Stark grabbed her finger and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Of course not. I love you, I need you both. If I could do what Pilot says I can, I'd only ever use it to keep us together.”
“You might have already,” Pilot muttered.
“What?”
“You might have already used your power to keep you and your family together. A future version of yourself could have gone back in time to manipulate events to keep you from being separated.”
“How would he know when to go back or what to do?” Staanz asked.
“I assume he would know because those events already happened to him.”
“Whatever happened, happened?”
“Yes. Or from Stark's point of view, 'whatever happened, will happen.'”
“Whatever happened, will happen,” Stark murmured. “What happened, will happen.” He handed Zev over to Staanz like a sack of breadstuffs. “I have to go.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the door with more purpose than Pilot had ever seen within him.
“Babe,” Staanz called, “where are you going?”
“I have to go unlock a door.”
-
John knew Aeryn needed space after that bombshell he dropped with way less finesse and care than he should have. But D was hungry, and their expressed milk reservoir was tapped, and John knew Aeryn would wear out all their punching bags if he left her to it.
Before John could greet her, Aeryn froze mid-punch, having heard D's cries. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, centering herself. She stripped off her sports bra. “Give him here.”
John passed D'Argo into his mother's waiting arms. “You wanna talk?”
“What's there to talk about?” D began to nurse. “I have a brother. And he's Braca. Just another cosmic joke at my expense.” She readjusted her hold on D. “I don't... I don't even know what it means to have a brother. To be someone's sister. I've just barely learned what it is to be a mother. And now I have this whole other person who I have to reconcile my life with. What good is a sibling to a Peacekeeper?”
“I guess that's something you have to figure out for yourself,” John said. “You can make that relationship whatever you want. It's up to you. You and Braca. Don't worry about what me and Scorpius are gonna think. I'm okay with whatever you decide... If you want to be in Braca's life, I'm right there with you. If you want Braca to be part of our family, D'Argo would love an uncle. If you want to tell Braca to go frell himself with a qualta blade...”
-
From navigation, Scorpius watched Braca run through defensive maneuvers in his prowler. Despite Braca's (deserved) reputation as a bureaucrat, the man was a rather skilled pilot. Scorpius supposed that he now knew why. Although, he didn't put much stock in genetic determinism. Or behavioral conditioning, for that matter. If people were shaped by nature versus nurture, Scorpius was frelled either way. So was Braca. Perhaps that was why Scorpius noticed him, picking him out of the ranks to be his left hand. It was not often one met another person raised in a single room as a genetic experiment.
Scorpius could feel a similar bond between himself and the girl-child currently resting on one of the consoles. They both knew what it was like to be born out of an unforgivable act of violence, but perhaps Mirwa could avoid wasting her cycles on a destructive and altogether pointless mission to avenge that act of violence. Hopefully, Mirwa would spend her young adulthood in a haze of rough sex and recreational drugs rather than turning in early to study wormhole mechanics. (Scorpius suspected that was an inappropriate wish to have for a monen-old child, who for all intents and purposes, was his offspring. Scorpius practically sired her himself, setting into a motion a series of unforeseeable events that resulted in her conception.)
Outside, Braca pulled out of a barrel roll and edged back into Moya's docking bay-even though he was only halfway through his exercises. Scorpius had never known Braca to stray from routine. Prior to that day, Scorpius might have said that Braca was pathologically incapable of deviating from the regimens hammered into him as a child. Of course, as of a few solar days ago, Scorpius would have also said that Braca was unlikely to steal a baby out of some paternal, protective instinct. Braca, apparently, had unknown depths.
Cognizant of one of those emerging depths, Scorpius grabbed Mirwa and hauled her down to the docking bay, getting there just in time to see Braca remove his helmet. Scorpius watched as Braca's face visibly brightened when he saw them.
“I assume this is what you came in for,” Scorpius said, holding out Mirwa.
Braca took the infant, cradling her closer than was purely necessary. “How was she?”
