Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He sneaks through the door, being chased by the first scream of the day, they start off as gurgles, then grow to whistles, then amplifies like a megaphone, loud enough to cause feedback.  The sound chases his thumping boots through the hallway, as he stealthy escapes the jail cell which is his family’s room which was originally a jail cell. It wasn’t his turn. It was his turn, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to admit it. It’s always his freaking turn and he does the doting husband/father thing, reaching over the edge of the bed he and Aeryn can barely fit on—been meaning to move another bed in because married couples haven’t slept in separate rooms since Leave it to Beaver—and rocks the space bassinet. It’s almost like a normal bassinet, but since they’re in space it’s a space bassinet, which just sounds cooler, because bassinets are not cool or manly or intimidating in any way, but a space bassinet sounds like it might be armed.

His space boots—same understanding—slide over Moya’s clean, but vengefully echoing hallways and he feels the rubber treads on the soles pull and flick with the friction because he’s trying so damn hard not to make a sound. Behind him the baby cries grow louder.

It wasn’t his turn—it definitely was his turn.

Three tiers later and he swears he can still hear the baby crying, the sound wafting through Moya’s internals and haunting him. He’s probably being tracked. Aeryn—with Deke in her arms, balling his little fists and screaming, just screaming because other than poop, that’s all he does. If he just keeps quiet he might have a chance—she’s going to find him, probably pretty soon—but the quieter he is, the longer he has alone.  

A large thunk echoes down the hallway from command, which should be empty during early morning sleeping time unless he’s hiding in there trying to escape their banshee of a son. When there were more people living on Moya, it was a busier place. Bad thoughts and bad feelings. The emptiness by the command controls, and no one to ask for advice when their son hasn’t gone to sleep for more than an hour.

Peeks around the corner to find Chiana stationary, feet unmoving but her body swerving like she’s hula hooping, back hyperextending, and she purrs with pride. In them middle of the table there’s a bulky object. It wasn’t there three hours ago when he went to bed—when he went to hang off the side of his bed with his eyes wide open.

“You scanning that thing for bugs?” He doesn’t know how her new eyes work, despite her telling him more than once. He’s either been too tired from lack of sleep or too preoccupied from lack of sleep. He just wants a little sleep. He just wants to sleep alone for one night.

Half expects her to start at his voice, old Chiana would’ve, would’ve growled something about privacy and how it’s only cool when she sneaks around. Would’ve Cheshire grinned at him and danced around him, only a little too close. She doesn’t even turn back to him, doesn’t even tense her shoulders. “Do you like it?”

“Well that depends.” He slips in behind her, lowering his head and viewing the thing from just over her shoulder. “What the hell is it?”

Perches her hands on her hip, knocking his chin away form her shoulder, and half grins while studying it with approval. “Do you think Rygel will know the difference?”

 “Again, that would depend on what the hell it is.” He turns back to the doorway—can’t linger in one place too long or Aeryn will smell blood on the wind—but in the dim light, his boot soccer kicks the table. It shudders and he stumbles before catching himself, less stealth now and more rodeo clown.

“Be careful.” Chiana steadies the table and wipes a finger down the outside of the jar—is it a jar? it kind of looks like a vase. It’s round, like a big jug or a planter for an indoor palm tree and it’s plugged with a stopper made of faint blueish crystals.

“I’m sorry, did I upset that giant eyesore?” Huffs and touches the side of it, expecting cool clay underneath his fingers but instead finds a dull warmth like a water bottle, like his side of his family’s makeshift, too small bed after he fear bolts from any sound close to crying. Crichtons don’t cry. Responsibilities are vast, galaxy vast, wormhole possibility vast and the tributaries that squiggle away from his central life line, the two major life events immediate and simultaneous as a war raged—he kept running at the time but now he’s got asthma and one hell of a charley horse.

“It’s not an eyesore you greebol, it’s a new hookah.”

He drags a finger over avocado sized indents until his fingers stop over two zen stones plugged in. They’re smooth and when he scratches at them, trying to pry them out with his nails he has no luck, it looks like a camp arts and craft project that no one finished.

“Awful generous of you to buy Rygel a new hookah, Pip.”  

“I broke the old one.”

“Yeah, there it is,” chuckles because he’s kind of been raising kids for the last four and a half years. Don’t break each other’s crap, stop stealing ingots from the universal supply, crackers don’t matter.

“It—it was an accident.” Chiana swings around the table, popping out from behind the hookah that obviously isn’t a hookah—no lines for smoke to come out, only rocks and crystals—picking her footsteps like someone pulled her over for a DUI. “I just—I’ve been having dreams about—well—I just needed something to take the edge off.”

“Chiana.” Her totter stops before him, and her head tilts to the side but her cat eyes cast to the floor. He’s still not used to the eyes, still not used to a lot of things. The room only offers a few white highlights from distant stars outside and they play across her skin. Hasn’t stopped to think about how she’s handling it, been too busy mishandling everything to notice. He covers the leather-like material on her shoulder with his hand, and his pinkie taps at her ice-cold skin. He speaks close to her, profile to profile, as they always do, and it might be because somehow she reminds him  a little of Liv. “That’s what the old lady is for,” he whispers and as she opens her mouth to question him, he leans away and shouts, “Hey Grandma.”

A whimper and thump answer him from the doorway, not Noranti, not who he was expecting, but who he so quickly forgot about while starlight galaxy dancing around a not hookah.

“What the frell are you doing.”

His lovely wife, dressed in one of his gray t-shirts and Calvin’s underwear, stands with widened hips and angled legs to impede his stampede by her. Their son, their little man with his head resting on her shoulder revs his engine and screams right in her ear, skipping a breath every now and again when he runs out. It’s so loud Moya may as well be tinged blue.  

“Honey, I was just—”

“It’s your turn to heed to his undying wails.”

He flings his arms up, landing somewhere between Shakespearean and childish, and runs a hand over his night sweat clammy face because it’s getting to the point that between recovering from creating a galaxy destroying wormhole and dealing with their son’s conniptions every two arns, he’s past full-blown insomniac. “It’s always my turn.”

“Because you always declare ‘double or nothing’.”

“Crichton,” Chiana growls, her walk a dizzying arc, her hands cotton balling her ears to the various noises his family bleat. “Deal with your narl.”

“Hey,” shouts after her as she slinks by his wife and down a hallway, naturally disappearing into Moya’s shadows. “Don’t leave your trash on the table.”

Aeryn advances from the doorway, lips pressing together in a perfect line of disappointment. She speaks in a low and steady, “You will take this child and you will not return to the room until he has settled.”

“Honey—”

“If this was a full blooded Sebacean child, he would be sleeping through the night.”

“Probably because the occurrence of shaken baby syndrome with peacekeeper night nurses is really high.” Her reaction isn’t what he hoped for, which is anything but the heavy-lidded glower she entered the room with. Since it became a necessity to be completely silent in the few precious moments while their son is asleep, they’ve been having more nonverbal fights, and he always loses those too. The grade school staring contest it reverts to throws him a loss because her composure is too good, her composure is scary as all hell and he think he’ll always lose because he loves her a little bit more

Without a word, without straying from her eyes—hardened by hanging off the other side of the too small bed—he uncrosses his arms and waves for their wailing son. “I thought Peacekeepers only needed three hours of sleep a night.”

“Your son—” her arms are cold as they brush against the tops of his, she shifts, black hair falling forward like a protective curtain and the tension in her muscles leaves when he cradles their son. “—makes me need more.”

“Our son.” He holds Deke the same way she does, head to shoulder. The little guy is always so warm, and it scares him. Babies and fevers. A half human baby in the depths of uncharted space with a space cold. The human and Sebacean parts of him fighting for dominance and cooling rods drilled into the soft spot on his little head.

He leans against the top of the table, careful not to drop the baby or the hookah and waits for Aeryn to leave so he and Deke can continue the dialogue they’ve been having since he was born. How Crichtons don’t cry that much or for very long and Deke’s newborn old man face turns red as he cries to spite him. Instead she balances beside him, her hand clasping the edge of the table, thumb touches his pinkie until he slides it away.

Aeryn sighs, because this is a battle they’ve been having for the last almost month. Responsibility. Does he have to change diapers? Does he have to do midnight feedings? The fact that Aeryn can’t breastfeed and has never even heard of breastfeeding doesn’t quiet help. Finding Sebacean baby chow in uncharted space is becoming more difficult—to find and explain—can’t exactly go around and parade their ex-peacekeeper and human wormhole weapons product of love. It’s a weird thing, love, he loves them both, but he’s fed up with them both so quickly now, spent the first week of their son’s life comatose and hasn’t really picked up slack since then, and he wonders why and doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Does this get easier, John?” Her voice now soft but identifiable over the weakening whimpers of their son, they all share the same weary face, the same skin brushed with gray sleeplessness and sudden rousing.  She tucks her hands between her thighs and the Calvin’s run up a bit on her pale legs. He’s married to her, which is beautiful and all he’s ever wanted while terrifying to no end. Where to go now, the edge of the universe, stare into the nothingness and welcome the madness. “If you tell me it gets easier, than it will be worth it.”

Everything he’s ever wanted is in his arms as he sits beside everything else he’s ever wanted. The thing is it happened to fast. They were gone and then back and eight days later—double the gestation period for any regular Peacekeeper as Aeryn keeps pointing out—they had a baby in the middle of Custard’s last freaking stand. He made a wormhole weapon and it was more exciting that anything happening right now. He was terrified but at least he was awake. “I don’t know, Aeryn.”

Her eyebrows crease and he figures she’ll slide closer, place a hand on his knee and give him those red hot tinglies that ended up giving them a son. But she doesn’t. Her hands clamp together and sit in her lap playing possum. Their eyes meet in the white highlights and hers shimmer with a layer of tears, her eyebrows slant to cut through the vulnerability. “John, if you don’t—”

The not hookah on the table glows like her hands clapped it on, and Deke falls silent for the first time since yesterday. Tiny balled fists relaxing into openhand high fives. Steadies their son’s heavy body on the table, propping him up with his hand and in the bask of the hookah’s luminescence, he falls asleep.

“Well now, all he needed was a nightlight,” he whispers, lips pulling into a grin, forgetting what he was just thinking, what Aeryn was about to ask him, chock one up to insomnia, boys. Despite the victory, a rueful grin still graces her face, half assed and barely meeting the corner of her mouth, she hasn’t forgotten. “Aeryn, look, I—"

There’s a rough metal clank as the two zen stones from earlier—buddah bribes or koi pond decos—tumble from where the last of the glue has finally space dissolved. The clack of stone to the metal tabletop and the immediate dispersal of the warm blue glow causes tiny baby eyes to blink back open. They’re not his eyes but probably see better than twenty-twenty. Tiny hands roll into dictatorish fists that begin their mechanized rotations through the air. A red, toothless, gum filfed mouth opens wide and the wailing returns.

“What did you do?” Aeryn is on her feet collecting the zen stones flipping them around in her hand. “What did you do?”

“You were looking right at me? What did I do?” he shouts and grabs a stone from her hand, flipping it around until it looks like he thinks it did while stuck in the hookah. “Just put them back.”

“How?”

“Do we have any glue?”

“What’s glue?”

“How do you not know what glue is. You’ve been to Earth.” He shifts his weight and get an earful of screaming right down his canal that gives him and instant headache and may actually tinge everything in blue. But it is better than getting thrown up on, he’s always getting thrown up on now.

“Look,” she halts him with a hand to his chest, his lips tucked into each other, his body bouncing Deke. She leans forward to place the stone in the same location. “Maybe they’re magnetized.”  

“Yeah, sure, magnetic stones.” He rolls his eyes and does the same and suddenly the white highlights devour them both.

He watches from the control deck as the Stargate bursts to life and collapses back in on itself. Two soldiers exit the blue gap. Walk side-by-side, each with an arm slung under a device, a familiar looking device and he wants to groan. Long-range communication device. Wishes Jackson came up with a better name. Something shorter. He hates this thing.

“Uh-uh, take it back.”

Vala appears on the transport deck despite this being an after-hours mission with a very high security clearance. She crosses her arms at the mouth of the hallway and keeps her distance from the soldiers. Or probably the device. “We are not dealing with this thing again.”

Fully groans now. Loud and unprofessional. Snatches his clipboard from the console and bounds down the stairs to intercept her false claim to any hierarchical power. She’s part of the team. Sure. But she doesn’t have a rank. She’s almost the plucky sidekick.

“Vala, get out of their way.” He startles her, and she jumps to the side, back flat against the high walls giving just enough room for the soldiers to continue their trek.

Intercepts just as she reaches to call them back. Her hailing hand smacks against his chest and when she sidesteps him, he follows. She shoves at his shoulder, but the force barely sways him. “Are you really allowing them to just bring this thing back.?”

“It’s not the same one—”

“It doesn’t matter, they’re all dangerous.”

“It’s not nearly as dangerous as—”

“Yes, of course, I forgot it wasn’t you who was burned alive.” Her body twists away and she paces in a wide circle, stopping before him to raise two fingers. “Twice.”

“No, I’m just one of the lucky people who get to hear the very specific details of the story when you retell it every other day.” He immediately regrets his words. Can’t imagine the emotions she went through, the immense pain, all the underlying trauma that’s still probably present. Hell, he still has nightmares about a certain plane crash. “Look, the device is missing the stones, so there is no way we can interact with people galaxies away. It’s spending the night at the base and heading to area 51 tomorrow morning.”

Turns on his heel, leaving the newly waxed floor scuffless, and rounds the corner in not quite a march but a fast gait. Paperwork for the device needs to be finished by 0600, along with the transit slip and all the customs reports. If he starts now he should have enough time to go for a quick jog before—

“This is an omen, you know.”

He groans again. Louder. A clipboard and a textbook worth of paper hiding his face from her skipping along beside him. The serious bristled faces of recruits and seasoned veterans watch her pigtails bounce with each jaunty step. Sometimes their nostrils flare or a sneer washes over their lips, sometimes he does it too. “Vala, I promise you nothing is an omen.”

“A device missing the stones seems like an obvious set up.”

Has a strong gait now, not the jog he wants, but she starts to straggle and maybe he can lose her in the late-night snack rush and lock her out of the lab. It’ll never happen. She’ll end up sitting in there with him, all because of Jackson.

She squeezes between two recruits both taller and wider than him and utters, “oop, excuse me gentlemen.”  

“Are you suggesting the immobile device with no energy reading is going to radiate and explode.”

“No, I’m suggesting that someone might have intentionally removed the stones in order to cause us harm.” She is valuable in that no one else on SG-1 has her skillset. Every few months she’ll have a really good idea. A life saving idea. A revelation usually counteracted by an immediate bad idea erasing the good. A Supergate sacrifice for an Ori immaculate conception. He’s been trying to hear her out more and more, but her naivety and playful attitude can wear thin in times of panic, in times of open fire and duck and dodge.

So, he fakes her out around the next corner, turns down a hallway and then doubles back. It reminds him of playing tag in the cornfields growing up. Dusty earth and a hot sun ringing over him until his mom called him for lemonade. It makes him smile. She scrambles in front of him, walking backwards and still speaking. He leaves his smile on too long, she notices and copies it with a genuine grin of her own.

He blinks his way back to Cheyenne Mountain, the twisting narrow pathways, and the retreating woman in front of him paying no attention to her footfalls. Jackson’s method of dodging and ignoring isn’t working anymore. “Who wants to hurt us?”

“Who doesn’t want to hurt us?” Her foot catches in a raise in the tiles and her expression falls blank as she slips backwards. Automatically, his arms shoot out, hands clamping down onto her shoulders, reeling her backwards and releasing her away from the stairs. Her pigtails bounce the entire time and she grins, not paying any attention to the near tumble down a flight of twenty metal stairs.

“Vala, look.” She grins wider at him and he purses his lips and taps his clipboard. “I have to transfer the device first thing in the morning. It’s not going to do anything when it’s here. It’s inactive, they found it in a garbage dump on some abandoned planet.”

“Then why doesn’t Daniel have a look at it?”

“You know Jackson has that conference.” Jackson spent the better part of a week writing up speeches and slideshow presentations on the dangers of the Ori and how monitoring stargate traffic can essentially cut down on planetary threats. He would have winged it the night before. Glued some pictures on poster board and be in bed after a nice jog. But education isn’t the call for the conference, funding is. “If he can convince them to give us a little more funding, the Stargate will be better monitored, and these long-range communication devices will stop popping up.”

“So. we aren’t even—”

“We aren’t doing anything, it’s a simple tag and transfer.” His stern walk takes him through the outer lab where he nods at the officer guarding the experimentation room. He inputs the code at the door and feels her shadowing him still.

The door whooshes open and a sterile smell curls it’s way into his lungs, not like antiseptic or any distinguishable smell, just the lack of one. No smells at all. The white room gleams under the strength of several lights and he blinks to rid himself of the snow blindness.

Her combat boots echo behind him. Clicking to his clunks, creating a shared melody between them.  “Well that’s good, because I’m not going.”

“Great.” He stops at the device, the blue crystal atop of it hazy and dull, brown lines of dirt and debris working their way through the crags on the outside. The metal body is tarnished with age and the once awkward scent of nothing is replaced with the lingering odour of a secondary planet’s dump. He glances over his shoulder and she’s dark green and black popping in an all white room. “Wait, going where?”

“To search for the stones.”

“No one is going to search for the stones.”

“Well not now.”

This is one of those times where he’s going to ignore her. He has a mission, get object A from location A to location B by 0600. She doesn’t have a mission. She has loneliness. He locks the device in place rendering it unworkable. There’s a high-pitched squeak and then the low hum of an emp field encircling and blocking all transmissions. “There, you can sleep safe.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“There’s a surprise.” Checks his watch. Almost 0030. A jog is out of the question, but he can still get a decent amount of sleep if he uses his base bunk, but that’s on the other side of the complex. Maybe he can just sleep in his office. He brushes by her and feels his movement pull her with him.

“It’s just that—” She trails after him through the corridor. The click of her boots more frequently tempoed like the metronome on the old piano his grandma made him practice on. “Well all of you get to go home, to a different home, outside here, and I’m—” She breathes in deeply. Faltering then regaining, then falling back again. Never once does she ask him to slow down and talk to her face-to-face. He would never pull this with Sam, or Teal’c. He might try to dodge Jackson for fun, but after his evasiveness became apparent, he would slow, and they would have the conversation. Half of his conversations with Vala he never sees her face, her reaction, or is even facing her. It bothers him because he doesn’t know what this means. Disrespect, or him picking up on her playfulness, or does she just assume this is how half of their conversations will go now, with her chasing him, because he’s done it for so long it seems ordinary.

“So, you understand then?”

He hasn’t been listening because he’s two feet in front of her and her voice has sunken between army boots and drive-by dialogues. It’s disrespectful and he feels a little guilty because she does get those valiant life-saving ideas and for a brief amount of time she is a hero. He turns and she’s almost slams into him.

“Sure?”

“Oh excellent.” She claps and beams and for a moment it’s endearing before he remembers how dangerous her excitement can be. “So where shall we look first?”

“For what?”

“For the stones.”

“Vala, we are not going searching for the stones.”

“But it’s been a week since I’ve left this building and I’m starting to go mad. Since Daniel and Samantha are preoccupied it would be a great way to pass the time.”

“Look, I’m sorry that down time bores you, and that you’re confined to command when you don’t have the proper supervision.” His hands swing a bit as he spins around her and continues towards his office. His empty hands. “We don’t need the stones, the paperwork for the transfer—” is on the desk beside the device, miles away from his office where he can catch a quick sleep.

“Dammit.” Pivots again on his heel and switches directions back towards the lab. Maybe she doesn’t question their tag conversations because he’s always backtracking. “Look, the stones won’t—” but she’s not tracking him anymore. He lost her or she gave up and went back to her dorm or the kitchen as part of the late-night snack crowd.

Guilty but not guilty. Maybe he should talk to Jackson about this. Anything caged long enough is bound to go a little stir crazy, like the fireflies he’d collect in jars and his grandma would benevolently release. Giving Vala duties or training when they’re grounded for more than a few days could be beneficial. She could take advanced combat courses, learn to fight in different ways instead of depending on luck and surpr—

 “Would you rather someone else get a hold of the stones and use them to transfer right into our bodies?”

“Jesus, Vala.” She pops out before the lab door, and follows as he walks the same route by objects of interest and chemistry sets he wouldn’t know how to use even after hours of training. Maybe they should all be cross trained a bit. She sighs loud enough behind him to draw his attention. “Our bodies are fine, Vala.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’ve never had to experience it.”

“So what?” Types in the password on the touch pad again and it sparks up as red until the buttons reset. “You want to go out and find all fifteen stones?”

“No, only the two that work in our device.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Enters the code again and it flashes as red. The guard next to the door gives him the eye and he twitches his lips into an awkward smile.

“Well that planet’s dump would be a good place to start.”

Presses enter and the pad lights up green. The door whooshes open and the familiar unfamiliar stench of nothing greets him again. Everything in the room still shines. The clipboard stands almost black stroke outlined on the metallic table. “Well, that’s not going to work because this isn’t our device.”

“Not our.” She flicks her hand between them, then widens and twists to gesture to the whole complex. “Our.”

“It’s neither. It belongs to Area 51 where it will go and stay and be deactivated.” He completes the final signature on the triplicate form. Beside him the air smells almost burnt, it’s unusual but the mission log did state the device was found under at least ten years of trash. Maybe the stench of a dump fire lingered.

“Well then when we get thrust into other people’s bodies it will be entirely your fault.”

In his peripherals he watches her raise an eyebrow and set her jaw in challenge, which doesn’t mean anything because she’s the sidekick. The one who takes people down by tripping them or names an ancient dragon Daryl.  

“Vala.” She’s closer to him now and he inadvertently tries to take a step back but knocks the table and his clipboard. The hum of the emp field increases behind him. In the extreme light of the room her blue eyes vibrate. She is hopeful, but also scheming. Half of him, the half that won’t meet her eyes when they talk, still doesn’t trust her. “I will never be leaving the comfort of my own body, okay?”

The emp field increases in rate again and the hairs on his arms begin to stand on end, her pigtails frizz up and there’s a small crackle of static. The sullen crystal in the middle of the device bursts to life.

“Aw shi—”

And a white light encompasses the room.

Chapter Text

Two Birds, Two Stones

Chapter 2

Behind You 

She’s immediately aware something is different. First the air, not as clear and constant as on Moya. Thicker, stewish, and heavy with humidity lapping her face. The temperature is a few klances higher, not dangerously so, tolerable, but not ideal. Her vision clears away to offer up an incandescent room contradictory to Moya’s dark and welcoming interior. The intensity dries her eyes and adds a ring of blindness to her peripherals.

One hand fixes to a table, not as weighty as the command table but sturdier, cooler to the touch. Employs her auxiliary senses to create an area map in her brain. Table to the left and a table in front with that frelling device on it—a beacon? From who? A lot like shifting bodies, she has her hands though, still wears Calvin’s, white reflecting the light. White like a Peacekeeper medical unit, but she was in command and that glowing blue crystal, John and Deke—

“John.” Uprights herself, eyelids gradual in opening, adapting to an overflow of white. Steps forward and something clatters to the ground, startling her to a stop. The second call is throatier, more desperate, “John.”

Objects stabilize in her sight, a metallic table, some papers on the ground. That thing blinking blueness slowly to the tune of a high-pitched hum before faltering out. A dark blur constructs itself beside her, grows until he’s on his feet, hand rubbing at the back of his head. “I’m okay, Honey.”

Vision healing, she traces his hand to his neck blanketing it with hers, allows him leech some of her remaining coolness. He retrieves her hand and brings the palm to his mouth. “Are you okay.”

Plays her free fingertips over the hair behind his ear. “Yes, I’m adjusting to the light.” Doesn’t mention the temperature which is not presently an issue.

“Why is it so bright in here?” Squints as he examines the room in a weak circle, his nose pulls as he inhales in deep snorts of the air, she doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it certainly isn’t analyzing the humidity. “Why does it smell like a hospital?”

“Deke.” Grabs the table and pushes it away from the wall, but there aren’t even dust motes behind it. Pushes John out of the way into the space she just created and rocks the device on the table in search.

“Aeryn, we had him inoculated. Remember how much the damn Diagnosian cost?”

“You fekkik.” Shoves him so he stumbles back against the wall. Not as hard as she could, they both know it.

“Hey.”

“Where is my frelling son?”

“Our son is—” anger floods from his face and it relaxes, then immediately tenses. “Oh shit.”

“Where is he?” Scrambles around the small chamber, reinforced walls around three quadrants and a panel for viewing behind them. No sign of her son. She leaned against the table beside John, and he pulled away his hand, they spoke briefly but the baby quieted, enthralled by the glow.

John lands beside her on his hands and knees, cheek planted to the ground to better scan with his deficient eyes among many other deficient factions of his body. “Maybe he didn’t get transported with us.”

Bursts to her feet, allowing another spin to take in the chamber again. The pulse of the device continues in pace and in pitch still matched by the blinking crystals. “Pilot? Chiana? Can anyone hear—”

“Hey.” Again reassembles beside her, more composed, more still. How can he be so frelling lax? His hands find her shoulders and rub, the friction only serving to increase her core temperature. “Calm down.”

“Do not tell me to calm down like I’m some frelling hysteric.”

“It’s okay.”

Flips her entire body so their faces almost touch, he smells of adrenaline and the odor of sweat. He doesn’t blink, instead holds her nonverbal spar. “Do. Not. Placate. Me.”

“Okay.” His lips purse to hold in words he wants to discharge but concedes to her. Presses his back to the wall, wrinkling his black shirt and keeps his arms raised in surrender. “You do your thing, Baby.”

Can’t be still. Can’t stand—legs pump and she tucks her face into fidgeting fingers. Her son is helpless, undeveloped body and brain incapable of defending himself. Created from love—perhaps lust or the need to lower fluid levels before the incarnation of love, but eventual love, and he does not deserve to be abandoned by both parents as she was.

“Pilot? Pip? Grandma? Anyone?” Back flush against the wall, he coms for those who might answer, irises tracing her marching movements. Tries for a full micron or two for contact before sighing, then catches her hand mid stride and she spins to him with a set jaw and a clenched fist. He only holds her hand, thumb ringing over the back, and drops his head.

“Are you two okay?”  A woman enters the room before either of them notice, she’s dressed what looks like military fatigues with flipping blonde hair and sparkling eyes. She also has a board like the one toppled to the floor.  She waits at inattention for them to answer her question, and when neither of them speaks, she shifts her head with elaborations. “Monitoring room recorded a flash from the device and—why are you guys dressed like that?”

She bends her knees, fingers filtering over the fallen board on the ground and without hesitation fires it through the air to hit the woman in the face. Distracted, the woman teeters back, allowing full access to her pulse pistol easily snatched from a holster on her upper thigh. It’s not a pulse pistol, but a gun of some sort, the schematics of most are easy enough to follow. Behind her, John constricts in surprise or perhaps disagreement. His hands still halfway in the air.

“Where is my child?”

“Aeryn maybe we should—”

The woman touches the small incision on her temple and lets out a hiss, which is ridiculous as it’s hardly bleeding. “Vala, what—”

“Where is my frelling son.”

“Our son, Honey,” John slips by her, heat waves following his course to mediate between her and the woman. “Our son.”

“I will ask you once more, and then I will shoot.”

 “Vala.” The woman’s hand falls from her eye as she straightens her stance. “you don’t have a son.”

“Look we just showed up here. Her name’s not—” John’s body sparks forward, hand clamping down on the woman’s bicep terrifying her. “Are you speaking English?”

“Umm, yes?” she clarifies with a nervous smile pulling the ends of her lips wide.

“Aeryn lower your weapon.”

“John—”

“She’s speaking English. We’re on Earth.”

Exhaustion complete in her being. The wakeful arns spent at night fixing her body rigid as to not fall off the shared bed only to be constantly disturbed by the wails of her son whom she cannot satiate. Who is never content. Chasing after John, somnambulant down lightless and abandoned Moya corridors, so he will hold and care for the baby who slips like liquid between his fingers. “Deke.”

“Aeryn.” Sounds like a chide, however she will not include it as a chide as then she would have to shoot him, should over his shoulder, a warning shot because someone has to put Deke’s needs first, the emotional turmoil of missing parents, of a missing child and she bites the inside of her mouth to keep from evacuating in tears and a rant which will turn physical.

“I don’t think we want to shoot her if she can help.” He shifts back to her, chin on her shoulder, nose pressing her cheek, his voice a teetering whisper, words smoking into her ear. Hands singe on her biceps, coercing her into lowering the gun, and she hesitates because her son sometimes stares up at her with her eyes and she doesn’t know what to do because they’re so despondent. More pressure exerts on her arm and she shakes to keep stationary, but breaks under his control, directing the gun away from the woman’s head. They all heave in at a rate increasing the humidity, a sliver increase in temperature and she cocks an eyebrow at this realization and slows her breathes.

“You’re not Colonel Mitchell then?”

“No.”

“Then why did you take over his body?”

“Hey, I didn’t hijack anything.” Floats his hands over his sweatpants, and his t-shirt stained with baby vomit down the back. Burped wrong and immediately returned to her, the disapproving mewls of an infant still wrapped in a war stained blanket. “This is my body. If you don’t believe me, ask her.”  

“You’re not Vala?” The attention falls to her and it shouldn’t. An improperly sized bed to fit a family. Sometimes when he flees, she retrieves her son and holds to her chest allowing him to cry until his throat dries. Pats his stiff back and speaks to him in Sebacean.

“Lady, she isn’t even human.”

The viewing portal behind her flashes open allowing a rotund man, dressed in an Earth military uniform, entrance to their stand off. He is accompanied by two soldiers, both of whom are armed with rifles, not pistols. His face is weary because it must be the middle of their sleep cycle, glassy eyes loop the room. Squints when analyzing John and herself. Perhaps as the woman mentioned earlier, their attire is inappropriate for their environment. Halts at the woman, and her hand shifts from her body to warn him not to cross into their territory. He addresses her curtly, “Colonel Carter, what is going on.”  

“Sir, this is not Vala or Cam.”

“What do you mean.” His voice is the gravelly equivalent of dragging a hand over his face.  

“The device briefly flashed which set off radiation peaks in the lab. I came to—”

“Whoa, radiation? I don’t have a good record with radiation. Tell ‘em, Baby.” John withdraws from the new humans, back turned, pistol swinging in his hand with his momentum, the military man takes notice, his eyebrow twitching into an almost full arch and the woman nods her head.

Wants to remind him over his childlike glee from returning to Earth that the baby is still missing, lay her forehead against the square of his shoulder in lethargy and repeat that he has a child they should be caring for and not grind her teeth when he responds with a guttural groan. Then the hollow sound of impact as the side of her forearm slams into the side of his head. The swirls of emotions, of worry and rage, boiling within her and her failure to ward sentiment from her speech and expression. Her turmoil palpable and manipulating in her words, “Where is my child.”

“Aeryn he’s our son.” Frustration in his constant reminder to share their offspring. Frustration in her constant reminder that it is his offspring despite earlier doubts. Earth television programs from their last landing, Chiana and herself graduating from children’s entertainment to soap operas or as John dubbed them ‘a lonely housewife’s daily entertainment’. Sitting on pliable pieces of furniture while eating foods full of sugar, fat, and salt, and becoming completely absorbed into someone else’s life. It’s her life now. Her life.

At her stoic expression, one he can now translate, his voice softens as to alleviate the blame, “and he’s not here.”

“How do you know this, Crichton?” John is a pet name akin to all the hypocoristics he tosses into their dialogue to appease her but only work to soothe him with familiar Earth idiosyncrasies. “You woke after I did, and I could not see.”

“I can only imagine what it must feel like to lose a child.” The woman, Colonel Carter, stretches her hand forward across the one table strewn aside in her earlier panic. Her voice continues steady giving her words underlying sincerity, “We can try to help you find him, if you’ll work with us.”

“We didn’t misplace him, we were transported here.”

“I was holding him.” Head down in admittance. The weapon hangs at his side and she’s not confused or surprised by his breeching loyalty. Their love so concrete then quickly buried in a recovery period. Supine on that bed for an entire week and for an entire week she tried to rouse him. Spoke with him equally in his comatose state, held entire two-sided conversations until the pressure of being a mother, the pressure of being a good partner ground her down. “Is there anyway to see if he came through with us?”

“We do have recordings of the room and we’ll gladly show you.”

“But?”

“But afterward we’d like your help in figuring out why you came here and where our people are.”

“Great, see, Honey, they’re—” Captured with his arm over her shoulders, heavy and warm, heavy and warm and difficult to maneuver. Muscles harden against his lax arm. Lax until it hovers away. “Not placating. I’m not.”

The unanimous motion to disperse is halted by the military man who remains locked in place as a hurdle before the exit. “You also need to return that gun to Colonel Carter.”

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

An argument breaks out as suspected. Safety versus customs. Impolite to be walking around a military base carrying a Lieutenant Colonel’s holster pistol. Unsure and unwelcoming, with half slotted eyes all directed at her because she’s stopped talking because standing is exercise, this chamber is infuriating, her partner vacillates between giddiness of Earth and parental duties. She grows wistful for an arn ago when she sensed him fumbling away, Deke’s cries amplified, and she cradled him, her hand over his back feeling the tick of each heartbeat.

They no longer acquire the gun, in the halos of blur still present after mass blinks, John hands the gun, barrel down, back to Colonel Carter. They are now unarmed on a military base, and the remembrance of memories not her own but acted by her; their sedation, Rygel’s evisceration, D’Argo’s transfer, and the sound of rain against glass as blankets became too heavy with sweat. She is starting to sweat.

“Good, follow me and I’ll take you to the security room.”

The doors open with a gust of synthetic air, dry and heavy on her face and Colonel Carter leads them into the adjacent room with large tables covered in items like a bizarre or trading post. They weave through aisles, and John’s fingers twitch with the need to disrupt.

“Hey, are we you’re first aliens?” Questions over his shoulder, his voice muffled by his shirt.

The General clears his throat behind her and Colonel Carter sends a brief glance over her shoulder. “I was under the impression that you were human.”

“I am, but I don’t think this is the same—” The tirade on multiple dimensions continues and he asks basic questions about his Earth to rule out similarities. 

She, however, remains wary. People—Human, Sebacean—of any species are hardly altruistic without personal gain. The soldiers remain at the entrance to the monitoring room, a gallery overlooking the various areas for experimentation. Their chamber holds the device they placed the rocks in, another holds what looks like an ancient chest made of stone, and the third is empty and being cleaned by two men in white suits, the same who abducted her in not her memories.

Colonel Carter leans over a chair and drags a piece of hardware attached to a small screen. Icons and pictures blink through until a film of the device chamber begins. There is no color, and no sound and this system is more outdated than the television she learned the alphabet from. White symbols scroll by in the corner, but the picture remains stagnant. Then the screen flashes white, and she and John fall from the ceiling. She lands on one knee with the other bent, her hand shading her eyes. John lands face down into solid flooring.

“No baby makes three,” John mutters as Colonel Carter drags the hardware around once more and restarts the film. Only they fall from the ceiling.  

“No baby.” The words are empty and mimicked only so she can gain meaning from them. Her son is on Moya, which is not as reassuring to her as John. His hand reaches back from where he leans over the console, his face close to the small screen, and she allows him to grip hers and pull her closer. In silence her head falls to his shoulder for comfort, for the miniscule amount of safety he provides.

The symbols at the bottom of the screen scroll and reroll as the movie plays again and John places a finger to them. “Wait, is it 2009?” 

“Yes.”

“We’re in the future, Babe. Do we have flying cars—”

The sound alerts her too late, and a current of electricity flows through her, dragging into her unconsciousness.

One of those horrid devices sits beeping on an immense table that is doing nothing to work with the design of the room. A spacious window lays just beyond showcasing a vast expanse of, well, space. No planets she can distinguish but plenty of stars, white shiny bobbles floating around in liquid black nothingness, enticing because she’s never been this close. Is it dangerous to be this close?

“Do not touch that.” Cameron’s up. He slaps a hand to the ground and then another until he pulls himself onto his hands and knees like some barnyard animal, probably a well associated one that he grew up with. Upon their transport here, he was knocked immediately unconscious, she never lost consciousness, simply picked up where she left off.

After swiping some interdimensional dust from her slacks, she tried to stir him, shook his broad shoulders and may have given him a quick slap. When his eyes didn’t flutter she checked his pulse and turned him—rather, kicked him—into a more comfortable position from where he was face down on the floor. He was entirely unconscious making his thick body difficult to manipulate.

She then took in the room, several consoles with letters in a dialect she has never seen, at least not in any of Daniel’s books. A camera would come in handy now, not just to feed Daniel’s linguistic addiction but also to snap shots of Cameron in funny poses as he slept. It would need a flash because the room is terribly dark and identifying that the unknown symbols were unknown was a great victory. Other than consoles that prove useless, a table with the device and a large window she’s found nothing of interest. No weapons, and nothing to divulge details of where they are.

“I didn’t do anything,” clarifies to him and proffers a hand, however, his head still faces the floor, so she pokes her pinkie in his ear once and then twice before he slaps her hand from the air like an unwanted insect.

“Where are we?” Spoken to the gritty tile, his head hanging like he’s doing a yogurt position. Head hanging hog or some other nonsense. Samantha invited her to a class under the ruse that the stances increased flexibility which is a good trait to have in and out of the bedroom, but it turned out to just be exercise.

“I warned that the device was dangerous.”

“I know.”

“I warned you it was dangerous while it was transporting us.”

“Are you going to keep saying ‘I told you so’ or are you going to do something to actually help.” He slobbers down his chin and onto the ground with his sentence. Not surprising or detesting, they’ve all had bad reactions to stimuli or atmospheric variances. One jump raised Muscles’ voice by at least seven octaves, another caused Daniel to urinate so frequently they had to cancel and reschedule, she still thinks it was a sexually transmitted disease.  

“I never said those words.” Steps in front of him and offers up the same hand careful not to douse it in the waterfall at his mouth. Tilts his chin to check his eyes, unsure of search parameters, but finds them still a bit wonko, floaty and bobbled like the stars out their front window.

“Vala—” grunts as he retrieves her hand from his face and borrows some of her keen balance to stand. “Wait a minute, you’re you.”

“Good perception, at least your eyes work.” Glances down at the clothes they enforced on her after the first few days. Pilfered her leather outfits while she recovered in a hospital bed. When she was cleared to exit the medical bay, Daniel approached her with a pile of clothes that turned out to be four black shirts in various cuts, two pairs of army slacks that are still too big for her, and a curious white plastic bag tied shut tightly.

“While I always appreciate a good love token, I came with my own clothes, Darling.”

“You might be more comfortable in these.”

“Aesthetic is not about comfort.”

“We’d be more comfortable if you wore these.” He then pushed the clothing into her arms with a final huff.  

“What’s this?” Opened the bag, while he stammered not to open it in his presence, to find it full of undergarments. Nude colored and plain white cotton. “Oh Daniel, your tastes are so pedestrian.”

“Sam picked those up for you,” he yelled on his way out the door, the back of his neck growing red.

“No Vala,” he grunts. He and Daniel do a lot of grunting and groaning and excreting heavy blows of hot air from their nostrils and mouths. They are the loudest breathers she’s ever known. “That means we didn’t take over anyone else’s bodies.”

“No, of course not, we merely switched environments.” Twirls around him a bit, feet in combat boots, which were also issued to her, clip clopping over the uneven flooring. He pauses movement, standing with a bit of an open mouth taking in the room. A device and a window and some new gibberish. After it becomes quite clear his rebuttal doesn’t exist she continues, “which means that there’s likely someone back at Cheyenne Mountain in our place.”

Crosses his arms over his chest either guarding himself, or from being short with her. However, he’s wearing that magnetic grin, the one that she knows bring an adventure. “How are you so calm with all of this?”

“This is my third ride, Darling.”

“So you’ve mentioned.”

 “I’ve been investigating the whole time you’ve been taking a lovely cat nap.”

“Alright Dick Tracy, what’d you learn?” Leans against he table which immediately wobbles underneath his weight.

“Well for one, I wouldn’t lean against that table, it’s made from something organic and is terribly unsturdy.”

Arms crossed again but he removes his smile and accompanies it with a step forward. “Where are we, Vala?”

“We’re obviously on a ship.” She flashes a grin hoping to appease his sudden bad attitude. Surely, he cannot blame her for this situation. She verbally alerted him several times to the dangers the device accrues. When the smile doesn’t work, when he still advances, she takes a step in retreat.

He steps. “Okay, in what galaxy?

“I don’t know.” She retreats.

“What make of ship?” He steps.

She retreats. “I don’t know.” Her back now pressed to the wall next to the bowed window with an opposite view of the room, and she notices it. Laying unmoving on the other side of that dreadful table, hidden from view behind the device.

She’s so distracted that she doesn’t realize how close he’s gotten to her, pinned her a bit against the wall. No bad memories with Cameron—alright a few—what she aptly named the Merlin speech still frightens her, the intensity and he refusal to allow her escape, shook her until she fell into place and she felt alone. Not just then, but in her dorm that night while everyone returned off base to their homes. And every night since. Wakes from memories, nightmares, and tries to stick onto whomever she can find.

He growls, “Do you know anything that can actually help?”

Before she can answer, the infant answers for her, clicking on like a clock radio and screaming murder. Swathed tightly in a stained brown blanket that exposes only a tiny red face. She raises her eyebrow at Cameron’s complete lack of expression, he’s too shocked to look shocked. “I know what that is”

He smacks his lips at her, and she grins widely before he turns towards the infant. “Hey little guy, what are you doing here?”

“Awfully macho of you to assume it’s a boy.” She stalks the other way as Cameron, unheeding of her warning, leans back against the loose table, taking the child in his arms. The face has the distinct quality of being human, creases for eyes, and a nose, and lips. Just a face full of grouchy creases. It gurgles, its throat caught on air from incessant wailing. “He looks human.”

“He does, doesn’t he.” Cameron folds back the top of the blanket, and little fingers find their way into a gummy mouth as she tiptoes up beside to garner a closer look. His eyes dart to meet hers and then back to the baby. Then he laughs, heartily laughs and it may be more surprising than finding a human infant onboard the darkest ship in the galaxy.

She laughs back, more of a mocking snicker and then pats his shoulder as she retreats again. “Well put it back.”

“What?”

“Put it back where you found it.”

“Why”

“Because that is not your child,” truly laughs now at the twist of the situation and the knowledge that SG-1’s fearless leader melts at the sight of a squalling infant. “Cameron, you found it on the table, it’s just some random baby.”

Jumps to his feet as the table teeters but doesn’t topple over yet, still holding the child, his arm raised a few inches higher as if to protect it from her harsh words. He glances left, then right. “Where do you want me to put the kid? There’s no crib or bassinet.”

Calmly, she approaches again. The cat and mouse game, the tag they play. Him running away from her down the snaking corridors of the complex, her scrambling up and over partitions and jumping half level stairs to beat him to his destination. “It was on the table; its parents will retrieve it from the table.”

“We could go find his parents.”

“That’s not our job, our job is to get home.”

“I’m not leaving this kid on a random table.”

“Why not? It is a random baby.”

“This table isn’t steady, something else you’ve also said a thousand times.” He quakes the table and the device dances, her breath gets caught somewhere between her lungs and nose. “He could roll off.”

The baby fusses, hands and feet now broken free from the confines of a very stained blanket, which doesn’t make sense and usually she’s in favor of the nonsensical as it brightens up a slow work week, but there is no way she’s slogging along some random baby on their quest to get home. “Its immobile, Cameron. Its not just going to be rolling about. It can barely support its own head.”

“Why don’t you care? You had one of these didn’t you?” The inflection in his voice hurts more than his actual candor, the insinuation that she ever got to be a mother instead of an incubator, instead of a trojan horse for troops to simply spill out of.

Pulls a strong face because her eyes feel very dry, then very wet. Doesn’t want to think of when the Ori yanked Adria out of her and stole her away. The baby that kept her up each night with tortuous heartburn and violent nightmares. Burning ceilings and walls and skin. Her skin. “Yes. Briefly. And when they took her from me I became awfully upset, so let’s not upset the parents because they might not be as nice as I am.”

“Okay. Okay.” Calms her with a halting hand, the end of her rant the end to his judgements. The baby stirs more frequently now, and Cameron bounces on his knees as if a song is playing that she can’t hear. “Let’s just try to figure out where we are and why we’re here.”

“We’re on a ship and we’re here because of the device.” Remove the baby and place it on the table and it is no longer their problem. It isn’t their problem. They have no biological ties to this child and if her own daughter is fine to be whisked away, then certainly this infant is fine to spend the next little while clumped on the table. “Did you hit your head when you fell? Gravity was not your friend.”

“Just—let’s think.” Paces as he speaks, adding in a jaunty little bounce every now and then, keeps the baby quiet briefly, but even its patience is growing thin. “There has to be a reason we were specifically transported here. Last time you and Jackson went to the Ori galaxy and we learned about their motives before they became a threat to our galaxy. So maybe here—”

His shadow drifts across the device, highlighting certain aspects in the lowlight. This is their device, the one from the complex. Has the same dirty crystals, the same tarnished metal and still smells like trash. “Perhaps the others, the ones who took our place, were just playing with the stones.”

“What.”

“Unaware of what could happen.” The device is devoid of stones, of tokens back to their reality where she doesn’t have much but a little more than four shirts, two pairs of pants, and a notorious white plastic bag.

“Maybe we’re here to learn about something that’s going to attack us.” As usual he ignores her explanation, his mind still caught in the gears of the idea that this is an educational not accidental excursion when it may be nothing more than two people who noticed two stones fit two holes.

Can’t help but arch another eyebrow at the drastic change in form when an infant, a screaming little potato who may possibly need a diaper change, is part of the equation. Tau’ri men take pride in their lineage, at least that’s what she’s garnered from books and programs she’s been exposed to. The majority of Tau’ri men take interest in and protect their offspring, which is quite unusual for the other planets she’s visited. “Maybe they’ll make us rear their children.”

“Well that would be your specialty.”

There is the missing rebuke from before. Biting wit with a snicker as he fixes the child’s blanket while saying such malicious words. She can’t say anything because it’s unsurprising, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Friends—family, a team she’s bonded with and has inclinations she’s become an asset to, all too loose with their tongues. She shakes her head at him, disappointed, and marches towards the only exit from the room.

Hears his footsteps clonk after her but she doesn’t stop her stride. Desperately misses her empty bed and falling asleep to celebrity reality shows around this time. “Oh don’t act like you don’t—”

The door opens awkwardly, not from the top or sides, but spins like a gold coin between two fingers. The air is a bit stale, smelling vaguely of rust, metal and a little like raw meat. The connecting corridor is not any brighter than the room, but she can not even wager a stumble down unknown pathways because someone stands in her way. A young woman, with shining gray skin and cat eyes.

“Oh-kay.” With his free hand he grabs the collar of her shirt and drags her back while tucking the child closer to him. They hit the device table again, and her collar is stretched behind repair, lolling off her left shoulder. “Hey we—uh—we—really don’t know what’s happening here, but we don’t mean any harm.”

“We know exactly what’s happening.” Fingers preen at the collar, trying to situate it back into the proper place because she only has four shirts, and this is one of them. She must fill out forms to get new shirts which is absurd, because if she had clearance she could go buy her own shirts. There’s paperwork for everything and always a clause why she cannot leave the complex without explicit verbal or written permission.

“Vala, you maybe want to do something to help?”

“Gray Girl,” she addresses the alien, vaguely aware of Cameron trying to reel her back in by the collar. She dodges his swipe at the last second. “We cannot understand you. Is it possible that you enunciate just a squish?”

The girl speaks to them in a language she’s never encountered. Even when skimming through the files on Daniel’s computer after she hacked it to prove she wasn’t the only one who visited non-work friendly websites. Her words fluctuate between nips of soft sounds and explosive growls of certain syllables. Her body sways with each sound, harmonizing hips for emphasis. She both moves and speaks like a lavatory lamp.

The infant begins to wail again. Face forever wet with tears. Cameron pivots on his foot, stepping forward to whisper, “Why isn’t she tearing our limbs off?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t do that.” Mimics the girl’s actions, tilting her head to the side to view her as she is being viewed. “Or simply doesn’t want to. Maybe not in front of the baby. Pass it to me.”

Before he can protest she plucks the infant up and holds it at arm’s length away. The girl rears, feet toppling backwards, and it becomes very clear a diaper change is needed. “See the child is evil, the silver monster doesn’t want a thing to do with it.”

The gray girl furrows her eyebrows as if in sudden pain and exhausts a whimper from her lips, her rotations slow until she is barely moving at all.  

Cameron leans forward again, his breath hot and his voice a low rumble. “I think she can understand you.”

“What? No.” But as she answers the gray girl nods her head in agreement, her mouth slightly pouting but still opened, corners not frowning or smiling, simply just observing the unfolding drama.

 “Oh yes she can, you’d better apologize to her quick.”

“Look Gray Girl.” The infant squirms in the air as an offering, legs kicking, and grunting much like Cameron. She folds it into the corner of her arm. Limbs become more ambulatory and circle through the air much like the gray girl’s do. The movement is strong and shocking probably because she’s never had the opportunity to hold a baby before. Would like to close her eyes and pretend, but it’s much to late for that. “I’m sorry if we upset you, we can’t understand you. But your skin is a brilliant color. Well done.”

The gray girl nods and smiles and continues to dance for them. Her voice fluctuates again, almost visual in the air, vocal highs and lows partnered with jovial movements. Almost like ballet, but a little more sensual. She knows what it looks like but doesn’t say a word less Cameron get short with her again.

One reflective gray finger sways through the air and stops just before contact with her arm or the baby. The gray girl bounces back on the pads of her feet, then stretches for the baby again.  

“I think she wants the child.”

The gray girl nods and purrs from her throat floating her hands towards her chest to signal relinquishing the baby.

“Do not give him to her.” Cameron, swift in his clonks, presses in beside her, standing before the device which still smells of trash, or perhaps it’s the child’s diaper.

“This is not our child,” reminds and holds the infant, now wailing like a security alarm, out at arm’s length again for the gray girl to scoop up.

“Vala—” Sounds both hurt and shocked, just as he was when he dropped straight onto his face from the ceiling. However, his exclamation and probable recrimination halt when the gray girl coddles the child, nuzzling it to her nose.

“See.”

“Oh.” His body relaxes beside her, throwing off heat everywhere, a lot of heat lately, solar panels at the complex malfunctioning and generating heat on the lower levels, her dorm level, instead of air conditioning. Falling asleep with a comforter to be awoken by her pajamas sticking to her skin. She’s complained but the malfunction is tenacious and returns every other day.

“Good job.” She doesn’t want it to mean as much as it does. Praise, not really praise, just acknowledgement. Her old attitude, her persona of thievery, sly movements in the shadows and grand escapes lurk far in the back of her mind. She changed. She changes and they’re hesitant to accept it as they feel she’s always double crossing them. She supposes it’s warranted, but she’s learned how to trust them more than any others she ever has, that the trust isn’t equal is painful.

But he’s actually looks at her, directly at her, and she tries to not fidget, not to pick at something in her teeth, because he doesn’t like to have face-to-face conversations with her unless they’re for reprimanding. He smiles thoughtfully, and she darts her gaze away from him. “Thank Y—”

The gray girl whistles with two fingers in her mouth, and the baby doesn’t even think to stop screaming.

“What was that?”

“Oh, probably a call alerting others.” Truly fidgets because as with all her intuitive plans, they tend to backfire and make the situation much more difficult and much more dangerous, then Cameron or Daniel or whomever she’s accompanying from SG-1 becomes irate in disappointment.

Keeps the smile on his face as a mask for the gray girl, even though she appears fluent in English. He bumps her shoulder with his, “Do you have any weapons?”

“No.” Shakes her head and her pigtails helicopter near his face.

“You were awake, and you didn’t think to find a weapon.”

“It’s not that I wasn’t looking for one. I did things in the proper order.” A tiny little yellow robot, the size of a meal tray appears at the toe of her boot. It has flashlights for eyes and lets out pulsating beeps as it scans them. She steps over it. “I evaluated the injured and moved you into a position where you wouldn’t suffocate on your face.”

“Vala.”

Spins around accentuating with her hands the work she’s done. Followed protocol to the syntax of each sentence in the procedural outlines “When it became apparent you weren’t in critical condition, I accessed the room for safety issues.”

“Vala.”

The weeks she spent in an interrogation room combing through the processes, the several theoretical quizzes and three field tests for following the rules. Their rules. The psychological exams that frightened her because they would see her faults, her fears and her worth. “Upon my examination of the room for immediate threats of death or injury, I found no weapons.”

“Vala,” he shouts.

“What?” So she shouts.

The baby stops crying, and the gray girl’s slanted syllables drop from the air. Even the little robots pump the breaks and halt in their mechanical chittering.

“What are these?” Crouches to touch one but it reverses away from his fingers. Another curiously parks beside his shoes. “They look like horseshoe crabs.”

“What on Earth is a horseshoe crab?” Cautiously eyes the two at her feet, and the one crawling around the circumference of the unsteady table. It pauses and trains its lights on her. She blocks them with her palm, then gently pats it on the head. It accepts and chirps.

“Ahh,” Cameron cries out in pain behind her, his face red and his body crumpling to the floor.

“Cam—” She gets one step before something pierces through her left combat boot, cold and crippling and she falls forward unable to catch a breath.

Chapter Text

“If you started answering my questions, things would go a lot quicker.”

“Not until you answer my question.”

He’s chained to a metal table in a brand new room with white bumpy walls that are probably soundproof. It kind of looks like a place where the space military meets up for band practice without getting dad mad.

Woke up here with the side of his face pressed into a cold table. The same side of his face that hit the ground at high speed after the zen stones worked their voodoo. His face is sore. It’s making him sore. The taste of tin in his mouth and the clanging of his cuff leash against the metallic surface reminds him of utensils scratching up the bottom of his mom’s good china that last quiet Christmas before she died. Makes him miss Deke’s screams. He misses Deke.

Feels like he’s being good copped and bad copped at the same time by an army general who can’t make up his mind. When his vision cleared for the second time tonight, the good General Landry introduced himself—he was still wiping the spit away from the corners of his mouth while the General apologized for their curt behaviour—tazed from behind by his own interdimensional Earth neighbors, an olive branch it was not. The exposition continued—the base couldn’t have two people looking the same part as two other people—one who’s in a position of power—running around. They needed to suss out the situation and blah blah blah—he might have taken a quick five. Still hasn’t answered the good General. Not true. He’s said several things, but they’re the same sentence running on repeat to the tune of chain clanking music and Milli Vanilli lyrics.

“This isn’t an interrogation, or a hostage situation.” Landry’s unchained hands mock him and teepee against the tabletop silently. “We want you to go home. We want you back with your people and our people back here.”

So he smiles alluringly to draw the General in and mimics the teepee though it’s not quick full steeple and the cuffs are so loud they sound like a dump truck hitting the side of a building. “Where is my wife?”

The good General groans at the question, a little bit of sweat peeking out from his temples and his receding hairline. He sort of looks like the human version of Rygel. How much does he eat? Does he have concubines? God, he wants to see him ride around on a little throne. “Are you hungry at all? Thirsty? Colonel Mitchell isn’t the biggest fan of coffee, but I can get someone to bring you a cup.”

Leans in on one elbow, slick skin greasing up their nice disinfected table. Everything about him is infectious, the vomit stain, the moist skin, the head wound that’s going to open if he lands on his damn face one more time. Sets his jaw, mulling over the decision. Coffee on Earth from a military base is probably as good as coffee from the hospital where they spent all nighters with his mom. “Donde esta mi esposa.”

Finally, the bullshit runs dry and the teepee collapses. The General’s face looks like it’s melting. His does too. Being in the hot seat, an obvious interrogation, makes him sweat a bit. Deke’s dried vomit smells sweet and sour being aggravated by his sweat. “I just want to have a conversation about where you’re from and what happened before you got here. What do I need to do to get that conversation started?”

“Quid pro quo, Lector. Bring me my wife.”

He chuckles in this throat and it bobs like a certain Hynerian’s. Small eyes rolling and disappearing into folds of skin. “Son, you have a one-tracked mind.”

“Well Dad, you took my family away.”

The laughter dies in his throat and his skin ripples when he swallows. Bushy eyebrows droop in seriousness. “We don’t have your son.”

“Yeah, I believed that before you tazed our asses and separated us into interrogation bunkers.” Hasn’t been tazed before, at least not with whatever they used—weird snake thing that made a weird non-snake sound. Every sound here is annoying, and he never thought he would wish for their son’s deafening screams. Silence isn’t silence on Earth.

“It’s protocol to question off world visitors separately,” The General states matter-of-factly with an empty hand gesture. Like he’s being roped into rules that he’s written.

“Ah-Ha,” shouts and raises his hands to point his accusations, but the chain catches short and he hits himself in the side of his sore face. They have sides of the bed, the smallest bed on Moya—well Deke’s space bassinet would be the smallest, but co-sleeping is so exhausting. Can’t move off his side, the same sore side. The same punched up jaw from where he smacked his face off the floor resetting a wormhole weapon. “So this is an interrogation.”

“No, it’s a Q&A session.”

“So, she’s being questioned in another room?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s telling you less than I am.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re interrogating her,” he states matter-of-factly copying the empty hand gesture. His dad would tell him not to be a smart ass, respect the authority even if it isn’t his Earth’s authority. Aeryn would—well she’d be quiet because she’s giving him the silent treatment because of the thing they’re going through where they need to talk but can’t get to it because of more pressing matters.

“She held Colonel Carter at gunpoint—”

“You. Tazed. Us.” Slaps his hand against the table with each word. Phantom spasms still clench his muscles every few minutes.

“We have no malicious intent.”

“Well, then you’d be the first.”

“Stuff like this happen to you two often?”

“More often than not.” The dance they do of obsessive to the point of entombment with emotions. The basic desire—the need to touch, and stroke, and taste resulting in shoving away, the fighting then silenced tongues. They separate and rekindle and set ablaze and now they’re married and is this going to be happening forever? “She’ll leave and I wait and I have to save her but to do that she has to save me after.”

“Well, that is not what I meant, but it sounds tiring.”

“That’s not what’s tiring.” Woke up with a baby beside him. Their son, and he told him for the first time that Crichton’s don’t cry which is a lie. He cries all the time. In front of people. Alone. In the shower. The shower is great for fluid reduction that doesn’t result in thousands of tiny crying Crichton’s in a seven-cycle stasis. “Are we in Australia?”

“United States.”

“Somehow I always end up back in Australia.” Finding her behind him with a gun trained on him. His hand on her knee for stability. His, she was more solid than when he was a statue. Trusted him. Followed him. Strolled through the rain with open-mouthed awe and he was in love. He is in love. “Look, where’s my goddamn wife?”

“You come back to Earth often?” A weird information seeking pickup line in the garage band bar. The subject change instant and distracting like rapid fire questions at the end of trivia shows. “Have family members who can vouch for you?”

“Just my wife if you wanna bring her in here.”

“I’m willing to allow a break in protocol to reunite you two because SGC hasn’t exactly extended an olive branch to you—”

“You did, you just beat us with it and then tazed our asses.”

Ignores the interruption and launches from the table without even shaking it—so he tries to shake it and it doesn’t budge. It must be made from pure adamantium. “—However, you need to give me some information about yourself: A full name, and where you came from.”

“The first time we came back it was in Australia and they kept asking questions like that.”

“Didn’t end well?”

“They killed two of our friends but we—I always wondered if that was the night.” The rain pounding at the window, the rain still wet on her neck. She was in a full business suit when he woke, maps everywhere and plotting a journey to India. What would it have been like to be on the lam with her. Playing Bonnie to her Clyde, telling her not to shoot every single person they spoke to. Would it have been hard to find a surgeon to release the baby if that had been the night. “It turned out to be a simulation and my friends are still alive—well, one of them is. It still felt so real.”

“Not a simulation, Son. You’re in America. Colorado.”

“You know.” Fidgets to get into a comfortable position—the heavy metal chair now digging into the back of his thighs no doubt leaving a red line or two. A blue line or two. When did she know? Really know. Because seven years is a lot of time, and maybe she always knew that it was his and not his all at once. “Normally, I’d say something rebellious like, ‘you’re not my dad’, but I don’t think my dad exists on this version of Earth. So you can be my this Earth Dad, I guess. Want to meet your daughter-in-law?”

“I’m sure if he does exist, he’d like to know you’re okay.”

Time to give a little because he’s played banter backswing like Agassi and isn’t getting anywhere. If anything is true it’s that Aeryn can take care of herself and hold her own, and because of that he needs to be the weakest link and bend to keep things in motion. “We’ve spent most of our time in the Uncharted Territories.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the Milky Way and to the left a bit.”

“How long were you there for?”

“Spent about a month there after the war to take it easy and deal with the baby.” Thought Deke was always hungry—not a Crichton thing, but Rygel did carry him for a quadmester—Grandmama cooked up batches of food they mashed down until they could find a trading post. The money and the danger to grab a Capri Sun pack of the awful smelling crap almost wasn’t worth it. He’s a hybrid. Doesn’t know of he needs the PK vitamins. Doesn’t know if he can just have mashed space banana. Doesn’t know of he can regulate his own heat because he’s red and hot and always in an awful mood for being a fucking baby. “Look, I told you what you wanted to know, I just want to see my wife.”

“I need a name.”

“I thought it was General Landry.” Fighting for her. Always fighting for her even when there’s no one to fight. Even when it’s her he has to fight for her. Even when he has to fight himself. Did other him ever treat her like this. “Commander John Crichton of IASA. I went up on a wormhole mission in 1999 called the Farscape Project.”

“Well, I can honestly say I’ve never heard of you or your mission.”

“Gee, thanks Dad.”

A knock at the door interrupts the General’s speed walk around the concrete floor. The door opens and a parade of Colonel Carter, the blonde scientist with the biggest eyes he’s ever seen, strolls in followed by Aeryn, followed by fived armed guards—with their guns ready at attention. Two of the guards are bruised up and he’s never been prouder.

When Carter stops, Aeryn stops and the guards form a semicircle around her, blocking out the doorway and creating one hell of a fire hazard. Carter divulges, “she’s speaking an alien dialect, Sir, one I’ve never heard.”

Both she and the General turn his way, eyes squinting with irritation or maybe allergies, or sweat because it’s so damn hot in this room. His eyes slam to Aeryn, still in his shirt, still in Calvin’s underwear and her body sort of glows under the lights. She’s sweating. He worries.

“You might want to go tear Dr. Jackson away from his preparations.” Carter nods and breaks through the wave of armed men at the door. The General nods to the soldiers, one steps out of formation to fiddle with Aeryn’s handcuffs—ones she could very easily snap in two—another comes and undoes his because he’s pathetic and can’t move the table. “I’ll leave you two alone for a moment.”

The General walk to the soldiers—parting them like the red sea—but stops in the light of the open doorway. “These men and three more will be posted outside this door. We’ve just started building a rapport, becoming violent would be an awful setback to a peaceful alliance.”

He rubs his raw wrists, he did try to break the cuffs—knew Aeryn would, and that’s why he had to Bonnie. He has to take a backseat and be the platonic explainer. The off-planet orator. “Don’t be calling the kettle black now.”

His comment goes ignored, of course, and the door slams shut. Heavy clunking echoes as it’s bolted in place. So, if they do break out and into the royal rumble in the hallway from the hell in the cell, it should prove to get him nice and tired.

Sways on his feet a bit while meeting her on the other side of the table. She’s rubbing her wrists as well, her cuffs tighter because she obviously broke out of the first set. Red and a little raw, nothing too serious. His fingers trace over the where the soft skin becomes blistered. Her heat is obvious. “You okay?” 

Aeryn wrenches her arm away so fast he thinks he touched a soft spot, or maybe his body heat is agitating hers. He takes a step back. “No Crichton, I don’t know where my son is.”

She bursts by him, away from the door and the mirror on the wall that’s not fooling anyone. False anger to create a private situation where lips and words can’t be interpreted. Or real anger and he’s going to get hit in the side of the head again. “No, we know he’s on Moya. We don’t know where Moya is.” He pads after her, loyal as ever, and adds, “Also friendly reminder—he is our son. Your son. My son. Your son. My son. Our son, Aeryn.”

“Then start acting like it.” Loud over his impression—the impression of a man who hasn’t left his room in over almost a month because pinhead priests don’t know how to keep the peace. Her words are loud. He sees them. Floating in the air, heavy like cartoon anvils. Bolded and underlined and italicized to for emphasis. So heavy they suck the air from his lungs from their gravitational pull and he can’t answer her because other him probably wouldn’t do this. “Do you even care?”

In the littlest of broken down squeaks he’s able to answer while memorizing the concrete swirls in the floor. “Of course I care.”

She’s perched on the table now. Soundless and light. Legs sticking to the surface, skin glistening and reddening under her eyes, her tired eyes, the eyes that he made tired “You seem to have regrets.”

And she thinks he doesn’t want this—well of course he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t know where the hell they are, and he wants it to be cooler and her to be happier and not tired and just content and in his arms like the briefest of moments after an Australian cloudburst seasoned her skin. “I don’t have regrets, it’s just—” Plops beside her, the very image of a drunken bear, his ass hits the metal with a thunk and his leg jostles into hers, peeling the skin away to reveal more redness. “Everything happened fast, I need time to adjust.”

“You adjusted to living in space quiet easily.”  Should be talking about more pressing matters, how many soldiers she thinks she can take out, so he knows how many he has to, what they’re going to tell the General if they can’t break out of here. If she has any idea at all how to get home. But sometimes less pressing stuff is just more pressing. Sometimes sitting with his wife in an interrogation room—that has definitely not been the place of an alien murder or autopsy—and talking about how their lives have changed since getting married and having a baby and stopping an intergalactic war is more pressing.

Sometimes watching the way her eyelashes fan and her teeth tap just before biting her lower lip, like the words she exhaled might hurt him because he taught her compassion—he didn’t other him did—is always more important. “No, I didn’t. I’m still adjusting.”

Talking forward like they always do, giving the wizard behind the curtain—plump General behind a mirror—a good old show. “Do you assume it was easy for me?”

Wants to touch her. Needs to, jostle her again with his leg, or lean shoulder to shoulder, or ensnare her hand with his. Check to see how hot she is. Ask her short-term memory questions. “No, I know it was a hell of a lot harder for you, but you’re stronger than me.”

“I never wanted children.”

“Okay, well, I think this conversation is a few weeks too late.” His hand floats back to his lap cupping over the sweats on his knee. The notion in his head that touching her will make her hotter—not just temperature wise—cause an infinite loop of tiny Crichton spores kept in her Schrodinger’s uterus.

Faces him straight, and he could trace the lines under her eyes with his fingers, taste the salt of her skin. “I never wanted children because they would be taken from me by the Peacekeepers and raised how I was. Then Scarrans wanted my baby and I had to fight for my life and a life that wasn’t my own.” She turns away from him again, eyes glassy but strong and narrowing as she adds, “and I did that for you.”

“For me?”

“Because I knew how badly you wanted the baby, how important family is to you. I couldn’t deny you your family.”

“You—” He has to pause and think it through. Think through why she left Moya in her prowler without him if she was aware of the pregnancy. To release the baby, or to release the baby. “You didn’t want our son?”

“He was never unwanted, just under appreciated by me.” Her grin grows like the sun over Kansas fields, and her eyes light up and he’s happy she’s happy. “But when I saw him I knew I loved him and needed to protect him, so he didn’t end up like me.” Smile clouds over and everything returns to darkness. A single tear shudders from her eye. “And now I cannot do that John. I can’t do that.”

“Come here.” Drapes an arm around her shoulders and is surprised when she doesn’t immediately shrug it off or tear it from his body. She’s burning up, and his calm expression washes from his face in the realization of the danger. “He’s on Moya with Pilot and Chiana and Granny.” Swallows hard and works double time to keep the panic from blurring his eyes. “They’ll take care of him, they’ll keep him safe for us because he’s their family too.”

“I hate this,” mumbles into his shoulder, the black cotton sticking to both their skin.

“I know.” His hand falls to her hip and he gives a small squeeze for reassurance, his and hers. Mostly his. She’s too hot.

“No, being emotional.” Finally, she pulls away with a large snuffle. Too hot to embrace—too dangerous. Kicks up the anxiety in his belly, the one that makes it so hard to sleep. The one where all the baddies in Arkham Asylum are vying to get revenge on him through his wife and son.

“Honey, you just had a baby. You just need time to adjust.” Always forgets she did all the work. All of it, released the baby herself, stayed alive during torture he’s never asked about because he thinks even if she sugar-coats it he’ll cry—like a baby—with their son.

“That’s the problem, John. I’ve already adjusted.” He was moral support sure, but he also had a war to win and a wormhole to birth, does she ever take into account what he had to do to—No Deke’s birth was definitely worse, he never tried to cut the wormhole out with a knife. It never got stuck breech in his frontal lobe.

“It’s a big change being responsible for—”

“You were always responsible for us, and us for you. I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Then what is?”

Her lips are starting to chap, and they pull tightly against her features as she speaks words she doesn’t want to. Just as he’s the scapegoat—the Curly always butterfingering their interrogations or interactions up to keep operations running smoothly—her sacrifice comes in being throat cuttingly honest even when she doesn’t want to be. “The permanence of it.”

Face down again. Face down and the air is humid from his nostrils to his face. The bridge of his nose hurts, but not enough to be broken. Does another push up, expects some blood, but there is none. Broke his nose before and doesn’t want to fill out an incident report saying the cause of his broken nose was a just nasty fall.

His eyes dart around to focus on a baby crying and the phantom movements of someone rocking the kid. A voice, not Vala’s accent, hits the air with small bursts like a songbird cheep. “Shush up little gnarl, your parents are just being a little fahrbot right now.”

“I can hear her.” Vala scrambles up beside him. Her shoulder knocks him arm out from under him and he half collapses.

“So can I,” he mutters rubbing his nose, then his elbow.

She crouches and leans in, one of her pigtails rests on his shoulder and she whispers loud enough that the baby can probably understand her. “I meant understand her.”

“Obviously.”

“What the biznak’s gotten into you two.” The alien tilts her head, swiveling it forward as he pulls himself up using the unsteady table. Her cat eyes blink twice. Her voice, the words she chooses, she sounds much younger than he’d anticipated. “I—I mean the loud arguing is nothing, but whatever you did blew out your translator microbes which I never heard of happening.”

“Okay, look.” Takes a step forward, a diverting tactic. Draw attention to himself to protect his teammates. In less dangerous situation, the background teammate might even be able to scurry away using the distraction of the conversation. “We have no idea who you are or where we are.”

Vala didn’t get that memo, or the training. Or any basic understanding of tactics in a potentially dangerous situation. Instead she falls to conversation and flattery powered purely by luck. Her luck has the potential to overpower them all. As a team they agreed to never tell her about lottery tickets. “Not true we’re on a ship—”

Slides a hand out at her side, halting her from making further contact or conversation with the alien. “Not helping.”

The baby hiccups and the alien purrs at him, rocking him in the cradle of her arm. She plasters a nervous smile to her face—white teeth, pink gums, and silver lips. He’s never seen anything that looks remotely like her before, except for maybe a slinky barn tabby he had as a kid. “Stop kidding around. We’re still on Moya.”

“What is Moya.”

Her grin falls to the floor and the baby abruptly starts to choke back into crying. She moves forward, her head angling the opposite direction, Vala follows suit. He rolls his eyes.  “Pilot did we go through any anomalies, cosmic magnetism, space dust, weird light? Anything like that?”

Not quite sure if she’s speaking with him, or Vala, or a third party. Then on a device that resembles a clam, a picture of an alien—which also looks like a clam—joins their conversation. “No Chiana, Moya hasn’t flown by anything like that in several solar days, why?”

He and Vala stand still, mouths still agape, her head still slanted, and both their eyebrows hit the roof. Glances towards her to gauge her reaction, after all she is the alien, and she just pulls her lips tight, nodding with the widest eyes he’s ever seen.

“Aeryn and John are acting really weird.”  The alien’s attention falls back on them, and he clamps a hand on Vala’s wrist to get her to stop bobbing around. It’s like she has her own gravity. Hell, maybe she does.

“I can analyze their physical data and see if I can verify—”

“What?” Hard to hear now because the baby hollers, his mouth gummy and opened. The alien—Chiana?—she  places the kid back down on the table,  unwrapping his blanket. The whiff of a very ripe baby enters the air and he groans. When the clam alien doesn’t continue Chiana glances up from swaddling the kid. “Verify what?”

“Chiana,” There’s a long pause. Maybe their communication cut out. Maybe they did go through an anomaly and this whole thing isn’t directly his fault for allowing the communication device back into SGC. “That is not John or Aeryn.”

Chiana pivots with her whole body. The perfect basketball block. Ends up in the doorway. Eyes blinking wild and unfocused. “So who the frell are you then?”

“We’re from Earth.” Shows the palms of his hands to prove he’s not a threat. “We work with the military using stargates.”

“What the frell’s a stargate?” Her head cranks to the side.

“It’s a wormhole that—”

“Does every Crichton obsess over wormholes?”

“I’m sorry.” Vala takes a step forward. When she tries to take another he tightens his grip on her wrist. She tugs once, and with an irritated sigh, continues, “but what’s frell? What’s a Crichton?”

“Frell, is, well,” Chiana pauses, then with a grin and a shrug adds, “frell.”

“Helpful.”

“And Crichton is you.” A gray finger directs to him this time. It circles in the air like any other of her appendages.

“We’re Crichton?” Vala gestures with her hands between their bodies, then sends a flashy grin and nod to Chiana.

“No,” Chiana shakes her head and Vala’s grin falters. “He’s Crichton.”

Vala squints her eyes trying to decipher the language already deciphered for them by whatever they were injected with. His foot still aches like he stepped on a wasp. “So Crichton means man.”

“No.” Again Chiana shakes her head, and the kid is oddly quiet now, like himself, as they watch the exchange. “Man means man.”

“Wonderful.” Vala is all teeth and claps again even though she’s been told information she’s already knew. At this point Jackson would have escorted her back to the device and continued his conversation for more information. He, however, finds it slightly amusing because both women don’t show any sign of irritation. Calmly trying to bypass what left of the language barrier with patience and grins. “what does Crichton mean?”

“Oh my God,” he chuckles at her. Not entirely at her, more like at her tenacity, her inability to not stop poking the bear.

“Crichton is his name.”

“No, he’s Cameron.”

“Well he looks like Crichton. Does he get grouchy quickly?” Vala and Chiana stand beside each other, like old friends meeting up in a coffee shop. The rapid-fire dialogue gives way to nodding and pensive looks before answers.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Vala touches her chest with one hand in a gesture of gratitude and Chiana’s arm with her other. Jackson would hate this.

“Enough.”

“Enough with you.” Chiana tries to shoo him away even though his interruption isn’t more than him situating himself back in the conversation.

Vala hugs herself to his arm and he fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Cameron isn’t bad at all, he’s very helpful and quite a gentleman. His mother also makes excellent pies.” Her words leave him speechless for a moment. Usually, they carry a heavy tone of mockery, but her voice is very genuine and he cracks a grin at her making hers grow.  

“Then who are you? You’re supposed to be Aeryn.”

“I’m Aeryn?”

“She’s Vala.” He introduces her and with her arms still wrapped around his and it reminds him of his high school reunion. He still has a picture of them with a bee and the worst smiles he’s ever seen tucked away somewhere in his dorm.

“Vala.” Chiana says the name again and then nods with approval. “Yeah you’re way too happy to be Aeryn and your hair is cuter.”

“Chiana, do you know what happened?”

“Frell if I know.”

“Oh” Vala jumps making him jump slightly in surprise. The horseshoe crabs are still scurrying around the floor. Maybe they jabbed her with something else. They remind him of replicators. He hates replicators. “Frell means fuck.”

Pats her arm in appreciation. “I got that.”

“Hey, I did see that weird hookah light up though.”

“The weird—”

“Ha.” Vala slaps him in the chest and spins around back to the device. “See, I told you.”

Guilt pricks at his stomach. She did warn him, and he assumed it was going to be a normal transfer. Up at 0600 to watch soldiers load the thing into a transport. Sign and stamp the papers and finish out the day. For his early morning sacrifice, he was going to get the next day off, and he had plans. Amy was flying in. “So much for not saying the actual words.”

“What?” Chiana joins them soundlessly approaching from behind and shoves her head in the space between theirs to stare at the device. He gets a good second scare.

“This device,” he begins but notices the kid is finally asleep in her arms. He lowers his voice to a whisper, “transfers consciousness from one body to another throughout galaxies”

“But we have our own bodies,” Vala reminds both completely unhelpful and helpful at the same time. What caused them to teleport instead of transferring? The docs back at Cheyenne Mountain have hopefully realized about the switch—or disappearance—by now. Jackson and Carter working together should have this thing cracked by noon.

“Who else is on this ship?” Chiana’s eyes flicker and she lurches on her feet, shoulders flying up in defense. Vala smacks him in the shoulder with the back of her hand and he clears his throat as he clarifies, “I just want to know if anyone else can help us.”

Chiana’s mouth skews to the side as she processes his question, “well there’s me, Deke, Stark, Pilot, the old woman, and Moya.”

“Oh, I want to meet the old woman first.”

Again, silences Vala with a tug on her wrist and her enthusiasm disappears from her face. “I thought you said Moya was the ship.”

“She is.”

“So she’s a person? Has an avatar?”

“No, but she’s alive.”

“We’re inside a ship that’s alive.”

Vala grasps his wrist now, effectively killing off his next question. “Are we to be digested?”

“No.” Chiana laughs and the baby gurgles. She sways him again and turns her eyes towards the ceiling and then the walls. “Moya’s a ship, she’s always happy to have passengers on board.”

“Chiana,” The clam lights up again showing the same shell alien, but it doesn’t have the same peaceful tone as before, and its eyes squint as it speaks to her. “Moya wishes the trespassers be brought to my den immediately for examination.”

Chapter Text

“How many times are you going to make me repeat myself when I know you’re video recording this.” He’s lax, a boneless pile thrown into the chair beside her; his fellow humans keeping disparaging acts of violence to a minimum. ‘Man-handled’ as he called it, ‘unwanted physical contact resulting in proper defense’ in her lexicon.

This General is much different from the captains in the Peacekeeper army. His eyebrows vacillate with compassion and comprehension. He may be an authority in extracting pertinent information from prisoners, but his quirks and mannerisms remind her of John’s father. “We just want to get our ducks in a row.”

“Ducks?” The room is plagued with people, far to many and every microt that passes the temperature raises more klances. Despite them cultivating what they term a ‘peaceful’ interrogation process, there is every suggestion that they’re employing a slow raising heat-based torture tactic to get her to be more agreeable.

“It’s an idiom, Honey.” His attention on her is brief, showering it on the General and the dozens of similar apprearanced soldiers, but amplifies as he returns, his eyes narrowing perhaps detecting the bit of sweat blistering at her hairline. The expectation is that he will say something to divulge her weakness, and in doing so it will result in their extortion for her good health. Instead, he clarifies with an analytical expression. “Ducks are easier to shoot if they’re all lined up.”

“Obviously.”

“She does speak English, right?” The General directs his stout fingers towards her, and as those expressive brows lower she’s privy to the glisten of something in his eyes. “Because she was speaking English when you got here.”

Rather than answer him, she crosses her arms, ignoring the squelching of moisture in her armpits and pooling underneath her breasts, leaning forward and resting against her knee in boredom.

John leans in slightly, his wayward hand resting further up the expanse of her thigh where the Calvins have rolled under. “You can chime in on this whenever you want to—”

Plucks his hand, radiating an untold heat directly into her body, from her thigh with a forefinger and thumb. Refuses to make eye contact with him and continues her dialogues in Sebacean. “I will not be revealing any information which could lead them to Moya and allow them to harm my son.”

The second man at the table, the one who replaced the only female she’s witnessed so far, finally moves from where his hands were clasped against his mouth in what looked to be a prayer. His skin is tight around his face, his lips very pale and his eyes appear uneven under the thin-rimmed spectacles pinned to his face. He addresses John, but his finger juts at her in succession. “How do you understand her?”

John attempts to lean himself back in the chair but fails when he finds the material used in its construction too considerable to even jostle. Instead his body refolds, hands burrowing beneath his arms and he sucks in the corner of his mouth. “Translator microbes.”

“Which are?”

“Exactly what they sound like.”

“Okay.” The man scoffs, hot refuse diffusing into the small room, stirring the air and the intensity of temperature empties her lungs. “No need for sass.”

But she forgets about John’s intuition, his memory of her body and the changes that overtake her in certain conditions. How he’s seen her suffer from the delirium twice and both times failed to acknowledge her plea for a quick and satisfying death, instead leaving her to boil in her own body while he searched for a reversal method.

His expression now is one of open concern, flaring nostrils, downturned eyes with pinhole pupils, and as his thumb drips from his lip, she interrupts what she construes as his apprehension, her eyes wrenching shut in the torture of her own body touching. “I don’t understand why we haven’t broken out of here and searched for a way back—”

Stretches to grasp at her, his hand practically on fire, and she shrugs her shoulder up to halt the impeding contact. The concern then bleeds into hurt with a patient sigh. “Because they’re our best way of getting back.”

“No, the stones and that device are.”

The man with the glasses whom they introduced to them as a doctor, with no military background decidedly on how he carries himself, omits a slight groan, leaning his elbows and hands against the metal table, the same one she has a leg wrapped around trying to siphon away the coolness.  “We don’t want to hurt you or your friends.”

John simply points a finger at him, the gesture a passive challenge. “Tazed.”

“We want to send you back.” The doctor has not let his attention stray from her. The sensation is all too familiar, being watched, feeling guarded, something she hasn’t experienced since the Scarrans. The ability of anyone to view her how she doesn’t want to be seen. As small, as incompetent. As just a female. His words trying to elicit compassion from her that does not exist. “We want our people back.”

“We just want to protect our people.” The General clarifies, his hands flat and spread over the tabletop, his back straight but not arched forward, his words calm with a smattering of an accent sticking on. His effect calming unlike the doctor. “Can you please just tell us if our people will be safe on your ship?”

Moya. Home. Her son stranded in the command center until hopefully Chiana stumbles upon him during one of her never ending routes throughout the ship. She doesn’t stop. Her son’s red-faced crying, their trials to find him nutrients and meals, the increase in his bodily temperature injecting her with the lingering feeling of transferring her own inadequacies to her offspring, her own faults to bring him down when she just wants to sense the quick raise and fall of his back, of lungs she formed within her, of his gurgles from a slobbering mouth and fat cheeks.

“Is this guy okay?” John gestures the doctor.

“Excuse me?”

“You look like you’re about to snap and take out a bus full of kindergarteners.”

“I’m a little on edge.” The cadence of his voice increases to display the proper level of his indignation. Apparently on this version of Earth, people are quick to offend. “You’ll have to excuse me, but you can understand that this is a little bit shocking for us.”

Her eyes lock on to this doctor, her body remains stable and unwavering and sweating from all crevasses. Arches an eyebrow at him, and in perfect English, with the drab tone indicating sarcasm, she voices, “for you?”

The men stop their chattering. Even the armed guards creating a ring around the room like a children’s game, stop rustling with their weapons.

“Look—” John tucks his head into his palm, fingers tapping at his temple. He becomes uneasy in captivity. He becomes anxious when she will not allow him to touch her. But he never abandons his intuition, has her knowledge of discomfort with this doctor who presumes to know her when she is not the woman he lost. “Can you take him to an exercise pen or something? Run it out of him?”

“I’m sorry.” The doctor stutters, not out of nervousness as she’s seen men do before, but rather out of irritation. His torso hunches forward, his hands sliding over the table into her territory. Precognitive of her attack should he drift to close, he withdraws just as quickly and instead fumbles to his feet. “Is this some kind of joke for you? Because we lost two of our teammates today—”

John still splays across his chair, his mouth clicking as he sucks in air unimpressed with the diatribe. “And we lost a son.”

“Did you ever think that if maybe—maybe if you cooperated—” He continues in his pacing, his boots clomping across the floor, and the General appear unmoved as if this is a regular occurrence.

During the second round of his speech she blinks and becomes lightheaded at the amount of words his mouth hurls into the air, each one hot and weighted. Never thought it possible that a man could speak more than Crichton. Steadies herself with fingers clamping down on the cold table surface, panting as if she’s back running drills again.

Before her husband has a chance to voice his concerns, the doctor’s hand falls to her own, blanketing her in unwanted contact, unrequired concern, and unhealthy heat. With cloudy vision and a weak equilibrium, she still managers to spring from the chair sending it clattering back into the wall and connect a single balled fist with the handsy doctor’s nose. “Do not touch me.”

All the soldiers click into position, drawing their arms and aiming at her.

John, intent on keeping their negotiations, rather their interrogations, as peaceful as possible. Wants to tell him if he wanted to spare her the torture he never should have sent her to search for Leviathan parts out all those cycles ago. “Okay, that was self defense. He was in her private space.”

“You’re in her private space.” The doctor lurches back, his hand pinching the tip of his nose and cupping to catch the blood ribboning out of it.

“We’re married you tool.”

“All right, well I think that’s it for negotiations today.” The General is again, unperturbed as if this is also a regular occurrence. The door groans open, hot metal expanding and impacting brick and concrete. The squadron of soldiers slowly flow out of the room, draping the hallway in armed protection. “I think we all might do a little better on a good night’s rest.”

 The doctor catches himself in the doorway, hand fully consuming his nose and his eyes watering and narrowed. “You know you’re not really gaining our trust”

Her English rebuttal is forgotten in her head as she starts to shake on her feet, and when she scrambles to dictate the stages of heat delirium to herself, she finds she can’t. John crosses his arms, partly to gather attention, partly protective possessive, and steps slightly to guard her. “The feeling is mutual”

“So—” She focuses on the ceiling, not really seeing any moving parts or receptors, or any sort of gooey bits one would generally expect when inside a digestive system. “We’re in a stomach right now?”

The gray girl slinks ahead of them, the baby resting its head on her shoulder, its tiny blue eyes trying to focus on Cameron or herself, but the bounce of their steps, even over slated metal, causes his attention to flicker, frantic for a destination to stop. A feeling she knows all too well. “Moya doesn’t have a stomach.”

“Then how does she eat?”

“How the frell should I know?” Chiana doesn’t really spat the answer, but her voice becomes punctuated, her words curt.

“Vala.” Cameron’s large hand curls around her bicep and yanks her closer to him as they walk, she glances at his hand on her and then to his face, cocking an eyebrow at him, which immediately gets her released. He clears his throat and then falls into a bit of a Daniel-esque stutter. “Maybe cool it on the questions.”

Her skin prickles in the absence of his hand. Not his touch, although she’s never one to complain about a strong pair of masculine hands on her body, but rather the heat. This ship, if it is living, which she’s not entirely sure it is, is awfully cold. “You’re inside a living thing and you don’t want to ensure that you’re not going to be digested?”