“Good. She slept. The pain medication is making her drowsy.”
“Thank you for watching her.”
“Your gratitude-” Scorpius slinked behind Braca “-while appreciated-” he pressed himself against Braca, chest to back “-is hardly necessary.” Scorpius reached around, resting a hand on Mirwa's head before biting down on Braca's neck-hard.
-
“Where was that door?” Staanz asked when Stark came back into Pilot's den. “You were gone for almost an arn.”
“Ektra. I borrowed the ship.”
“Ektra is two arns away at hetch seven,” Pilot said, “which is far beyond the capabilities of your ship.”
“I might have frozen time on Moya.” Stark mumbled as an afterthought, “Or the entire universe.”
“Don't let Crichton know you did that,” Staanz said. “You know he's none too fond of you messing with time and I do not want to sit through another one of his deranged rants.” She smiled self-consciously as Stark. “Not that I have anything against deranged rants. His are no way as good as yours.”
“I don't care what Crichton thinks. Crichton does not understand. Crichton never-never-never-”
Staanz interrupted, “That wasn't me asking for a deranged rant.”
Stark shook his head. “Crichton... This isn't wormholes. It's not science. I-I am not a man of science. This... this is power. I have the power. Me, my child. We have the power streaming from our fingertips.” Indeed, time was dripping from Stark's fingers like soap bubbles. Little temporal spheres hit the floor and popped. “I've had power my entire life-terrible, wonderful power-but I never used it. Not for anything that helped. Other people-it was everyone else who used my power-the slavers, the Scarrans, Scorpius, Zhaan, Crichton, Aeryn, Sikozu, the Eidolons. But today-it's different, I know now. Everything I can do. It's better. I am better. I have the power and no one is going to use it but me. And I am going to use it.”
“Baby, you're getting a case of the crazy eye.”
“Am I scaring you?” Stark growled.
“Naw. To be honest, I'm getting a little turned on.”
“Good.” Stark grabbed the back of her head, bringing her in for a kiss that made her see stars. Staanz wasn't sure if those were metaphorical stars or actual stars brought into her sight by a new superpower of Stark's.
Pilot coughed. “That's all very well, but you can't keep manipulating time like this. I must profess an academic interest in your abilities, but altering the flow of time is unethical. People have a right to experience time naturally.”
“People have a right...” Stark let go off Staanz and stalked over to Pilot's console. “People have a right. Where were my rights when I was torn from my mother? When I was sold again and again. Put in the chair-the chair!-again and again. When the people I loved raped my mind?” Stark grasped Pilot's claw. “Where were your and Moya's rights when you were forced to bond? When you were enslaved by the Peacekeepers? When Crais stole her child? When they led Talyn to the command carrier like a negnik to the slaughter?” He clasped Pilot's claw to his cheek. “Rights don't mean a lot to people like us. But we can change that. I have the power now. It's my destiny.”
-
Aeryn didn't know how being a sibling was going to work, if she was even going to give it a try, but she knew that she wasn't going to figure it out on her own. Now that she'd cooled off, she could appreciate that she and Braca were at least in this confusing mess together. She sought him out, at first over comms but when he wouldn't respond she tracked him down on foot. She found him sitting on the terrace surrounded by stars and datachips. On a holoprojector, a familiar video played.
“My name is Xhalax Sun. I'm your mother. But you mustn't reveal to anyone that I was here. Do you understand? I came to tell you something. Aeryn, your life was not an accident and it wasn't an assigned birthing to fill the ranks. Talyn-that's your father's name-he and I chose to have you. You were conceived in love. Our love. I wanted you to know this. It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you. Go back to sleep now.”
Braca rewound the clip.
“Aeryn, your life was not an accident and it wasn't an assigned birthing to fill the ranks. Talyn-that's your father's name-he and I chose to have you. You were conceived in love. Our love. I wanted you to know this. It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you.”
“It makes you special. We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
“We wanted you and we love you.”
Unable to take Braca doing this to himself, Aeryn spoke up, “Braca.”