“The questions are getting us into more trouble,” he grumbles from the side of his mouth, his voice steadier, back to the classic army sternness, however she does love when she can get a rise out of him in more than one way.

“We’re inside something’s stomach, how could we possibly be in more trouble.”

“Look—” Chiana pivots on her toes, a swift movement and so perfectly balanced that the child doesn’t stir until a few seconds later. “Pilot and Moya aren’t angry with you, more concerned about where Crichton and Aeryn went.”

“If the ship is alive, then why does it require a pilot.”   

“Princess, please.” He cuts in front of her, copying her half of their chase around the base, wanting her attention for a change and not for a swift reprimanding, but rather a plea. “I’m begging you. Stop. Talking.”

“I’m never one to refuse a man on his knees” The expression he gives her is borderline murderous, but she gives him a plush wink and brushes by him as they approach another large door.

“Hey, are you a real princess?” The baby snuffles or hiccups against the gray girl’s shoulder, and she switches him to the other with a bit of an upturned nose. “Because there was one time that Aeryn was—”

Cameron cuts in before she has a chance to lay the groundwork for a spectacular lie giving her royal rights, “it’s a nickname.”

“What’s that?”

“A name given by friends to show endearment.”

“Oh.” She clasps her hands together, and leans her head back to his shoulder, batting her eyelashes at him again with coquettish ease. “I’m endearing to you?”

“In so much as you’re on my team and therefore I have a responsibility to care about your wellbeing—” The massive door opens smoothly revealing a very murky chamber with the shell creature from the hologram situated in the middle at a desk of sorts. Many of those things Mitchell called ‘whore’s who crabs’ scatter around the ground and along the wall, their little torch eyes dot the darkness.

“I think this surpasses a subtle affinity to me.” With a cheeky grin she picks up her usual position walking backwards while deep in conversation with him. Trying to jam her words out as fast as she can before he eventually shuts down whatever topic she’s brings up. “I think you care about me more than you’d care to admit.”

“Vala—” His tone isn’t completely harsh yet meaning she has a good two or three exchanges in order to work out what she wants to say and decide how much goading she wants to do.

“I’d even wager to say that you—”

Unfortunately, as she takes the next step back, her foot settles on the sudden empty space beside the walkway. Her body starts to tumble backward before she recognizes what exactly is happening, and just as the panic of tumbling storeys down to her death on some random living alien ship sinks in, his arms snatch her up, one on her bicep again and the other on her ribs, settling her beside him with ease.

Then they share an entirely awkward moment where they just gaze at each other as if mid-dance. Just a tingle, just a wisp of a grin.

The ships groans, or perhaps one of the spinning coin doors doesn’t connect in perfection to an oblong archway somewhere, either way the noise jolts the finally slumbering infant awake, and in an instant his fists and his face are clutched tight and his wail echoes throughout the cavernous chamber. She and Cameron disengage as Chiana adjusts the child away from her ear.

“Pilot how did they end up here?” The gray girl prowls easily through the precariously thin walkway with not so much as a blink of second guessing her footfalls. The wailing infant also seems undeterred by the infinite drop into nothingness. “Why aren’t they Aeryn and Crichton?”

“For starters their heat signatures differ vastly.” The monster—rather the alien before her is more enormous than she assumed. When she takes a hesitant step forward in the interest of counting his arms, Mitchell yanks her back into place. The creature—this pilot, pays no attention to the yelp of an outburst she offers, which falls on infant wailing deafened ears. “As she is Sebacean, Aeryn’s body temperature is several degrees lower than Crichton’s, a human. Crichton also has a lower blood pressure than this man.”

“Hey, I am in peak physical health.”

To her delight the crab monster rolls his eyes at Mitchell, then continues to explain, “it is due to your nascent exposure to the uncharted territories.”

Chiana angles her head, her body climbing forward towards the pilot’s desk, sort of perched on the side. “Where did they come from though?”

“Oh, oh.” Her hand blasts into the air and in seconds Mitchell is trying to suppress it, she manages to wrench her arm free, and then take a step forward to spite him. “You’re in possession of a long-range communication device.”

Chiana and the pilot exchange a doubtful, perhaps disapproving look. She flips around on the desk now somewhat crouching to the side still cradling the baby in one arm. “A what?”

“The device on the wobbly table in the room where we met.”

“The hookah?”

“The device can actually transport—”

As Mitchell digresses into a somewhat patronizing explanation of what the horrific devices actually are, the baby twitches against the gray girl chest, punting a leg in the air followed by breaking into another wail.

“I’m sorry, but does that child ever stop crying?” She grinds her teeth together, poised fingers pressing on her temple. The sound reminds her of her home world, rampant with multiple marriages and crops of children. The marketplace a dissonant conglomeration of screaming broods and rampant illnesses spread by screaming broods.

Then she remembers what it was like after Qetesh.

“It’s a baby,” Mitchell huffs, though his tone is more stoic than before. “That’s what they do.”

“Actually, Deke doesn’t stop crying, not really.”

“Well can you get rid of him for a moment.” The marketplace and her betrothed tugging her along between the swarms of people, the crying and singing. Then crying and screaming. Just screaming and red.

“What.”

Cameron waits for clarification but when she doesn’t offer any he translates for her. “I think maybe it’s time to return the little guy to his parents.”

“Sure,” Chiana agrees with a squeak of a giggle, then holds the child out to them.

“No. Oh no.” The massive step she takes in retreat slams her back into Mitchell’s chest.

“You gotta be kidding me.” She notes interestingly enough that his expression isn’t pure horror as hers is, but rather one of mystification.  

 “As I’ve already stated countless times; we are not this baby’s parents.”

“Although You may not be his biological parents, your physical bodies are very much the same.” The pilot’s gentle voice cuts through the strain of baby’s throaty cries hiccupping in and out. “The familiar faces and voices as the child begins to tune his senses might put him at ease.”

“So here.” When the gray girl shoves the infant forward, she turns her body away slightly, locking her arms behind her back. Chiana’s face skews, her eyebrows furrowing. “Haven’t you held a baby before?”

“Briefly before she was pried away from me.” Her lie is better than the truth. She also will never require or seek out his pity on the matter. With a roll of her eyes, she holds out her arms, ready to receive the rather weighty child. “Oh, give it here.”

Chiana pauses, retaining the child at the last second and correcting, “him.”

“Whatever.” Snatches the child and settles him gently so his fat chin rests against the skin on her shoulder exposed by Mitchell’s pawing earlier. When she chances a glance at him, expecting him to say something biting or pithy, instead he has a wide grin on his face, almost mooning a bit. To hide the blush creeping into her cheeks she ducks her head, settling it on the gurgling infant and with a lilt she adds, “if this infant vomits on me I will wipe it on you.”

“Fair enough.” The line isn’t delivered with a laugh, or a chuckle, or any sort of sarcastic action meant to belittle her, instead she can only hear his smile. When Chiana clears her throat, a knowing expression of side-eyes and a pulled grin, he restarts the topic, “did your long-range communication device have stones?”

“Yeah, two of them.”

“We’ll need to examine it then.” She bounces the baby a bit, itty bitty feet squared off against her hip and the first dollop of drool on her skin.

Chiana nods in agreement, the pilot seems to as well with a soft dip of his massive head accompanied by a slow blink. “I’ll take you back to command.”

Though uninjured and less jarred than Mitchell on their transfer into the ship, her body is starting to tire and with the added weight of the child she feels an ache already pooling in her lower back. “Is there no faster method of transportation on Mayo?”

“Moya,” Mitchell corrects from over her shoulder. His finger ghosting over her skin, tickling at the tiny palms of the baby who begins to sour again, the muscles in his face tightening.

As his guttural wails return, the pilot narrows his eyes at them, just a tad on the judgemental side.  “Moya is still not sure you’re entirely to be trusted. You should be more appreciative that you’re not being vacuumed into space.”

“Oh, we are.” Mitchell releases the infant’s hand and nods along with her, wide and innocent. “We are.”

Tired of the crying and the now puddle of drool sliding down the misshapen collar of one of her only four shirts, she rearranges the baby with one hand supporting his bottom and the other arm wrapping around his chest, somewhat primitively buckling him to her for support, but offering him a wider array of people to view. It also works to aim his mouth cannon somewhere besides her very limited wardrobe.

To her, and perhaps everyone’s relief, the crying stops, instead replaced with content gurgles motoring out of a very gummy mouth.

Mitchell now wears a half-grin, one she definitely hasn’t seen before and all these new positive facial expressions of his are more unnerving than the idea that she still might be masticated by a ship. “How did you do that?”

“Well I’m using my hand to support his tiny—”

“No, how’d you get him to stop crying?”

“I don’t know.” Shrugs at him and sways with the child, who is  warm against her chest and jittering his little legs. “Everything is very dark, and everyone is very serious, I thought perhaps if I entertained him—” When she tucks her head down to view the baby, he looks up at her and give her a wide, toothless grin.

“I think he likes you.”

While she appreciates the enthusiasm behind the comments and the underlying intention, properly holding a baby is not the same as pleading with her daughter not to kill and torture millions. “That’s a learned response, Darling.” But she can’t help but grin back down at him. “He likes his mother.”

The baby gurgles back at her, and with a happy twitch kicks his feet.

“No.” He elongates the word, and stoops to be even height with the infant, again taking his tiny hand and again the infant’s face sours. “I think he likes you.”

“Well then, I suppose he’d be the first.” Glances to Chiana who is obviously reading the exchange between Mitchell and herself, smugness tightening her shining lips.

“No he wouldn’t, Princess.”

Chapter Text

The hallway they walk down—at his slow pace despite everyone else’s swift military speed—looks exactly like all the other hallways, white and metallic with random pipes running through it like they’re in a submarine, and tight as hell because if this doctor guy bumps shoulders with him again, he’s gonna let Aeryn have a free swing.

Finally, they reach a roundabout of a dead end, a circular room with two doors at what must be the bottom of the mountain and if that’s true it should be a lot cooler. His clothes are starting to stick into all his unmentionable nooks and crannies.

The doctor stops right in the middle of the circle, forcing everyone to file in around him, and he takes the opportunity to shimmy up next to his wife, analyzing her sweat glowing face and trying to discern what stage of heat delirium she’s at and how much time they have before she make him promise to kill her again. At this point it probably should’ve just been in their wedding vows.

But that damn doctor clears his throat and gestures towards two doors across the hall from each other. When he speaks, his voice is still nasally, but he’s downgraded to only a single tissue sticking out of his nose, slopping up the blood.  “The General’s delegated these two rooms for you—”

“Hear that, Honey?” He grins through her daggers, trying to be more of a spectacle, to draw any lingering eyes away from Aeryn so they don’t see the way she sways slightly on her feet—and because he’s caught the guard to his left staring at her ass more than once—and although that’s her ass, the wedding vows should’ve said he’s the one who gets to look. “Even though you’ve beat the shit out of the military’s top classicist—”

“Egyptologist, and she only hit me once.”

The grin shatters from his face and with a serious grumble he reminds, “that’s because it only took one.”

Then he nudges her shoulder—because this is kind of a vacation, a vacation under a mountain that might actually be a volcano barring how hot it is, and under the intense watch of other dimension Earth military, and with the threat of her being boiled into a permanent vegetative state, but there’s no screaming baby and midnight feedings—which he really never did anyway—and no teeny bed to balance on. “We don’t need two rooms.”

“Of course you don’t.” The doctor doesn’t make eye contact with her, his head watching the tiled floor as he unlocks a room and gestures through the open doors again. “It’s protocol, even for SGC members, no fraternizing.”

Okay, so not much of a vacation anymore.

“No sleepovers?” He gets a stiff nod in return—which is the only thing stiff he’s going to be getting while on this Earth—he holds his hand up flashing the wedding band they had custom made for him from the melted down metal of an old module part. “We’re married.”

“As proud as you are of that, it doesn’t matter to us.” The good Doc gives him a shit-eating grin and stands, nosebleed-stained hands behind his back by the electronic door panel. “John, you’ll be in this room and uh—your wife will be across the hall—”

“Her name is Aeryn.”

“—and eight armed guards will be stationed outside your rooms in case you get any thoughts.”

Neither of them moves and the Doc just sort of stares, like they should know what to do. She arches an eyebrow at him, and he watches a big fat drop of sweat bead from under her chin and slip down her neck in between her breasts.

“Hey!” The Doc shouts to get their attention back, “you do understand that you need to get in the rooms, right?”

“Jeez Dr. Happy, can you give me and the wife a second to say goodnight?”

When he doesn’t immediately oblige them, Aeryn speaks up, her voice wavering because he can tell her concentration is on her stance. “Our son is without us, having a moment to negotiate our distraught emotions would be appreciated.”

With reluctance, kind of like he doesn’t want to see the embrace, the good Doc nods and she throws her arms around him, her body weight into him, and Goddamn it, she’s on fire. His shirt pastes to her skin, and she twitches against him from his heat added to hers.

But one of her hands sneaks into his palm, the fingers flat, then suddenly her thumb and pinkie depress throwing him a three.

Three hours until breakout.

*

The rooms aren’t as bad as he thought they’d be—not as much like a prison as most of the other jailcells he’s lived in. There’s a bed—a big bed—bigger than the one on—man, he’s going to have to let that go.

His finger plucks at the collar of his stained and now sweat drenched shirt as he fans the fabric, then just yanks it off over his head. He’s got three hours to kill, and they’ve been kind enough to leave some basic clothing—military issued of course—on the gigantic bed.

There’s an area with a desk, a lamp, and a notepad—even a touchtone phone that’s been unplugged and left in the room for decoration. It’s dark, not only from being buried however many storeys underground, but the room is constructed with different types of metal and concrete making him miss the dark but warm-hued palette on Moya.

They even gifted him with the smallest bathroom he’s ever seen, a toilet, sink and shower in a space so small he couldn’t lay down if he wanted to. Naturally, he turns the shower to cold, letting it run and leaving the door open so it cools down the room as he picks out a pair of thin gray sweats and a new plain black shirt.

He hops into the shower, getting shocked by the cold and adjusting the temperature to a relaxing almost lukewarm and praying that Aeryn is doing the same across the hall and not passed out on the ground—tries to tear his mind away from his wife because their son is almost five weeks old, but it’s been six weeks—and he’s gone six weeks before—but never with someone looking so goddamn hot—not in a literal sense usually—laying less than an arm’s length away with her cold skin tickling his fingertips during their blessed ninety minutes of co-sleeping. Her hair soft with oils she still has from Zhaan and her face so peaceful in the lowlight that once he—on purpose—shook her awake to live out the fantasy—but Deke woke too and then that was a whole thing he had to deny.

The water starts to flow warmer than he’d like—or maybe it’s just his increase in blood pressure—among other things—and he steps out not even really bothering to towel off because in roughly two and a half hours, he’ll be breaking out.

Plans to just air dry on the bed, the big bed he can starfish on happily and maybe catch up on alternate Earth news and it sounds like a movie length dream. His ass actually hits the bed, his eyes closing before he realizes—

How the hell is he going to break out of this room?

*

Once the door opens, she’s already mid-fray, tossing guys around like sacks of potatoes, disarming guards, guns and men are clattering to the floor left and right. One guy goes to run at her, and he sort of redirects him, punching him in the face, while simultaneously tripping another—guesses the answer to the earlier question is six.

She can take out six armed guards without his help.

“What—took you—so long.” She’s full out panting now, her hair—that was in a ponytail—is falling free around her shoulders. She’s got a different gray tank top on, and what must be military workout shorts that offer her about the same coverage.

“Sorry Baby.” He stoops, collecting a concealable weapon for each of them, then plucks her hair tie off the ground, wiggling it into her palm as she leans against the wall. “I had to figure out how to get out of the room. How’d you get out so quick?”

“I—stole a—cardkey from—from the guards as we were—we were—”  Raises her hands to collect her hair, but she’s sloppy, starting to lose fine motor functions, so he steps up, collects her hair from between her cragged fingers that fall slack, and ties it up as she rests her shoulder against the wall. “You?”

“Me?” Wraps the straggling hairs around the bun he’s constructed and it’s not going to win him stylist of the year, but it will keep her cooler.

“How did you get out?”

“That. Whatever the card thing you said was.”

It’s a lie.

He used the pen—left with his desk and notepad—to jimmy the electrical panel open and mess around with the wires until the door hissed open.

“Come on.” Tries to retrace their steps, but all the damn hallways look the same and of course on a secret alien military base there’s not going to be any ‘you are here’ signs. To be honest he doesn’t even know what they’re looking for. He’ll start with a way out. 

“Where are we going?”

“We just have to make it outside.”

“Then what?”

“Then we steal a car or something.”

“And go where?”

“Jesus Honey—”

Pauses because she’s about half a hallway away still leaning into the wall, breathing just as hard and her knees are starting to knock. He backtracks, wary because if she remembers she’s angry at him, he’s likely to get one of those knockout punches to the face again and her cognition so far appears to be pretty good. She doesn’t even move, just presses the bare skin on her shoulder tighter to the metal in the wall, trying to cool herself and keeps her eyes closed. “I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

Her eye sneaks open and she curves an eyebrow at him. “And I thought you trusted these humans.”

“Yeah.” He fans her shirt a bit, allowing her a few seconds of relief. They must have made it up at least one floor, and it must be late at night because so far, he hasn’t seen another soldier except for the pile they left behind. “That was before they started separating and trying to conquer us like a game of risk.”

They weave through more of the same hallways, and after a few minutes, he slips his hand into hers because she’s trailing too far behind, her footsteps are starting to fall staggered and uneven—tripping her up—and she’s gotten too quiet.

When she stumbles into the back of him, he stops allowing her to catch as much of her breath as possible, fighting to not comfort her because that’s what she so harshly demanded.

Thankfully a sign—the first he’s seen—offers him some hope.

A stairwell sits at the end of the hallway.

As he’s deciding if she can make it up however many flights of stairs—or if he can carry her the remaining storeys she can’t—she huffs in exhaustion, “where are we going?”

Shit.

Lifts her teetering head, and she still has enough oomph to slap his hand away. They’re near the stairwell, there’s always elevators by the stairs—it sucks because it’ll be enclosed and hotter and easier to snag them, but she needs out of the heat. “Okay we gotta boogey.”

“Wait—” Her brow coarsens in confusion, her eyes squinting through the sweat resting around the bags she’s collected in the last five weeks. “What?”

Briefly holds her chin in his hand, and greedily plants a kiss on her forehead to judge her temperature—as if he even needed to. His teeth clack off each other, his jaw tenses because this just went from a farcical escape plan to a medical emergency.  “We just need to find the elevator.”

Drags her along by the wrist now, ducking his head down every hallway, serpentining through this damn mountain. Her feet slap the ground harder at his pace.

“We need to find an elephant?”

“Elevator.” That’s strike two. He stops, pivoting on his heels. The tank top she has on is too big for her, the strap tumbles over her shoulder and he tugs it back up. “How you doing?”

She yanks her arm away, stumbling back and steadying herself against the wall. He tries to find relief in her bad attitude, the grudge she can—and might—take to the grave, but at this point it’s exhausting him. “You do not need to constantly placate me like I’m some—” For a second he believes her, until her hands travel down to the back of her army green shorts and she tugs out the gun he gave to her from the waistband. “Why do I have this?”

“Oh no, no, no, no.” Yanks her along now, spinning down each hallway opening, no longer looking for surface level.

“Crichton, what—”

“We gotta get you cooler now.” What level would a cafeteria be on? Or a doctor’s office. Or just anywhere that isn’t on fire, and they knew—they must have known—acting all calm and pseudo friendly before tazing their asses—what if they have Deke? What if this is some elaborate brainfuck done by the Peace Keepers or the Scarrens or anyone because they can’t get off his ass long enough to hold up to their end of the—

“Crichton.” Manages to wrench her arm away with some reserved force, almost collapsing from using up her energy to snub him. He holds her up as two soldiers stroll by, giving him the side-eye and he just grins and nods until they pass.

“You have heat delirium, Baby.” Words against her ear. Her hot ear. Every part of her is on fire as she slumps forward, resting her head against his shoulder. His voice is almost hidden, as his lips brush against her temple. “Escape plan’s cancelled.”

In a harsh whisper she reminds, “You cannot let them know about this. They will use it to exploit us.”

His hand cups the side of her face, thumbing over the shiny layer of sweat on her cheek. “To exploit me, Aeryn.”

She seizes him with her eyes, even barely open they won’t stray from his. Before he reassures her that this isn’t her fault, that her one biological flaw doesn’t make her weak—although, it’s a pretty shitty weakness to have and their enemies exploit it left and right—someone bellows from down the hallway.

“Colonel Mitchell. Vala Mal Doran.”

There’s a guy, a big guy, hanging his head out of an elevator waving at them. He doesn’t remember the names of their doppelgangers, or ranks, or anything because he was too worried about getting his wife back to listen to half of the words falling out of General Rygel’s mouth.

“Is that us?” asks from the side of his mouth, lips barely moving.

She doesn’t answer.

So he wraps a hand around her waist, walking her almost unconscious body towards what could very well be this Earth’s version of the Terminator. The guy takes a single step—the length of the elevator—back as he shifts Aeryn in, praying she can make the few steps without collapsing.

She does, collecting herself in the corner, peeling the sweaty shirt away from where his hand plastered it to her back.

“How’s it going—” Buddy? Big Bear? Tall Boy? “Big Guy?”

Luckily the guy doesn’t send a glance his way, instead taking a step closer to Aeryn. “Vala Mal Doran you are sweating profusely. Are you suffering from heat stroke?”

When she doesn’t answer in the appropriate beat, he gives her a nudge with his bare foot, and she snaps into action. “What?” Stands straighter for a split second before sliding back down, her cheek pillowing against his shoulder. “I’m—just—tired.”

“No, no sleeping yet,” he mutters into the hair clumping on the top of her head, his hand jostles her arm, rousing her from resting.

Without turning his attention away from the elevator doors, Big Guy asks, “Is there any update on Daniel Jackson’s conference?”

“No, but I’d say he has a bad headache from prepping.”

“Why would you say that?”

“No reason, you know, Daniel Jackson.”

“Indeed. Are you heading off base to meet with Amy?”

“No, she, uh, cancelled.”

“Then where is your destination?”

“We’re actually on our way to the cafeteria because Vala left something in there. Isn’t that right, Vala?” Elbows Aeryn in the side because she’s going to have to say a word or two to make this conversation believable, but her body sort of limp noodles beside him. He flashes a tight grin at the gigantic man he realizes he’s stuck in an elevator with, and his ass kicking wife is out of commission. “Isn’t. That. Right?”

Aeryn darts awake, almost parkouring off him, kicking him against the button panel and standing, wavering, in the opposite corner. “He wants asylum. If you cannot promise me that right now, I will leave this ship.”

“Colonel Mitchell, I suspect deception concerning your intentions with Vala Mal Doran.”

Aeryn’s fit, her crazy out of context words—at least for the monumental guy taking up half the elevator—don’t seem to phase him and either this dude’s seen a lot of weird shit in his life, or this Vala chick is batshit crazy too.

The guy crunches at his hips, his hands clasped behind his back, and slowly lowers his head until they have the same eye-level. His eyes narrow and with a whisper that still sounds like a clap of thunder, he questions, “does this have to do with what you disclosed to me confidentially while inebriated?”

“What? No.” Tries to return to his wife—his very leaky, slightly crazy, almost motor function deficient wife— “She’s just a little hot and we want to go to the—”

When he tries to slip an arm around her, her hand launches up from her side clamping around his wrist, holding it in place, and her eyes are wild, jumping, dangerous, scared. “Crichton, promise me.”

He’s not going to let her die.

She’s not going to die because this is the third time something like this has happened and all it takes is a nice cool place to take the edge off. Touches his free hand to her cheek, staring into her delirious eyes, and knows he’s got to be the Bonnie again.

For her sake.

"Look, I’m not Colonel Mitchell, she’s not Vala.” The Big Guy opens his mouth, but he shakes his head. “I don’t have time to get into it right now, but she really needs to get somewhere cold. Just help her and I promise we’ll cooperate.”

The Bug Guy presses a button on the elevator and arches an eyebrow at him. “Indeed.”

They spent the next three hours staring at the long-range communication device trying to figure out where the stones went. He poked the indented grooves, Vala bounced the baby on her hip, and Chiana explained to him several times how the machine was purchased at a second-hand hut at a trading post. He rested his chin in his hand, staring—then glaring—at the device until Chiana bumped the table and it tottered while the baby blew up again.

The baby was restless. They were restless and decided to turn in.

If he only knew what that fully meant.

“This is it.” His chin juts out while he stares at a tiny bed and a tinier cradle.

“That’s it.” Chiana happily grins, maneuvering on the pads of her feet around the room to Vala who is lowering the baby into the bassinet. “They put him there sometimes, but that usually doesn’t keep him quiet.”

Vala tucks a ratty old blanket up around the kid, who is already starting to go weepy-eyed again. “Where does he sleep then.”

“With them usually.”

His stance doesn’t change, but he breaks his glare to witness a snapshot of Vala tickling at the baby’s toes and pulling a bright grin at the kid. He turns back before she notices, playing off his own grin as a smirk. “I’m still not sure I understand where they sleep.”

“Right there.”

“That’s a bed.”

“Yes.”

Vala pops up beside him, fixing the loose collar of her shirt. It immediately slides back down. Her eyebrows knit with worry as she examines the bed for the first time. “Is it possible to add another bed to this room?”

Chiana stops filing through what he can only assume are personal items and steps down from a chair. “that is two beds.”

“Oh.” Vala pouts. And he might notice her lips for the first time. Shining in the low light until her head cranes back, addressing Chiana, who is now tossing clothing into piles on the floor. “Is it possible to add a third?”

“Before they shared this room, did Crichton and Officer Sun—”

“It’s Sun,” They both correct him while Vala gravitates to the clothing pile in the middle of the room.

“Whatever.” Stretches his neck and finds the baby actually asleep, so he lowers his voice. “Did they have separate rooms before?”

“Yep.” Chiana nods and hands Vala a white shirt and some other unidentifiable black clothing. “On different levels too.”

Vala holds the clothing against her front and nods, then turns to him for approval, that big, wide grin plastered to her face. She’s adorable. They’re both adorable in an innocent but mischievous kind of way. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her mesh this well with anyone but Jackson. So instead of picking out all the reasons why clothing isn’t the biggest priority right now, he says nothing but gives her a thumbs up and a nod.

She practically vibrates with excitement and he doesn’t think his opinion ever mattered this much to anyone before.

“Alright.” Drops his thumb and points an index finger at both. “Chiana, can you take Vala to Officer Sun’s—”

“Sun.” Both cut him off again.

“Take her to her old room.”

“Fine.” Chiana leans forward, her body almost snapped in half, and smacks Vala’s scuffed boot. “I’ll show you where the refresher is too.”

“Brilliant. Perhaps you could also show me where the facilities are—”

He steps in before they can get too carried away with what might be the equivalent of an intergalactic sleepover. “Just make sure you come back for the baby.”

“What?” Vala stops just before the door, clothes spilling over one arm as the other tugs and loosens her pigtails.

“The kid.” He tries not to get distracted by the way her fingers brush through her hair, jutting a thumb back to the sleeping baby that obviously plays favorites. “You got to take him.”

Chiana’s expression sours, “he sleeps with his parents.”

“Not. You.” Curls his fingers in the air because, it is too late or too early for the who’s on first act again. “Vala, he needs to go with you.”

“Why?” She sounds almost offended.

“Because—” it’s said through terse teeth “—you’re his—”

“I’m as related to him as you are.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

“You know—” she shakes her head, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to elaborate and he’s got a bad feeling about this “—he’s a baby, you’re the—”

“Oh, my dear Colonel.” She’s full out offended now. “Please do not tell me you’re suggesting I take the infant that is not biologically related to me simply because I’m a woman.”

“I—”

“I cannot believe that living on your planet has tainted your thoughts with such—”

“Dren?” Chiana chimes in.

He holds his hand against his forehead because now this all seems like a really bad fever dream and he’s going to wake up in quarantine with Lam telling him to stop drinking off-world water. “I just meant you’re better with him.”

His compliment goes in disguise as another insult. “I am not!”

“I meant that he just likes you more.”

Chiana sort of growls playfully as she takes a step forward. “The only reason the gnarl likes Aeryn more is because she actually spends time with him.”

“I’ve been caring for him for the better part of four hours.” Vala hikes up the bundle of clothing in her arms and sort of sashays to the door, Chiana following her. Before the door closes, he hears her add, “this is perfect not-father, not-son bonding time.”

And before he can even understand what the hell just happened, he’s standing in the middle of the room, clothing still all over the floor, with a bed his legs are going to hang off of, and a baby, that’s not his, staring up at him.

Deke gurgles, a wad of spit forming at the side of his mouth, and blue eyes wide, expressive in worry.

“Yeah kid. I don’t know what the hell to do with her either.” He sits on the side of the bed and it feels like it’s made of pure metal, and then tries to rationalize why he wanted to check out Vala’s ass as she left. “But she sure looks cute when she pouts.”

And that’s when Deke starts crying.

*

It has to be hours later when he finds his way down to her room, a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders as he wanders through dark, dank hallways. It’s only by happenstance that Chiana pounces out in front of him.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Don’t you?”

“What are you doing?”

“Chasing ghosts.” She wears a coy half-grin and he can’t tell if she’s lying or telling him the truth. Either way it’s disturbing.

“Well, as much as I would like to unpack that happy sentence, can you just tell me where Vala is so maybe we can get this kid to settle down and get some sleep?”

An entertained mewl excites her mouth, and now her smile is all cheeky. “Crichton never could stay away from her for long.”

“We’re not them.” It’s not a growl or a grumble but a deadpan statement because they don’t belong on this ship, or in this galaxy, or together. It was all a matter of coincidence, and just because she has pretty hair and what he bets are soft lips, doesn’t mean anything.

 His grandma always said to never mistake coincidences for miracles.

“In one major way, no.” She spins and starts to creep down another hallway, her cat eyes glowing in the darkness of the bulkheads. “In a lot of little ways, yes.”

*

The room is dark, but there’s a bronze undertone from the ship’s walls, or skin. The idea of being in something that’s alive is hard to understand, so he focuses on other things instead, like getting himself and Vala back to the SGC safely or trying to somehow quiet the screaming kid in his arms.

Neither of his nephews cried this much in the first ten years of their lives.

She’s dead asleep on another one of those weird metallic beds, but half of her body is hanging off the far edge, her hair’s all over the place, and the burst of white skin on her bare shoulder distracts him for a minute.

“Vala,” he whispers and doesn’t know why because he can’t hear himself. He has no clue how she’s still asleep with the baby hollering the way it is.

He takes another step forward, shifting Deke in his arms, getting glob of spit across his shoulder, and a close up of a wide, gummy mouth. Stops about a foot from her face, but her expression doesn’t change. She’s playing dead, has to be because she doesn’t want to take care of the damn kid when she’s obviously better at it—for no certain reason.

There’s no twitch in either of her eyelids, or of her fingers and when he ducks closer, she still doesn’t move.

Is she even breathing?

What if the teleportation had some adverse effect because this is her third galaxy and what if—he tucks the baby against his chest and shoots out an arm to her bare shoulder finding it icy and giving her a rough shake.

Her eyes fling open and she pushes him away with surprising ease, the whites of her eyes as identifiable in the warm darkness as the skin on her shoulder. She rubs where his hand was, blinking away the sleep, and strands of hair, folded over in tossing and turning, wave over her head. “Mitchell, what the hell?”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, holding out the baby, who is worming, rallying his hands in the air and kicking his feet loose of the thin blanket. “But it’s been hours and he hasn’t stopped crying.”

“Hours?” Her sleep heavy mind must warp her senses because she accepts Deke without argument, twisting the kid against her so he faces out again. Her eyes are barely open, and she huffs a strand of hair away from her face as she glances at something on the wall. “It’s been twenty-three minutes.”

Finds himself just staring at how her eyelashes fan, how the baby tucks back into her even though he’s still crying, just how she’s sitting on the bed, fur blanket tumbling off her. “What?”

“Chiana taught me how to use their time measuring system.” Cradling the baby, she points across the room to a device. “I glanced to it just before I fell asleep. It’s been twenty-three minutes.”

“Well, maybe he just wanted—”

“I’m not his mother.”

“And I’m not his dad, but there’s no denying he feels more comfortable with you.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him, settling Deke against her shoulder. When she bounces him, it only makes small intervals of gasping between his cries. “Perhaps he’s not the only one who feels more comfortable with me.”

“What do you mean?”

When it becomes clear that the kid isn’t going to stop crying, she shifts on the bed, pulling the fur blanket away from the base of the bed. Her fingers pluck until the blanket around Deke comes loose, and she side-eyes him with a coy grin. “Darling, it took you twenty-three minutes to come seek me out.”

“Yeah.” Crosses his arms and raises a brow, matching her game. “Because the kid was crying, and I didn’t know what—”

“Did you even bother to check to see if—” when she leans over to see if Deke still smells baby fresh, the blanket falls off her lap in a clump and her legs are bare. She has bare legs. They’re bare and milky white even in the bronze undertone of the room.

“Vala.” He snatches the blanket off the ground and tosses it back into her lap.

“What?”

“What do you mean ‘what’?” She pauses swaddling the baby, and his chubby little legs bicycle through the air. When she doesn’t even bother giving him an arched eyebrow, he feels the need to clarify, “You thought that would be appropriate attire for the first night on a strange—”

Her raspy chuckle interrupts him, her fingers guiding down one of Deke’s arms, and then the other, to be pinned against his chest. “Please do not tell me you’re aroused by my current position, Mitchell.”

“I’m not.”

He is.

Can feel the hotness of the flush creeping into his cheeks. Deke’s arm escapes and she tucks it back under again, only giving him an all-knowing smirk and an almost eyeroll.

“I’m not,” restates, marching closer to her, but away from the blanketed end. “I’m just thinking it might not be the best idea to be running around in your skivvies—”

“I’m wearing panties—”

“Don’t—Say that word.”

She chuckles again, flipping the now burritoed baby up to rest his chin on her shoulder. He’s stopped crying and his eyes are starting to close. “Panties?”

“Don’t.”

“Panties.”

“Vala—”

“Well, perhaps if you removed yours from chafing sensitive areas of your own anatomy—”

“Stop.”

“—you’d have more fun.”

“I don’t need more fun.”

“On the contrary, my dear antiquated Colonel, rules aren’t fun.”

“They are if you’re making them.” He’s staring at the blanket now, at what’s underneath the blanket, what he knows it there. Long, pale legs that must be cold because before he rushed to cover them, he saw goosebumps on her skin. Turns before he can give it another unhealthy thought, intent on getting back to his room and alone. “I’ll drop by here in the morning to—”

“Oh no.” When he doesn’t stop marching to the door, she flings the blanket off her, scurrying after him. “No. No. No. Mitchell, we are in this together, and if we need to sleep and care for this child, we will be doing it together.”

She’s got him pinned because she’s not wearing any pants and the second he gets caught checking her out, he’s screwed. So his eyes stick to the ceiling. “Fine. Just—go put on pants or something.”

“I’ll go back under the blanket.”

“Oh no you won’t. If I’m staying here—”

“It’s not like you’ll actually fit on the bed.”

Again, another great point by his pantsless teammate. So he sits on the ground beside the bed, his head leaning back into the edge, intent on staying with her until she falls asleep and then fleeing back to the safety and weird bed in his own room.

When he glances up at her, she pulls a tight, tired smile, and slides down so her head rests just a few inches behind his on a curve of the bed, nestling Deke into the curve of her chest, and wrapping an arm protectively around him. Just before his eyes fall closed listening to the hums and groans of a living ship, she drops a second blanket into his lap. “In case you’d like to take your pants off, Darling.”

Chapter Text

There is a strange hum when she wakes. Moya tends to make different noises depending on the areas of space in which she travels, particularly ones with higher pressure or more stars and systems. Doesn’t open her eyes, only listens to what sounds like the constant hum of a motor. Does not chance a movement because Deke is being silent, perhaps having fallen asleep—but when she sweeps her hand softly across the bed, she finds no evidence of her son, and at that her body bolts upwards.

“Easy Baby.” Crichton’s hand lands on a blanket pulled up around her bare thigh. She’s wearing shorts, military shorts from an Earth installation. They’re in mountain. She was suffering from heat delirium.

Her son is gone.

“Deke?” Doesn’t condone the wildness etched into her voice, the unwavering pitch as she cranes her head around the room, trying to spot her child, the one with tiny fingers that curl around her own, who carries her eyes that are always free to be full of tears, and who may have her aversion to heat. Turns to Crichton, her hand falling on his forearm and allowing the unconcealed concern in her voice to adopt some hope. “Did we—?”

The calm smile slips from his face and he simply shakes his head at her. Wants to ask him if he even bothered to look, if he remembered he had a son without her conscious enough to remind him. But his hand scoops hers up, holding it tender in his own before and placing a kiss over her knuckles.

Takes relief in his proximity as he pillows her hand between his, tucking it beneath his chin, and tries not to dwell on the fact that this relaxation is the result of the complete trust of another being. Her cold skin warms between his hands, her arm peppered by his exhalations. She closes her eyes, the headache lingering from the sudden change of temperature. “What happened?”

“Well.” Shifts their hands to before his mouth, his words heating her skin as the tips of her fingers trace over his lips. “I met the biggest human-looking guy I’ve ever seen. He might have been a human, but he looked more like a Mac truck and I sort of made a deal with him.”

Her hand stiffens within his, and when she tries to tug away, he holds on. “What deal, Crichton?”

“We can talk about it later.”

Reclaims her hand, using it to push against the brown boxes beneath the blanket wrapped around her. The cold is no longer soothing and despite the irate emotions coursing through her, she finds herself lethargic, her concentration waning. “What did you offer?”

“You’re going to get upset and you need to relax—” Tries to guide her back into a laying position, but at this point if she falls back into sleep, she’ll be hard to rouse.

“I’m already upset,” speaks from between gritted and chattering teeth.

He unzips the plush jacket he’s wearing, it very thick and smooth with a fur trimmed collar. “I told them we’d work with them.”

Doesn’t offer him a remark because this is how it always ends up. He caves when someone he loves is threatened and she has to come to terms with the fact that it’s usually her that’s threatened, or the son she birthed.

Fingers tickle at her wrist, as her posture becomes precarious on the closing of her eyes.

“Aeryn.”

On his beckoning, he draws her inwards to the body heat pouring out of his open jacket zipper.

“I’m cold.”

“I know.”

“Where are we?”

“You were hard into the heat delirium, so the Big Guy brought us to the closest, coldest room.” His hand slaps down onto one of the cardboard boxes beneath her, slipping between the slatted top, and pulling out a bag full of frozen foodstuffs. “This is a freezer.”

“Do you truly believe that they will help us return to Deke?”

He guides her hands to loop around his waist, and a shiver runs through her at the welcoming furnace of heat hidden at the small of his back. “Despite everything they’ve done so far, I don’t think that they mean us any harm.”

More awake now, but more relaxed, visualizing his words, his plans that sit in constant failure. “They promised to do what they can about the heat—and honestly—” The weight of his head cushions on top of hers, feels the muscles in his jaw stretch and snap as he speaks, his hands over the bare skin on her back, fingers in her hair. “I think they just want their people back safe.”

Three solar days ago she sat on the edge of the tottering table in command, Deke lay cradled in her arms as she tries to feed him a pouch of the Peacekeeper infant formula. John hates the smell and texture of the viscous green sludge, his eloquent description of the minerals keeping their son alive. It was Deke’s feeding time and he refused to feed, only cried misery with despondent eyes lined with thick lashes, all things she made and protected and nourished within her, actions she never intended to do, actions that once brought her shame instead of pride.

Attempted to distract herself from the nascent frustrations growing within her, a squalling infant, less than an arn of sleep, the worry of where to get the next meal, and which Diagnosians to trust as despite the peace treaty, despite the wormhole generated from her husband’s mind, Scarrens and Peacekeepers alike still viewed them as a threat. Both honored the agreement, and Moya traveled safely though enemy territories until able to starburst, but the radio silence on both sides only served to stoke her concern.

Her mind exhausted and racing, her arm giving a gentle bob to her son to calm him, her voice whispering words in Sebacean, words she wished Xalax had whispered to her, sacred promises which she vowed to keep, she dipped her head, resting it against the one she created, and sighed in his scent, one she could track through the wilderness on any planet, only to have him reach and grasp her hair.

Her emotion became his emotion as she grinned at him, and he gurgled back, eyes bright and clear, and just a slight tug at his lips. John explained it was generally unheard of for a human child of only thirty solar days to have such motor skills, but it is quite common among Peacekeeper children, especially those reared upon a craft.

But she knew this action, from her son to her, was on purpose, was a reaction to her fatigue, her surrender. Knew that this was a priceless reward and when Deke still refused the food, still wailed arns on end, she remembered his fat hand in her hair, just like his father’s, and knew to be patient.

“John.”

“Yeah?”

“I want our son back.”

“Then let’s go get him.”

*
The truce John struck up with the military offers them benefits, too many benefits to simply sit back and appreciate without the lingering suspicion that eventually these benefits will have to be reciprocated.

The doctor from before and several guards, she counts five, but keeps her head low, lest her counting be discovered, escort them back to their room. A different room this time, situated in the middle of the complex. It’s more spacious offering a bedroom separate from a communal living area, and a bathroom equipped with a soaking tub.

“Why would they give us this?” Her finger grazes over the enameled surface of the rectangle basin sunken and tiled into the floor. In its opulence she presumes there’s a more utilitarian usage.

“Because I asked for it.” He tugs out the drawers in the bathroom counter, taking stock of what was given to them. Preoccupied with simple toiletries that he took to during their last visit on a different but eerily similar Earth.

She doesn’t have the patience for his antics, despite being relocated several levels, the complex still radiates heat from within the walls, and while she’s not at a high enough temperature to be in medical danger, it’s high enough that she’s permanently unwell.

From the bathroom, the white luminescent panels on the walls and floors contrasting with the drab boulder exterior of the bedroom and living quarters, he shouts, “don’t you want to know why?”

“I’ve given up wanting to know why you do half the dren you do.” Sits atop the arm of the couch, the leather is cool, but it sweats as she does, permanently, ceaselessly. She collects her hair, ratty and dry from the few arns spent in the refrigeration unit but finds that her tie has been mislaid from her wrist. All she can do is blink her eyes closed and sigh.

A solar day ago her son was with her, she was in a room where the temperature was moderated to her liking, she was tired, and concerned, but less so that she is now. Her body adapts, it was created to adapt, to deal with harsh environments, to be pushed to extremes and then exceedingly further, to carry a hybrid offspring safely for double the gestation period. But for the first time, she fears adapting here, fears their residency becoming permanent. Fears not feeling the hold of a tiny little hand in her hair again.

Her hair is again collected, his fingers combing through to keep some semblance of a military exterior, twisting until her neck is bared and a messy ball of hair sticks out the back of her head. She vacillates between finding the same solace she did in his body warmth, the idea that he knows of her weaknesses and ensures there are routes around them and being inherently vexed that the bun on her head is now too tight, and too messy to be of use.

His lips press behind her ear, warm and wet, and when he speaks, he nuzzles into her neck. In the midst of constantly sweating, it induces a shudder. “I asked for it for you.”

“For me?” Cranes her head back, her nose brushing his cheek, smelling his perspiration, seeing the same glint on his skin.

“In case you can’t handle the heat, we can fill it with ice and let you marinate a bit.” His thumb traces the angle of her chin, his words parsing slower. “Can’t always be contaminating the frozen food section.”

Allows his hands to worm their way around her ribs, resting underneath her breasts, his exhalations are hot, but warranted. Normally would deny the idea of recreation during such a time, but she feels unmoored, on edge and perhaps the reduction of fluid levels would deliver her the calm the temperature simply will not.

The kiss is not lacking, his dry lips pulling against hers, willing her to open, to fall backward over the arm of the couch, reclining, accepting him on top of her. Normally, they fight for supremacy, their recreating boiling down to half pleasure, half sparring, seeing who will take the reigns and who will submit. On this world, in this universe, her responsibilities are numerous and overflowing. Needing to dominate him now will be one other task she must complete, so she remains reactive beneath him.

His hand slides over her stomach to her bra, similar in style to the one worn by Peacekeeper soldiers, a simple pliable black material, and his lips course over her neck, elongated for him as she bows her body back. Tugs at her bun, releasing her hair into his fingers once again, and if she wasn’t preoccupied with his hips rutting against hers, she would tell him what a frelling waste of time it was to put it up.

But instead he sucks on her shoulder, his hand strumming her breasts over the fabric, and her hands dig underneath the band of his pants, sliding along the ridge of his—

The door to their room hisses open.

As John scrambles off her, the swiftness of his movements stunted by his obvious arousal, she identifies the contour of the doctor standing within the archway.

“Is it that doctor guy? Tell me it’s not that—”

“Sorry to interrupt.” The doctor is a vibrant shade of red, his face angled towards the corner of the ceiling, refusing to make eye contact or other acknowledgement—Peacekeepers would describe this tactic as submissive and weak as direct eye contact can insight aggression. “But we need you two to take a look at the long-range communication device.”

She doesn’t answer him because she’s still not trusting of this truce. John’s jaw clicks into place, tense and tight, with his narrowed eyes, direct and aggressive. “You are just the worst.”

The doctor purses his lips and give a single nod of acknowledgement, his eyes flitting to her and lingering.  “I’ll be waiting outside.”

She wakes up almost completely frozen, her legs still tucked under the end of a heavy fur throw, but her bare shoulder practically sporting a layer of frost. Her teeth chatter as she pushes herself into a sitting position, placing herself in the right scene. On that ship, that living ship with a name that escapes her, with Mitchell still nestled at the side of her risen bed. Grins at his deep sleeping form, and the heavy snore pouring from his mouth, would have wagered that he be gone when she woke up, scurrying back to his room, and the bigger bed, leaving her on parenting duty.

The child still sleeps, a son she never birthed but has taken to her and she cannot embrace it because he is not hers. He may have her eyes, reminiscent of her most broken days holed up in a sandy-bottomed prison before the Tok’ra took pity on her, but he is not her son. Gently, she lowers him over the side of the bed, making a nest for him from the throw no longer warming her legs. Her pants, the ones she arrived in, are covered in a bit of spit up, and a little of something else from a diaper change gone awry. One that Mitchell slept through or else he has wonderful acting skills.

It’s only been about four hours since he plodded in here last night holding the baby at arms length and she’s unsure if his avoidance of the child is for her own same reasoning, trying not to see himself in a human being who means nothing, who should mean nothing, but stirs up envy and bad memories like ocean detritus.

A shower would be best.

A shower always helps, and Chiana was kind enough to show here where the facilities were. She grabs a makeshift outfit from the pile of clothes pilfered from the other room and pads her way down the bronze-hued halls until slipping into the closest communal shower. There are towels, hanging off a wall to use afterwards, and her hand slides over what should be the dial, trying to rummage through the operational instructions she was told after intergalactic jetlag and four hours of baby duty.

The water, well it’s not exactly water and she really doesn’t want to know what it is, is hot, hotter than her normal showers after off-world missions with mud caked into personal crevices, or after a tumble with a strapping soldier who followed her winks. She cleans, trying not to compare the shower to all the others she has experienced in her lifetime. Qetesh had a proclivity for hot springs, oblong baths with warbling bubbles that made her skin flush red without arousal. The showers on Ver Isca were a basin filled with heated water and were a treat to her only once a week.

With the suds rinsed from her hair, she rings it out, watching the liquid drip and run down the slanted floor to the drain. She runs a towel over her hair to catch any lingering wetness. Another towel wrapped around her as she approaches the bench in which she’s laid out her clothes, well not her clothes, other hers clothes. A white top, leather pants, and suspenders. The undergarments are more rudimentary black and white and made of stretchy nylon or a similar material. Nothing flashy or lacey or sensual, garments used for basic needs. Misses her frills, her bows, her lace. Pink with brown stripes and all the trimmings that men love to fuss over, like unwrapping a gift. Has to keep it interesting because after three years stuck in the same mountain, sex with an alien isn’t exactly the draw it once was.

There’s a noise outside the doorway, and she assumes it’s Mitchell panicking while being left alone with a child he was all for adopting before he knew it was his, well not his, but alternate his. She rolls her eyes because men, nothing scares them more than sexually progressive women or babies. Qetesh ruled entire Jaffa armies while wearing next to nothing, pushed herself on men until they quaked in her presence, championed men in the battlefield and in bed, and all because her strength, her confidence, loomed over their own.

Is unsure why babies and the birthing process frightens men so much, she was on path to work as a midwife before being hijacked by Qetesh, and there’s nothing more natural. Perhaps it’s the time discrepancy or the bodily fluids or one of so many other reasons. Would frequently tell Tomin of her changing body, her weakening bladder, milk laden breasts, the marks cut across her stomach from lack of give in her skin, and he would silence her and tell her it was inappropriate talk.

Tugs on the panties to below her hips, her fingers sliding over the craggy white scars still carved into her skin from a baby that was never her own. Pulls on the bra adjusting herself accordingly and finding it a bit of a tight fit. Knows her counterpart has had a baby and can only guess this garment was from before that time.

Pulls on the loose-fitting white top, and yanks on the leather pants which she doesn’t care for, but there’s not much in the way of alternate clothing. Digging through that pile, the majority was black and leather. No frills, no bows, no pop of color. Fits the suspenders over her shoulders and finds them relatively useless, the pants fit fine, particularly in the hips, and her hypothesis of this being an older outfit is proving itself truer and truer.

Slides her feet back onto her combat boots and imagines her counterpart, Officer Sun, doing the same back on base. Perusing her limited wardrobe of three shirts and one pair of pants, and no boots now because she took them. Feels bad leaving her with next to nothing, but perhaps the SGC will treat her a smidge better, offering her other uniforms. Perhaps she’ll get the use of the civilian clothing that she hardly ever gets to wear. Hopes she wears the blue frilly shirt, the one that kind of rides up under the arms and works it in for her.

With still moist hair, she opens the shower room door expecting to find an irate Mitchell, which is partly the reason she took her time, but instead finds a new person. A shorter, older woman, about the height of Chiana, with a third eye in the center of her forehead and the biggest ears she’s ever seen.

“Oh Aeryn, I wanted to inquire if the food I—made—for—” Her words peter out as the woman stares at her, examining her, perhaps with the third eye. “You’re not Aeryn.”

“Yes—Yes I am.” Bursts by the old lady still sniffing around her like one of those slobbering Tau’ri animals Cameron keeps on his farm, the ones with spastic tails and floppy ears. He named his Misty and said she was a good girl. “I just—the child spat up on me, and when I went to offer him a new diaper, decided to relieve himself on the legs of the pants I pulled back on because that room is so dreadfully cold and—”

When she turns to judge whether her lies are believable, the old woman blows a handful of dust in her face and everything goes black.

*

Awakens with heavy cuffs eating up her hands and wrists. They must be magnetized as her arms are pinned above her head, and when she struggles to yank them down, she cannot. As her blurred vision clarifies, she witnesses the old woman puttering around what must be a kitchen, adding bits and bobs to a pot cooking on the stove.

When the old woman turns, catching sight of her conscious, she throws a hand to her chest and releases a weak laugh. “Good, you’re awake. I was afraid I’d used too much of the fyang powder. Aeryn requires a high dose and I was unsure to how similar you are.”

She swallows, blinking her eyes, her head lowering a bit, the effects of the drugs obviously still present in her system. “I believe we only look similar—”

“—Yes. Yes, outwardly you appear exactly alike, perfect precision in copies, however interiorly you differ vastly, which is how I was able to suss you out.” She putters still, extending on the tips of her toes to grab a red piece of twine from a high cabinet and tossing it into the mixture.  

“I don’t know if Chiana informed you—” The woman doesn’t pay attention, throwing three of something into a canister and shaking it like a primitive instrument. It results in high pitched squealing, and the noise gives her a rotten feeling in her tummy. “I mean no harm.”

“Yes Dear, I’m quite aware of your benign nature.” Sidling up next to the pot, the woman dumps the content of the shaker into the boiling water, and the screeches become more potent before dying out.

“Excellent, then perhaps you’d be kind enough to release me?” Shoves her body back into the metal bulkhead, causing a thunking sound from her weight.

“I will do so in just a few microts.”

She pouts her lips, now hanging the full weight of her body from her arms, her head difficult to keep up. “I realize you’re quite busy creating whatever fantastic concoction you’ve got brewing, but is there anyway we can expedite my releasing?”

The old woman pours the boiling liquid from the pot filling a small bowl to the brim. Little tendrils of smoke rise from the mixture, bubbles popping, but slowing. “You can be released just as soon as the mixture cools.”

“Lovely.” While finding this old woman agreeable, the small portion of her that is lucid, warns that perhaps she’s too agreeable. “May I ask why?”

“Oh,” the woman glances up from where she sweeps a bit of dust off the counter with her hand and pockets it. “Because you need to ingest it.”

“Okay.” Glances to the bowl that is no longer throwing steam into the air, and she swallows harshly. Is never one to turn down a meal, a good meal, a bad meal, has lived off roots and grubs before she trotted to Earth, all done up in leather gear to hide her boney figure. “Again, may I ask, why?”

The old woman only laughs, collecting reeds strewn around the room and placing them back into a vase. “Because you’re all done up.”

“I’m aware of that.” Eyes roll upwards, witnessing the metal consuming and restricting her hands. Can’t hold the pose for long and her head lolls back down. “I’d just assumed you’d done it.”

“No. No. No.” The old woman tuts with a wag of her finger, just like any village elder, just like any older relative, just like General Landry. She approaches with a smile, but her third eye opens, revealing a bright green glow. “You are empty, and there was no consent given.”

“I’m not sure I—”

The woman drifts closer, the eye shine no longer calming, but growing intense, almost radiating heat. “Aeryn’s was natural, biological from heritage, from birthright.”

“All right. Perhaps you should go get—”

“Yours is unnatural. Not for betterment. You were kindling, just a sacrifice.” The old woman shakes her head, empathising with her over a statement she doesn’t understand, a trait she’s unsure she actually has. Her eye closes, retreating into furrows on lilac skin, before she turns away, shuffling towards the bowl.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.” Feels her heart speed up as the old woman clasps the bowl between her two hands, the liquid inside cooling to a thick paste, bright red with frozen ripples. She really doesn’t want to ingest the concoction. She has minor food allergies, and her stomach is already roiling from the lack of fresh fruit available. Bartering won’t work because she has nothing the woman wants, but perhaps exploiting her good nature, her nonsensical words, will work. “But I don’t want to eat that, and if you make me, it will be unnatural and not bettering.”

“No, no, no.” Tuts again, a mischievous half-grin tugging on her worn lips. “It will better you, it will undo what was done—”

“Well perhaps I don’t want—”

The old woman balances the bowl in a single, steady hand, placing a cold palm against her cheek. Her grin turns warm, her eyes as gentle as her touch. “Your body has always been forfeited, Child.”

The words strike her harder than any fist ever has, and she manages to hold her head steady enough to stare at this woman, while unpacking such a heavy sentence, one she tries not to admit to herself.

“This mixture will help you reclaim it.”

Before she has time to ask another question or even consider drinking a solution she saw made up of screaming nodes and common kitchen rubbish, the woman clamps a hand over her nose, blocking her nostrils, and when she opens her mouth in protest, the bowl tips back against her lips.

The thick, sticky, fowl liquid trips back over her tongue, coating her throat, making it hard of her to breathe, like the time she ordered extra extra cheese on her pizza, against Daniel’s behest, and a wad of melted cheese got stuck in her throat until Muscles smacked her back so hard, she saw stars.

Can’t breathe, can’t cough, and the bowl clatters to the ground as the old woman forces her mouth closed with both cold, thin-skinned hands. Her breaths are staccato against he woman’s fingers as she weaves a lullaby of soft, supportive words while keeping her mouth clamped with unbridled strength.

“There, there. Keep it all down.” The still warm smile, the still tender hands, and it’s oddly familiar. Comforting while being in intense fear caused by said comforter. The holding down, the hair stroking, the Goa’uld burrowing into the back of her neck. Tears prick the corners of her eyes as she shakes her head, flailing her feet, trying to knock the woman away, her throat thick and full, her mouth dry and tasting of refuse. “You must ingest it all of it.”

She swallows the lump of what she’s trying to trick her brain into thinking is cheese, just as the old woman is flung aside, back against the cabinets, shaking the utensils and cupboard doors. Her head dizzying, white lights, bright colors spackling across her view as she coughs, trying to bring up the mixture that sits hard in her stomach, like swallowing a boulder, but as she hacks, strangles out whooping coughs, her throat remains empty and her stomach full.

Chapter Text

The classicist keeps looking at his wife.

Kinda ogling but almost like he’s studying her—like he still doesn’t believe their story—like maybe this Malcontent chick could be faking being a whole other person.

They’re back in the laboratories where they first got dropped off—the side of his face still soft like a tenderized slab of beef—staring at the weird hookah thing they’ve all seen before and no one is saying anything.

But the hookah isn’t what the doctor is staring at.

“So—” stands from where he sits across from Mr. Language Expert, watching the subtle lick of his lips while he watches Aeryn lean in, examining the hookah closer, the way her hair falls, the perfect curve of her—drags his groaning chair across the floor to sit beside Aeryn. Bumps a shoulder against hers and she leans away from the hookah. “This is what you all do all day?”

“Hmm?” The doctor hums, leaning against his hand and finally turning his attention away from Aeryn. “Oh yeah, pretty much.”

Before he can pose any thinly veiled threats, the doors slide open and Colonel Carter walks in holding a manila file folder. She grabs the last chair, dragging it to his recently vacant spot. “I need you to tell me everything you know about the long-range communication device.”

“Sure, what’s a long-range communication device?”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor sputters to life like Betty’s engine, “but didn’t you make a deal with Teal’c that if we helped your wife, you would both help us?”

“Her name is Aeryn.” Slams his arm down the table, not jostling the hookah, but everyone in the room except for Aeryn, and maybe a few hidden behind the cameras. “She’s in the room, you seem like a nice run-of-the-mill Revenge of the Nerds type guy, so I’ll let you in on a secret: she’s not your friend—”

“John—” Aeryn’s fingers cuff his wrist, and she doesn’t understand what’s going on here. Or maybe she does and it’s just another way she’s a better soldier than him. Another way she can keep emotions out of it.

Ignores the doctor’s boiling attitude, or the quirked brows Colonel Carter give to them before she distracts herself with shuffling papers. He distracts himself with his wife’s, literally, hot body. His hand cups hers as he calms, no longer needing to enter into twelve rounds with a guy who knows what Alexander the Great’s undies looked like.   “Are still doing okay? Do you want an ice pack or something?”

Doesn’t answer, just tugs her hand away, straightens her posture—shoulders back—her PK training still showing.

“Because I made a deal with them—”

“Commander Crichton—”

“So, they have to get you one if you want it.”

“Fine. You know what? Don’t help us.” The good ol’ Doc shoves his hands against the table sort of donkey kicking his chair away, growing a bit red in the face. “Just keep messing around, because at the end of the day, you’ll still be stuck here.”

Well now, that’s damn near obvious, but the Doc is trying to pull it off threatening with his cocky Mr. Ed routine. There has to be something going on between him and the woman Aeryn replaced, because he’s getting obsessive and defensive—the same way he did before wormholes weapons and midnight feedings.   

“Your son will still be somewhere else.”

Knows it now because that’s taking it too far. There’s an intergalactic space rule that threatening someone’s kids—if they’re not adults—is strictly verboten. Is gonna guess this Earth’s exposure to the great vast black is limited and they don’t know the etiquette. Is keeping his cool for Aeryn who’s giving off heat like a space heater. He tries to pick out the polite way to tell the nerdy military doctor that no one will threaten his kid when Aeryn rises, slowly, purposefully—on the hunt—her chair silent, her arms at her side, and her eyes narrowed to hell. “Do not speak about my son.”

While the sort of stare off happens—Aeryn ready to gut this guy with white knuckled balled fists, and the doctor, squinting, looking like he still thinks someone else is in there—Colonel Carter taps the table lightly with her hand. “Okay—” the word has way more than two syllables, but it draws there attention back to her flinch of a grin. “Why don’t we get our focus back.”

Wants to casually remind that Deke is their son. That it took two of them to make him, and although he may not have actually been there, he kinda was, so it still counts.

Instead he runs a hand through his hair and points to the hookah. “We have one of these long-term—”

“Long-range communication device.”

“Yeah, whatever, we thought it was a hookah.” Shrugs and waits for good ol’ Doc to interrupt him again, but he doesn’t. Keeps quiet, but still sneaks looks at Aeryn. “It had two zen stones.”

“Zen Stones?” Colonel Carter questions, glancing up from scribbling on the clipboard similar to the one Aeryn beaned her in the head with a day ago. There’s still a small cut near her temple.

“Yeah, like the kind you’d find in a koi pond or something.”

“We call them long-range communication stones,” she nods, scratching down something a bit faster while explaining, but not with full attention, “they allow the users to inhabit a body in a different galaxy.”

“Hold the phone, they just let you hijack someone else?”

“Well.” Colonel Carter pulls a face again, a long wistful smile, like she’s trying to keep her patience while teaching a room full of unruly kindergartners, and giving a quick assessment to his attitude, the doctor’s, and Aeryn’s lack of any form of communication, she might as well be. “Not so much hijack, as borrow.”

“Borrowing—without consent.”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s hijacking.”

“Everyone eventually goes back to their old bodies.” The Doc pushes away from the table again—too twitchy to sit still for long—this time a little more eloquent, more like a dressage horse than a donkey. “But that’s our problem.”

“How is that a problem?”

“Well, you didn’t just take over Mitchell and Vala’s bodies, you switch places with them entirely.”

“That unusual?”

Colonel Carter nods and turns a screen towards him, there’s a rate graph and numbers charting along the side. They’re measuring something. “We had to gate—destroy the original long-range communication device in order to get Daniel and Vala back safely from another galaxy, but we did manage to recreate the frequency of the device that allowed Vala to inhabit Daniel for a brief period of time from another galaxy.”

“This Vala bounces galaxies a lot.”

“You have no idea.”

“I have an idea why.”

“Excuse me?” The Doc huffs and puffs, and not in a way he’s seen before, actually getting all riled up and a bit red faced.

Aeryn shoves at his arm and his retort dies in his throat while he tries to regain his balance. “Will you please stop instigating so we can finish this discussion?”  

The Doc points a wagging finger at her. “Exactly what language is she speaking?”

“It’s not important.”

“Well, my specialty is in languages and—”

“If you don’t know what she’s speaking, then I guess you’re not that special—”

“John.” Aeryn’s voice cuts through their pithy back and forth. Expects that expression she gives him, the one where he knows if it was within her power—hell, it’s always within her power—she’d be beating the ever-loving crap out of him for prolonging this. But instead she just looks—tired. Defeated almost, not scared or angry or threatening, just tired.

His hand covers her on the table top. She’s still really warm, not warm enough to confuse elevators with elephants, but warm enough that he thinks she’ll be spending at least an hour in the bath that he pulled strings—he begged like a dog—to get. “Sorry Baby.”

The room is quiet for a stitch except for the humming of whatever dampener they have for the long-term hookah machine.

Colonel Carter clears her throat, setting down the clipboard and leaning into the table.  “I think that having the device here when we have a fabricated frequency might have upset the balance. The stones could still do their jobs, but our man-made stone acted as a barrier.”

“Can’t you just take it down?”

“If we did that, we might lose our pinpoint in the galaxy all together.”

“Okay, so don’t do that—” scratches his head and tries to remember the hookah, the stones were smooth, and he thought they needed glue. They glowed blue and Deke liked them, finally quieted down. He was running. “You don’t have any stones for it?”

“No.” The Doc shakes his head and crouches on the edge of the table. It was found without them.”

“So, we have no way of getting back?” Squeezes his hand over Aeryn’s when he feels her tense up. She’s staring at the hookah and he’s going to have to talk with her about participation points.

“No.” Colonel Carter’s ever-present grin disappears, but he can see the dot dot dots forming in her pulled expression. “There is a possibility, we would just need to either create or find two more stones.”

“You would also need to remember which slot your stones went into in order to ensure transfer to the right galaxy.” The Doc shrugs, the skin on his face very tight and his eyes tiny behind his glasses as he drags them away from Aeryn. He clears his throat, trying for a smooth recovery. “But that can be done through trial and error.”

“So, you understand why it’s so important we know everything you know about the stones.” The words sound more like a plea as Colonel Carter leans across the table, her arm reaching for Aeryn again, extending like an olive branch—one they’re still hesitant to accept.

“We spent less than five microts with—”

“Our son liked them. They soothed him.” Aeryn stands, more graceful than before, strong on her own legs and circles around the table, finally deciding it’s her turn for show and tell as she ignores everyone, focusing on the hookah.

“He reached for one, and they toppled loose.” She leans over the table, between him and the Doc and they both watch her the same way, with the same hungry eyes. She points to a certain area of dips, of the slots where the stones fit in “From here.”

“You can’t possibly rememb—” The Doc stops his skepticism for once, closing his mouth when she snaps her head to him.  

“There are subtle shifts in design.” Her voice terse and tired, the kind he wakes to in the middle of the night when she’s talking to Deke, saying things that don’t translate too well because apparently, Sebacean is a very literal language. “The symbols are not as bright in this section.”

That gets their attention. Colonel Carter drops her pen, leaning into inspect a device she’s probably examined for hours. The Doc hops off the table, tugging his glasses off and staring like he did once at a sink on Moya. “What—what symbols?”

They really are deficient.

“The ones right—” as Aeryn’s finger touches the surface of the hookah, the humming of the dampener increases to a high-pitched scream and before he can ask what the hell is going on, another large pinch of electricity surges through his body, and he blacks out.

Doesn’t know what time it is when he wakes up because Vala never bothered to share how to work the damn clocks with him. It’s still dark in the room. It’s probably always going to be dark in the room, and what he wouldn’t give to walk outside the mountain and feel the fresh Colorado air hitting him in the face, whip on a pair of sunglasses, and hop in his mustang for a weekend away.

Had a weekend away planned with Amy. It’s been planned for a while, but he keeps having to postpone it because stuff like this keeps happening—maybe not as bad as this, but bad enough that he’s got to suit up and march through the gate.

So instead he deals with hip and lower back pain from falling asleep against the bed for however long he did.

Part of him is glad the kid is out, and that Vala’s still asleep, because now is his time to sneak back to his room. Brought the baby down last night under a different guise—sure, he would’ve been more than happy to pawn off the kid—who’s not his and he can’t see a hair or freckle reminiscent of his own faded baby photos from his parents’ farmhouse walls—but he was more concerned about her. The longer he laid in that bed alone, the more he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to happen to her. She almost tumbled off that skywalk twice, and if she gets excited and starts exploring without him—

Played his part, huffed and rolled his eyes, which are always directed at the ceiling now because she has a penchant for flouncing around in Daisy Dukes and Qetesh dresses, and pretended to be annoyed that he had to stay with her, while happily sleeping like a guard dog at the base of the bed.

But when he turns to make sure she’s still out before he leaves, she’s gone. If his back didn’t hurt so much he would kick his own ass.

The kid is nestled next to him in a fluffy pile of blankets, the one she had over her legs, her bare legs that—nope.

No.

Doesn’t know what it is about this place, but it’s making him think dirty thoughts, or admit to it at least. He’s a guy, he’s thought about it before, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Being worried that she’s going to take a swan dive off an elevated walkway is okay, remembering the tickling of her fingers against the material on his fatigues as she unconsciously played with his collar as she slept, is not.

Hikes the kid up and is relieved when he doesn’t immediately start crying again.

He barely gets a chance to wipe a hand over his stinging eyes before the door opens to the hallway with Chiana on the other side.  

“I figured you two wouldn’t be getting that much sleep.” Her laugh would be almost innocent if it didn’t follow the insinuation. She blinks to accentuate her suggestion and keeps a wide grin.

“Yeah, the screaming baby really set the mood,” yawns as he passes by her, enjoying the kid now that he’s silent, all curled up and warm. Doesn’t know the last time anyone changed him or fed him, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to try. Let sleeping babies lay.

“If—if you want, I can take him for you.” She sort of prowls alongside him, cat eyes fixated on his face and he never thought about how weird it must be for them. To have someone who looks exactly like their friend but isn’t. He’s dealt with clone type things before, and Vala-as-Daniel, but never the direct removal and complete replacement of a companion.

“Look I understand that our doubles here—”

“Crichton and Aeryn.”

“Yeah, them, that they had a great thing going and what looks to be a wonderful family if you can get passed the constant screaming of their kid, but—” He spins in a connecting corridor, an almost circular room that offers him three different hallways to choose.

Chiana stops behind him, close but not warm, in fact he can’t feel any body heat from her at all. “Where are you going?”

“I’m looking for Vala.”

“She probably popped into the refresher. Said she wanted to last night but was too tired.”

“What the hell is a refresher—” Chiana parts her gray lips to answer and he quickly shuts her up by waving his hand “—I don’t want to know.”

“You’re gonna want to know eventually.”

“Can you just tell me where the hell—”

“Excuse the interruption.” The voice startles him, seemingly drifting through his ears out of no where. Whips his head towards Chiana and it seems to be a normal thing, her attention is paused, her eyes drifting around the hallway.

“What is it, Pilot?”

“If Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell is interested in finding Vala, my DRDs have picked up her presence in the kitchen with Noranti.”

“Who’s Noranti?”

“Thanks Pilot.” She nods down the middle hallway, taking a quicker pace to keep up with him. “She’s Traskan, an old woman—crazy, but harmless.”

*

Harmless isn’t the word he would use to describe the mad woman.

When they get to the kitchen, he walks in on the old bat force feeding something that looks like a big bowl of taffy to Vala. It takes about a second for him to connect the whimpering noises and the cuffs holding her up before he shoves the baby into Chiana’s arms and tackles the grandma.

Issues a mental apology to his own grandma who’s probably cussing up a storm, but he’s got one team member to look out for and currently he’s losing the game.

“Vala—” She can’t answer, only gags, trying to cough up whatever this crap is. Tries to yank the cuffs off, but they’re really stuck in place and when his fingers falter from the metal, ghosting over her skin, she starts to kick at him. “How do I get these off?”

“I haven’t seen those in a while.” Chiana lurches forward the baby in her arms suddenly awake and crying up a storm.

“Chiana!”

“It’s a number—”

“What’s the damn code?” Says it loud enough that there’s an actual hiccup in the crying, and Vala stops thrashing beside him.

“I’d—I’d have to see—” Cautiously, Chiana leans in over his shoulder, pressing into the side of him, the kid almost screaming in his ear now, and types the code releasing Vala, who slumps to the floor.

She hacks, her arms a little bruised up from the restraints, and does her best to induce vomiting that won’t come. He rubs at her back, not really sure how to handle it—the touching—if she wants touch, the comfort, because there was a wildness in her eyes earlier. One he doesn’t want to know about. “You’re okay.”

“No, I’m not.” Her voice is different, darker, vindictive. Swoops up into a sitting position, and whatever was fed to her is drying around the corner of her mouth, her face is wet with sweat, or tears, or spit. “Whatever that woman fed me —” she points to where Chiana is helping the old lady to her feet, the baby squirming and shouting “—is not coming back up.”

“But that’s good, Dear.” The old bat rubs a palm across her third eyelid. “If even a single bit comes back up then it won’t work.”

“What’d you give her anyway, Wrinkles?”

“Something to make her unempty.”

Vala lunges, but she’s still kind of out of it. He manages to grab her, not really restraining her, or wanting to. He’s the one who sent Granny into the cabinets after all, but they’re still on first date basis with the people on this ship and if they want help going home, they’re going to have to show a little control.

She wrenches her arms from him, whipping around—he’s seen her upset before, crying and trying to hold back the tears from those big gorgeous eyes, he’s seen her laugh away nervousness, and shrug off concern. But what he hasn’t seen is the glare that almost slices him in half. He’s never seen her be serious, never seen her be upset that didn’t involve tears.

Holds up his empty hands when he notices hers balled at her side. “Okay. Everyone just—calm down.”

“She just force fed me whatever was—”

“I know, Princess, I know, just calm—”

“No. Where were you?”

The insinuation hurts because she’s right, he is still technically in charge, although this isn’t really a mission—but he went to her last night because there’s protection in numbers—went to her under the pretext of a man needing a break from his crying not-son. “I was with the kid. You’re the one who—”

“I left because I did the last feeding and change, and got excrement of all kinds on—”

“Then you should’ve woken—”

“Okay. Okay.” Chiana’s tone drags out the word as she rubs her way between them, breaking them up. She grabs Vala’s hand and smiles until the glare washes from her face. The arm she has wrapped around the kid is elbowing him in the gut, so he moves back out of reach. “Are you two sure you’re not Aeryn and Crichton because—”

“Mmm, no.” The grandma shakes her head and pulls her fingers back from her mouth, her lips smacking against them. If her skin tone was a little more natural and she wore an Easter bonnet for church service, she might just offer him a macaroon. “As I’ve stated, this one is quite empty and—”

Vala’s tone is murderous, low, almost inaudible.  “I. Am not. Empty.”

She waits, maybe for him to say something, but this is the first time that he can actually picture her as Qetesh—he doesn’t know how to handle this. Thankfully, she only rolls her eyes at him, before stomping out of the room.

Doesn’t know if he should just let her blow off steam—should probably leave her to blow off steam—but an unchecked Vala usually evolves into something dramatic and detrimental to everyone—he’s had to pull her off the table in the gate room more than a dozen times as she threatens to take people out if they won’t let her go.

Maybe he knows more about her than he thinks.

Nods to the kid still actively screaming against Chiana’s shoulder. “Will you watch him for a bit?”

Chiana switches the kid to her other shoulder. She nuzzles one of his fat cheeks and then sends a grin to him, sly without the need of bouncing eyebrows. “Go get her, Mitchell.”

“I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

“She’ll be fine.” The old bat putters around the kitchen, now fixing a meal of some kind, pulling pots and pans from random places, and the smell of burning wafts into his nostrils even though there’s nothing on the stove. “There are very minor complications—”

“There better not be anything—”

“I promise you; they will be worth it.”

And the smile she gives is like a punch to his gut, like there’s something she’s not telling him, something he probably doesn’t want to know, it’s threatening, it’s the verbal equivalent to Vala’s glare. He takes a step forward, pushing Chiana who tries to hold him back, along with him, and points directly into the old woman’s face. “Stay away from her.”

“Or course, my dear, my job is already done.”

*

“Do you want to talk?” Sits with his back to her on their shared mini bed. Her shoulders are still tight and her lips even tighter because she refuses to say a single word to him. Found her in their shared room, the pile of clothing still tossed on the floor, and he doesn’t know why she came here instead of being alone.

He’s trying to navigate out how to comfort her when she doesn’t really accept anything but praise or criticism. Afraid that if he offers her kind words or lets her in on the threat he gave the grandma, she’ll make some sort of joke about it.

More afraid that she’ll read into this as anything but him as the Team Leader trying to protect what little team he has with him.

“We don’t have to talk about—that.” Stretches out his thigh, aching a bit, maybe from the pressure, sort of feels the same as when they go for extended missions on the Odyssey. “We could talk about—”

How perfect that outfit looks on her, how the suspenders sort of make it, how the only thing he’s found to change into is leather pants and a plain black t-shirt that’s not going to look as good as anything she puts on, how he’s sorry he snapped on her about the device and that she was completely right and if she has any ideas on how to get back, he’s open to hearing them, how damn good she is with a kid that’s not hers, how he feels something he shouldn’t when she’s holding that kid and grinning at him and that’s the part of this whole mess that scares him the most. “About the stuff you’ve learned, maybe you can teach me how to tell time?”

“I just want to sleep, Mitchell.” Her back is still tense under the outline of her curls, air drying and twisting tighter.

“Fair enough.” Doesn’t know what to do. To stay and keep watch, to leave and try to investigate the long-range communication device when she knows so much more about it then him. To try and get out of the grandma what she actually did.

Decides that maybe they both need some time apart. That he could explore more of the ship, learn more about the galaxy they’re in, ask Chiana more about the stones. His muscles tighten when he stands and the metal skeleton of the bed groans, making her flip towards him, grabbing his shirt.

“Don’t—”

Glances down to her fingers stitched into the short sleeve of his air force fatigues, then back at her, expecting her to release him, but she doesn’t. “Vala, I could go find out more about the stones, try to get us out of here.”

“Yes, that’s true—” and her sentence doesn’t sound done, her eyes drifting to her feet tucked tightly under a blanket.

“But?” Starts to pry her fingers away from his shirt, they’re cold as he gathers them in his palm, before settling her hand back onto the bed.

“I’m just—I don’t—that woman—”

“I’ll stay.” Taps her hand, reaching over and grabbing a blanket from where he threw it on the ground last night in frustration. “I’ll stay just until you fall asleep, okay?”

“Just until I fall asleep.” She nods, her lips quirking into a small smile, relieved and shimmying back into the bed.

“I’ll talk to Chiana about how to lock the doors too.” Turns his back to her, burying his one arm underneath his pillow.

Feels her nod into her pillow, the bed shaking unbalanced, creaking until steadying into place. His bad thigh already stretched clear off the side.

“Thank you.”

Chapter Text

There’s another hum. The buzz of an annoying insect following her around on another planet she would rather forget.

To have a child.

To not.

The same question droning through her head as she stared at a man she loved more than anything she ever had, a man she gave up all her convictions for the moment they met, a man who wasn’t that man at all, but was. He loves her, that is fairly obvious through his extroverted gestures, his fingers itching to touch her, her skin some sort of remedy to him. Through the way his face cracks into one of horror or sadness in times of her duress. How it may remain a stoic mask which is far more alarming.

The white room, how she despises this white room, clarifying in her view. The same table, the same device, but a screen flickering, buttons blinking in distress. Immediately aware Deke is not here, disturbing as part of her just accepts this now. Exhales staring down at the same unspoiled tiles, her fingers fanned out against the mild surface, eyes flitting as they did yesterday, searching for something to latch on to.

“Roo oaky?”

A warm hand curls under her bicep and on instant knows that these are not John’s hands. Different callouses, softer skin overall—humans and their inferior biological composition—such a delicate exterior boasting their lack of intergalactic travel.

“Kanu stan?”

Blinks and allows the life she would have allowed herself to slip away again, only to be cultivated in sleepless morning sessions coddling a child who now means more to her than a man she means the world to. Her body evolves from slack to rigid, shoulders clicking into place, elbowing the doctor’s knee from beneath him, and his fragile body once again cracks underneath the force of her blow. His left side slumps in his lost balance, his chin barely missing the edge of the very solid table.

Bellows, more in shock than in pain, short but carnal, and when he fully stoops to the floor she towers over him, ignoring the intense ache radiating from her neck, the haze on the outer rim of her vision as she fights to focus, the slight adjustments she needs to apply to her footing to not tip over from the rush of regaining her stance, but most noticeably, the heat. The smoke filtering from machines, accompanying the increase in breathing from three other people turn the air boggy.

Glares down at the doctor cradling his knee as she would her son. Cautiously rubbing his palm over the tendon she more than likely bruised as she calculated her blow to be just shy of dislocating the cap. “Do not touch me.”  

Surprisingly, the doctor glares back at her over the rim of his spectacles, located near the tip of his nose. Blue eyes piercing through the haze that is very slow to clear. “Saw rhee eye ohn lee whanted 2—”

Angles her head at him, at his unusual words—perhaps a different dialect of English she hasn’t encountered before. Distinguishable in syllables, in the basics of sounds, but unable to translate into a direct meaning. Listens as he rambles, still petting his knee, and his lips motor into noise after unknown noise.

“Your prattling is no longer being accepted by the translator microbes.”

“Wut?” His eyes narrow at her, his hand stilling on his leg, and the other breaking free to push his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

“I cannot understand your—”

“Ef yur not gun nuh speak in glass than—”

Observes his discontent momentarily before the familiar call crashes over his words.

“Aeryn.”

Bifurcated in the want to roll her eyes, because he does worry entirely too much. She’s the one who taught him how to fly a space vessel, she’s the one who spent the arns teaching him to fire a pulse pistol, she’s the one who birthed and cared for their child while simultaneously caring for herself and his comatose body.

She works in physicalities, while he works in abstracts.

“Aeryn!”

But the concern in his voice is so prevalent it may as well be tangible. Turns from the doctor to witness Colonel Carter helping John to his feet.

“I’m all right, John.”

“What?” Squints into the settling haze, his skin growing red from worry. Flinches away from the Colonel when she lays a hand on his back, bringing up a heavy hand to direct his accusations directly to her. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.” The Colonel coughs out, her balled fist drowning the action in her throat, free hand fanning at the remaining smoke, but her eyes scanning the table, the various electronics present which could have caused the upset. “There was a malfuct—”

“What did you do to us?” Emotions too raw for him to attempt his charade of stoicism, instead the unbridled anger seeps through as he steadies himself against the table by pounding a fist into it, demanding attention, draining his rage.

One of the screens scrolls through characters and syntax at a rapid rate, turns bright blue and then promptly turns itself off. The humming of their shield, or whatever they declared the device in the corner to be, is growing again, almost pulsating against the inside of her skull.

This is not coincidental.

“They didn’t do anything, John.” Ignores the humidity, hot on the back of her neck like the musty breath of upper officers who becomes too informal after a few rounds of ferlip nectar. Instead, picking her way passed the doctor still sprawled on the ground and to the shielding device with rapidly blinking lights.

“Wut’d you sey?”

“This machine is—” groans, flicking her head to the side, at the sharp snap in her head, the device’s droning now palpable. “Turn off this machine.”

“Aeryn, I dunt understan—”

“This machine is what’s disrupting everything. Can’t you hear the distressing sound?” All three of the humans stare at her, not exactly open-mawed, but breathing heavily from their mouths. “Can’t you feel the vibrations?”

“Baby, your speekin Sebacean.”

There’s a greater disjoint in the words than she noticed before. Sounds, broken sounds like pieces to a puzzle she has to put together. Like a computer or mathematic equation she has to solve for using a part of her mind that has never been cultivated. “You cannot understand me.”

It is not a question, because she knows the answer.

“Why ar you speekin Sebacean?”

Translator microbes utilized to produce a picture, an idea, an emotion at alien words and sounds. Sonant and surd and the language he speaks is punctuated by too many glottal stops, but that is not the issue, the lack of pictures and ideas and emotions are. The base of her skull throbs at the area of her brainstem where the microbes gather rotting.

Connects eyes with him, aware of how difficult it will now be. She visited his home, met his family, ate holiday dinners, and saw pictures of deceased domesticated livestock.

He walked her away from murdering her mother.

She began learning his language.

He did not.

The translator microbes are dead. Does not tell him, or those responsible this, as it’s obvious in their lack of shared tongue, their miscommunications no longer the result of his emotions and her actions, of his bumbling and her impenetrability.

The hum evolves into a shriek, slashing through her ear drums, and leadening her head at the base, now a cemetery for hundreds of microbes. Gestures to the machine with a stiff nod, then back to her husband, the father of her only offspring, and although she loves him, sometimes she thinks back to the manner of her rearing, the strict rules by which she was raised and wonders if  those rules weren’t implemented for a valid reason.

Obvious. This has to be obvious.

“I think our trenzlater mikerobes might be—”

This machine is going to explode very shortly and with it, the beacon anchoring them to this galaxy, the only thing that can possibly reunite her with her son.

Doesn’t explain this as she bludgeons the machine with the legs of a very sturdy chair.

*

Knows he requested this basin for her. Three empty plastic bags splay across the gleaming white tiles, rivers of water growing over the floor, puddling in the bottom of the cupped plastic. From her basic translations of his overcomplicated native tongue, ice in sacks the size of pillows is readily available at her call.

She only knows because he bothered to share it with her.

Trying to share things with her in a half-spoken language that leaves her half mute isn’t exactly relaxing. Attempting to work together while only one of them half understands the other isn’t plausible.

Only heard of translator microbes exploding as an outdated form of Peacekeeper torture from a time before her birth, before the regiment of mixed psychological and physical torture was implemented. When prisoners wouldn’t answer questions and were deemed a waste of commodities, a recording would play slowly increasing the amount of damage done until the prisoner’s brain stem was completely destroyed rendering them a vegetable or dead.

This technique was discontinued as it was deemed too barbaric.

A knock interrupts her thoughts, which are all she has for the moment.

Adjusts her thighs under the water, the fractions of intact ice clink against the side of the porcelain basin. John’s head pops around the door, fingers piled over his eyes. “You descent?”

Scrolls through her lexicon, trying to retrieve the information of descent, of where he means for her to go, does he want her to submerge herself under the water? When she doesn’t answer after what he judges is an appropriate amount of time, he peeks between his fanned fingers.

“For got you cant really answer.” The joviality drops from his face as he walks into the room, not entirely serious, but concerned, as he perches on the edge of the tub. “You feelin better?”

Nods, a human gesture for agreeing. A ‘mmhmmm’ does the same. There are very basic ways they can still communicate.

“Good.” Hand drifts to her hair, done up in an acceptable bun, ribboning loose strands around his fingers. His words require the majority of her concentration. The manual translation, the sifting through hundreds of rhymes and multiple meanings, not to mention insinuations, idioms, and homonyms. “You gotta take it easy.”  

Take it easy. To do something easier? To snatch something without hurdles?

“Relax,” he clarifies as he traces the pensive lines on her face.

She groans, shakes her head, turns away from his touch. Concerned for her while she is present when his concerns should fall on the little one abandoned galaxies away. The one who hasn’t gotten translator microbes yet. The one who screams against her chest as she tells him stories she was told as a child through Peacekeeper rearers but changes the ending to hopeful instead of civilizations laying in the wake of war.

“Will be fine.” His lips stamp like a hot seal over the exposed skin on her neck.

Wilts her fingers around his neck, his lips preoccupied with another form of nonverbal communication, but her determination is concrete, her goal—reuniting with her son or perishing while trying—is solid, burdening the back of her head, the base of her skull where yet another device has failed her.

The encouragement saps from her fingers as they still, then grow tense against his neck, drawing him away from tracing water droplets from her skin with his tongue. His face falling into one of concern shrouded over the irritation of being halting in his conquests yet again.

“How will we be fine when we cannot understand each other?”

The snug pinch at the corners of his lips slackens in his inability to render her words. Plays cute, trying to charm her with the grin on his face as he shakes his head at her, yet never admits to the fault of not understanding while knowing she is perfectly capable of understanding.

His world, his family, his language, and she assimilated for him. Spoke words soft and malformed from her mouth while reassuring herself it would benefit everyone if she looked human and spoke the language. They would be safer, she would be more easily integrated, and the terror and suspicion that accompanied them to Earth would dissipate leaving her and John safe to raise their family.

That was the original plan, but since he arrived, her plans, no matter their level of practicality, are useless and either interrupted or discarded, barely ever resembling how she envisioned.