He flinched, surprised at her presence. “What?”
“I came to talk.”
“I don't want to talk.”
She walked closer to him. “Will you listen then?” Aeryn took Braca's silence as a yes. “I know that in the past we've had our differences.” That was putting it lightly. “You've tried to kill me and the people I love, but I'm willing to look past that because you're my brother and, as I understand it, if it weren't for you, I never would have been born.”
Staring down at a data projection, Braca said, “And as I understand it, if it weren't for you, I would have two living parents right now.”
Aeryn got the impression that Braca said that with the express intent of hurting her, but rose to the bait anyway. “And if it weren't for me, your daughter would be dead right now. So I guess that makes us even.”
“And I am grateful,” Braca said and the words seemed to kill him. “But not so grateful that I can tolerate you coming in here and acting like my conception was some miraculous event that gave rise to the radiant Aeryn Sun. Because it wasn't.”
“That's not what I meant. I was only saying that to-”
“Make me feel better? You've really gone soft out here.”
“And you haven't?”
It was a cheap shot and Aeryn wasn't surprised when Braca took one of his own, dragging her down the terrace's sloped deck by her ankle. He caught her head before it hit the ground, pulling tightly on her braid. “You have no idea what these past four days have been like for me.”
She could have just as easily freed herself (Braca was never that skilled at hand-to-hand), but needing somehow the closeness to him, she grabbed a fistful of his hair. “So, tell me,” she said like it was a challenge.
“What?”
“Tell me about it.”
Braca shook his head, glaring at her indignantly. “It's been dren. How the frell else would it be?”
“Why is it dren?”
“Well, let's see, Sun,” he snarked. “I found out I fathered a child with a woman I loathe and that she used me as her own personal frell toy for a cycle. I almost died. A giant frelling needle was shoved up my spine to save me. I stole a baby, became... attached to it, and then find out she's slowly dying. When I go to get her cured, I run into a former lover who betrayed me to the Scarrans who now knows what exactly went on while she and Scorpius were playing grab-eema in Tormented Space. And now-now-I find out I'm the unwanted offspring of the only Peacekeepers to ever procreate out of love.”
Aeryn loosened her grip on his hair. “You can't know that they didn't want you.”
Braca huffed, letting go of Aeryn's braid. He reached across Aeryn and handed her a datapod. “Read that.”
She released his hair and sat up. As she activated the datapod, Braca turned away from her, gazing out at the stars with his knees hugged to his chest. She scanned the datapod's projection for any mention of her parents. “After four unsuccessful attempts, gamete donors Lyczac and Sun (previously unknown to each other) were able to conceive,” she read. “Two solar days after their last round in the mating chamber, the viable embryo was removed from Sun and implanted into gestater Amil Braca. For their service, Lyczac and Sun both received commendations...”
Understanding now, Aeryn turned off the datapod. “Braca... just because they didn't have a choice in your conception... that doesn't mean they didn't want you or that they didn't love you. You should know that better than anyone. You took one look at Mirwa and...”
“They never looked at me. They never met me. They never tucked me in at night.”
“To be fair, you did grow up in a box.”
“True. They probably didn't even know my name for the same reason I never knew theirs. Information about the other participants would skew the results of the experiment.”
“For what it's worth, I met Xhalax-and Talyn, in a way-and there was nothing there for me. She told me that she loved me once and it killed both her and Talyn.” Aeryn felt strange saying the next part because she had wished so many awful things on Braca over the cycles. “I... I wouldn't want that for you.”
Braca leaned back, resting himself on Aeryn's side. “Still. It would have been nice to know that somebody...” He hovered around the word 'love.' “The way I... feel about Mirwa, no one is going to ever feel that way about me.”
This was as a good a moment as any. “I can't be your mother and I can't promise to love you, but I'm willing to try to figure out what it means to be someone's sister.”