The original plan involved a different Crichton, where self-sacrifice was never a concern.

“John.” Shakes her head, pushing her gripping hands against the enamel of the tub, sliding the rough pads of her feet over the slick bottom as she stands. The return of heat is immediate, his hand cupped under her arm, helping her stand in a similar fashion to the doctor earlier, but kicking his kneecap out would only be slightly satisfying right now.

He skips across the floor, retrieving a large towel embroidered with his nation’s insignia. The fact that she depends on these people—ones who boast so much while having achieved so little—to reunite her with her son is terrifying.

“At least this time you cannot attempt to explain away my apprehensions.” Stagnates as he blankets her with the towel, comforting and caring, distracting when she focuses. “You’re not even aware of them.”

Still doesn’t speak, but rubs his hands over the towel creating friction, and with it, heat.

“Were you ever aware of them?”

Her expression sours as she wrenches her eyes closed, turning away. Must understand that much because his hands still. “I sacrificed all I had for you. For our son. And until now have never thought to regret it.”

When he leans in to kiss her, she halts him with what she considers a gentle hand against his chest. “I learned your language so I wouldn’t be marginalized, and yet everything you do continues to make me feel so.”

Amazed that he hasn’t spoken yet, that she’s captivated him for this length of time without an English interruption or more appearances of roaming hands. Removes the towel because her body is dry, is heating up, and her future is now restricted to meager floors away from this tub.

“I learned your language because I love you, and I knew it would be comforting to have a partner you could converse with.”

Pulls on new clothing from an unending stream of donations from their military. Fatigues, pajamas, jumpsuits, all things she cannot wear because the extra insulation would result in her vegetative state. Sticks to workout gear designed to vent body heat, to clothing baring expanses of skin deemed unprofessional by the doctor in the mumbled side conversation she overheard earlier. Cannot speak with them to argue otherwise and instead is left to ruminate in a thin camisole and shorts.  

“Both of these things you never offered me.”

Must sense the shift in her tone because he sighs, “Aeryn, just use Engl—”

“No John, I’m finished talking.”

Switches off the light in the washroom leaving him bathing in the dim glow from over the sink, something he calls a night light. When he thinks she is out of range, possibly forgetting her superior hearing, or perhaps, wanting her to hear his discontentment, he grumbles, “Man, I wish I knew Sebacean.”

The pain was excruciating. Ripped through her torso, up the sides and penetrated between each of her ribs. Mounted at the bottom of her spine in the furrows of her hips, striking down and gripping through her thighs.

And then the pain was gone, and there was crying, but it wasn’t her tears any longer, instead belonging to a tiny being she birthed calling out for her. Calling out for sustenance, for comfort, for protection.

But they took her, swaddled the daughter she never saw or held or fed or comforted.

Certainly, never protected.

And the crying and the pain is insistent, a fury of overstimulation through sounds and nerves and—

Awakens with a dizzying headache. Flutters her eyelids open to find a wall, not the stark gray or black or brown of Tau’ri construction materials, but a bronzed metal of a living being. Inhales, her lungs itching for air, as the dream—the nightmare—the memory—undulates over her skin, prickling the hairs to stand on end. The temperature in the room has to be nearing freezing, but when she exhales there are no wisps of air.

As the dulled mute rings out, the baby wails return, and her eyes jolt open. Attempts to sit up but there is a restraint around her ribs.

Warm, heavy, hairy—an arm?

An arm slapped over her torso and angling downwards draped over her hips. His chin digs into the back of her head and somehow, despite having two very small and inadequate pillows, he is now sharing hers.

He’s warm and with every other breath he snores. 

Might find the domesticity endearing, might wish for a camera to take pictures of her dear Colonel caught in a less than professional setting, but the wailing hasn’t ceased. Calmly, directs his hand back to his own hip, and shimmies to roll off the bed, noting the presence of heaviness in her stomach most likely due to the gruel that the horrid old woman force fed her earlier.

In a makeshift bassinet, not more that a smooth box fitted with blankets for comfort, lays the baby. Not her daughter, her adult and now deceased daughter, but the bitty boy with the constant red face. Hands broken free of his swaddled restraints, much like herself, and pumping in the air.

“Oh, dear boy.” Keeps her voice soft, lest the Colonel wake up and berate her for whatever reasons he chooses, although, within the last day aboard this ship, his attitude towards her has softened. He did pry that old woman away from her, has offered her more open compliments, and if she didn’t know any better, she could swear that she’s caught him staring at her in a less than professional manner. Her bare legs, the leather pants, which still pull tight against her abdomen, giving her glances she’s seen from some of the other men on the base.

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she smiles gentle at the still screaming child, the one she’s always afraid to touch because he is not hers, and the more she holds him, the harder it is to discern regardless of the years passed because her body doesn’t know the difference.

“You cannot continue to cry constantly.” Caresses a finger over his cheek and listens to his little hiccup before sliding her hands beneath him and settling him against her shoulder. He’s warm and heavy, signs that he’s fighting sleep. Carefully, tucks his hands back into the stained blanket that is somehow still soft. “You’re going to run out of tears.”

He gurgles, eyes bouncing trying to focus on her face, she directs him back so he has a better view of her. He rewards her with a tug of his lips, a lopsided gummy grin. She laughs, because otherwise the tears in her eyes will fall. “There you are, Darling.”

But she settles him against her shoulder again, feeling the steady rise and fall of his tiny chest and the half nuzzle his head as she rocks him, humming half-tunes of children’s songs she barely remembers.

Perhaps she was never meant to be a mother, her motives are rather selfish, conning and scheming, then working with the Tau’ri to try to right her ways. Her concern mostly for herself, unless one of her team is involved, but she still steals pretty things, still breaks into restricted areas for play, is still reckless with her life.

Perhaps she was never meant to be a mother, but for the interim of their stay aboard Mayo, she can tend to this boy, reluctantly so if Cameron is present so he doesn’t completely pawn the responsibility off onto her.

“Yes.” Bounces with the quiet boy, whose red face has diluted to white, as his eyes close and his lips smack. “I think that would be acceptable. Don’t y—”

The pain is back.

Sudden and overtaking, shredding through her organs like carnivorous teeth. Flinches forward, the movement stirring the baby, whom she quickly deposits back into his bassinet before smacking a hand to her stomach, the flare of pain swirling and liquid and then a concrete rock that hitches her breath.

And it’s so familiar.

Familiar and it shouldn’t be because—because the Ori—because her daughter stopped—

Hobbles by the very likely comatose Colonel who now actively snores through his nostrils, breaking free of the room because for as much time as she spent on Earth, this isn’t a subject men tend to be privy to, or enjoy discussing without a nose crinkled in disgust.

*

“Chiana,” beckons the gray alien girl she’s barely known for two whole days, but somehow her bluntness, her honesty, has labeled her as trustworthy. Perhaps because they’re so similar, so unashamed by their sexualities, their natural prowess in the area that makes other blush during meager conversations.

The girl, who seems much younger than she is, not in a naïve or innocent aspect but through conduct, turns when called and a grin tugs on her lips. “If you’re here to give me dren for dropping that narl off, you can turn around right now sister because—”

“No. Not about—”Doubles over, the palms of her hands baring into her thighs to ease the pain, the tight muscles, each one streaming from one origin point.

“H-hey.” Finds comfort in the gray girl’s cold hand against the white shirt she borrowed, the one now covered in sour smelling spit up. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“You want me to go get—”

“No. No,” huffs trying to push the words from her throat without a painful throttle. “I need your help.”

“Me—what?—” Cat eyes narrow from round surprise and Chiana takes a jump back “—you’re not having a narl are you? Because I can’t deliver every single—”

“No, nothing like that—while oddly similar I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m experiencing my moon tides and I need—”

“Moon tides?”

“Do your people not call it that either?” Bites on her lower lip, tries to keep the positive, humourous attitude she’s cultivated for situations exactly as these, keep her mind off immanent pain. “The Tau’ri have a distinctively masculine term for it that escapes my mind at the present.”

“Look—” Chiana pounces, backwards this time, hands held up in a surrendering gesture. “I don’t know anything about—”

“The evacuation point—” Tries to reconstruct herself to stand upright, to have a proper conversation, but feels the beads of sweat dance down her back “—in the reproductive cycle where—”

“Let me stop you right there.” The whites of Chiana’s eyes almost overpower her perfectly hued face. “I don’t know what the frell a ‘reproductive cycle’ is, but I don’t have one.”

Silly to think that their bodies ache the same way for the same reason. Chiana is an alien after all, just as she is on Earth. After returning from the Ori galaxy Samantha took her shopping, took her aside and explained about Tau’ri moon tides and birth control—‘safe sex’ she had called it, which garnered her response of but then it’s no fun.

“What about Officer Sun?”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s asking if Aeryn too experiences a monthly bleed—” That horrid old woman, chewing on some sort of root, creeps out from the shadows wearing the same complacent grin on her face, still deceiving even after their bout in the kitchen “—which she doesn’t as she was reared on a command carrier with enhanced genetics, her body always willingly accepts fertilized embryos that remain in stasis until released.”

Immediately, she straightens, ignoring how her muscles seize in her back, ignoring the slickness pooling between her legs. She doesn’t want to communicate with this woman, who unstitched whatever the Ori sewed shut, but she seems to be the only one with pertinent information. “You knew what you were doing to me.”

“Yes.”

“What could you possibly gain from—”

“You were made empty before—” the old woman steps closer, her sandaled feet peeking out from beneath the frayed ends of her dress “—now you can be full, if you choose.”

“I’m sure you knew this was going to happen.”

“Oh yes.” The old woman nods with a triumphant smile, perhaps because she’s finally understood.

“Then please tell me you have some way to quell—”

The old woman spits the root out onto the floor and raises her finger. “Ah, yes.” She tugs up the hem of her dress so she doesn’t trip and beckons her to follow down an adjacent hallway. “Crichton brought some useful products back from his trip to Earth.”

“Crichton?” She turns to Chiana who follows along beside her, shoulders raised, and head skewed in interest. “I thought Crichton was Mitchell’s counterpart?”

They stumble to a stop at inside what looks to be the cargo area of the ship. Large containers line against the walls and spill out into the room creating aisles to travel reminiscent of the coiling hallways deep in the mountain.

Chiana hops up on one, padding across it and sitting on the edge, while the old woman lifts her head to the air and sniffs, before waddling towards a specific container.

“Crichton is a man, but he also gets shot more frequently than anyone else on Moya.” The old woman shoves off a large lid that clatters to the ground. Chiana stretches forward, two hands and a foot gripping the container’s edge, quiet as she lifts her chin and scans the inside. The old woman digs around until retrieving an open box of tampons, and of all the things she never thought she’d be happy to see, it has to be at the top. “He uses them to stem the wounds.”

Chapter Text

He can’t understand his wife.

Feels like he’s on some 1950s serial where the guy drops his suitcase and jacket at the door as his doting wife waits with his slippers, the newspaper, and a martini—supper ready in an hour, the kids knowing not to make eye contact.

Let’s be honest, he never really understood his wife.

Sure he knows the basics, the glares, the elbowing, the grunts—man, does he have the grunts down—knows why she acts the way she does because he knows all about her Peacekeeper indoctrination.

What he doesn’t know is how she’s feeling.

How she did feel after the baby, the college cramming style sleepless nights? They never talked about how it felt for her to lose her mother, because, hey, that wasn’t with him, so he doesn’t have to deal with it—right? It’s not that he doesn’t care, but by the time she came to him with that baggage, she was already done talking about it, so he left that suitcase right at the front door where it belonged— for her to get rid of.

Maybe this is why the other him was so much better.

She fell for him—from what he can tell, fell for other him pretty hard considering her status as a previously Ludovico’d space fascist who felt weak when she admitted to loving. When she came back she wouldn’t look at him, talk with him, acknowledge his existence, until it became necessary for survival.

When Crais and Talyn died, she didn’t react—at least not with him—bounced back to sacrifice being natural, that hive mind theory, the deaths piling up behind them necessary for the adventure in front. He never asked how it felt to lose them—a close friend, a surrogate child that she named with honor after another fallen member of her family.

He doesn’t ask, and at first he didn’t because he was afraid that she would withdraw more from him—that the basic dialogue they’d reconstructed would crumble back to nothing. Then he didn’t ask out of habit.

Why she left?

Where she went?

Was she an assassin?

How did Scorpy scoop her up from the middle of nowhere and slap her back onto Moya?

All the questions she refused to answer in full.

Got her back from Katratzi and he asked the same slew of questions.

What happened?

Was she okay?

What did they do to her?—she was tortured, that much he knows, and he hates—but there were higher stakes because the baby—

Jesus, the whole baby thing.

Not telling him.

Not knowing who the daddy is like a year long episode of the Maury Povich show.

To be fair, she never asked him once if he wanted to be the daddy to a kid that might not be his. Even if he was his—and that’s another reason he doesn’t ask questions because Deke is his flesh and blood, his firstborn, the son that will carry on his name in the universe—or a hyphenated version of it—but he knows that Deke had a different daddy, and as much as he’d argue that point until he’s red in the face if someone accused him of it—it’s the reason he can’t handle the midnight heavy metal screamo sessions with a month old son. The reason he tries to dodge diaper duty and feeding him that gross green sludge from a Capri Sun pack.

Even if Deke is flesh and blood, it’s hard to bond with a kid that’s not his.

Even if he can see his wife’s tired eyes, and his dad’s big ears, and his own stupid, lopsided grin when the kid—when his son—actually smiles—it still stings that he wasn’t the Crichton to help make him out of love.

All of this Aeryn has figured out and called him on, and he’s argued until he was red in the face, until she actually relented from being so exhausted—with stuff maybe or maybe not happening to her body—from the pregnancy, from the hormones—because they only had one quick layover with the Diagnosian, and it was to get Deke inoculated. Didn’t even have time for the translator microbes before they had to starburst away, because even after the treaty, the peace hangs heavy like an albatross around Moya’s neck.

Translator microbes are a problem now too.

If he didn’t know what his wife was feeling before, he sure as hell has no clue what she’s feeling now. Aeryn’s poker face could win them millions of credits if put to good use, but when he’s trying to figure out if she’s healthy or not, if she’s tripping into heat delirium or not, if being blinked into a whole other galaxy where one on of the main players is a beady-eyed classicist who keeps ogling her has upset anything in her system—which is only a month out from birthing their son—it doesn’t hold up well.

Can’t fall back on being physical.

Their relationship was physical first. Her thighs strapped tight around his neck, them cramped together in the little pit of his module or lost in a different alternate reality where they dissected Sparky and she undulated on top of him while a rainstorm slapped at the window.

What he knows about her now, is that she’s shimmied all the way to the other side of the Queen-sized bed the army hooked them up with, that her legs have cycled the sheets and blankets passed her ankles and she’s still cycling. If it wasn’t for the heat, he would assume that it was a bad dream, but he can’t remember the last time she’s had one, or the last time he was there for one, or that she told him about one—maybe she’s started keeping those to herself too.

Her tank top is riding up her back with the constant cycling, and her skin almost glows in the dark by how covered in sweat she is. With a final kick, she shoots the sheets and blankets off the bed—halfway off him—and onto the ground. The mattress bounces as she sits up on the edge for a few minutes, before standing, rounding the bed soundlessly, aiming towards the bathroom.

He turns towards the opposite wall tracing her movements in the dark, listening to the door creak shut, and watching the sliver of light flicker on. There’s running water and after that he falls asleep. He’ll ask her about it in the morning—

At least that’s what he wants to do, because that’s what he’s used to doing.

Leaving the suitcase at the door for her to take care of.

Leaving their son in a soiled diaper while he ducks out into another endless Moya corridor to hang out in the command room and talk to ghosts.

If he asks her what’s wrong, she’s not going to answer him. Mainly because she’s refused to speak to him in English since her ice bath, but she doesn’t want him concerned with it, just like he is overly concerned with every single thing she does because someone has to be.

But she’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, so he asks her anyway.

“Aeryn?” His voice comes out groggier than he means, and he realizes this is the first full night of sleep they’ve gotten since Deke was born, well, she’s gotten—he was sort of out of commission for the first week.

She doesn’t answer him, just rounds the end of the bed, heading towards the bathroom.

So he shuffles up in bed, sits with just a flat sheet over his lap and bent knees, and leans over to the side table, clicking on the lamp. “Are you okay?”

She recoils at the sudden blast of light—the same way he does—but it makes her stop her trek to the bathroom. When she doesn’t say a word, he calls out to her again, because maybe she’s used to waking up in weird places—but maybe she’s not. “Aeryn?”

Her answer is a scoff, and words in Sebacean—the choking inhales and sudden screeches—before she rolls her eyes and takes another two steps.

“Baby,” he sighs and rubs a hand across his face, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. “You gotta work with me here.”

The Sebacean keeps pouring from her mouth, but he’s a guy and he can pick up on the pissed off intonations she’s using whether she wants him to or not.

“This isn’t going to work.”

And the words he doesn’t know just keep pouring out.

“You can’t be against every single person here.”

Backwards Ts and sibilant Ss.

“Do you really think that’s going to get us back to Deke any quicker!”

They’re argument—their multilingual argument crescendos beautifully in him yelling about her piss poor plan to ironically alienate everyone around her, while she throat screams. Then she stops, and he stops, and they stare at each other for a second and if he was a betting man—knowing her poker face—he would place money on that bathroom door being slammed in less than a minute.

But he’s not a betting man. He’s a family man—sort of—trying to be.

“I’m sorry I never learned Sebacean.” Starts off talking to her, but his eyes scroll down to the crisp starched sheet tented at his knees. “I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

Surprisingly, she keeps her stance.

“I’m sorry that I never asked you how you were—after—well everything. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you and Deke for that first week—or since—kinda. I’m sorry the temperature here is making you sick, and that you’re worried about our son, and that I’m not sharing in the panic as much.” Wants to add that he’s pretty sure she knows why he’s not panicking, but there’s only so much self-flagellation that he can take this early in the morning, under a mountain, in a different galaxy. But it’s getting to him, not the apologizing, because she deserves it, but admitting out loud to all the things he’s been screwing up on lately. With a softer voice, almost just a tired whisper, he adds. “I’m sorry you went through all the trouble of learning English for him, but that I never thought to learn Sebacean for you.”

The mattress depresses again, and when he glances up from his lap, she’s perched on his side of the bed this time, her hand cups over one of his knees, and being this close to her, is like sitting in a campfire.

“He didn’t learn Sebacean either.”

Doesn’t know if it’s her broken English, or if it’s her accent—but the words slipping from her mouth and to his ears make him relax more than any night of full rest ever could. He sets his hand over hers, jostling his knee a bit, careful not to linger to long because he thinks she’s approaching the first step of heat delirium again.

But when his eyes catch hers, and they’re the same color as their son’s, month old baby boy Crichton galaxies away, helpless because they’re not there—sure he’s got the Moya gang—but he’s practically a newborn, hell, the kid probably already has a bounty on his head—his stomach sinks, the exhaustion bleeds from his face, the stinging from his eyes, and for a second he thinks he’s gonna puke.

He knows how she feels, because now he feels it too. Their son is out there, maybe among family, maybe not. Maybe still on that command room table they left him on, and they can’t do a damn thing about it from here.

He smiles weakly at her, seeing the same tears in her eyes that he has, seeing the same relief that they finally might be on an even battlefield, and that maybe they should start fighting the actual enemy instead of each other.

“Can you teach me how to speak Sebacean?”

It’s a true request—also a joke meant to lighten the mood—but the way her lips break into a full smile, her eyes gleaming along with her sweaty cheeks and forehead, he knows that she sees the sincerity in the question. Only nods with a tight grin, before pulling him into a hug, and shaking—maybe sobbing—against the top of his head as he wraps his arms around her drenched back.

Enjoys the embrace until the count of five, that’s what he gives himself, his nose tickling the side of her neck, dragging from her collarbone to nuzzle at her ear as she flinches and laughs. He gets a kiss—one kiss—that restores all the fantasies of sleeping feet apart from her on that tiny stupid bed. Her lips relax him, her fingers at his cheek, her taste so familiar—she tastes hot.

“Okay.” Smacks a kiss onto her cheek and taps her ass, which is almost in his lap, almost able to sense why the sheet would be tented for different reasons. He shimmies his legs as a distraction and to get her to stand.  When she does, he juts a thumb to the bathroom. “Ice bath, let’s go.”

“John—” her fingers pet through his hair, flutter to behind his ear “—you don’t have to come with—”

“Yeah.” Retrieves said hand, and plants a kiss on her extended palm. “Yeah, I do.”

(*)

He wakes up semi-hard for the first time since he can remember. Doesn’t know why, except he knows exactly why, because the dream he was having, one he was far too into because—it was a good thing he woke up when he did.

Takes a second to place himself, the cold air circulating through the room helping to distract him as he shifts on the squeaky, God awful bed. Thought he wasn’t alone, because in the dream he definitely wasn’t—his hand smacks the small empty space beside him, and he finds whatever is passing as the mattress cold too, which is weird because he thought—

A gurgle interrupts him slowly piecing memories together: stones, another galaxy, doppelgangers, a living ship. A wail reminds him of the baby, that is kinda cute when he finally stops screaming, and—

“Oh, there is no need to cry.”

Vala.

She’s a few feet away from him, her back not completely to him, more like on a slant as she stands from the floor, hiking the kid up with her. The baby stops his crying, like he can understand her, or maybe because she’s entertaining him, lifting him a little above her head, and then bringing him close to her face to touch her nose against his.

“There you are, my Darling.” It’s a whisper that’s so genuine, someone might actually confuse her for his mom. Her rubbing noses with the kid doesn’t help.

He doesn’t really care because as long as she’s taking care of the baby, he doesn’t have to. It also keeps her out of trouble, as in, she’ll be less likely to stumble off raised walkways, or be force fed goo if she’s preoccupied.

Plus every time she lifts the kid, the black t-shirt she’s changed into raises a bit from where it meets the leather pants hugging the curve of her ass. The sliver of skin grows until it bares her hips, then her navel and, despite his best efforts and the cold air, he finds something stirring within him again because in his dream her body looked exactly the same.

“Let’s get rid of your little present before Uncle Colonel wakes up and has words with us.” The little guy fits into the crook of her arm as she stoops and snatches something she’s rolled into a ball. He closes his eyes, not so that she won’t find out he’s playing opossum but her squatting only accentuates the hug of that leather.

She strolls by the bed, baby talking to their not-son and he gets a great whiff of rank diaper—which is enough to snuff out any lingering fantasies. She stops at the wall, and through his barely open eyes, she hits a panel revealing a garbage chute or something because she tosses the diaper in and closes it up again.

The kid makes another gurgle, a deeper one that evolves into an unhappy whine, and she pokes at his stomach underneath a new onesie she must have changed him into. How does she already know where everything is, they’ve been here a day and a half? How the hell is she taking care of this kid so well when the Vala he knows breaks into level five security clearance computer files, and then jail breaks out of the holding cell she’s placed in as punishment. He’s seen her swipe five different things in just as many minutes. He knows for a fact that she has three of Jackson’s credit card numbers, one of his, and had one of Sam’s but gave it back for her birthday.

“Someone is a hungry boy.” Has a bright grin on her face as she strides away from him again, picking up a silver pack on one of the tables, rounding the pile of clothes still in the middle of the room.

And he realizes he loves seeing her with the baby.

Not just because he knows the kid is a fail-safe and it lets him relax, and not just because she seems happier and more carefree. Knows it does something inside of him, flickers something on that certain dreams stem off of, watching her be maternal, watching her snuggle and protect someone so small. It shows a different side of her, one that’s just as hot as the dips of her hips.

“Perhaps Colonel Uncle will stop pretending he’s asleep and allow us to use the bed for your feeding?” She singsongs her words until reaching the end of her sentence where she becomes very blunt.

“That’s Uncle Colonel.” He groans, trying to play it cool under her watchful eye, because of course she knew he was sneaking peeks. This is Vala, she knows where every security measure is, and knows when someone has eyes on her.

As he shoves an arm underneath him, pushing himself up to sit, she approaches smelling different, cleaner, and he realizes she had another shower when he hasn’t even gotten one yet. She hands him the silver pack, which looks just like a juice pouch—it even has a straw thing to shove into an opening, but the end of it looks like a bottle so the baby can nurse.  

The kid whimpers again, and she whispers hushes at him, bouncing him up to rest on her shoulder. Her t-shirt rides up, and those leather pants are slanted and—

“Mitchell?” She’s staring at him, and he actually flinches this time because she caught  him red-handed.

“What?” He ducks his head back down, screwing the feeding straw into the juice pouch.

Quirks her lips to the side and then stands beside the bed, her knee nudging his, telling him to shove down so she can sit. “I asked if you saw something you liked, but now I’m not so sure it wasn’t the food pouch.”

“I just noticed that you had another shower.” Tightens the nursing straw until he’s sure if he tightens it anymore he’ll rip the bag clear in half.

“Yes.” She takes the pouch from him and nudges the end against the baby’s mouth. He’s just starting to cry, the redness creeping into his wrinkled face. She didn’t swaddle him, so his little fists are pumping. “I needed one after I woke.”

The baby doesn’t seem interested in the food at all, and now his legs are starting to kick in the air. Thinks that maybe she’s done in, and even though she’s the one who’s showered and cleaned and probably eaten, there’s a weird voice in his head that wants to offer to try to feed the kid—but just before he opens his mouth, the baby opens his to scream and she shoves the end right on in.

At first the kid seems offended, his eyes wide and his wispy eyebrows furrowed, but then he starts to suck, and she uses one hand to cradle his body and one to slowly squeeze out the contents of the pouch.

“You’re staring again.” She doesn’t draw her eyes away from the baby but uses the same knowing singsong voice as before.

Wants to tell her it’s because she looks gorgeous. Her skin is glowing a bit, and there’s a soft curl in her hair, and he can see the way her eyelashes spread when she blinks down at the baby in her arms. How the back of her shirt has inched up.

Thinks that if he told her all that, and then maybe about the dream that got him more aroused than any porn in his computer search history has, that she would actually be into it. She would probably finish feeding the baby, and then curl up next to him and let him run his hands over her hips and her navel—and that’s why he can’t. Eventually, they’re going to go back to the SGC, and if he starts something here with her, he’s going to have to bring it back there, and as sneaky as she is when she’s stealing shit—sometimes his shit, sometimes from right in front of him—he knows that her big mouth wouldn’t keep it a secret. Hell, she would probably brag about it to Jackson to make him jealous.

So instead he falls back on the stern colonel character, the commanding officer routine, like he’s done so many times before, like when they were in Auburn and she was in his bed, and he was on the couch staring at the ceiling, thinking about her in his bed. “I was just hoping you were eventually going to share some information about this place, like how to tell the time, or where I can get a shower.”

“Well ask, and you shall receive, Darling.” She sits up straighter, squeezing a bit more from of the top of the pouch, directing all the food inside downwards. “The shower is called a ‘refresher’ and it’s around the corner, the third door on the left.”

The baby—Deke, now he remembers—is suckling loudly, greedily. One of his fists raising and brushing against her fingers holding the pouch. After another suckle, his fingers spread and wrap around hers, and her reaction is beautiful, the sass and the sarcasm slipping away for a genuine warm grin make him want to stay, make him want to enjoy this with her. “Maybe I’ll just wait, and you can show me when he’s done eating.”

And it’s like she can sense what he’s thinking—not the sexual things—but how he’s admiring her for caring, because she snaps right out of it, sliding her fingers back to the top of the pouch and rolling it down like a tube of toothpaste.

“And maybe you’ll do us a favor by going now.” She reaches over and tugs on the sleeve of his fatigues, which are more than dirty. “If my time telling is correct, you’ve been in those fatigues for almost fifty hours and you’re not smelling so lovely.”

“Yeah I get it.” Rolls his eyes and groans as he pushes up from the bed, his thigh a little rusty.

“Make sure you take in new clothes with you.” Deke starts to tire in her arms, the little guy must have a full belly, because his hand slowly drops from the air and his mouth stops sucking. Amazingly, when Vala, tugs the pouch from his mouth, the baby doesn’t make a sound, even as she adjusts him back against her chest for burping. “Do you have a shirt under that?”

He screws his eyes a bit, trying to understand her insinuation. “Yeah—”

“Good, give it here. I need a burping cloth.”

“You’re not using my shirt as a burp cloth.”

“Mitchell, he has a full tummy and if he—”

“You’re not using it Vala!”

“Then you’d better find a suitable replacement.” The hand not supporting Deke is gesturing wildly around the room. “Because if he vomits on me, I’m going to be back in the showers, whether you’re there or not.”

*

He’s never wished a kid would throw up so much in his life.

But after a few minutes of standing underneath the stream of water, he realizes that his undershirt probably did the trick. The rest of his fatigues lay across a bench a few feet away along with his new clothes, a simple black t-shirt and leather pants, just like hers.

When he complained about the leather, asking why this galaxy seemed not to know the comfy fashion of sweats or jeans, she shrugged while burping the baby and said that leather is best worn in phases, then sighed, leaning her cheek against the top of Deke’s head, his once white, now gray undershirt laying over her shoulder, and said she was done her phase when she stayed at the SGC.

He scrubs a hand over his hair, and then washes one over his face. Wonders what she did before she got to the SGC. What planet is she from exactly? They’ve worked together for a while now, and he doesn’t know anything about her except that she worked in thieving and cons. She doesn’t talk much about it, and whenever anyone brings it up, it seems to upset her in the same way that him catching that smile did, so he tries to let it go.

She’s brought it up before on missions, how she can get whatever they need for the right price, and Jackson goes into the same prodding that leaves her pulling sardonic remarks out of her ass until someone steps in and changes the subject. She obviously didn’t like who she was back then, so why bring it up if it makes her feel bad? She’s changed a lot, proven herself to them. She’s earned it.

She’s changed a lot all right, and he tries to steer his mind away from the dream and how good her skin felt under his, around his. That gap of skin that’s going to drive him crazy all day. When she was in Auburn and had on her Daisy Duke’s he never asked her to change, because it was her vacation too, and she needed to have fun to—can he order her to change?—he definitely can’t order her to change because if she doesn’t tear him a new one, Chiana definitely will.

His one-track mind tries to steer him back to pumping out what he needs too because of hips dips and navel plains, but thankfully before his hands skip to the danger zone, he remembers that he’s on a living ship and it is definitely not appropriate.

He keeps his hands to himself, in the most literal way, and steps out of the shower, towards the towel he hung off the bench beside his clothes. He doesn’t know what the water is made out of, or where it’s coming from, just made sure not to think about it and not to get any in his eyes and mouth. If he ever has the pleasure of meeting Crichton, he’s gotta ask him how he’s lasted over four years on this ship—what is the appropriate conduct with the ship? Should he talk to her? They talk to the baby who can’t understand them, and he’s talked to jets he’s flown before, but knowing it could hear and understand is kind of freaky.

Also, there’s no way that guy went long without knocking one out because just the stress and the pressure from space has been revving him up and it’s hardly been two days.

He tosses the towel back to the bench and tries to navigate his new outfit. The shirt is no problem, the underwear are boxer briefs and he’s more than glad for that, but the pants. He tugs the shirt on, and the undies and then gets to work.

Someone pounds on the door once he gets his first leg in.

“Mitchell—” Vala’s voice carries over the empty room and there’s  a pause where he hears Deke cry.

“Gimme a sec—” Yanks o the other leg and as he tries to pull them up they crease against his thighs.

There’s another bang on the door—at least she gave him that second—and he shimmies up the pants while he walks towards the door, listening to her spout out words from the other side, which isn’t upsetting him the way it would if they were back at the SGC. If he was in the showers there, slipping on his favorite pair of fatigues, and she harshed his calm by slamming her hand into the door this many times—especially with a screaming baby—he would probably come out all red-faced and tear into her until she got that glassy look in her eyes that makes him feel like shit.

Realizes that this Crichton guy didn’t last on this ship. He has a kid, he has a wife, and he wonders how long it actually took before he gave in, because apparently his wife looks exactly like Vala, and he needs to know what record he has to beat.

Or when it’s okay to give in.

As he buttons up the pants, still surprised that he didn’t have to suck in his stomach to get them on, he pushes the button to open the door, and finds her pacing outside the room, bouncing the baby and looking a little worried.

Takes his hands away from his belt, and steps to intercept her. Placing and hand on her bicep. He doesn’t think before he does it, it just seemed natural, like comforting her means more than breaking the rules he gave himself. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Noranti—that old woman—”

His hand drops from her arm as he stiffens, his back straight, his eyes scanning the hallway searching for her. “What did she do?”

Vala narrows her eyes, and tilts her head, observing him. “Nothing.”

And he doesn’t know if this is the that thing she does where she sacrifices herself in order to keep him safe—where she doesn’t tell if something is hurting her, because it will get in the way.  His hand rests on her shoulder, drawing her eyes away from calming the baby, to him. “If she—”

“She didn’t do anything, Mitchell.”

“Then what?—”

“She thinks she knows where we can find the stones.”

Chapter Text

After three solar days, the need to be reunited with her son does not decrease.

However, she begins to grow calmer despite the situation, despite the temperature constantly infiltrating her body, forcing a more exhausted and fatigued state, negating her usefulness.

Through the burden of her powerlessness, trust begins to form with the military employees she interacts with routinely, the gentle blonde colonel, the gruff general, the rambling doctor, and the big one who speaks less than she does. She still ignores the pleasant chitchat they make to fill the silence as it is not a prerequisite for a successful mission, and their questions quickly evolve into concerning her physique, why exactly she finds this heat nearly unbearable when they simply discard their jackets and roll up their sleeves. Questions about her race, where she was born, how they should address her, what her abilities are, if any.

Ignores them because questions such as these are not expediting the reunion with her son.

The colonel dresses the information gathering as bonding, speaking about her son as if they’ve met, as if she was present for his traumatic birth, as if this colonel has a single idea of the roiling occurring in her body from the separation.

The doctor feigns curiosity, boasts his prowess in multilingualism, speaks to her in languages that three solar days ago, she would have translated automatically. He flips between languages like they’re  pages in one of his large texts. Books, that when he won’t embrace the silence, she wants to beat him with.

The general notes that fact-gathering is part of any mission, part of sending her back to Moya, her friends, her son, her climate-controlled room that allows her the simple pleasure of sleeping through the night before she birthed a boisterous baby.

The large one says nothing, but nods or bows civilly. She prefers him the most.

She does not answer the majority of the questions, instead leaving them for John.

The bond between them is growing strong once again, allowing them to combat their apprehensions together. Revived the first night they shared a bed in their assigned room where he woke with her, shared the burden of her weakness to the heat, slumped on the tiled floor beside the basin she sat in, filled once again with ice, and chattered to her as he fought sleep.

Held her hand as she relaxed into the comfortable temperature, but when she became too listless, her movements lagging as the cold temperature superseded the hot, and the sleepless nights from caring for Deke added to her grogginess, and she closed her eyes, he shook her awake immediately, shoving his hands through the ice and whisking her up and into a stiff towel. Talked to her in that worried ramble as he rubbed heat back into her shoulders and held her upright when her eyes closed again.

He apologized for her weakness to her, wished he knew of a better way to help, and embraced her.

After that night they reduced fluid levels quite frequently, more often then on Moya, even before Deke was born.

More often then on Talyn.

Finally, although stranded in another universe, she felt their relationship mold into what it was meant to be, felt completely connected to her husband and trusted him implicitly. Knew he wouldn’t divulge too much pertinent information concerning her biology.

It is the start of the fourth solar day as they lay in bed, post-coital, sheets rippled and piled at their feet. He holds an ice pack to the back of her neck, under the hair he fanned across the pillow, and purposefully places another across her exposed navel, enjoying her jump and gleefully accepting the shove she delivers into his shoulder with a deep laugh, catching her hand on her recoil and placing individual kisses upon each of her fingertips.

The device on the nearby table rings, not the one meant to rouse them from sleep, but the one that  releases some form of klaxon.  John instinctively know what to do, reaching and retrieving the handle, the alarm stops as he brings it to his ear.  

“Yeah?” He grunts into the receptor—he’s explained the purpose of the device before, a comm of sorts, but immobile, tethered to the wall. “Well, that’s good.”

He rolls away from her, his attentions on the comm conversation, and when she shifts from the bed, his hand instinctively reaches behind him for her. A clumsy gesture, but a sweet one. She takes pity on him, directs his hand to cup her cheek as she relaxes back against a mattress, and two very watery bags of ice.

“All right, we’ll be up in a few microts—minu—whatever.” He crashes the handle back onto the remains of the device, his free hand drifting to her hair, pulling, massaging as she nudges up against him, her chin against his ribs, feeling his dramatic inhalation as she rests her cold hands against skin.

He rolls over on his back, kisses her, then again, longer, harder, prolonged and interestingly, with that cheeky grin. She breaks the embrace, keeping cool fingers at his temples, grounding him. “What was that about?”

But, he flips her into his lap, runs his fingers tantalizingly slow over her hips, then higher to her ribs, her neck, before sitting up and popping a final kiss on her lips. “They think they might have found a few planets that could have stones on them.”

*

Apparently, this is what these people do.

Dress in tan, or black, or dark green outfits, and strap themselves down with weaponry, the ‘essentials’—Peacekeepers would snort at the opulence—and leave this version of Earth to any number of unexplored planets eager to explore.

They’re allowed to view an arched sculpture carved with ornate symbols, and she’s knows this is the  device they call a Stargate. When the colonel mentions it is a controlled wormhole, John guffaws. She rolls her eyes and steps away from the doctor, who purposefully took a step closer.

Afterwards they file into a meeting room, with a large table and several chairs. The colonel blathers off a list of five planets, which is almost too perfect a number as there are five of them, but when John reads her intuitions and presumes everyone is to go to a separate planet, the colonel and the doctor just laugh.

“No, we all have to go to each one together,” the colonel clarifies.

John crosses his arms, and straightens his back, the positions he tries when attempting intimidation which never work on her because she can read through to the same cheeky grin. “Wouldn’t that take a hell of a lot longer?”

“Yeah, but it would be a hell of a lot safer,” the doctor counters, and mirrors John’s stance before taking a direct look to her.

Safety is also what these people do.

It is surprising that she and John have been allowed to roam through the complex as freely as they have.

Much more surprising after the requirements before gate travel are explained to her.

The rest of their fourth solar day is spent proving themselves to a team of humans who have no idea what it is like in the rages of space.

They’re taken to something called a range, which in her mottled English, she confuses for an oven, and told to fire at targets to prove their abilities with weaponry, which everyone, including the general agrees is a waste of time.

They both have a sparring session with the large, silent man, to prove themselves in hand-to-hand combat. John is immediately knocked off his feet due to his bantering, but she is easily able to seize the upper hand. She suspects the man was withholding his full force. Perhaps because she’s a woman. Perhaps because she resembles his friend, whom, she’s been frequently told, she acts nothing like.

Lastly they’re sent to a doctor to clear them medically. It’s the simplest out of all the processes, yet it by far requires the most time. Once the doctor is made aware they’re not from this Earth and have had prolonged exposure to the affects of space, she wants to run tests before inoculating them against anything.

A blood test, a swabbing of their mouths, and some form of Diagnosian scan for the entire body.

John argues, not really seeing the point, and she flat out refuses, using the little bit of English they know she has, she crosses her arms, leaning back in her chair and reiterates, “no.”

“The scan might be beneficial to you.” The colonel takes the seat beside her, nearing her, but never touching her directly. However, she refuses to even offer eye contact. “It may be able to tell us why your so susceptible to the heat.”

“No.”

“It might allow us a method to bypass your response to the heat.” The doctor is approaching her, and from behind him, John jolts awake, taking giant strides to be at her side first.

“Her and I know why she’s susceptible to the heat, which is enough.” He grasps her hand, starting to grow too hot again in the bright lights of the medical unit, and starts to draw her away and to the door.

“So, you’re just going to give up on finding stones?”

“If it means keeping her body private, then yes.”

“But these stones can get you home—Officer Sun, they can get you back to your son.”

“I will not allow my body to be subject to another slew of invasions and tests.” Speaks it in perfect English, to the whole room which falls silent. The two humans from surprise at her prowess with words, and John because he knows the situations she’s referring to, knows she will not be taken prisoner again.

As the doctor tries to stutter out a sentence, John keeps hold of her clammy hand, directing her attention to have a dialogue with only him. “What about just the swab and the blood test. You did it when you were on my Earth. You didn’t care much about them.”

She has her convictions and, under normal circumstances, holds herself to them as a method to ground her, to give her strength and direction when she feels so lost—holding a child that will not stop crying, yet now in the absence of his weight, his noise, she finds her convictions bending.

“I’ll do it too. We can get it done at the same time, like matching tattoos.” He tries to lighten the mood, swings her arm in a mock dance and wears that lopsided grin their son inherited. But something still feels dangerous about the situation, allowing bits of her biological material, even a small portion to be processed for examination—she may end up turning into Pilot again.

But John draws her near, and the voices of the others fade away until she can just hear his breathing, feel the hot puffs of air against her cheek, and he mumbles, “we gotta do this honey, we gotta do it for Deke.”

*

Obligations and restrictions force a separation upon them.

Since John is human, despite his marginalization from belonging to another galaxy, his tests prove simple to follow. She sits beside him as they swab his mouth and cap the small bit of material that absorbed his saliva. His hand cups her thigh while they tie a tourniquet around his arm and draw blood from a vein, something he says he’s never been good with, explaining getting needles and shots and how his mom would take him out for a milkshake after.

“So, she bribed you?” Her voice is coy, but she lovingly strokes a hand through his hair as the doctor cocks a curious eyebrow at them before bandaging up his arm.

“No, she gave me something to look forward to. I had to get the needle, but she made me think of a good thing instead of being afraid.”

She feels an unbalance within her, equating to knowing that she wants to do that with Deke, that when he faces hardships, she wants him to focus on the good that will be birthed from the suffering, not the pain and strife to achieve it.

But the notion isn’t just the yearning for her child, it’s equally terrifying in a different but oddly familiar way.

John sits with her while they draw her blood and she doesn’t flinch. She waits as they tourniquet her arm in the same manner, and tell her to make a fist, which she does in defense, until he lowers her arm gently away from threatening the doctor, holding it with his hand. She wants to watch as they draw her blood, the same way they did with him, the small vial growing dark, but he tips her head up, his eyes resting on hers and he talks to her so softly, that she doesn’t realize they’ve finished until the pressure relieves on her arm.

“See that?” Caresses her cheek and grins at her, the same lopsided one that sometimes graces their son’s face. “You did great.”

Wants to tell him she wasn’t worried about getting her blood drawn, or about getting her mouth swabbed, although she didn’t enjoy the process. Is more worried about the pinch inside of her, the something growing heavy but still unnervingly familiar.

Her test takes longer to run due to unknown variants in her blood, and after already researching and waiting for three days, the humans are getting restless and wish to start exploring other planets in search of the stones. Since nothing extraordinary appeared in John’s medical samples, the doctor clears him to travel off world.

She, however, must remain behind.

Promised it would only be the day, as she may be needed to answer any questions the doctor may have.

She already knows she will not.  

Eventually they relent, because John can help more, and the planet they choose for their first mission is what the colonel calls ‘tropical’, which John explains indicates the temperatures are higher than average, meaning she wouldn’t be of any use anyway.

Jealousy invades her as she stands stagnant in the room after kissing him goodbye and watches him march through the blue eye of the gate. The general stands beside her, reading the sudden falling of her face as concern for her husband, perhaps the undulating concern for her son, and careful not to touch her, he states matter-of-factly. “He’ll be fine, P3J-222 is a beach resort of a planet.”

But her sick expression wasn’t for her son a galaxy away, or her wormhole enthusiast husband who cheered as he walked through the gate leaving her behind, but because her microbe-less mind finally translated the unsettling notion within her, the ever constant pinch not strong enough to pose her discomfort on the same level as the irritating and nauseating heat.

She swallows harshly and stares at the gate, unable to do anything else, until the doctor summons her back to the medical lab.

“Your swab was fine.” The doctor, a brash speaking woman, is always preoccupied, always buzzing around the small exam room, straightening canisters or smoothing out sheets. “But your blood test gave me some cause for concern.”

“I know.”

The doctor ignores the firm nod she gives, and drags over a chair, continuing her monologue. “There’s a few hormones that are high, in humans it’s indicative of—”

“I know what it means.”

“Well.” The doctor pulls her lips tight and sets her hands on her knees. “I’m sorry to inform you, but you’ll have to be grounded to the complex for the remainder of your stay.”  

The void expression on her face straightens, replaces with full outrage. “Please tell me I mistranslated something—”

“It’s standard military practice.” The doctor scratches something onto a clipboard. “Unfortunately, you’re a liability, and if anything happens to you or—”

When the doctor stands, she imitates the action, both pushing their chairs back with a screeching slide. “You know nothing of my physiology—”

“Because you won’t tell us.”

“You, therefore, know nothing of my reproductive cycle. This information can’t be allowed to—”

“Officer Sun.” The doctor holds up a hand to silence her, which only proves to provoke her more, creates more friction. “Because of doctor/patient confidentially, I cannot discuss your medical issues with anyone but you. So this information isn’t going anywhere else.” She slips the writing implement behind her ear and slaps the clipboard once against her leg. “And because of your pregnancy, neither are you.”

The old woman, whom she is still hesitant to fully trust, herds them into the room they arrived in, the control room, or command room, or some other bravado name when it only consists of a poorly constructed table and large windows to open space.

Noranti’s third eye opens, glowing green as she munches on clippings from a small satchel tied around her wrist and points emphatically at the empty slots where the stones should be. “I believe I know where you can procure a stone you’re in search of.”

Mitchell stands beside her, his arms crossed, and his jaw set all manly man. She’s not quite sure, but she thinks he’s placed himself between her and the old woman, who is still jigging around the table extremely happy, on purpose.

“You know where to get the stones, Wrinkles?” Chiana slips by them, prowls to the other side of the table, opposite of the old woman.

Noranti stops her dance, shaking her head. “No. Not at all.”

Mitchell raises a hand and crunches his eyebrows, sometimes he gives her the same expression when he doesn’t quite understand the level she’s speaking at, if she’s talking about crystals or in Goa’uld. “But you just said—”

“Stone.” The old woman corrects, wiping her lower lip free of what looked to be the nail clippings she was snacking on. “I think I might know where you can find a single stone.”

The room stays silent for a bit, Chiana not really interested in the conversation as she cocks her head at the device again. Mitchell sighs and patiently waits for an explanation. Little Deke begins fussing about in her arms, until she adjusts him, facing forward so he can see the long-range communication device as well.

“Well,” it’s a little breathless because she’s still aching from her moontides. The old woman delivered on the feminine hygiene products she required and even gave her a mild pain killer, which she took despite the history between them—she still feels more lethargic than usual. However, she has to keep the optimism up, if no one else will. The baby continues to wiggle, and she bounces him a bit. “I suppose one stone is better than none.”

“I’m sorry.” Mitchell’s arms unfold and he turns towards her, as his eye contact remains with the old woman, his large hands grasp around Deke, and he lifts the baby easily from her arms, holding him forwards, and rocking him gently until his fussing ceases.

The entire exchange is not only flawless, but more so natural, leaving her wide-eyed in surprise.

When he turns back to her, Deke almost cooing in his arms, and offering her a concerned expression, a little flutter jitters through her stomach. “Are we trusting her now?”

“Surely you’re not still upset about earlier? I merely—”

“You can’t just go force feeding people your dren, Wrinkles.”

“It was for a good—”

Mitchell continues to watch her as the disagreement breaks out before them. She glances up at him, her eyes heavy and her smile complimentary. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

*

The planet, Valdun, is three solar cycles away, which she loosely translates into days.

Neither her nor Mitchell are particularly pleased about the travel time but use it to familiarize themselves with Mayo. The refreshers, the room in which they do laundry in a glowing pool of blue, some sort of fluid she doesn’t remember the name of. She’s able to clean Officer Sun’s clothes which she wore and were either soiled by her, or by Deke throwing up on her.

She spends time with Pilot, learns more about the mechanics of Mayo because she’s never been on a ship she hasn’t been able to fly herself. She perches on his desk, or sits before it wrapped up in one of the fur blankets from the bed, and listens to him speak of his home world, his forced bonding to Mayo, how he speaks of the pain he’s endured like it’s inconsequential, like it doesn’t matter.

How his darling voice dips and she knows he can still feel the tremors of pain the way she does sometimes.

He also tells her of Officer Sun.

Speaks so highly of her, telling of her mottled background and how her lack of compassion transformed once she met Crichton. How she visited him once in tears because she feared her child wasn’t bonding to her, how being a mother was the most terrifying thing she’d ever done. How he reassured her until she fell into an exhausted sleep in the very spot before his desk that she sits now, and how he silenced everything he could to allow her the peace she deserved.

“Why did you tell me all this, Pilot?”

“Because I believe you know how to keep a secret.”

Chiana and her speak more, understand each other better over their shared tattered histories of sexual deviancy. Of being judged by only a scrap of their personalities and not as a whole. By being defined by pasts they try to outrun but never quite can.

On the second night while slinking down the hallway, unnoticed by Mitchell searching for her for baby duty, Chiana tells her of a lost love, and her delightful cat eyes glass over with tears. She holds her while she cries, knowing all too much what it’s like to walk away from dying loved ones.

After that, she spends most of her time on an observation deck, sometimes sitting with a novel written in a different language that she can suddenly read or leafing through Commander Crichton’s star maps and journals. Sometimes she brings Deke up with her, and they fall asleep under a canopy of stars and planets in beautiful rainbow hues.

Sometimes Mitchell will wake her up for dinner, sometimes his large hands slip around the baby and remove him from her chest or side to go do a feeding or diaper change.

Despite him trusting her more, and perhaps having her back more actively than he ever has, the strain between them grows awkward. They agree, for the sake of the baby and equal workloads, that they will share the bedroom that still lingers around near freezing temperatures—she doesn’t know how Deke hasn’t caught a cold yet.

She shows Mitchell how to use the waste disposal in the far wall, where the diapers and clothing are located, and true to his word, sometimes when the baby cries at night, she hears him squeak up from the other bed he’s dragged in from next door. It just makes more sense, more room to sleep, less intimate, but sometimes her body still tingles when his side brushes against hers in the hallway, or when she’s walking too slow from fatigue, and he grabs her hand, guiding her along to see his new discovery on board.

After they’ve turned in on the third night, after a long conversation with Noranti, who kept jabbing a finger at the device and showing them where to place the stone once they retrieved it tomorrow, stating the symbols on the device dictated this was the one for their galaxy—what symbols she didn’t know, and her and Mitchell chuckled about it later—the privacy screens are drawn and the baby is snoring softly at the end of their beds.

She hesitates, but twists from side-to-side, pent up, her back aching from her now dwindling cramps, her body restless, aching and cold in a still somewhat unfamiliar environment.

“You keep doing that, and you’re going to wake the baby.”

When she flips back to see him, his back is straight against the bed, his eyes closed and facing the ceiling, his words a low rumble.

Tucks her hands up underneath her head which alleviates the pressure in her neck but amplifies the one in her lower back. “I’m sorry, I’m just uncomfortable.”

“Well get comfortable.”

She rolls her eyes at him, at the same bluntness he’s always treated her with, and flips onto her back, staring at the same ceiling indistinguishable in the dark. “Yes, that’s helpful.”

Assumes he will just ignore her snarky reply and go back to his macho man snoring, that somehow doesn’t wake the baby. Instead he chuckles, and turns towards her, stretching his bad leg out from under the blanket. “What’s wrong?”

She blinks at him, once, then twice, trying to decide if this is some sort of weird dream from the pressures of space, but then she shifts her hips and the dull pain is still present in her pelvis. A conversation, even in a dream, is better than focusing on the pain, however she still skates over the cause as Sam’s advisement to ‘never discuss feminine matters public’, rings through her head. “Just achy from these awful beds.”

“Yeah, they really suck.”

“You’d think with the technological advancements, being completely multilingual, eradication of most disease, they would have developed better sleeping implements.”

He chuckles again, holding his breathe when the baby stirs.

In the silence she presumes he’s fallen back asleep, but in the darkness he poses, with a hint of mirth in his voice, “how pissed do you think Jackson is gonna be when he finds out that we can understand every language now?”

“Oh, he will be positively livid.”

They speak more, some words she remembers, most she doesn’t as she drifts into sleep. It’s late—perhaps the middle of what Chiana refers to as the ‘sleep cycle’ when she’s jolted awake by a wall of warmth, her body initially tenses, staying perfectly still, but the heat slowly works her apart from being curled in on herself.

“Sorry,” Mitchell apologizes so closely to her that the word caresses her ear. Her muscles seize again, disorientated mind unable to place herself, to identify the danger. “You were shivering so loud that you woke the little guy.”

At the foot of their now combined, three-piece bed, the bassinet remains undisturbed. Little Deke sound asleep inside.

“I fed him half of the juice pouch—” their triple bed shudders as he guides his bad thigh on. They’re not as close as before, when they were literally hanging off each other or the edge, but there’s less than a person’s width between them “—I hummed him some classic rock and he went right out again.”

Blinks at him through groggy eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain in the morning, as long as you’re okay with the sleeping arrangements.” His fingers pluck a strand of her hand from her mouth and she notes the difference in temperature. Her limbs, her bones are sore from the sheer cold. When she shudders again, he tugs up his fur blanket, draping it more over her. “You’re okay with this, right?”

Vaguely remembers Mitchell enamored  with her and the baby, watching her for him through the slits of an untrained deceiver’s eyes. Assumed it hacked into a portion of him he didn’t know existed, the one where he wanted a wife and kids—or the one where he strove to achieve the family life she was able to view at his parents’ farm.

“You—you were really shaking, Vala.” The bed balances out between them as he relaxes onto his portion. Although she’s facing away from him, she knows he’s turned her way, waiting for an elaboration which she cannot offer. “You feeling okay?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, a creepy old lady fed you playdough.”

“I just feel split.”

Between enjoying caring for a baby that resembles her, a baby made out of love—one she didn’t have to birth, one who is not her own.

Enjoying the people on Mayo, bonding with them over battle scars.

Relieved at the ebbing cramps waning in her pelvis, yet unimpressed with the idea of having to ensure safer intercourse with the boys around the base upon her return.

“Anything I need to worry about?”

And Cameron, who will cross the divide in the middle of the night, keeping her toasty, warming her strained muscles and worn bones. Knowing his arm with lap across her side as a safety precaution when really it’s all idle crap and the wanting between them is only growing stronger.

Harder.

“Not right now.”

Chapter Text

“Man, this planet is hot.” He yanks off the hat that they were kind enough to lend him, he doesn’t know if it’s Mitchell’s or not—he hopes it’s not, he still doesn’t know the guy very well, and he really doesn’t want to get lice right now.

“Most of them are.” The classicist sighs, digging around more in the dirt, hunched over like a kid trying to hide his chocolate bar at recess.

When he glances up, two suns glare back down, and he uses the back of his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow. “No, I mean, it’s really hot.”

“You kind of get used to it after awhile.” Colonel Carter grins at him as she types something up into her computer. She’s perched up on a huge stone before the entrance to the ruins, the tips of her toes digging into the sand to keep her balanced.

The big guy says nothing—the last time he said anything was in the elevator when Aeryn was hallucinating—but stands rigid as a statue at the mouth of the cave, like he’s just waiting for something bad to happen.

Maybe these guys have had enough bad run-ins that they just bring the big guy along for muscles, and it makes him want to laugh at first, but hell, they should probably start doing that when they take the transport pod to commerce planets.

Shit always goes down on commerce planets.

“So whatcha actually doing?” He gazes over Colonel Carter’s shoulder, looking at a black screen with jumbles of alphanumeric code spilling on to it.

“I’m trying to access the program we created that mimics the frequency of the long-range communication stone so that we can use it as a dowsing rod of sorts.” She turns the laptop towards him, pointing out an error in the code. “The problem is the frequency is also preventing the program from opening?”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s like having two positively charged magnets, they’re both repelling each other.”

“Maybe it has something to do with how we’ve slipped into Dante’s Inferno.”

Colonel Carter gives him a small chuckle.

The classicist who always checks out his wife, does not.

“Most of the planets in this galaxy are desert biomes, Crichton.”

With pursed lips and widened eyes, he takes large, goofy steps towards the doctor who has planted himself in steaming desert sand at the bottom of a large column at the mouth of the ruins. They’re never going to get inside, he knows this already, because if they did, they would flash fry in seconds.

“It’s not really the heat that’s bothering me.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” The doctor responds without even glancing up from ever so lightly brushing the stone.

“What bothers me, is that you wanted to drag Aeryn along too. Aeryn who can’t handle the nice balmy summer day temperature you’ve got cooking up under that mountain.”

“We’re hoping to get the air conditioning fixed by the end of the week.” Colonel Carter offers as she ceases her quick-fire typing.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve sort of got my fingers crossed that we won’t be here by the end to the week.” He barleys his fingers for show with a smug, but patient grin. No wonder Aeryn has been in a lousy mood since they got here. He’s uncomfortable with the heat, he can’t imagine it making him ill, screwing up his memories, making him paranoid.

He just wants to go back.

He wants to jump in that ice bath with her—maybe not in the actual ice bath because he doesn’t think the boys could take that much damage, but maybe he could convince her to use the shower. Lukewarm shouldn’t be devastating and it would give him another excuse of getting his naked body next to hers—like he needs an excuse lately, the rate they’re going at it, with no distractions, with barely any responsibilities, it’s like a honeymoon sans the mai tais.

“If your wife would have just submitted to the medical scan—”

“No.”

“—then we might have been able to figure out what’s wrong with her—”

“Nothing is wrong with her.”

“—and helped her fix it.”

“First off, her name is Aeryn—”

Doesn’t realize how loud he’s getting—he must be getting pretty loud—because Colonel Carter snaps her laptop closed, scrounging around looking for her bag until the big guy hands it to her.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to get this program up and running until I find a way to backdoor it.” She has that same tight grin on her face. The one where she’s got to keep the peace, the one where she has to deal with all the spats—which seems to be true because he hasn’t seen otherwise—when really there’s something else she’d rather be doing. “I think we should just head back.

*

He finds out that there’s a post-mission protocol.

Basically, he’s got to go directly to a secured medical room for another one of those scans, to give another blood sample, and another swab. When he makes a joke about getting a cookie and a pin for donating so much blood, the doctor doesn’t crack a grin, just snaps the rubber band away from his arms and tells him to hold the cotton ball there until the bleeding stops.

What’s worse is that this medical room is an auxiliary room, so if they’re infected with something, they don’t drag it through the whole facility through the elevator and halls. He doesn’t even get to see if Aeryn is still in the main medical area battling invasive questions about all the samples they took from her, still refusing to go into that full body scan through a silence strike.

What’s the worst of all, is that he has to use showers, auxiliary showers, an all male shower room to bathe before he gets to go into any other part of the building, because again they don’t want his dumbass dragging some foreign space virus throughout the facility, which he completely understands and supports.

What he doesn’t understand is why he has to shower with twenty other guys and not his wife.

Why the classicist and not his wife?

What’s the shittiest thing he’s ever had to deal with, is after all the swabbing and soaping up with a guys he’s already spent the better part of the day with, is the fact that they immediately have to have a mission debriefing after that, and all he can think about is how he wants to do a different kind of debriefing with Aeryn.

“So the planet didn’t have a stone?” General Rygel sits at the front of the table with his hand crossed on top of it. He and Colonel Carter have been having the same back and forth for the last twenty minutes, while the rest of them just sit here—the doc adds in various useless tidbits every now and again.

“We don’t know, Sir, we didn’t get a chance to explore beyond the mouth of the cave.”

“Why is that?”

“The computer program that emulates the frequency of the stone, wouldn’t work with another stone in the area.”

“So there is potentially a stone?”

“Well, it would give a reason to why the program isn’t operative there, when it’s still working fine here.”

“Wait, Sam, don’t you have that frequency running down in the lab?”

“Yes, but it was the frequency we used to create the program.”

“Each stone has a different frequency?”

“No, the frequency is pretty much the same for—”

“Oh my God.” He moans and slams his head into his hands on the table.

How can after the mission take up as much time as the mission?

“Maybe we should have a meeting on this tomorrow?” It’s amazing, but he can hear the tight smile in the colonel’s voice. He’s definitely spent way too much time with them today. “When everyone has had a chance to think about it?”

“Agreed.” The table shakes as General Rygel shoves his chair away. When he ducks his head back up, Colonel Carter stands at attention as the general rounds the table. “Bright and early tomorrow to continue this discussion.”

The general stops at the side of his chair, just before the door, the door that this man has to walk through before he can bolt out and go find Aeryn and tell her how much he hates it here. “Maybe your wife will be able to join us on the next mission?”

Is about to reply that her name is Aeryn, and that if all of the planets are like standing on the unadulterated surface of a sun, that she won’t be able to handle two minutes after exiting that wormhole they’ve got tamed that just screams murder whenever they use it.

But Colonel Carter replies for him. “Actually, Sir, Dr. Lam says she can’t clear her medically for an indefinite period of time.”

“What?” Asks with an upturned hand, exhausted and defeated. He just wanted to see Aeryn and maybe have a little hanky-panky in the shower. It shouldn’t be this hard. It was never this hard on Moya.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The same smile. “I talked to Dr. Lam while she was doing my post-mission evaluation. I think it just has to do with the heat.”

Great. Now he’s excluded from the girl talk about his wife.

“Look—I don’t—It’s not even important how you know.” He washes a hand over his face, his eyes sting and it feels just like having Deke here to scream in his ear, except it’s a colonel who only has one smile, a guy who never talks but intimidates the hell out of him, a fuzzy general, and the classicist whose talking is the equivalent of Deke screaming in his ear. “I just want this to be done.”

*

He’s dismissed, and it’s like being a kid in school when the bell rings. He has to try not to run in the hallway, to keep an orderly conduct, to follow protocols, but it doesn’t stop him from mashing the button on the elevator twelve times, and then getting impatient and running down three flights of stairs taking them two at a time.

Assumes she’s either in their suite, or the medical bay, and since Colonel Carter said she hadn’t been cleared medically yet, he’s got a good idea of where to start the goose chase. He bursts through the double doors, immediately hit with the strong smell of antiseptic and wet metal, and slides to a stop at the nurse’s station.  

Except there are no nurses there, but the doctor—the one who doesn’t find any of his jokes funny, the one who left him to bleed out after she took a second blood sample—is sitting under the white light of a desk lamp and writing in her charts.

“Excuse—”

“She’s been discharged back to your room.” She doesn’t even turn her head up from scratching a pen writing in what definitely can’t be English. “Effectively grounded from missions until the foreseeable future.”

“It’s because of the heat sensitivity, right?”

“I’m not sanctioned to share that information with you.”

“Are you kidding me?” He chuckles derisively and when she finally lifts her head from writing her chicken scratch notes, her eyes are narrowed in irritation. “I’m her husband.”

“In your galaxy, under that jurisdiction, sure. Under the United States Government of this galaxy, on this planet, you’re not.”

He leans over the ledge of the counter, the light spilling over the top of the desk lap warming his chin like two suns did for almost eight hours. In slow and concise words, he restates. “I’m. Her. Husband.”

The doctor shrugs, and puts her pen back to the paper, uninterested and finished with the subject. “Then I suggest you go ask her.”

*

She’s not up to her shoulders in an ice bath like he thought she would be. Instead he finds her laying on top of the bed sheets in a black cotton tank top and a pair of his official military undies. She’s asleep with her one hand thrown over her stomach and almost turned over onto her side.

He tugs his shirt over his head, letting it drop to the floor as he fumbles with the buttons on the official military pants they’ve been kind enough to lend him. All his clothing smells like nothing, not like starch, or laundry detergent, or dryer sheets.

Not like baby puke.

Maybe he should’ve pushed for them to go into that temple today, he sort of lost sight on the mission—on finding those damn stones and returning to Moya, to his son. Misses the little warm bundle screaming in his arms as he tries to get the nipple end of the Capri Sun pouch into his mouth—how those Capri Suns cost them an arm and a leg because Peacekeepers aren’t so keen about splitting from their official merchandise. How they don’t even know if there’s something wrong with the kid who just keeps crying. Is he colicky or does he have heat delirium? How they can’t take him to a Diagnosian because they’re few and far between since the war, and them actually showing their faces on any planet right now would be a bad idea.

“Your skin is a different color.” Aeryn was asleep, but she’s the lightest sleeper he’s ever seen. She could hear a mouse fart three rooms down and bolt up in a sweat.

Always sweating now.

Her groggy voice carries over the small bedroom as he steps to the mini fridge in the corner, yanking out a small baggie of ice and jostling it in his hands. “The planet we went to might have actually been hell.”

The mattress bounces with his weight as he sits on her side of the bed, her legs twisting from behind him into his lap, her skin shiny with sweat, but pure white, sans sunspots like the ones he’s sure have popped up over his shoulders. “The heat was unbearable, the fact that they thought you could go there pissed me off.”

“You’re just oversensitive,” she moans, half asleep, arching her back forward so her ass rests near his hip.

When her toes start to flicker and furl, to trace along his legs and pick at the material of his undies, he holds the baggie full of ice to the sole of her foot, listening to her squeak in surprise, but settle down against the temperature.

“That doctor, the medical one who likes to yell at us.” Starts massaging the bottom of her feet, feeling her body unfurl more, her muscles slacken, a satiated moan escaping her lips. “She said you were grounded until further notice.”

“Grounded?” She leans her shoulders back against the pillow and he traces the blush blooming across her chest with his eyes, while his fingers ring around her ankles.

“Yeah like—” he pauses his fingers until she gives him an impatient punt “—I forgot you’re still not a hundred percent on the English thing. It means you’re mountain bound.”

“John.” This sigh is with irritation and he knows he’s gotta be direct now.

“You can’t go through the gate.”

“Yes.” She’s waking up now, trying to reel her legs back in, but he keeps her feet where they are and shuffles down the bed towards her. “That frelling woman refuses to allow me autonomy.”

“She said it’s because of medical reasons.” She tries again to reclaim her legs, her muscles growing tense again, her jaw set as she turns away from him. She’s been told by some other world authority that she’s not fit for duty, he might as well give her a gun to fire to feel better.

Knows she won’t tell him because she doesn’t want to talk about it, so he asks for the answer. “Is it because of medical reasons? She wouldn’t let me know because apparently our marriage isn’t sanctioned here, which is a bad thing for you and that—”  

She turns one her side, using her arm as a pillow and he almost gets a knee in the gut for it. “I despise that woman.”

“I’m not a fan either.” Taps his hand against her bare, smooth calf—still so in contrast with his own—thinks about the heat on the planet and the heat she must feel now and how those idiots actually intended to bring her there, and he can feel his own muscles stiffen. “Aeryn, you gotta fill me in here.”

She sits up, and he lets her have her legs back, watching as they curl underneath her, as her tank tip sticks to her body under her breasts from sweat. “It’s just the heat, John.”

He leans over, pushing the hair plastered to her face in sweat back, but letting his fingers linger against her cheek. “They’ve seen what it does to me, that woman believes I’ll be a risk if she allows me out.”

Nodding, he slowly falls against her, the exhaustion from today still burning over his skin and into his muscles and even thought she’s heating up like a protesting monk, she accepts him into her arms, one hand tracing the butt of his chin, and the other playing with his ear. He can hear her heartbeat from where he’s leaning back against her and it does more to relax him than any lakah ever could.

When she sighs, it rides through his body, and he closes his eyes just as she places a kiss on the top of his head.

“I hate it here.” 

He tucks the baggie of ice against her thigh and she twitches before settling again.

“Me too.”

The planet is exactly how the old woman described it to him when Vala was making a last-minute trip to ‘freshen up’. He jiggled the baby in his arms the same way he saw her do early and sighed, relieved when the little guy didn’t immediately start screaming.

He definitely has a favorite parent. 

And it is definitely not him.

And despite this kid not actually being his—although sometimes he sees his stupid, cheeky grin pop up on the kid’s face—it still bugs him.

“Are you listening to me, Colonel?” The old woman was inches away from him and smelled like his momma’s spice rack.

“Not really,” muttered and peeked around the corner for any sight of Vala, or Chiana for that matter. Seems the ‘women going to the bathroom together’ thing jumps galaxies too.

“It is of utmost importance—” the old lady squirmed her way around him, trying to get his attention. Finally, she huffed standing on spot. “You must listen.”

“Look—I still don’t know if we trust you or not.”

“In that case, I suggest you decide quickly.”

“Well, it’s not like we’ve had a ton of free time to discuss it.”

But then the old woman put her hands on him, not threatening, not like she was with Vala when he first encountered her in the kitchen. She held his biceps to still him, weak, frail arms just like his grandma. Her third eye opened, and he instinctively darted his eyes away because he wasn’t sure if it was for brainwashing or not, but when he glanced back it was glowing red and her wrinkled face was nothing but serious.

“You must not let her get out of your sight.”

“Okay.” Nodded, tried to pry her off, but she stayed put.

“Colonel, you must not let her stray.”

He told her he has a pretty good record leading all the sheep from his flock home safely, and if she was going to say something else, she never did because Vala rounded the corner, dressed up in a long leather coat that is vibrant red on the inside. Her hair was down, and straight, and he didn’t recognize her—not the hair or the clothes, but her expression was so serious, so unlike her.

When she bent to take Deke’s hand and babble out some more sweetness to him, he noticed how pale she was, how pronounced the bags under her eyes were, which was weird because last night was the best night’s sleep he’s had since getting here—maybe even a little before.

Never got the chance to ask her about it, because Chiana slunk around the corner, and handed them both a weapon she called a ‘pulse pistol’, showing them with her pinkie and ring fingers bent back, where to holster it.

The weapons shouldn’t be a problem, they shouldn’t really have to use them, because as far as he’s concerned this is a level 1 mission. Get in, secure the goods, get out. Work using developed disguises and try to blend into the crowd. Both the old woman and Chiana had taught them a few mannerisms in the last few days, enough to lie his way out of a wet paper bag, at least.

But the planet was overwhelming. Immediately after landing, securing the pod, and filtering into the Grand Central station of a backwashed and dangerous planet, Chiana, cocked her head to the side observing something in the din as they walked casually out into the marketplace.

Then his first sheep started to stray.

“Chiana.” He shot his arm out to grab her, while still trying to stay relatively close to Vala, who was uncharacteristically quiet.

“Look, just go get those frelling stones—”

“Easy, if we knew where to go—”

“Back corner stall, the vendor has eye tentacles.” Somehow she slipped from his grasp and when he wrenched forward to reel her back in she dodged his hand. “I’ll meet you back at the ship in half an arn.”

“Chiana?”

“Don’t talk to anyone you don’t have to.”

“Chiana!” He shouted as she slipped away, and her unusual gray skin actually disappeared in the crowd. “Great.”

When he turned back to tell Vala the new itinerary, she wasn’t where he left her. “Oh, come on.”

Now he bumps his way over to the spot and spins a quick 360, taking in the various appearances and noises going on around him. The atmosphere is tight—almost suffocating—like a carnival at night, overwhelming of sounds, smells, and sights. He’s about to go into team leader panic mode where he just grinds his teeth until he fixes the problem or runs out of teeth, but someone finally tosses him a win, because he catches a glimpse of that bright red on the inside of her coat rustling with her movements down an alley across the quad.

“Vala.”

He bolts after her, ramming into several aliens, most of them way bigger than he is, and steps in a gross green goo that’s collected in a stagnant puddle, but these aren’t his shoes, so what does he really care because he’s only a few feet behind her now, the sway of her straight hair entrancing, but her footsteps unsure.

“Vala.” Reaches for her, slipping his hand into hers and she starts, first flickering her fingers away, but then twitching them shut around his. “What the hell are you doing?”

He wants to reprimand her, not because they’re still a team and on a mission and she needs to listen to the itinerary and not screw around like the has the penchant to do, but because she scared the shit out of him. What if he didn’t see her at the last second? What if she was scooped up by people who hate this Crichton guy? Wants to yell but he doesn’t because she’s still really pale, but the seriousness is gone from her face replaced with something he thinks is pain. Drooping browns and glassy eyes. Without thinking, his hand touches the side of her face, cups her cheek finding her skin cold and a bit clammy.

“Are you okay?”

Doesn’t know when he adopted the new hobby of needing to know how she is at all times, but she smiles at him wistfully, putting her hand against his, then guiding it from her face. “I’m fine.”

“Where were you going?” Ducks around her, examining the rest of the alley which is definitely not as lit as where they are now, there’s a distant sound of dripping water over the din and grumbles of the marketplace.

“I—” she turns her head, glancing into the darkness too, but almost like she’s searching for something. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

“Who could you possibly know here?” Doesn’t temper himself on time and a bit of his anger seethes out, and almost as quickly as Chiana disappeared into the crowd, her expression falls again, her gaze downtrodden.

“You’re right. I’m—”

“It’s okay.” Can’t hear the apology, because something isn’t right with her, something is off and it’s dangerous and the bad feeling he has in his gut about this place kicks up to ten. Instead, he takes her hand gently, holding on and guiding her out of the alley and back into the overstimulation of the marketplace. “You just gave me a scare.”

“You got scared?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find you,” speaks preoccupied as they weave through aliens and people who look like normal humans that he forgets the name of. A group of four stand to the side, have on vests very similar to the one he saw in the pile of Crichton’s clothing still rotting on the ground after four days. He makes brief eye contact with one of them, a guy with a messed-up face, and thinks it’s an immediate mistake because he can feel the guy’s eyes on him even after they round the corner.

“You were concerned?” Doesn’t have to look at her to know she’s grinning, that wicked smirk that tugs at the corner of her lip when she’s amused. He’s so glad that everyone else is having such a great time on this planet.

“Yeah, if I lost you, think of all the paperwork I’d have to do when I got back.” There’s a brief hitch in their gait, where it turns more into him dragging her for a step or two. Knows that he hurt her feelings and doesn’t know why he did it. Sees Jackson do it daily, hourly, just tear her down instead of risking being embarrassed at a genuine response.

He’s about to apologize when she snarks, “how could that possibly be a waste of your time, it’s not like you have much of a social life.”

“I get out more than you do, Princess.” Again, said with preoccupation and the malice he can’t stop channeling because it’s routine, it’s natural to want to hurt her instead of admitting how it felt to think she was gone, admitting how good she looks in a long ass coat, how her hair is enamoring and he wants to run his fingers through it.

“Oh, you may, but I doubt you entertain as much.”

That, that makes him stop and she stumbles into place beside him. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, my Dear Colonel.”

“This.” He gestures between them. “Is not a conversation we should be having here.”

Wants to add ‘or ever’ but instead just continues to walk towards the stall they’re looking for—the one in the corner has to be their stall, it’s the only one with a guy who has tentacles for eyes—purposefully not taking her hand in his own.

“Well, I’ll just have to regale you about my various SGC trysts as a bedtime story—”

Ignores her response as she bounces into step beside him at the stall front, and more importantly, he shoves down the way it makes him feel nasty, like he can feel the jealousy creeping up the back of his throat.

The tentacle guy somehow knows they’re there, because he turns around, his face almost entirely tentacles, but with a seemingly normal body, normal hands with five fingers and clean-cut nails that he digs into the wood on the ledge of his stall.

“What do you want?” It’s a gurgle, like trying to talk with a mouth full of water, but those microbes must be translating the hell out of it because he can definitely understand him.

Before he can respond, Vala opens her mouth, her fingers also set against the ledge, and that wide beam shining on her face. “We’re looking to procure somewhat of a rare oddity and were told that you were the man to seek out.”

He rolls his eyes, but before jumps in to save the overflattering sentence from costing them a stone and a way home, the tentacle guy leans in on an elbow, the cadence of his voice dropping the gruffness. “Is that so?”

“Yes, I’ve asked around quite a bit, and everyone has referred me back to you. It’s really quite impressive.”

“I suppose I could help out a pretty woman, such as yourself.”

And he should’ve known Vala could charm a guy with no face or eyes.

Turning away from the interaction, half amused, half still stomping the envy back down into his gut, he notices the four people from early, the one guy with the gnarly face, all red and pink splotches, all wrinkled—all burned up—have formed a blockade at the mouth of the entrance to this side of the market place.

Only when the burnt faced guy catches him staring this time, he points directly back.

“Oh shit.” He spins back, catching Vala’s coquettish and vapid giggle as she places her hand near tentacle guy’s. “Vala, we gotta—”

“John Crichton.” Burn Face shouts at him as he starts to take bounding steps into the marketplace. The other three follow staggered, and at a quick arm signal, they all whip out their weapons, aiming directly at them. The crowd notices and starts to rile up, scattering around like ants.

The only one who doesn’t notice is her.

As the first shot goes off, he hooks an arm around her waist, lugging her to the side, behind a large stack of shipping cartons as all the gun blasts trail behind them.

Chapter Text

She dreams of Deke most nights. She’s not used to having dreams unless they’re engaged by a third party. Rarely, she’ll have the odd nightmare which she can not control. Her physiology, her genetic makeup predisposed her to sleeping for mere hours at a time, able to fall asleep with ease, and wake at any questioning sound. However, her genetic makeup has changed now. She’s birthed a child, a hybrid offspring which remodeled her with more hormones that cause her to constantly be in tears at the first tick of frustration, that cause her to be more tender when remembering the fuzz on her son’s head.

Hormones that set off her anger because, again, everyone is impeding her from getting him back.

John curls up behind her, his body hot and heavy in the throes of the last few minutes of sleep before the device beside the bed rings, and either Colonel Carter or Dr. Jackson calls them down to talk for hours because all humans do is frelling talk. The dialogue they hold lasts until they’ve unanimously agreed on the best course of action which they knew of in the beginning. As they discuss the planetary missions, they excuse her from the room because since she doesn’t have leave clearance, she doesn’t need to be informed of such things.

John is hot, but he slings his arm over her bare thighs and despite the hiss she releases from being uncomfortable, the action soothes her. She’s enraged, has been slowly fanning her fingers for the last hour while thinking about the situation, and how once again, she’s marginalized.

The medical doctor has absolutely no authority over her. Wagers she doesn’t know how to use a weapon, and in hand-to-hand combat, believes she could take her down in the matter mere of seconds—less if it needs to be done fatally—yet in this world, that medical doctor has the authority to tell a military team comprised of colonels and learned personnel that she is unable to attend to their missions due to biological issues.

Causes uneasiness, that all the members of this team know of her weakness to heat, and if they choose to, they could simply turn up the frelling heat and let her become nothing. She’s seen them dart their eyes away, the way the doctor scoffs when she needs to rest, or excuse herself to a nearby refrigeration unit, or return to the room for one of her three, nearing four, ice baths a day.

John shifts behind her again, his hand slipping from her hip to fall over her stomach.

He doesn’t know.

There’s no way he could possibly know and she’s not going to tell him.

With Deke they sacrificed almost all they had, not only to have their son, but to ensure his safety. Were willing to give up their lives, his life, to secure the peaceful upbringing he required. But when she found out on the command carrier, when she knew she was carrying the child of a man who stood within arm’s length, yet was dead, she didn’t know what to do because she had never wanted to be a mother.

She didn’t abort the baby because if either John were beside her, he wouldn’t allow her to do anything so rash before they talked about it for monens first—a solar cycle to be exact. If either John were beside her, there would be no reason to abort the baby at all.

She didn’t abort Deke because she wasn’t ready to, and as she worked as an assassin, the small pin prick of pressure plagued on the back of her mind. How women sit with the pressure for up to seven cycles is ridiculous, because she barely lasted a cycle with the little bundle of cells pushing in her pelvis, not hard, just constant, just telling her that he was still here.

Lost that pinch on Katratzi.

Doesn’t remember Katratzi, at least that’s what she tells John if he asks, but she remembers every single part of it, the pain, the heat, the pleading, the breakdown. Knowing no one was on her side, knowing a dead man she loved more than she’d loved anything in her life’s seed had stuck and that was why she was enduring such torture.

Knowing exactly what they wanted from her, so she would not, while she still held a breath left in her body, give them up.

When she woke in John’s arms as he tucked her into her bed, and she flailed against him because she couldn’t tell directions, couldn’t tell feelings and truths and placements. Could distinguish that pestering pressure that had been in her pelvis once she was told she was with child, and she panicked and asked afraid to hear the answer, afraid to know if she had lost. At John’s reassurance she found immediate relief, and he thought her wild, crazed from her time spent in torture, yet she was confused by the relief. Initially, she just didn’t want the Scarrans to get what they wanted but being told the baby was safe offered a different level of relief.

After she and John were reconstituted, she couldn’t feel the pressure then either. Left it for an arn or two while they got settled with the Eidelons, but the constant pinch never returned, and her stomach dropped as she tugged John aside and whispered with a cracking voice that she needed to see the Diagnosian. He agreed, happy laughing, holding her hand and swinging it, until she brought the pendulum motion to a halt. Her eyes explaining what words cracked her throat. Could only tell him that she felt different, that the little pressure they’d been so coy with, that they’d fought about for the last cycle, had depleted.

If she tells John about the baby, more so the baby-in-waiting, he’s going to be as stupidly optimistic as he always is and attempt to find a way to release it when these humans know nothing about her physiology. All action and grins, and tearful chuckles, until she has to ask him, how exactly will they take this baby home? How are they going to raise this child and Deke, who would be born monens apart, when he doesn’t help with Deke in the first place, and she knows why.

His arm curls around her stomach, dragging her back to him, and she rolls her eyes though he can’t see them. He’s awake, radiating heat, and adjusting himself against her so she’s well aware of his arousal. He drops a kiss to the base of her neck, his nose nuzzling behind her ear, and a fragment of her is still surprised at the gentleness he exudes when the majority of her previous recreation partners were forceful, greedy—the way she was until she spent half a cycle on Talyn.

“Morning Baby.” His voice is a low grumble in her ear rolling up from the back of his throat. His fingertips drag over the exposed skin on her stomach, making her shudder, as he kisses her shoulder. “You’re getting hot.”

“You’re already are hot.” She twists, resting on her back, viewing his face through the highlighted panel on the wall meant to simulate natural light. He looks green and gray and drops a kiss to her collarbone, his tongue tracing, making her shudder again.

His hand falls to her thigh, tracing the inside upwards until he finds the band of her undergarment, stopping abruptly, fingering the stitching while leaning up on his free arm. “What happened to the ice baggie?”

“It melted in the middle of the night from your nuclear body heat.” She shoves him, partly wanting away, feeling the sweat at the base of her skull, down the back of her neck and the small of her back, but he grabs her hand instead, placing a kiss on the palm, and most of her is happy he does.

He keeps her hand against his lips, holds it stable while he glances up at her with those innocent eyes that always make her anger sieve a bit. She sighs, taking the hand and drawing a finger over his chin, pushes her fingers into his hair to clear where it’s settled in his sleep. “I put the baggie on the floor so if it ruptured, we wouldn’t be sleeping in drenched sheets all night.”

He slants himself into her touch, eyes closed and happy as she pets him like a domesticated animal. That too, makes her smile. “Why didn’t you go get another one?’

“Because I was tired, John.”

Her hand drops and he reopens his eyes.

“Fair enough.”  

He crawls over her to grab the device from the side table just as it rings, his body so hot, so heavy, so hard as she twists to get away from him without wanting to but needing to. He speaks grunts and single words into the phone before depressing a button and tossing it to the mattress. “I’ve got to be in debriefing in two arns.”

“You’d best be getting ready then.” She stands, stretching, rolling out her shoulders, shifting her neck, bending at her hips, knowing what her body is doing to his from feeling the weight of his gaze upon her. She glances up from where she’s positioned bent to her feet. “You get fussy when you don’t have breakfast.”

“I—” The bed squeaks as he shifts to her side, to the edge, walking on his knees, his eyes never leaving her. “I was thinking about taking a nice cold shower.”

“I think a cold shower is exactly what you need right now.” She stands throwing her hair back over her shoulders in a swoop, knowing it’s enticing to him, knowing that he will be late in two arns—and part of her thinks of their son, on Moya, in the command room where they left him, their counterparts holding him, playing with him, feeding him, and she grows envious of something she was only allowed to have for a monen, grows irate because she spent so long birthing that child, was in such excruciating pain, and yet someone else now cares for him.

“I wasn’t thinking of going into that shower alone.” John lowers himself to laying on his stomach on the mattress, his eyes level with her behind, still enamored.

“And I think that—” His hand smooths it’s way over the back of her thigh, upwards until it rests on her ass, warmth exuding through her, yet also arousing her. “John.”

“We can be quick.”

“That’s not very enticing.”

“I’ll wash your hair.”

“You know that’s for your pleasure, not mine.”

She busies herself collecting his dropped clothing from off the floor as he watches her with the same gaze, using it as a scheme, trying to get her to relent. “Aeryn, Baby, come on.”

“I will recreate in the shower with you right now if you promise me I will see our son in the next solar cycle.”

“I promise you’ll see Deke by tomorrow morning.” Speaks the words so quickly, she isn’t sure he understands the gravity of them, doesn’t realize what she’s asking from him.

“John.”

He snags her by the hips as she walks by the bed, holds her in place as she tries to continue to tidy up her husband’s mess. “Aeryn.” He jostles her hips, and his thumb is almost directly over the pinch, like he knows, like he can sense it as well, yet she knows he can’t. “Aeryn, look at me.”

Rolls her eyes before giving him the contact he’s requested, and sighs deeply so he knows he’s on the cusp of an argument with her.

“I have this feeling—”

“Every time you have a frelling feeling it’s either wormholes or—”

“Just listen.” He laughs shimmying her hips again and when she moves to smack him away, he tugs her closer. It is entirely too warm now. “I have this feeling that we’re gonna see Deke real soon. I don’t know why,  it’s just a hunch.”

“You and your hunches.”

“You love my hunches.”

“I also love our son.”

“Me too, and I know we’re gonna get back to him soon, so a little hanky panky in the shower isn’t going to mean boo—”

“If it isn’t going to mean anything, then why—”

“Aeryn, I got ninety minutes left.” He holds the back of his hand to her forehead and she tries to duck out of the way. “And you need to have an ice something to cool down because your short-term memory is going to go soon. Can we just win-win this thing and hop in the shower?”

She huffs, still holding two of his dirty socks in her hand, turning her attention away from him, but feeling him practically vibrate as he keeps hold of her free hand. “Go and start the shower.”

It’s not entirely giving in as she was going to have a shower, and she would enjoy a good frell before spending the day cooped up in the infirmary with an angry doctor who is still trying to persuade her to get the body scan, or Dr. Jackson’s lab, as she’s supposed to do research looking for the location of the stones, yet she doesn’t know what they are officially called, and while her reading level of English is passable, most of the texts are written in an absurd language.

“Water’s getting cold, Aeryn.” He calls to her, flinging out his dirty undergarment, before proving his words with a loud yowl.

She will not see her son tonight, nor likely not tomorrow, she knows this because despite all her changes, she is still a soldier, she still remains pragmatic and realistic.