“Aeryn... If you're looking at me for some small piece of your parents or yourself, you're not going to find it. I am, in the late Captain Crais' words, a 'consummate Peacekeeper' and you're Aeryn Sun. Whatever gene that coded for rebellion either passed me by or was conditioned-what?”
Aeryn calmed her laughter. “You recreated (rather flagrantly) with a half-breed. You stole a baby. I'm sure you've surpassed whatever rebellious standard was set by our parents.”
“And look what it got me,” he murmured. “Aeryn...” He looked over his shoulder at her, their faces mere intons apart. “You do not want to be my sister.”
She laughed. “I know.”
“You don't-” He sighed. “Aeryn, if the Peacekeepers learn that we are siblings-and I have no doubt that they're staging an inquiry into my genetic profile after our... heist-you and your offspring will be in grave danger.”
“Braca?”
He looked away. “My genetic experiment was discontinued retroactively. I was scheduled to be terminated, but Scorpius...”
“He rescued you?”
“We rescued each other. And Triskel and Pilot. We blackmailed Grayza into belaying my termination order and giving us a vessel. I imagine she didn't want us to have a ship with weapons. Now that she's dead, I'll be shot on sight. As my direct descendent, so would Mirwa. I don't know the policy about siblings and nephews, but given the Peacekeepers' fascination with genetic determinism, I imagine the total incineration order would extend to you and D'Argo.”
“Having the Peacekeepers after me and my people is hardly new.”
“This is different. You will not be captured. They will kill you.”
“Well, that's exactly what I needed to hear.” Aeryn reclined, slumping her shoulder against Braca's back.
“We should probably go our separate ways. Together, we'll draw even more unnecessary attention.”
“Frell, you sound like a character is one of Crichton's scary Earth films. Have you forgotten all of your training?” Aeryn recited, “'Together we're better.'”
“'Apart we're dead,'” Braca finished. “I never placed much stock in that until recently.”
“You found people to be better together with.” Like Crichton, like D'Argo, like Zhaan, Chiana, Rygel, Pilot...
“And now I'm apart from one of them and I do not like it. I won't do it again.”
“I know what it's like to lose people, but the answer isn't to stop being with them. I watched John die and it tore me apart, but-”
“You got another one.”
“I did. I risked losing him all over again, because being together for however brief a time is infinitely better than being apart.” If emotional overtures wouldn't work, then maybe cold Peacekeeper logic. “We're Peacekeepers. We're not meant to be on our own. Not ever. We're safer together. I watch your back and you watch mine. We'll be a unit.”
He pulled away from her. “I've never been much good at being part of a unit.”
“I know. We were briefed, remember? But maybe you can learn.”
“And you'll be my teacher?” he scoffed.
“And you'll be mine.”
“That's not how teaching works.”
“You are so obstinate.” Don't make me beg; I need this. I need us. Aeryn looked out at the stars, wondering how far she would go for him, and decided to try a familiar approach. “Ever since he left Earth, Crichton has been working on a star chart. Everywhere we go, he adds to it. He even has his own names for the stars.”
“They already have names.”
“He knows. He likes his better.” She pointed out at the sky. “See that one? The brightest star. That one he named Aeryn. It's his point of reference. Everywhere he goes, he centers himself around that one star.”
Braca snorted. “How romantic.”
“The things is, and I've never had the heart to tell Crichton this, Aeryn is actually two stars, the Hitark system. Two stars born from the same interstellar matter, always together, constantly sharing mass, made the brightest in the sky because they're together.”
“Is that supposed to be a metaphor?”
“You can read into it what you will.”
“This is completely fahrbot.”
Aeryn shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“I'm not sure I can.”
“I can help. I know what it's like-”
A cough came from behind them. “Hi.” Staanz waved. “Hate to interrupt Peacekeeper bonding time, but Stark need to have a little chat with you all down in command.”
“Can it wait?” Aeryn asked. “We're in the middle of something.”
“No. It's sort of important. Maybe the most important thing ever.” Staanz grinned. “I'm excited. Can you tell?”
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