Yet, with John still shouting from the shower, freezing with no benefit as she’s not there, she absorbs his optimism and pads toward the washroom.

“Hush. Hush.”

She bounces the child in her arms as he slowly begins to wake. Pulled him ensconced and slumbering from his makeshift bassinet. Wrapped shaky hands around his small, warm body and tucked him against her chest because she can’t be alone right now, and she can’t be in the room with the others, so he will simply have to do.

“Hush. Hush.”

Speaks to him though he is barely awake, slits of her own shade of blue eyes looking up at her in curiosity, in confusion, before closing again, and drool dripping out of a ruby red gummy mouth.

There was so much red.

Even more blue.

The sounds of the pistols, the jolt of Mitchell dragging her to cover, and sitting with her behind storage crates, asking for a bit of her luck because they could use it. The group—there was four she thinks, one with a very crispy face—firing on them, shooting through the crates, and when Mitchell threw his arm over her head to block it from a blast, to force her more into cover, the shot broke through the storage containers and burst directly into his shoulder.

He toppled, howled with pain, his pulse pistol dropping to the ground and his hand flying to his injured shoulder. The blast was bright green, acidic, burning through the clothes he’d borrowed and now can’t return in any shape. His skin appeared fine at first until they were on the transport back to Mayo, when his skin started bubbling and burning, until the blisters started spreading.

She knows because she feels it too.

“Hush. Hush.”

Chiana wasn’t conscious enough to explain to them who these people were, or why they hated them so much, just showed up behind them on scheduled to reunite and leave—hopefully with a stone—and instead was fired upon. Hit twice, once in the abdomen, and once in the side of the neck, her blue blood spilled all over the marketplace ground, while shoppers screamed and ran for cover.

She froze, had reeled Mitchell back in, cradling his injured shoulder to her chest the same way she does with little Deke, and she froze, unable to plan a strategy, to think of what to do—knowing what she must do. She reached for the gun, ready to leave him, ready to leave Chiana, and Deke, and Pilot, and even that old woman who might have her trust. She stood, ready to draw the fire away so the injured could escape.

But he grabbed her by the bottom of her black t-shirt and yanked her back down, grumbling something along the lines of ‘don’t you dare.’ He snapped the pistol from her and did something with the cartridge that caused it to become explosive after he threw it—

“Hush. Hush.”

—the aftershock allowing him to haul Chiana up over his uninjured shoulder, getting blue blood all along his shirt and skin. He didn’t have a free hand to reach behind for her, and while she trailed, she became distracted by the same person who had distracted her before, with the same dark brown eyes she doesn’t know how she got.

She became distracted—

“Hush. Hush.”

—and was fired upon.

Mitchell missed it, and she held in the howl which he so freely let loose, pulled her borrowed long coat closer to her body so he didn’t see the piece of her t-shirt burned away at her side. Limped uphill after him through the central hub and back into the vehicle they call a transport pod that neither of them knows how to fly but was programmed to automatically return to Mayo.

Listened wide-eyed, staring at the bronzed interior while he contacted Pilot and explained their situation. Stood completely stationary within the pod and listened as his voice became further and further away, until he yanked her t-shirt down again, forcing her to deal with Chiana’s wounds the best she could.

He carried Chiana to the infirmary where the old woman was waiting and she ran to the refresher to wash the blue blood from her hands, as she’d done several times as Qetesh, before Qetesh in a river by her home.

Changed her clothing and grabbed the baby because she was so scared—he must be scared. She was in shock and so the baby must be too. So in pain as her side bubbled—

“Hush. Hush.”

“Vala.”

His tone is different, not the frantic, demanding one he used aboard the pod, or to her behind the storage containers. His form is hunched a bit and he’s mislaid his shirt, smelling like the refresher just as she did an hour ago, maybe two, maybe ten.

“I’m—I’m trying to get him to sleep.”

“Well, then you’re done.”

“What—”

“Kid’s asleep.” He points to Deke as he perches on the edge of their shared three bed, grunting a bit in pain as he does.

“Oh.” Glances down and Deke’s eyes—her eyes—are closed, happily slumbering in her arms. Moves him slowly towards the bassinet because there’s no reason for her to continue to hold the child, who looks like her, who looks like Mitchell, but is not their own.

Too many faces rivaling her own.

“I just didn’t want him to be alone.”

Mitchell nods, he has a container beside him on the bed, and he’s trying to stretch out his arm to reach his wound. “I understand.”

And something snaps in her.

Replaces where she is, in her surroundings, whom she’s with. The pain her side pales, not longer boiling. She crosses the room, moving the container away from him, and gesturing for him to turn around. “How is Chiana?”

He appears surprised at first by her sudden revival, but does as she requests, turning his bare back towards her. “She’s stable for now, that old woman is working some witchcraft on her.”

“I’m guessing she’s the one who’s gifted you with this ointment?” Three of her fingers dip into the salve, it’s cold, almost numbing, and smells vaguely of peppermint.

“It’s supposed to help with the gunshot wounds.” He hisses, whether it be from the temperature or the contact as she rubs a thin layer over his blistered skin. “Apparently, we were hit with special bullets that actually eat away at the skin like acid.”

She knows that. She can feel that.

His hand reaches back to steady hers when she removes it. Their eyes catch and she sees all the panic he’s feeling fill up behind blue eyes. He holds her wrist for far too long to be explainable, then adds, “that old woman said you gotta put on a thick layer of it.”

“Yes.” She agrees as if she knows this to be true, and spreads the salve thicker across his back, past the boarders of the encroaching wound, and onto his healthy skin in case the tissue is already compromised.

When she removes her hand, when his back is sufficiently covered in the ointment, he turns his head back to her again. “Vala?”

Wants to lie to him and tell him she’s fine, when the wound along her flank is eating away at her, burning her to such a degree that she doesn’t know why she isn’t illuminated.

“Who did you see in the market?”

“What?”

She knows exactly what he’s asked.

“You chased after someone on the planet before—” he pauses and sighs into his hand, before standing and marching to the pile of unused clothing, fishing out a black t-shirt “—who did you think you saw?”

“Noranti said that planet has a very strong spiritual energy—that it can sometimes dredge up hallucinations of those from our pasts.” She wipes her hands off on her pants and begins to walk towards the door.

“Okay—” he lengthens the word, watching her, narrowing his eyes the same way Deke did a few minutes earlier. “Who did you see?”

She pauses at the door, raising her hand to engage the opening mechanism hurts, but she stifles the flinch. “I saw someone from my past.”

Adria.

She saw Adria as she did the first time. The tiny child who healed her ailing abdomen too well and made her adequately infertile until an old woman in a different galaxy force fed her sludge and suddenly the fertility quite literally started gushing out of her.

Small, perfect Adria with the dark mysterious eyes she always loved. Not her own, not constantly sad and red from crying. Her pale little face, and a tiny hand beckoning her down an alley and she had to follow because she didn’t when she was taken, and perhaps she could have changed her. Perhaps she could have been a real mother instead of a bystander.

“Vala—”

“I’m going to go check on Chiana.”

It’s a weak lie at best, but he’s too tired to call her on it, probably even noticing that she heads in the wrong direction once out of their shared quarters. She holds her breath as each step becomes more excruciating—although sometimes she can accommodate the pain and it’s not so much—until she reaches the room they arrived in.

As she crosses into the command center, or whatever vernacular they use for it, she rifles around in the pocket of her long leather coat, something she didn’t discard with good reason, because as she was sweet talking the gentleman with the tentacle face—he really was quite a gentleman, and if given more time, she might have been interested in him—she swiped the stone clear off his table just before the gunfight broke out.

Before she was covered in red and blue and burning at her side.

They’ve marked the appropriate grooves as Noranti incessantly pointed at two of them for the three days travel it took to get to Valdun, shouting happily words even the translator bots couldn’t correctly phrase, and the word swan.

The table wobbles as she leans into it, not hesitating for even a second, and the stone slips in easily, glowing blue, calming and enchanting.

Before she loses consciousness she notices for the first time a battle scar—what looks like an attack from a sword—across the tabletop.

Chapter Text

Aeryn starts screaming.

He’s in the bedroom—yanking on the uniform they insist he wear even though he’s not a part of their happy space program stating it’s for safety—it’s not, it’s for conformity—and his wife starts screaming bloody murder from the bathroom.

She never screams.

Well, if she’s having a kid—or if she’s being tortured.

But she’s screaming—almost high-pitched.

Almost girly.

“Aeryn?” He yells back, fumbling steps as he tries to yank on pants one leg at a time that are too loose after only wearing leathers for the last four years. He trips, catches himself with the tips of his fingers against the floor, and pushes himself up into a full scramble as he tears open the bathroom door. “Aeryn, what—”

She’s standing in the corner, her chest pumping, her hair and body dripping water all over the floor. She’s sort of hunched over, each of her hands covering delicate features that he knows inside and out—that he’s friends with, that he would gladly invite to poker night. There’s more water on the floor than there is in the tub where ice cubes still float languidly—he slipped in a bag, got the tub ready for her, smiling and satisfied after their shower excursion and tried to keep his mind in that headspace instead of thinking of spending the better half of the day with the team again.

He chances a step forward, an amused grin tugging on his lips. “Honey, what—”

“Mitchell, what the hell are you doing?”

“You screamed like a banshee so I—wait, Mitchell?”

“While I understand I’m the content of your dreams.” She’s shivering back against the wall now, visibly shaking as lazy drops of water still streak down her arms. “Can you put that aside for a moment to find me something? A towel, a blanket, perhaps dirty laundry.”

He can still see the scar on Aeryn’s stomach, the place she was stabbed by Larraq—or the virus formally known as Larraq—and it’s Aeryn’s body. Like he’s said, he knows her dips, her hips, and her nips intimately.

“Mitchell,” her voice is parsed by her chattering teeth. “Please.”

“Holy frell.” It’s more of a mutter to himself, but he repeats it, just so she can hear. “You’re not Aeryn.”

“No, I’m not, and I’m freezing off my—”

“Oh God.” Realizes that there’s someone possessing Aeryn in the bathroom—nude. Probably woke up in the shock of an ice bath. He opens the cupboard and yanks out two towels, tossing one to her, which like Aeryn—because she is Aeryn—he thinks she’s a she—swallows up most of her body.

She sighs, body still high-power shivering, as he approaches her with the second towel. “Who are you?”

Her face scrunches into confusion, and he’s never seen Aeryn make that face in all their time together, a little disgusted, a little playful, and it makes him chuckle. “I’m Vala, who else would I be.”

“Well, Aeryn for one.”

“Aer—oh Office Sun?” Turns towards the mirror, wiping the remaining water off her face with the towel she snagged from him and he didn’t even notice. “Really Mitchell, we have to talk about your conduct. This voyeurism of yours has taken on an identity far to—” She stops herself midsentence and turns back to him just watching her. Her body moves differently, not as stiff, not as beaten down. More musically, like dance, steps light and bounce, lips pink and grinning, eyelashes fanning and blinking with those Bette Davis’s. “You’re not Mitchell are you?”

She sounds vaguely concerned because, well, he did just see her naked, but technically, it’s not cheating or even lecherous, because that’s his wife’s body that she’s hijacked—right? “Are you the look-a-like?—the chick that classicist is obsessed with?”

Clasps her hand together for a sec, showing all her pearly whites, and then bouncing by him. “Daniel talked about me? Did he miss me? What did he say?”

She’s surveying the room now, the unmade bed, the discarded clothing Aeryn didn’t get around to picking up. She gives him a suggestively cocked eyebrow.

“The doctor really remains neutral to bad on the things that he says about you, but he doesn’t stop talking about you, or checking out my wife for that matter.”

“Oh, he checked me out?” She clasps her hands again, and the towel starts to slip.

“Hey, Wardrobe Malfunction.” Ducks his head away, not even really knowing why now, but it still feels like the right thing to do. “Maybe grab some clothes?”

“Excellent idea, Darling.” She follows his finger where he points, tugging open a drawer and finding only t-shirts and shorts, because it’s all Aeryn can stand. “This is not her attire—is it?”

“Yeah, she has a sensitivity to the heat.”

“That’s why your quarters are so cold.”

His quarters with the two-bed—that stupid tiny bed and the space bassinet for his son that doesn’t stop crying and— “You’ve been there.”

“Yes.”

Turns his back as the thump of the towel hits the ground and the ruffling of shorts against her legs echoes in the room. “Is Deke okay?”

“Oh, he’s a wonderful baby. He has your wife’s eyes you know.”

“I know.”

She grins to, pointing to him. “He has that smile too.”

“So what’s the good word from the SS Moya—”

But she’s too preoccupied preening herself in the mirror—trying to make the shorts and the shirt longer—to hear him. “Does you wife really get to waltz around in such little clothing? I’m not allowed to run out of my room in my jammy jams when I have a bad dream and need to know the world’s not ending—”

“Can you just tell me—”

“But Mrs. Cretin can just bounce around—”

“It’s Crichton and she doesn’t bounce—”

“With little shorts and more of a selection of shirts than I’ve ever received—”

Moves with a  hop in her step towards the closet, tugging out one of the zip-up sweaters with the military insignia on it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Scantily clad may work wonders for your wife, but as soon as I step my behind out of this room, at least a dozen people will go tell me to change.” She closes the closet, which bangs against the mound of hangers sticking out, the door still ajar.

“You’re going to overheat, you’re in my wife’s body—”

“Really?” She glances down, spinning, examining, and then presses by him. “How can you tell?”

“Scar right hip.” Birth mark on the sweet spot of her left, but that’s just something for him and Aeryn.

Without hesitation, she yanks down the shorts, causing him to flinch and spin with his back to her again.  

“Huh, you’re absolutely right. We must have switched temporal positions and not physical ones.”

He stops in the doorway of their bedroom, watching her open the minibar fridge where they keep cooling packs and bags of ice. “You know about the transferring?”

“Oh Darling, I’m the resident expert.” She stands, and pouts, and it’s another face he’s never seen Aeryn make, so innocent, naïve, bratty. “Is there a reason this food receptacle is full of ice?”

“I told you, Aeryn has sensitivities to heat she needs—”

“It is rather hot in here now that you mention it.” Fans the collar of her sweater, glances at the ducts in the ceiling. “Have they not fixed the heat yet?”

“You know damn well that they’re never going to fix the heat.”

“Hmm,” she hums, slipping by him and into the small living room, knowingly punching in a code on the door. “Perhaps they’re more concerned with collecting their two marooned operatives.”

The door opens and she slips out into the hallway fast enough to almost disappear in a crowd of uniformed clad men. He jogs to catch up with her, slowing at her side like an old farm dog. “I think they’re keeping it hot in here to keep Aeryn under control.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She waves him off, stopping at the elevators and fanning the still zipped sweater collar. “It’s still hot because the Tau’ri are completely inept when it comes to prioritizing.”

“You think they got bigger fish to fry?”

“I think that in the matter of days, they will realize it truly needs to be seen to.”

Is gonna ask the what exactly she means, because it’s cryptic enough to be mildly threatening, but the elevator doors ding open with the classicist standing inside, his nose so deep in a big old book that his glasses are threatening to fall off.

“Daniel.” She beams striding into the elevator with her arms wide for an embrace. “I heard that you were checking me out.”

He’s about to grab her, tug her away from the good old doctor—it is still Aeryn’s body, after all—but surprisingly the doctor keeps her at arm’s length. She huffs out a laugh, but by the sound of her voice, no longer commanding and upbeat, she’s obviously hurt. “Didn’t you miss me at all?”

The classicist ignores her completely, instead speaks directly to him, “What’s going on?”

“This is your girl, Vala.” He drops a hand on her shoulder, mostly to sneak around her and actually into the elevator, but also to gauge her heat, which is climbing, but not yet dangerous. She doesn’t seem to notice or care that much. “In Aeryn’s body of course.”

The classicist’s eyes dart from him to her—she’s got that bright grin again—then back to him. “You’re kidding me.”

“Perhaps you’d like me to recite one of your credit card numbers?”

“Alright, enough Vala.” The doc adjusts the glasses on his face, his nose a little shiny with sweat. “When did this happen?”

“About half an hour ago.” She turns her back to the classicist, now uninterested, watching the numbers count down instead and suddenly he feels like he’s watching a soap opera play out before him.

She’s dramatic as hell and he’s a massive jerk, and they’re already butting heads.

They have to have slept together or are sleeping together now.

“Half an hour? What have you even been doing?”

“If you must know, I’ve been situating myself, galaxy jumping isn’t exactly easy work, Daniel.”

“Were you even going to bother telling me you were back? Or were you saving that for when you were more situated?”

Not this guy. At least not with his wife’s body.

Without missing a beat, she glances over her shoulder, her face as stoic as Aeryn’s, and she deadpans, “no, I was going to come find you after I ate, why do you think I engaged the button for the commissary level?”

He doesn’t know much, but he’s starting to like this lady.

“Vala?”

Realizes he’s dozed off, the lights have been lowered and the privacy curtain engaged. At the foot of the bed, Deke switches between snoring and gurgling, and as long as he’s not crying, the kid can make whatever noise he wants.

“Vala?”

Asks again to the space he knows is empty except for his toothless roomie, still happily asleep in the makeshift cot. Tries to remember what happened—the shoot out. Chiana unconscious and banged up—her wanting to sacrifice her damn self again and he doesn’t know what happened to make that her first course of action, but he knows it’s going to take years to ensure her that she’s not everyone’s kamikaze plan.

He sits up, ignoring the pain in his thigh, drilling through the spent muscle from carrying Chiana, from dragging Vala, from just booting it the hell out of the cesspool of a marketplace. Why did the old lady even suggest that damn planet? Moves to jab a thumb into his muscles to offer relief, but his shoulder flares up, not bad—definitely not as bad as it was—more like someone slapped his Miami Beach sunburn. It smells like peppermint and vaguely like her—and he doesn’t want to know why he knows her scent so well now.

About to stand, go searching for her—said she was going to hold mass over Chiana, but they both knew that was a lie as soon as the words spilled out of her mouth. Figured she was in shock, that maybe the gun show today dredged up some sort of bad memory as Qetesh, or hell, even as her. He’s willing to bet she’s seen her fair share of bloodshed in battle and covers it with shiny hair things and a bouncy step.

About to go, but the doors hiss open and she hobbles in, her left leg a little stiff, her face devoid of her flashy grin, or her coquettish winks—maybe the shootout today scared her more than she’s willing to talk about. Wants to ask her to sit down and talk, but he knows that she’ll blow him off, wants to tell her to just lay down, she doesn’t have to do or say anything, just settle until she realizes that she’s safe.

Wants to tell her that he would never let anything happen to her because she’s a member of his team.

It means something, but it doesn’t mean everything, and in this case it means nothing because being on SG-1 has absolutely nothing to do with it.

But she ignores him completely, grunting as she marches, heavy-booted towards the sleeping baby.

“Vala, he’s still asleep. You shouldn’t—”

She whisks him out of the bassinet in a swoop of her arms, her balance off kilter a bit, and as Deke wakes up and starts with the waterworks, she speaks to him not in whispers, but hushed tones. In a language he hasn’t heard before, that the gunk hey got shot  up with when they got here straightens out and spits into English for him, so he no longer hears the throaty gulps and gasps.

“Vala?”

Deke’s tears begin to dry as she brings him closer to her face, her smile wide—but not bright, more tired—she cradles him to her shoulder, caressing the back of his head, and placing a gentle kiss in his peach fuzz hair.

“Hey.” He stands, groaning at the weight on his hip, but shifts and it eases up a little. “You want to tell me what—”

She half turns, apparently noticing him for the first time, and a grin—still not flashy—lights up her face. “John.” A single laugh as she hugs the baby and hobbles over to him. “How did you frelling know?”

Before he can answer her, she slides a hand to his cheek, frozen fingers licking at his stubble, and pulls him down for a kiss.

This isn’t Vala.

She doesn’t smell the same.

Whoever this is, realizes it about the same time as him—when tongues come into play. The woman shoves him away and instinctively reaches to her side for what he’s guessing is the weapon that Vala felt no need to arm herself with once they returned from Valdun.

“Who are you?”

“It’s okay.” Raises his hands in surrender, lets her know he doesn’t mean harm to her or the baby. The baby. She takes a quick glance at Deke, and he knows, she’s his mom. “Officer Sun?”

“It’s Sun.”

“How did you get back?”

“You will tell me who you are before I have Pilot vent you into space.”

“I’m Colonel Cameron Mitchell. I’m—”

Her shoulders relax, her tight grip of Deke loosens a bit. “You’re the one who switched with John.”

“Yeah.”

He rounds the bed uneasily, still wary of her because from what Moya’s crew has told him, she could kill him eight ways from across the room right now. “How—where’s Vala?”

“Vala?” Speaks the name awkwardly, like it doesn’t belong in her mouth. “Forgive me, you all have such stupidly complicated names. Which one—”

His brows drop and his lips straighten into a serious expression as he completes his tour around the bed. “The one who switched with you.”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t see her.”

“Did she switch with you?”

“That would be an educated assumption.”

He approaches, using cautious steps still, not wanting to impose, especially on a reunion between her and Deke. She grins down at the baby again and he fells compelled to tell her, “we’ve been taking good care of him. We both feed him and wake up when he cries—well usually.”

“Then you have a step up on my husband.” She shifts Deke’s weight further to her left side and grunts in pain, her back hunching over.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“This is not mine.”

“What?” He scurries closer, still worried that she might snap his neck in half, or maybe tear him apart, but he thinks maybe something happened to Deke, got switched with some random SGC baby or something. “What isn’t yours?”

When he reaches out a hand to help her to sit, she doesn’t take it, guides it away from her, but doesn’t slap it from the air. Pulling off the idea that she might hurt a kid that doesn’t belong to her—even out of frustration—or that she could drop him from doubling over in what he thinks is pain, he offers, “I can take him while you sit.”

“Please do no offer the idea of removing my son from me, Colonel.” It’s said in the most removed tone he’s ever heard, but the words are blunt as hell.

She shuffles to the bed, laying Deke, who gurgles, now on the brink of sleep again, in the fur blanket he and Vala shared once. She stands straight, her fingers moving curiously over her body, prodding down the side, and then over her hip to the center of her pelvis. Her eyes dart up from the examination. “This is not my body.”

“Okay.” Keeps a calm tone, still unsure. “What do you mean?”

“For starters this room is much too cold for me, when I know that the temperature is optimal minus two which should be perfect for my body.” She flaps out of the long jacket, the red piling against the floor, and her hand moves back to her side with a hiss until she tugs the shirt up.

He would look away, but the action is so quick he doesn’t have a chance to—instead he’s gets a full view of the navel, the hips that have been guest starring in his dreams for the last few days, and the mass of blistering skin that’s puckering and oozing at her side.

“Also,” Officer Sun sighs, flinching as she runs a finger against the injury, “my body is not injured.”

“What the hell happened?” Rushes to her side again, but she quickly curtains the t-shirt, perching on the edge of the bed with a hiss.

“You tell me, I’m going to guess you ran into Peacekeepers and they had acidic rounds.”

“We had a shoot out.” He starts tossing things around the room in search of the jar that the old woman gave him with the ointment. “I didn’t know she got shot. Why didn’t she tell me she got shot?”

Officer Sun grunts again, this time with a hand against her stomach. “Did she also not inform you of her other injury?”

Stops dead in his tracks, turning back to her, and he’s sure for once he’s as pale as she is. How did she get injured—did she fall off that damn walkway in Pilot’s room? Did that old woman do something to her? He sets the jar back down in case the old lady isn’t on the level. It’s something they need to discuss. “What other injury?”

“She’s bleeding.”

“Bleeding where?”

“Internally, the organs in her pelvis are in distress.”

“What?” Okay he doesn’t understand again, but she’s letting him get close to her, close enough to tell by her expression, that she’s probably on the level. “How do you know?”

“Because I’m fairly certain there is blood expelling from within her—”

“What?”

“There is cramping here, right here—” she touches the area again and it’s not exactly Vala’s stomach. “And when I stand I can feel the—”

“Oh.” Gets it at the last second, and almost throws a hand to his face because he’s such an idiot. Sets down the rags he’s gathered to stem the blood, although he’s not sure, she might need them. When Officer Sun watches him, her hand balled and her knuckles pressing into her pelvis, he explains, “that’s normal.”

“How is this normal?”

“Well, not the gun shot.” He stands before her, holding out the ointment for her to use, she uncaps the jar, smelling it, and nodding with approval, apparently having used this from the old woman before.

“You’re telling me that human females just bleed from their—”

“It happens once a month.” He turns away from her, as she lifts her shirt over Vala’s body, and starts slathering on the salve.

“What frelling purpose could bleeding once a month possibly have?”

He shrugs, a little amused by the whole situation, but he sort of understands her freak out. “It’s a fertility thing.”

“So, she is incapable of having children?”

“No, it means she can—”

“Bleeding this much, even for one day—”

“It’s usually for a week—”

“How is she not dead?”

“You know—” peeks over his shoulder and she’s pulled the shirt back down, capping the salve again. “I’ve asked myself that at least once a day since I’ve met her.”

Deke stirs, and whatever rebuttal Officer Sun has dies in place of her snuggling up to her son. She speaks again, a different language that the translators in his head scramble to give him the English of, little half whispers and words planted in kisses on Deke’s face. When she pulls the baby back to her shoulder, she groans and adjusts her back. “This is really uncomfortable.”

“This isn’t something I worry about.”

“You should.”

He steps away from straightening the blankets in the bassinet and swallowing awkwardly when looking at the pile of discarded clothing still in a pile on the floor. “Is it that bad?”

“It’s manageable, but as her partner—”

“Whoa, let me cut you off right here.” Holds both his hands up again, and her eyes scroll away from Deke, to hold his gaze. Vala’s big flirty eyes that hold nothing that he can recognize now. “We are not partners.”

“Really?” Officer Sun stands, bouncing Deke in her arms, and walking around the room, taking note of the discarded clothing, the blankets slipping off their bed. “Because it seems like you’ve been bunking together.”

He zips to the bed, starting to fold the blankets, cleaning up the place a little too late—maybe trying to get rid of the evidence. “We did it or safety, and to help each other with the baby.”

She stops rocking Deke, and turns to him, her eyes heavy, and a twitch of a grin pulling on her lips. One Vala sometimes uses. “You’re not partners, yet you’re co-parenting my son.”

“Well, if you put it that way, it sounds incriminating.”

Chapter Text

“How did it happen?”

She stands solemnly, her son flush against her chest, quiet as if such a little mind could comprehend the gravity of the location, of the situation, of a member of his family laid out on a bed before them. The gentle raise and fall of his chest grounding her as she stares at Chiana, unmoving, her neck bandage tinged with bits of her blue blood.

“I—honestly—I don’t know.”

Colonel Mitchell, stands behind her, leaning in Moya’s ovular door. Parts of him are like Crichton, though he is not complete. There is joking, and compassion, and a near overdose of what her husband calls ‘Southern hospitality’ in being overly accommodating to each of her moves, answering each of her questions to the best of his knowledge, allowing her room to move, privacy with her son.

But she can sense a fellow soldier, a fellow pilot at that, and it’s dangerous to know that however far removed he is, that his loyalty still rests with Stargate Command, whose job is simply to go forth in the galaxy and colonize.

Her fingers play through Chiana’s hair, setting her part straight, wishing she could talk to the girl, to relax in all her questions about the other world, to find solace in a familiar face and sound, in not talking about the second division of a cell pulsating a galaxy away. Talk about how these people are treating those on Moya, how well they care for her son, put her fears to rest because this exchange is temporary—she can feel it, the tingling feeling circulating over her skin slowly diminishing, as is her time with loved ones.

“How do you not know?”

“I got shot, and—Vala tried to—it was a real mess. I had to frag one of the guns to get away.” He speaks into the knuckles of his hand, his voice terse, heavy. “How’s your side feel?”

“Like your shoulder does.” Her friend is pale, gray skin pallid under the lights, the lamps that John lay under for over a weeken. “Who attacked you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not—” She pivots on the spot, her free hand dropping from Chiana’s unconscious body, to support her son. He fusses against the side of her neck, and she inhales deeply, tempering her voice.

Colonel Mitchell patiently waits, part of his Southern hospitality, and when her pause is no longer caused by an outburst he responds, “I’m not from your galaxy, I have no idea what the hell has been going on here, except the cliff notes Chiana sometimes feeds me.”

Briefly turning back to Chiana, she whispers a Sebacean coda for good health, while holding her hand. Wishes she could stay, be present for her awakening, but she needs to examine the device, see if there’s any difference, something that can allow them to piece together a way home.

“Can you describe them?”

The colonel trails her out the door, keeping a respectable distance, until she slows her stride to allow him to step into place beside her.

“Four of them. Looked human. In red leather, sort of like one of the vests in the clothing pile—”

“—the clothing pile?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Sebacean, Peacekeeper. Marauder most likely. Can you describe any of them individually?” When the colonel gives her a questioning glance, she clarifies, “I’m afraid Crichton is very good at collecting enemies.”

“The leader had a real burnt up face. It looked like a side of Canadian bacon.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It was really scarred, one of his eyes might have been gone.” He points to her son, whose mouth stretches slanted across his face as he hiccups once. “Deke had more hair than him.”

They cross through another hallway, traveling from the medical unit up to command and she wishes anyone of use was conscious. Noranti apparently went to rest after healing Chiana, and the colonel hasn’t mentioned anything of Stark.

“Does it help at all?”

“Well, we know that Grayza has either revoked her portion of the peace treaty, or there’s a rebel marauder unit who has a vendetta against us.” She steps over a DRD as it zips by her path, not really thinking, just feeling the static scaling over her skin lessen.

“Either one of those likely?”

When they stop at command, as she juggles Deke, the colonel leans over swiping his hand over the switch to open the door. Then just as quickly, returns his hands to clasp behind his back, allowing her through first.

“Both of those are likely.” It’s said absently to him as in the jolt of the transfer, in the pain eating away at her side, the shock of viewing Chiana, and the ecstasy in holding her son, she forgot about her best confidant. “Pilot?”

“Yes, Ms. Mal Doran?”

“No, Pilot, it’s Aeryn.”

There’s a brief pause before Pilot materializes on the clamshell communicator to their left. His eyes narrowing, judging, trying to discern her words. “I’m sorry, but my physical scan still reads a non-Earth originating human.”

“We’ve switched.” Steps delicately closer to the communicator, reaching a hand out to touch the hologram, watching it fizzle at her fingertips and straighten in her wake. “Please believe me, Pilot, as I don’t have much time here left.”

From her periphery, she notices the colonel’s eyes grow wide with her emission, but he allows her the grace of having her conversation with Pilot. “The men who attacked us—who attacked Chiana and our counterparts on Valdun, they were Peacekeeper, most likely marauders.”

Pilot nods in understanding, one of his hands coming up in the hologram, and she wonders if he’s doing the same. “I will do periodic scans of the space around us, Officer Sun. If there is a marauder ship approaching us, Moya and I will be aware of their presence before they are of ours.”

“Please, Pilot.” She exhales, refusing to shed her tears on her lightly slumbering son. “Protect our family while we’re gone.”

“You have my word, Officer Sun, that I will do my very best.”

“Thank you.” She nods and watches the hologram disintegrate from the clamshell.

They’re defenseless. An unconscious Nebari, an old woman, a man who apparently still has not left his quarters, a ship not equipped with offensive measures, an immovable Pilot,  and a baby. “Tell me.” She turns her attention back to the colonel, snuffing her emotions and instead focusing on how she can help. “Are you good at combat?”

“I’m an ex-air force pilot, near perfect marksmanship skills, and Teal’c been training me in hand-to-hand for the last two years.”

With another inhalation, the emotions have almost subsided. She feels them more often now, in swarms and hoards, just an overabundance of sadness, longing, fear—emotions she’s been trained since birth to ignore.

“And her?” She nods down at her borrowed body, pausing to caress the side of her son’s face.

“Well, I’ve never sparred with her, but she can kick some butt if she wants to. Has great aim. Has flown almost every alien ship. She’s a fast thinker—she’s gotten us out of some major jams before.” A grin grows on his face, similar to the one Deke gave her earlier, almost wistful in nature. “She’s got a horseshoe up her ass.”

“Even with the microbes, I doubt that—”

“She’s really lucky—just—” he produces the same grin again “—naturally lucky.”

There another rush of emotion, because she recognizes the grin now—not wistful, but calming, what John calls ‘puppy-dog eyes’ which the microbes translated to innate adoration. Despite holding her son, she misses her husband, and she doesn’t comprehend why it’s so frelling hard to just have both. She clears her throat, turning back to the device, standing solitary on the precarious table, the one that hasn’t stood strong since Chiana pierced the Qualta blade through the top.

“You’ve got a stone.”

“Yeah. Vala, must’ve stolen it during the shootout.” He steps closer, moving to the opposite side of the table from her. In a very gentle voice, a voice that isn’t fair because he looks and sounds like Crichton, who should be here—he should be here—the colonel asks,  “what did you mean when you said you didn’t have long?”

“I can feel the energy used to switch my being into this body waning.”

Deke stirs in her arms, his small face growing sour, his skin turning red as the first cry bursts from his mouth followed by the continual stream she’s accustomed to. She doesn’t know how these humans managed to satiate him so well, to calm him into what seems to be a trusting nature.

She tries to soothe him, bring him to her shoulder and rock or bounce while whispering comforting words in Sebacean, but his wails only increase in volume, his tiny hands balled into fists.

She doesn’t know what her son wants, and for a brief moment, the fear creeps in, that perhaps he misses the other woman.

“Here.” Colonel Mitchell sets a Peacekeeper infant food pouch down on the table, before jamming in the nursing apparatus. Bits of the green goop leak from the side, but he hands the pouch to her. “He’s probably hungry.”

“How—” Confused, angered, ashamed, she accepts the pouch and slips the puckered end into Deke’s mouth, stunned briefly into silence as her son immediately accepts his meal. The wails cease and there’s only the sound of him greedily suckling. One of his hands raises, his fingers skimming her own. “Why didn’t I know?”

“Hey, you’re all turned around from shooting galaxy to galaxy.” The colonel approaches her now, moving slowly, but closer. “You’re in a body that’s not your own, dealing with injuries and functions that aren’t your own. Hell, you were probably so relieved to see the kid that you didn’t realize what time it was.”

It’s placation at it’s very basis, but somehow coming from a man who resembles her husband, but is not her husband, in this situation, at this time, she finds solace in his words. In his kindness as he smiles at her.

“While we’re sorting out this situation, I promise, we’ll take care of the little guy.” He stands beside her now, not towards her, but staring at the device along with her, the single stone glowing a light blue. “That means protecting him from burnt faced men too.”

She swallows, the energy streaking over her skin is almost depleted and she knows she has less then microts remaining. “Thank you, Colonel Mitchell.”

“My pleasure.” He scratches at the back of his head, his eyes still not meeting hers as the blue of the stone drops in brightness. “Hey, I know we got to sort this whole stone thing out, but is everyone back home okay?”

“Everyone seems normal.” Deke’s mouth slowly loses suction and strength, the Peacekeeper formula beginning to leak from the side of his mouth as his eyes drift closed. She takes her thumb, pulling the hem of her shirt around it, and wipes at the corner of her son’s mouth. He is at peace, and content. “The doctor, the bespectacled one, stares at me which John doesn’t appreciate.”

The colonel chuckles, his grin meeting his eyes. “He probably still thinks you’re Vala trying to pull a fast one over on him.”

Doesn’t comprehend his answer, because the energy has ebbed from her body, almost depleted. Lifting her napping son to her shoulder, she places a gentle kiss on the side of his face and runs her fingers over the soft hair on his head. His lips bumble, and she knows it’s time.

“Would you mind holding him for a second?”  

Voluntarily releasing her son into the care of someone else, into the care of a practical stranger, burns her heart. She gave up everything to guarantee the safety of a child she was hesitant to admit existed for over a year, whom she went through hell to keep alive, and now all of her sacrifice has resulted in her depending on the competence of two unfamiliar humans.

She will be back in that frelling mountain where the temperature makes her nauseous upon waking, and be tethered to that room, where she needs to take frequent ice baths in order not to succumb to heat delirium. She must rely on her husband, whom they keep dispatching, to let her know when the temperature has become too much for her and relieve her with bags of ice or direct her to the shower. She is no longer the strong solider she was bred to be, her military knowledge is no longer sought after, instead she is domesticated, and it infuriates her.

Would infuriate her greater, if the resolution wasn’t returning here permanently and falling asleep with her beautiful child tucked at her breast.

She touches his cheek one last time, skin so incredibly soft, skin she created within her, a feat she never thought she would experience, and she knows she will see her son again. That it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t miss her because she will miss him enough for two beings.

“I love you.”

She falls unconscious, transferring back after the last word, her timing, for once, is perfect.

“Why do you people always insist on videotaping me?”

She stares into the dead eye of the lens of a rather large recording device, her hands pasting with sweat against the metallic tabletop, the set up is very reminiscent of when she commandeered Daniel’s body to warn them about the Ori. Each time she was working with limited accessibility, and each time they insisted on taking half an hour to set up lights and a camera.

“You wouldn’t even let me go freshen up before you did. You wouldn’t even let me go get food.”

This transfer has been the most difficult of all four. She’s in Officer Sun’s body, which while resembling her own, doesn’t feel the same. There’s a tightness in the muscles in her arms and legs, a stiffness in her lower back that’s familiar from overworking the farming fields when she was younger. She has a horrible hunger, one so ravenous, she’s almost lightheaded, and a thin layer of sweat has been on the back of her neck since she got dressed which the lights only work to intensify.

There is also an omnipresent heat. A heat which is definitely palpable.

Perhaps most noticeable over all her discomforts is the pinch of something in her pelvis. Not exactly the cramping she was experiencing, more like something tight, and stuck in place. Something she can’t shake loose.

“Vala, stop fidgeting.” Daniel chides, resetting the camera, aiming the lens directly at her and she swallows harshly.

“I’m really hungry,” but even as she says it, her stomach does flip flops, souring her expression.

“Okay, hold the phone.” Crichton steps in front of the camera, the monitors at the side only broadcasting the black from his t-shirt. He’s stacking his hands together to look like a ‘T’. “You can videotape her testimonial after she’s eaten.”

“It’s—”

“No,” his voice is stern, but tapers off as he adds, “it’s not.”

Daniel throws his hand over his face, an idiosyncrasy he usually saves for her, when her irking becomes too much to handle, and sends her from the room to ‘bug’ someone else. “It’s answering a few simple questions, Crichton.”

“That’s Aeryn’s body, and your teammate, who I’m willing to guess has never inhabited a Sebacean before.” He points back at her, while continuing to argue with Daniel. “She hungry, she’s going to get heat—”

Daniel rips his hand away from his face, it going as red as the splotches on her bare legs, itchy patches of skin hot to the touch. “It’s less than ten questions.”

She holds her head in her hand, the room growing very tight, stocked with each individual’s breathes, their body heat, their perspiration, the heat curls at the bottom of the wall, inching upwards, growing towards her.

“Just ask your stupid questions already.” Huffs it, surprised at the own exhaustion in her voice as her face angles towards the metallic table, her breath leaving the same wisps of heat against the surface.

“She’s done this before.” Daniel shrugs his shoulders with a smirk as he shakes off his BDU jacket, tossing it to one of the vacant chairs. “She just wants ice cream.”

“How do you know?” Slants her head and blinks downwards, ignoring the heat crawling up the wall. Ignoring how it makes her think of sitting on the bench, the feeling as the lit oil swerved closer and closer. “I was you last time.”

“I watched the tapes.” Daniel slants to the side of Crichton’s body to shout at her directly. “Partly out of curiosity, partly to make sure you didn’t do anything to my body.”

“Okay enough.” Crichton spreads his arms out between them, as if he were going to physically hold them apart, as if she wasn’t feebly trying to stay upright while sweat swivels down her back and the backs of her bare thighs stick to the chair. “I don’t know what the hell is going on between the two of you, but you could’ve already gotten through your damn interview.”

There’s a brief pause, during which only the sound of her scratching at Officer Sun’s leg is heard. When she leans forward with the motion, the pinch is more pronounced, not painful, just distracting, constant, an odd bit of pressure that redirects her attention every few seconds.

“Vala?”

“What?”

“Is that agreeable or not?” Daniel’s crossed his arms, an expression of disappointment on his face, his lips in a tight smirk again.

“Is what agreeable?”

He huffs, shifting on his feet and approaching her a bit, behind him, Crichton’s eyes don’t leave her. “Crichton’s going to go get you some food and an ice pack.”

“Why?”

“You said you were hungry.”

“Did I?”

“Okay. We can do this later.” Mitchell approaches her, his face stern, the one he wears when she follows him lost down the hallways out of boredom. She shrinks beside him when he reaches for her, but his hand lands softly against her forehead, and his eyes burn as much as her entire body. “You’ve got the first stage of heat delirium.”

His hand slips under hers soldered to the table, and he helps her stand precariously. She doesn’t remember him being this gentle—she does, but not in this environment, somewhere cooler, darker.

Somewhere where he snores into the back of her head each night.

Can’t connect the pictures, the ideas, the memories, but can grasp the feeling of safety, of comfort, and she keeps hold of his hand as he tries to lead her from the area.

“Crichton,” Daniel begins, “we have a specific set of—”

“Let me help you get this straight.” He stops rather quickly, almost causing her to trip up her steps. “This is Aeryn’s body. You know it’s sensitive to heat and right now, your girl Vala is driving it and doesn’t know the controls.”

Daniel says nothing but drops his crossed arms.

There’s sweat between each of her fingers and toes.

“Aeryn is all I have while we’re stuck here, and if anything happens to her you won’t be able to make it to that gate fast enough.” His hand slips slick against hers and she wobbles a bit on her feet.

“Why do I remember a baby?” Her voice breaks on the word because she remembers more than one, and the pinch pulls her back to Mitchell, who has his hand on the zipper to her sweater.

“You gotta take this off, you’ll feel better.”

She nods, unzipping the fleece lined sweater and dropping it, sweat soaked, to the floor. There is a blast of relief, but it wanes quickly. The pressure distracts her again, and she’s able to collect Mitchell’s words.

“—I thought she was your teammate.”

“She is.”

“Then why do you treat her like she’s not?”

*

He helps her sit on one of the boxes of what she assumes is a refrigeration unit, and takes a seat across from her, his arms huddling to his chest and frequent exhalations puffing from his mouth.

“How do you feel?”

“This is delightful.” Reclines against the boxes, the swirls of heat threatening her on the borders of the room destroyed, and instead, she feels the healthy flow of cool air circulate around her.

“You know who I am?”

Glances at him with a cocked eyebrow. If this is a game, it isn’t a very clever one. “You’re Crichton.”

“Good.” He sighs and the largest puff of air swells around his face.

“Why?”

“The first stage of heat delirium is short-term memory loss.” He shifts on the box, crunching down the edge with his behind and a pained look on his face, forcing him to stand. He dusts off his hands on his pants, before offering her one. “I think you thought I was Mitchell.”

Accepts his hand, gracious for his help, for knowing what he did because the illness that overtook her was swift and debilitating like a fire scorching through her veins. “I think I did too.”

He gives her a pitying smile and is kind enough not to ask about her and Mitchell, or her and Daniel. Instead, pounding a fist into the thick metal door, and tossing her the white package of generic peas he pulled out from under the collapsed box. “You might wanna take that. We gotta go through the kitchen.”

“I don’t remember going through the kitchen.”

“I know you don’t.”

The door opens and the blast of heat hits her like a metal bat in the chest. He keeps his hand grasped around her, swerving through various workers and cooks, until almost at the end of the preparation area.

“Wait.” She stiffens her foot, covered in a sneaker she doesn’t remember putting on, into the tiles.

“What.” He stops, turns immediately, waiting for her to dictate a problem.  

She points at a food on the counter, a shallow metallic bin just full of breaded meat. “Chicken nuggets.”

“Chicken nuggets?” He repeats the words like he doesn’t understand them.

Jabs her finger out again at the mound of them, her mouth watering despite all the turmoil this body has recently been through.  

“Hey chicken nuggets.”

He grabs a massive handful, dumping them, overflowing into her cupped palms after she maneuvers the frozen peas under her arm. He snatches another handful, shoving three or four into his mouth before the wails of upset staff chase them from the kitchen.

They reach a hallway which runs behind the commissary, slamming the door shut behind them, both laughing and spewing masticated chicken from their mouths. That is, until the pinch causes her back to straighten suddenly.

His chuckles die in his throat. “You okay?”

“Yes, it’s nothing.”

“Sounds like something.”

“Well, your wife has a very distinct pinch.”

His stern brows furrow with confusion, his arms crossed, but his attention completely on her. “A pinch?”

“Yes, it’s this little troublesome bit of pressure—”

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s more of a constant distraction.”

“Where is it.”

“Her pelvis.”

There’s a pause where a concerned expression ghosts over his face very briefly, and if she hadn’t been chained to Mitchell’s side for the better part of a week, she may have missed it entirely. Then he shakes his head. “It’s probably just the scar. When she got stabbed they hit a vital—”

“It’s in the middle. Closer to—”

And the pinch absolves itself as unconsciousness consumes her.

Chapter Text

Maneuvering his arms underneath her, he balances her back against his chest. Ran up an entire flight of stairs and didn’t even feel it in the balmy temperature. Slid across the bathroom floor, twisting his knee a little to the left, because when she popped out of the tub screaming three hours earlier, neither of them bothered to clean up the water and melting ice from the floor—Aeryn usually did that.

He can’t even feel his knee—knows he will later, after all this isn’t the days of the challenger anymore, and the adventures in space have only worked against his aging body—but for right now, he’s trying to keep her face out of the direct stream of water—not lukewarm—pure freezing water, that barely tingles as it showers down on them.

Holds her limp form like a puppet and just wills the water to cool her down, to wake her up. Doesn’t know what the hell happened—she just dropped that bag of frozen peas and the chicken nugget she was half done eating and ragdolled in the hallway. Luckily, the space adventures have honed his keen reflexes and he managed to snatch the woman wearing his wife before she smashed Aeryn’s beautiful face off the ground.

Man, does he ever want this to be over.

It seems like it’s lasting longer than their usual space adventures, the usual foibles they accidentally get wrapped up in because every single thing in the galaxy—and other galaxies now—wants to frell with them. Wants to drag him, and his beautiful, unconscious wife, and his screaming, wailing, possibly colicky, possibly heat deliriumed son, and the whole rowdy crew on Moya into their dren, and he’s done with it.

He’s so done with it.

“Come on.”

Speaks with his chin on the top of her head, long black hair running slick under the water, dripping icicle drops down his shirt and arms.

Her head falls slack against his throat, then rolls to his shoulder, and he moves to straighten her again, tilts her head up with a thumb under each side of her chin, so he doesn’t accidentally drown her—ignoring the fact that he can’t really feel a pulse.

 “Come on.”

It is so still as he waits.

He stands, a grown man in a shower, in a bathroom, in a mountain, storeys underground.

A bump on a log.

He holds everything in his hands.

It’s so silent. The soft sound of falling water, echoing through the bathroom because he never shut the door to the shower, and it reminds him of Australia, of a storm lapping at their window and his tongue lapping at her neck.

She was so perfect then, so absolutely perfect that he couldn’t bring himself to place doubt in the situation. She was there, and he was there, and then he was inside her, and she was shuddering—a blush flushing over white skin glowing against overcast skies from outside—and then they had a son. A perfect son, that as far as he’s concerned, was conceived during her first thunderstorm, and he was the first person to hold him. He caught the kid and cut the cord during the middle of the blitzkrieg.

“Come on!”

And maybe she’s finally listening to him, because her lifeless body tenses, she sucks in an awful big breath that bursts her forward, her eyes opening up under a stream of shower water, and the sight of their leaky shampoo bottles welcomes her back.  

He wraps an arm around her chest, pinning her shoulders to him, and one around her forehead, just so she doesn’t lurch forward too much and smash that beautiful face off the dial, and he laughs into her ice cold hair—not knowing which woman it is—just happy that there’s some form of life in her body.

“Oh, God you scared me.”

She takes four breaths in quick succession, her back pressing against his chest, his soaked t-shirt licking at the soaked tank top she’s in and he should really be letting go, but that was too much. He’s all for living dangerously, and playing on the edge, but that was too damn much,

Her head tilts one way, then another against the restriction of his arm, and her body tenses for a different reason—not shock anymore—but fear because he’s got her held down.

“Sorry.” He releases her, finally feeling the full effect of the coldest water a mountain can offer, goosebumps widespread over his body. “You just—who are you?”

She turns to him, and he knows it even before she says it. It’s something about her eyes, something about the way they soften when they see him because maybe she’s remembering that room in Sydney where she drank her first beer.

“It’s me, John.”

“It’s you,” he agrees, snatching her up—this time, facing him—his cold cheek piling against the top of her still drenched hair—she smells like her again. “It’s you.”

Her fingertips run up the back of his neck and into his hair, scratch like she’s holding on to him, like he’s anchoring her there and if she lets go she’ll poof back to Moya, so he holds her tighter because under the right circumstances, three hours is a frelling lifetime.

“It’s you,” says it one more time as confirmation—not for her—but for himself, so he can let go of the veritable nightmare of someone not Sebacean driving his Sebacean wife’s heat delirium prone body through what feels like the Florida keys during rainy season.

Drops a kiss to her neck, and the taste is cold—of course it is—but a comfort, familiar, the same as that first experimental peck beside her on the bed. Her hand sways up to hold the side of his head as her frozen lips press a kiss into his temple, and if he could describe perfection—after describing her and Deke—he’d talk about this, and the feeling of ultimate relief.

“Why am I in the shower?” She pulls her head back with a disgusted expression on her face, her finger traveling to her mouth to pick out bits of nugget still stuck to her gums. “Why do I have breaded poultry in my mouth?”

Forgot that she hates chicken.

“The girl in your body fell slack while eating a chicken nugget.” He reaches across her, the water droplets dancing across his skin in the light and turns the shower off. The pipe groans in resistance but then there’s only drip of the random drops of water from their bodies. “I thought it was a heat delirium thing.”

“No, our time possessing each other merely expired,” she shudders—the droplets starting to slow now—and wraps her arms around her body, like she did when she came back, the first time he actually lost her, the time he killed—“Did she not feel?—”

Bows his forehead against hers—despite the temperature, the confusion, the taste of subpar reheated frozen chicken nugget in her mouth—she embraces the stance, closing her eyes along with him, breathing in the same air he does, feeling the same comfort he does, nuzzling a little into him.

“I love you,” murmurs it against her skin and feels at home a galaxy away.

“I love you too.”

Snaps out of ‘what-if’ mode, because although it sure as hell may sell comic books, it only gives him another reason to lose sleep. Cups a hand over her cheek, watching her eyelashes clump together with water as she blinks up at him. “Let’s get you dry.”

Still staring at her, he moves to push the shower door open, only he forgot he never closed it—due to thinking he somehow killed her again—and he stumbles backwards, slipping on the floor again, trying to catch himself with a knocked knee—that he definitely feels now—and falls flat on his ass in the bathroom floor marshland.

Figures she’s going to ask what the frell happened to the bathroom in the three hours that she was gone, but instead she grins down at him, stepping gracefully from inside the shower, her arms wrapped around her, until she offers him one to help him stand.

As he takes it she smiles, “I saw Deke.”

“Is he—”

“He’s perfectly fine. Content. Our counterparts are caring for him well.”

“I miss him.”

“He misses you.”

He grins, accepting her words, knowing an almost five-week-old baby can’t really miss him, especially when he wasn’t there for the first week—or this last week. All he can hope is that in the long run of things, his kid doesn’t remember all the sick days he took.

“Colonel Mitchell, your counterpart, is a gentleman.”

“Vala, yours, is feisty.”

He grabs the last towel from inside the cupboard, and takes careful steps, back to her, wrapping it around her shoulders, pulling her hair out from beneath it with a slap. His hand wring through it, squeezing out the extra water.

“Our son is in good hands, until we return.”

He nods, his lips pressing and staying against her forehead as he embraces her again, before remembering, “hey, the last thing Vala said before her ass got booted from your body was something about a pinch in your pelvis.”

“What?” She stiffens ducking her head back to observe him.

“Yeah, she said it didn’t hurt, more like it felt like a distraction?” His fingers lightly touch the sliver of skin escaping from between her top and her shorts—across from the scar, like she said. “You okay?”

“Yes.” She steps away from him now, which makes him think she’s lying. Which makes him think the opposite is true, and it’s like he told the good old doc, she is his only investment here, and if she doesn’t make it back with him— “I’m sure it’s just a reaction to eating the processed poultry.”

“Well, I think this was happening before she—”

“Remember when we went to your Earth, how ill I was after eating Wackdonalds?” She pulls the towel tighter around her, leaning back into the counter, still shivering under the layer of cotton.

He chuckles, shaking his head, the image of Aeryn thrown over the porcelain throne making the most carnal sounds he’s ever head coming into his head. The guys at IASA thought that she was having a reaction to the atmosphere or something and it turns out that some teenager just didn’t cook the nuggets all the way. “That’s not the name, but yeah, you threw up for a whole day.”

“The twinge she felt was a reaction from masticating so many nougats in such a short time.”

“Nuggets, and if that’s the case, then why aren’t—”

“What’s that?”

“Nugget is the word, not—”

“No, John.” She bolts from the counter, padding across the ice rink of a floor that’s claimed him twice, back to the shower, not slipping up her footing even once. “Look.”

Think it’s the old diversion tactic—maybe there is something wrong with her, doesn’t know about the prolonged exposure of Sebaceans to heat other than how she looked when he broke her out of Katratzi, doesn’t know if it can start fooling with her internal organs, cause a gallbladder stone or something—but then he looks and sees what she sees.

There’s something in the bottom of the shower.

He squints as he approaches, trying to make it out, thinking it’s a piece of clothing, maybe a sock or something. “What is that?”

She holds it up for him to see. A pouch as big as her hand, once full, now empty, the familiar disgusting green slime leaking from the top of it.

She hands it to him, a grin on her face. “It’s the Peacekeeper infant formula I was feeding to Deke.”

She doesn’t wake back up right away, which is not what he expected, and it sort of gets to him.

Could deal with the fainting because he was a little forewarned by Officer Sun’s words—her actions—finally listened to her, laid Deke back on table where they found him—and caught her just before the back of her head bounced off the ground.

Thought she would wake back up as Vala, just snap back to it like going through a revolving door—only she didn’t. He stood there holding her lifeless body for a good solid two minutes, before he realized something might be wrong and he screamed for Pilot, panicking, not thinking straight.

The baby started to cry.

Finally, the old woman woke up from her eight-hour nap, and shuffled into command, took one look at unconscious Vala, and scoffed that she would be fine, that she was just lost in between worlds.

He argued that sounded pretty fucking not fine.

But Noranti didn’t hear him, or didn’t answer, just took the baby and told him they would be with Chiana, to go there when Vala woke back up.

So he lugged her back to their room—lugged is the wrong word, despite how she packs her food back, she still weighs next to nothing—and laid her out on the bed and sat in a nearby chair. Didn’t want to plan scenarios, but that’s what he does, he’s a leader, he has a contingency plan, and a contingency plan for his contingency plan.

Just sat with his fingers steepled, pleading that he didn’t have to continue on—or worse—go home alone.

When she wakes, it doesn’t happen immediately. Not the snap back he thought would happen from seeing her leave Jackson and seeing her return from the Ori galaxy. Her fingers twitch and her eyes move just slightly under still closed lids. She groans somewhere in the back of her throat and it’s hoarse, but her head falls to the side, her hand coming to rest on her forehead.

Then she yelps and that quickness he was searching for kicks in. She flips to her side, the healthy one—he completely forgot about her injury. When he carried her, she wasn’t conscious and couldn’t shout in pain, but his fingers definitely dug into acid blistered skin.

Her body tenses, her hand flapping in the air from pain, her eyes wrenched shut a she grunts, “Cameron?”

It might be because her voice sounds so weak, so she’s in obvious pain, but he thinks it’s the first time in a long time she’s called him Cameron instead of Mitchell, or some other nickname.

His shoots out his hand, snatching hers up. “I’m here.”

She grunts again, her face growing sweaty and red. “This really hurts.”

“Here. Here.” He’s panicking again because she’s back and hurt and he can’t think straight, he always takes action, he always tries to stay calm, but he can’t because—he grabs the ointment—what’s left of it, and he hopes the old woman doesn’t charge by the ounce. “Put this on—”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” He pets the back of her hand, trying to talk calmingly even though his heart is about to burst through his ears. “Just slather it—”

“I can’t move my arm.”

For the first time he notices her left arm seized against her chest. Bent in and held firm while the hand he just let go of flails around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.

“Cameron, it hurts so badly I can barely see.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going to have to—”

“If you have to shoot me, I don’t care, but do something already.”

Just remembers how he was with Sam when she took an Ori staff blast to the gut. He stitched up Sam no problem, he took care of Sam and he’s proud of that.

He can do it again.

Sets the ointment container on his bad thigh—which is jostling everywhere—uncapping it and reaches his free hand, the hand not ensnared in hers again, forward to tug up the side of her shirt. The skin underneath has decomposed more in the last three hours and he can see the specific spots where his fingers burned into her.

Keeps tugging the shirt up until he sees the bottom of her bra, and the blisters run underneath the material, trailing fully up her side now. Pulls at the collar of her shirt, slipping it around her shoulder where the injury continues halfway towards her elbow.  The skin is bubbled and irritated bright red, liquid seeping out from the wounds, running to untainted skin and infecting it.

“Shit.”

“Cameron!”

“Okay, do exactly what I say.”

She nods as he leans over her body, directing the back of her t-shirt over her head, but leaving it pillowed at her chest. Releasing her grip, which definitely cracked a few of his knuckles, he guides her good arm to hug across her chest, keeping her top in place. He swallows hard, reaching back, trying not to skim her skin as he pops the clasp on her bra, letting it sink against her waiting arm.

It might be a few seconds wasted, but it’s something that he needs to do. Not for him, not to keep the balance between them, but because she deserves that modesty. They may be here for a lot longer than they intended and this can’t be something she thinks he’s going to lord over her. This can’t be something that changes the dynamics between them.

Scooping up the salve, he rubs it against her side, down the curves of her body until the dip of her hip, which yes, does look exactly like what he dreams it does—without the blisters that is. Rubs in the peppermint smelling lotion until her rapid breathing begins to calm, slides it over the still clean skin on her naval because it might be infected. Uncoils her injured arm from her body, and circles his thumbs massaging the ointment in.

Slowly, just as she woke, she settles, her chest no longer accordioning with each painful breath, her body no longer shaking from the pain, her arm no longer seizing to her chest.

His hands grow numb, the ointment absorbing into his skin too, and in an afterthought, he takes his still moist hands and rubs them over the still biting wound on his own shoulder.

After minutes of her light breathing through her mouth, and before he thinks to leave her to sleep off the pain, he asks, “how you doing?”

With a deep inhalation, her brows soften, “better.”

“Good.”

“Cold,” she adds with a shiver that is too well timed not to be theatrical—he doesn’t care, he sort of missed it over the stoic gruffness of Officer Sun. Vala was only gone for a few hours, but he really did miss her, and that—that makes him think.

The shiver trembles her arm, her good arm, and before anything else happens, he reaches behind her for what’s become her favorite fur blanket. Only he might stretch over a bit too low, and it seems stupid, but over the lingering peppermint, she smells like her again. Like autumn leaves and a bit like cinnamon.

Tries not to notice how his closeness affects her. But it does. Sees the goosebumps spread over the pale, smooth skin on her neck.

He lets the blanket fall over her gently, careful not to aggravate any of the rash. Her eyes are closed, and though he wants to, he decides against tucking the blanket in. About to leave—to go get the old woman because maybe she has to do some evaluation, maybe this sort of thing happens all the time in this part of this galaxy—when she questions, her voice sounding a little far away, but not ‘other galaxy’ far away.

“Does this stuff heal the injury, or just numb it?”

“You know—” he yanks at his own shirt collar trying to get a good picture of his own blistered up shoulder. It doesn’t look any worse for the wear, but it doesn’t look like it’s healing either, granted they were shot with some form of acid, so maybe the healing’s always going to be slow, maybe they’re always going to have scars. “I didn’t think to ask. The old woman just gave me a potion that took away the pain and I jumped at the thought.”

“It’s completely understandable,” she agrees, her voice more of a mumble, and something makes him stay, makes him keep the excuse to leave he’s concocted up in his throat.

He relaxes into the chair, crossing his nonstop bouncing legs because he’s waiting for something to happen, for the other shoe to drop. The solution to the old switcharoo, the cure for her debilitating wound, all came a little too easy.

“A lot has happened in a few hours, I figured, I’d just accept the win.”

She adjusts, her good arm sliding from beneath the blanket, cushioning underneath her head as she nuzzles into the pillow. “Sometimes things just happen for a reason.”

He smiles. He knows she doesn’t see it. But he still does it.

“Did you get to meet Officer Sun?” Her brows raise as she asks the question, but her eyes don’t open, He figures she has another five minutes of chat in her before she falls asleep.

“I did.”

“Was she as terrifying as all accounts have provided her to be?”

“Sort of,” he yawns, balling a fist over his mouth and shimmying into the chair to get comfortable. “She was more just happy to see her kid.”

That makes her smile, and maybe she thinks that he won’t see it, because it’s the same smile she gave to Deke once. “Did she seem like a good mother?”

“She didn’t put the kid down until she knew she was getting sucked back to the SGC.”

“She knew?”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” She nods her head lightly, her lips pursing together with a long pause before she continues, like she forgot what they were talking about. Oh yeah, the sleep is coming. “One moment I was eating chicken nuggets in the hallway behind the commissary with Crichton, and the next moment I’m roiling in pain in front of you.”

“That’s quite the change of pace.”

“That’s nothing. Officer Sun has a weakness to the heat—”

“Weakness?”

 “Yes, like heatstroke but a hundred times more powerful. I’ve never felt that physically ill in all my life.”

“At least you were only there for three hours.”

“Crichton had to drag me to a walk-in refrigerator in order to reconstitute me. Not to mention I awoke in an ice bath.”

“Ice bath?”

“The less said the better.”

“Oh, I think it’s going to have to be one of those bedtime stories you promised to tell me.” He reaches forward, snagging another blanket off the ground and tossing it over himself, because the room is cold, and if what Vala said about Officer Sun is true, it makes perfect sense.

“I’ll add it to the list.”

They’re quiet for a bit. He thinks she’s asleep and he keeps trying to fall asleep, shifting on his side, following her queue and using his hands for a pillow. But he feels guilty because he wasn’t there, because some guy who looks like him had to help her instead. They’ve been here less than a week, but it feels like this is their thing, like they’re in this alone but together and he wonders if she and Jackson felt this way when they came back the first time.

After all, being burned alive together has to cement some for of relationship.

But he’s seen the way they act together. She tries to play with Jackson, and he shoots her down, how she has ideas that might actually make sense, and he ignores her—and he played off that for so long too.

Sure she’s Vala—flighty, flirty Vala who took care of herself first unless someone needed to be sacrificed—but now she’s different. He’s seen her care for him, for Deke, for Chiana. He’s seen her sit with Pilot and fall asleep at the foot of his console while talking with him. He’s watched her take the baby to view the stars, pointing and whispering things while his little face lights up.

She’s different now.

Maybe she was always this way.

Maybe he’s different now.

Different because the mood Jackson had when they came back from the Ori galaxy, was that he could have accomplished more if he was alone. That she was the hindrance who got herself set on fire because she couldn’t follow a few simple social cues—but he was there in that room, he barely knew her and he watched her flatline, and it changed him then too, made him a little more susceptible to saying yes to her, like when she wanted to go to Auburn.

He’s different because he wouldn’t pick anyone else to be stuck with here. Not Sam, or Teal’c, or Jackson. Not even Amy, who he’s going to have to reschedule his date with for the fourth time. He’s glad that if he has to be here, that he’s here with her.

“Vala?”

“Yes, Darling?”

He reaches forward, taking the blanket that’s tumbled from her bare shoulder, skin still as red as ever, blisters still bubbled, and tugs it back up, tucking it in like he wanted to.

“I’m glad you came back.”

“Me too.”

Chapter Text

“You shouldn’t have been able to do this.”

The bespectacled doctor’s office is of a higher temperature than most of the other areas she’s allowed clearance to within the mountain, yet he stands before them, wearing a fleecy dark green sweater, his arms crossed over his chest in indignation as apparently they’ve broken some set of universal physical rules.

“Well, we did.”

In the middle of his examination table, sits an empty pouch of Peacekeeper infant formula. The feeding mechanism still engaged, pablum crusty around the top. Two arns ago she held Deke in her arms, felt his familiar weight and became enamored all over again.

Now she has wet palms, a communication barrier, the constant pressure in her pelvis of another life that wants to be, and a group of frelling useless humans who refuse to let her aid in their quest home.

“But you shouldn’t have been able to.”

The doctor takes off his glasses, folding them neatly, and tucking them into the collar of his sweater. The heat is beginning to grip it’s claws into her, slowing her mental processes, the words jutting less clearly from his mouth as he grimaces.

“Well, we have.”

John stands to her left, they’ve split onto the other side of the table than the doctor, his arms remain crossed, the black t-shirt straining against his muscles. It’s a welcome distraction from the pinch within her, the heat around her constantly trying to stray her mind from the content of the debate, the little mouth that gulped down food, and the little hand that held her own.

“But it’s physically impossible. “

The doctor leans in, his eyes squinting at the pouch, probably intelligent enough to figure out the utilization of it, yet he hasn’t reached to touch it yet. Stands with his hands tucked into his sides, wearing that sweater, and she has to look away from him. Has to move, lest she start to sway on her feet and be redirected away from one of the only conversations she’s been allowed to partake in.

“But it’s obviously not.”

“I mean, I’m no expert in the physics of this, but when possessing someone’s body, you shouldn’t be able to bring things back with you.” The doctor still stares at the pouch, leveling himself, bending at the hips so his eyes are even with it.

John’s arms are still crossed and by the expression on his face, he’s fighting straying the conversation  on a tangent, which is big of him. “Didn’t you and Vala bring back information when you were shot to that other galaxy.”

“Yeah, but that’s weightless, it’s incorporeal.” The doctor straightens, his arms no longer stable at his side, flying out in emotion, in what she wagers is offense. “Not tangible concrete things. Not permanent things.”

“And you don’t think the information you learned changes your brain, the structure of it?” Her husband remains tall, rigid, oddly unemotional. He’s fallen into the stoic nature, where his belief is so serious, where something so drastic needs to be done, that he can’t fall back on lost jokes and grand gestures. “You don’t think the memories of what you’ve seen are permanent, at least until you go senile?”

“See Nile?” Scrolls her eyes up to his, immediately garnering his attention away from the conversation because the word isn’t in her vocabulary, or if it is, it’s in the portion of her being leeched away by the heat.

“Senile. One word.” He takes a step towards her, holding out his index finger to indicate the amount. “It’s when humans get old and forget things.”

“Like heat delirium?” Her eyes dart away from his, towards the concrete ceiling, suddenly uneasy of her position. Of being underground. Of being buried.

His hand blankets her forehead, and she doesn’t draw her eyes away from where they’re tracing over the gray surface dotted with lights, something isn’t right. Something is wrong, and she becomes infuriated with herself, because if she was of a typical temperature, she would have figured out what it was long ago.

“Kind of, but it’s not reversible.” Removing his hand, he brings it to his back pocket, shuffling around until he produces a hair tie for her. He taps it against her bare shoulder once, then two more times in quick succession, and when she doesn’t react, he simply moves behind her, collecting her hair again, blowing against the back of her neck as he constructs not a perfect updo, but a much better one with four more days practice.

The doctor clears his throat, his glasses placed back on the edge of his nose as he snaps what looks to be rubber coverings over his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you, other than by all laws of known physics, this shouldn’t be possible.”

“Well.” He directs her slightly to the left, doesn’t tell her to stop her examination because just as she knows him, knows that his time for jokes and dancing are over, he knows that there’s a reason for her fixation. “Isn’t that the same for us switching places?”

“No, there’s a simple explanation using the long-range communication device.”

“You said that normally you just get to ride shotgun in someone else’s body.” There’s the sound of dragging, of clattering behind her, and then the soft click of a button being depressed before the relief of a cool stream of air hitting her back.

When she glances back, John is beside a device, it’s black a little over half her height tall. There’s a round cage with rotating blades inside it generating the air pulsing over her, similar to the Scrubber Room on Moya. “With the exception of Aeryn and Vala for a three arn stint, we moved realities, not bodies.”

“Yeah.” In her peripherals, the doctor jabs a finger into Deke’s formula pouch. Then again until the garbage topples over. “I don’t know what to tell you about that.”

“We’re just full of firsts.” The way John says it indicates that his words are directed at her. He presses a kiss into the back of her head, on her hair, over the bun he’s just created and whispers, “Whatcha looking at?”

“Something isn’t right.” Stares at the concrete now growing black with the stationary position of her eyes, of the bright, fake luminescents humming from the ceiling, and she doesn’t know how the doctor hasn’t gone mad cooped up in such a dungeon, but she views him poking the food pouch again, and perhaps he has.

“Those aren’t comforting words, Honey.” John leans into the table beside her on his one arm, his body turned towards her, and his expression fallen from blankly stoic, to full of concern again.

Doesn’t answer him because she’s still trying to process what’s posing a danger. She sets her hands palm flat on the table, not seeing any cracks in the foundation of the ceiling, no loose wires which could cause a fire, and her mind resets to Moya and staring out windows into multitudes of glorious colors in the face of stars, to being planetside and relaxing, staring up at the black expanse of an endless sky illuminated by millions of gleaming gems. Not the darkness of concrete over manufactured lights that pain her eyes.

“Aeryn, you can’t throw out those words without—”

“Shhh,” she snaps her head at him, and then resumes closing her eyes. Pilot’s DNA still resides within her, and with it, her multitasking skills have only excelled over those ingrained into her through Peacekeeper training.

Now she focuses on sounds.

“Shhh?”

Trying to discern if the difference inhabits auditory factors. If one is specifically overpowering at the moment.

“Did you really just—” His cadence isn’t offended, more playful, happy that she’s adopted such a human vernacular.

“Yes.” Gently covers his mouth with her hand to silence him, blankets half his face as he did to her moments ago. “Please, John.”

Her casual descent into anger replaced with stoicism in the same manner he has implemented, and vaguely, part of her wonders when they adopted each others behavior so naturally? When, after four long years together, did they start to embrace the same methods of garnering each other’s attention in a non-direct manner.

He only nods. Understanding.

When she closes her eyes again, all the sounds flood her. The humming of the fluorescents, the heavy breathing of the doctor, the crinkling of the jabbed pouch, John’s heartbeat, her own stomach growling, the grinding of one of the electronic screened machines the humans have littered this complex with, footsteps walking down the hallway away from the door, the roar of the fan oscillating back and forth.

Distantly, the pinch in her abdomen distracts her.

“Can you turn that off?”

John’s face tenses, his eyes following her finger to the fan, and he stands straight from leaning against the table beside her. “It’s gonna get real hot in here for you, real quick.”

“Just for a moment.”

Hesitantly, he agrees, stepping and depressing the button again. Immediately, the sound of the motor, of the rotations ceases, and she strains her ear to listen further.

“What exactly is this stuff made—”

“Shhh!” She and John simultaneously shush the doctor, who has just noticed their preoccupation. His mouth, again, pulling into a grimace.

“What are you—”

“What part of ‘shhh’.” John places his index finger to his lips for emphasis. “Don’t you get?”

As they continue to argue, because of what she knows of the doctor, and how well she knows her husband, neither man likes to remain silent for very long. But her abilities, her senses enhanced from a command carrier birth, from spliced DNA, allows her to focus in on what sounds like a weak click, a dissonant beep, an aggravated hiss.

Her arm shoots out, landing on John’s shoulder effectively silencing him, and ending the nascent argument. “What room is located above your laboratory?”

“Uhh.” The doctor thinks aloud, his eyes squinting as he tries to answer. “I’m not sure what’s above us exactly, but it’s the communication level. Mostly people typing up emails and press releases.”

“What do you hear?” John spins her towards him, asking in a mumble, trying to shield the conversation.

“A clicking, a beeping, a hissing. It sounds like—”

“Oh, I think there’s an engineering room up there too.” The doctor points to the ceiling, and then carefully removes his gloves, making sure the exterior never touches his skin. “There’s one every few floors to—”

A distant, but equally voracious boom extinguishes the rest of his words. The walls shudder, the horrible glowing lights blink off, and the ceiling opens up spilling in internals from multiple floors, dust, pipes, and large chunks of concrete upon them.

Expects to wake in the same oddly glowing, warm-hued room, but when she opens her eyes, all she sees is darkness. At first she thinks it’s a dream, because she still has them—night terrors about Ver Isca, about being pregnant and on fire and used up.

About feeling too full, and then far too empty.

But with a familiar snore, she places Mitchell somewhere to her left. Wagers that he fell asleep in the chair he was in before, afraid to crawl into bed beside her from their lingering injuries, and just before she calls him a coward in her head, her body twitches and the full fire of pain shoots through her side again.

“Cameron?” Calls through the dark, because the pain is too intense for her to try to navigate, yet no where near as powerful as before. She has more mobility in her arm, more rotation of her torso, yet every single breath feels like her last, feels like being buried in a pillar of flames.

His snoring ceases, as he probably thought she was beckoning him to shut him up, but when he doesn’t respond more to her words, she calls again, more fervent than before, “Cameron?”

He stirs, she can hear him rustle in the chair, the sound of fur against clothing, against skin, and skin squeaking against metal, or whatever organic equivalent the chair is constructed from. His lips smack and when he speaks, she can hear him stretch his body in his voice. “I’m up. I’m up.” The stretch elongates into a sort of grunt, and by the sound of friction, she guesses that he’s rubbing his hand against his thigh. “My turn with the kid?”

“No, my side,” she gasps, as she experiences the circulation of her blood, pulsating, heated through. “It hurts—”

Suddenly, he’s awake with such fervor, that it works to distract her from her pain for a moment. There’s the sound of the fur blanket being shed, and flopping to the ground, then of his feet slapping across the floor to the doorway where he turns on the light. Believes she might hear a few of his joints crack along the way.

The light blinds her briefly, causing her to flinch her face back into her pillow, hiding her eyes away as he pads back across the floor, snatching up a jar along the way, a bigger jar, hopefully full of more of that salve that works to numb the pain.

“Lay on your side,” he commands, and she flops from her back, to face him. As she does, her own fur blanket falters from around her, dipping from her chest.

He remembers that he relieved the tension of her bra and shirt—which felt like it was bisecting her—before she does, uttering, “hey, hey, hey,” before just reaching forward and dragging the blanket back over her chest, maneuvering it so that the injury on her side is accessible, while unmentionables are still covered.

“Always so modest,” comments through strained teeth to hopefully alleviate the mood, because when he saw the state of her torso, he hissed in a breath.

“I try.”

He scoops up a large amount of the salve and wipes it off starting at the jut of her hip. Immediately, relief floods through her, over her immolating skin, over the blisters seeping acidic and infectious fluids threatening to contaminate any healthy tissue. The smell of peppermint conquers the smell of burnt flesh and rotting skin.

His hands are very warm, and he continues to work in silence, large fingers caking on the salve in thick layers, massaging it into her muscles, and she knows he’s trying his hardest to get every inch covered.

“How bad is it?” Can hear the relief in her voice, the edge and shakiness gone from the explosions of pain.

“Pretty bad.” His face is stoic, consists of just straight lines as he continues to work.

Her eyes grow heavy, and she allows herself to close them, to focus on the movements of his fingers over her body. So dept, so knowledgeable, most likely from taking care of his own strained thigh. But she doesn’t want to stop talking, doesn’t want to fall asleep again only to awake in Ver Isca in a canopied bed all aflame.

“What does it look like?”

“Remember that old road we took into town in Auburn? How when it switched from dirt to pavement, it was all beat up and full of potholes?”

“The one you claimed had been on the docket to fix for the past two decades.”

“Yeah that one.”

“Yes.”

“It sort of looks like that.”

Her nose scrunches up, remembering the road which quite literally was molting itself off in chunks of tar and full of large holes seeping with collected rainwater. “How lovely.”

“Hey, I’m no prized peach right now either.” It’s almost said with a chuckle as his palm presses flat against her ribs, kneading the flesh, tracing over each bone, and each groove.

“You must be quite the hero to continue on as you are.” Had a pithier reply planned, but his hand travels from her ribs to her shoulder, finding and testing a knot.

His hands slip up the hub of her shoulder and down her arm, there’s no active burns or infection, but the tissue could be compromised from contact. “I’m not gonna complain.”

A hand slips to her neck, softly fans her hair across the pillow. Again, there are no active burns or pain, but the touch, the softness is calming. When his hand traces upwards, she leans into it, letting him cup her cheek, and her heavy-lidded eyes contact his, entirely awake, and extremely intense.

“How are you feeling?” His thumb strums over her cheek.

She feels completely relaxed, at ease, without pain, comfortable in a place that isn’t home. The whole response is completely irregular, yet she welcomes it. “Far better than I have in a long time.”

“Good.” He grins at her, his hand stilling, but when he tries to stand, a wince crosses his face.

She should reciprocate the favor.

“Take off your shirt.”

His hand retracts like he can feel the fire beneath her skin, like she’s physically burned him with her words. “What? Why?”

She pushes herself to sit, very careful to continue to protect the modesty he’s allowed her, the first man in some time to do so.

“So we’ll be equal.” He gives her a deadpanned, somewhat irritated expression, and she shakes her head at him, pointing to the jar, and adding with a grin. “So I can put some on your wound.”

“Oh.” He nods and she realizes for the first time that he’s been kneeling beside the bed this entire time on his bad leg. “That would actually be good.”

He tugs at the collar of her shirt, and something about the way Tau’ri men disrobe is far more attractive than any other method she’s seen on any other planet. He pulls his shirt over his head, mussing a hair a little more than it already had been with his heavy sleep. Setting the jar on the bed, he turns his back to her, and she notices for the first time the map of muscles, the scars and indents from missions gone wrong, from combat training and crashed flights.

She dips her fingers into the salve, the peppermint scent overwhelming, yet familiar and swipes the initial layer over his injury.

“How’s mine look?”

She rubs her thumbs over the broken skin, following his method and trying to knead as much of the curative into his skin, his muscles, as she can. His head dips forward as he relaxes in response. “Probably not as particularly gruesome as mine, but you’ve got quite a journey before I’d consider it fully healed.”  

His head sort of sways to the left, watching her momentarily over his shoulder. “Think it’ll make a good story to tell any potential dates?”

“I think if you’ve gotten a woman this far, you’re pretty much guaranteed a happy ending.”

“Remind me to explain to you what that phrase means,” he groans, then shakes his head.

Her hands stop against his shoulders and she leans forward, just so the fur blanketing her chest tickles against the bare skin on his back. “I know what it means, Mitchell.”

“You know, you can call me Cameron.”

“Hmmm,” she hums, her thumbs now playing at the uninjured skin on his neck, as his head bows further and further forward.

“You say it differently than anyone I’ve met. It’s refreshing,” he sighs deeply, an exhalation that works its way through his body, as they both know this invigorating game of flirting is going to end soon.

“I’ll have to remember that.”

Her fingers slow against him, enjoying the exchange they had, the tit-for-tat situation that allowed him to play along to her whim for once. His chivalrous nature trumped by his need to satiate her pain.

When she removes her hands from him, he turns towards her, his eyes as intense as they were before despite all the effort she’s put in to make him feel good. “Can I ask you a question?”

It hits her unprovoked and along with his stance, with his expression, she doesn’t have a snarky remark ready to bat back at him. “Yes.”

“Why do you always try to sacrifice yourself for the team?”

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, Vala,” he laughs but it’s sharp, dry, like he shouldn’t have to debate the subject with her. “You do.”

“I filled in the Supergate, because no one would—”

“Then why did you hit Ventrell at the reunion, knowing he would hit you back.”

“In all fairness, I was a tad inebriated—”

“Then what about when you ran after that dragon? Or when you let us plant fake memories in you brain? Or—”

“Yes. Yes. I get it.”

When she glances to him, he’s still watching her, waiting for an answer, and she doesn’t know if he deserves one. Doesn’t know if she entirely trusts him enough to carry the weight of her response, but she rolls her shoulder and finds no pain, stretches out her side and feels nothing but good.

So she stares into those eyes and speaks genuine words. “I’ve done many bad things in my life. Some as Qetesh, some as myself. If I could exchange my life for someone who has done more good, than maybe when being judged by my actions, perhaps all my misdeeds would be overlooked.”

Expects him to nod and get up. To turn the light off and return to bed, issuing a warning to her to not forget she’s topless under the blanket. He may even stay emotionless, quiet, before trying to talk to her of all the past lives she’s lived. Maybe even become infuriated, tell her that each team member is special, and it takes all of them to succeed, blah, blah, blah.

But he doesn’t.

What he does do, is lean forward, and press his lips against hers.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t know what happened, all he knows is that his back hurts.

When he intakes the first breath, it’s gritty, full of dirt—no, not dirt.

Something else.

A powder.

Talcum?

Deke.

Bolts upwards, not testing his strength first, and flops right back down on the ground, which isn’t just the lackluster industrial tiles he’s sure is all the rage with alternate Earth militaries, but hunks of the ceiling, office furniture, and some rebar maybe.

He can only make out a few things in the emergency siren circling a red highlight around the room.

Tries again to stand and finds his shoulder held down with a bit of drywall or insulation from the ceiling, flopping on his good side, it’s easy to topple it off, but man those muscles haven’t hurt that bad since sophomore year football.

Sits for a moment, just uneven in the wreckage trying to place himself. He’s in a lab, that classicist’s lab, and—he scans around, trying to see what he can in the cloud of dust, in everything piled up, and he coughs, wiping his hand across his cheek, streaking dirt, the grime, to his ear.

Then he sees it, gleaming in the red ray of the emergency light, the standing fan—still standing, still a fan—no Aeryn.

No Aeryn.

“Aeryn!” Bolts up, his shoulder seizing, sending him to his knees, and when he reaches back, tacky blood sticks between his fingers, but he crawls a step or two and then pulls himself up again.

Calls for her again, and again, but the siren is a lot louder than him, blasting through a system on the wall by the swirling light. He reaches down, grabbing a hefty chunk of ceiling or floor or whatever—maybe an actual piece of the hollowed-out mountain, and hurls it at the alarm, which fizzles and lets out one last dying wheeze.

“How is that productive?” The classicist coughs behind him, constructing himself against the counters at the far wall.

“Where’s Aeryn?”

“I haven’t seen her—”

“Aeryn!” He cups his hands around his mouth, projecting his voice in the moderate-sized room. For what it’s worth the computer by the doc is still on, still active, a pipe screensaver scribbling over it. “Aeryn!”

“She’s—”

He flips on the classicist, knows his eyes are wild, but this keeps happening—stuff keeps happening to try and separate them. He promised her they were done, promised her they weren’t going to get dragged into any intergalactic dren anymore, that they were going to be the Swiss Family Robinson, drifting along on their Leviathan island. He swore to her and then he built a weapon of mass destruction—not including the bomb he set off on Katratzi—and then zoned out for a week.

Now he’s hollering like his Ma used to holler for him when he was a teenager to get him to come in the damn house. Using up all air and stamina he doesn’t have an ample supply of, to locate a woman who keeps getting put through the ringer. A woman he loves more than he’s ever cared about anything including the fate of another galaxy, including the fate of this one. The one he gave Earth to. The one he gave up Earth for and it wasn’t even a question, he didn’t even need to show his work to come up with the answer, because from the moment she tugged off her helmet, and he saw her, he was sunk.

“Aeryn!”

“Crichton.” The classicist puts his hand on his bad shoulder drawing him away

He wrenches away in response. “Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘she’s right there’—”

The doctor points to a steeple of concrete, a pile that’s built up around the table they were surrounding—specifically to the small gap in between two slabs. “She’s right there.”

Stops his hollering for a moment to listen, cupping an ear, and faintly, hearing her voice call out in Sebacean. He grins wildly, shoving the classicist, who is also still recovering from being in a—what? Explosion? Cave in?—who stumbles back on weak feet. “Way to go, Doc.”

Picks his way through rubble and around the biggest crate he’s ever seen in his life—were they shipping an elephant?—kneeling before the gap, trying to navigate his gashed shoulder with his piss poor balance.

“Aeryn?”

Her hand flings out, swats around, gripping into the concrete, trying to drag herself out with a grunt, but she’s rambling in Sebacean, quickly, he’s picking up little bits from what she’s taught him—laying with him in bed, his head cushioned in her lap as she stroked his hair and corrected the way he screeched.

Stuck. Hot. Dren.

“Aeryn, Honey, relax.” Grabs on to her flailing hand, expecting to calm her, but she tenses, her arm growing rigid and her words more pronounced, more threatening.

Baby. Hot. Baby.

“Deke is fine. He’s not here.”

Thinks that the concrete might have smashed something loose in her head, until he realizes that he’s sweating, that the dust piled up on his face is being washed away by sweat pouring out of his forehead and cheeks, that every time he wipes his eyes or nose he comes back with a layer of schmutz.

Hot. Baby. Baby. Stuck.

If it’s this hot for him.

Baby. Hot. Hot.

Then it’s beyond dangerous for her.

“Why isn’t she speaking English?” The doc asks, crouching a bit, staring at her one swinging hand and the one caught in his own.

“She’s got heat delirium bad.” Grabs the other hand, bracing his legs against each chunk of concrete to tug her out. “She’s gonna need to cool down ASAP.”

Expects the doctor to argue, but maybe it’s his tone, the no nonsense one he uses to tell his infant son that Crichtons don’t cry often or for very long, when he can’t even think about what he’s doing now or he’s going to lose his goddamn mind. Then again, maybe it’s Aeryn’s hectic shrieking, the calm ex-Peacekeeper façade fading away into frantic yowls—but the doc doesn’t argue, just nods, regains his balance, and starts off towards the door to get help.

Moves to yank her out by the wrists, but a thought occurs, she said ‘stuck’. Does she mean between the rocks, or on something else? Is something keeping her pinned in place? Doesn’t want to wrench her out, only for her to have a piece of steel pierced through her shin or something.

Aeryn. Stuck?

Yes. Stuck.

No. Stuck?

Yes. Stuck.

No. Stuck? Pinch? Hurt?

There’s a pause and the rigidity in her arms settles. His fingers are over her pulse because he almost just lost her to a shower and is not going to risk losing her again, this quick, when she just got back, and even brought him baby chow as a souvenir.

Aeryn. Stuck? Pinch? Hurt?

No. Baby. No. Pinch. Baby. Baby. Baby.

Baby. Good. Baby. Moya.

No. Pinch. Baby. Gone.

Her words are flying fast, but he thinks she’s trying to place herself, forgot that Deke was on Moya, forgot that she’s here in this god-awful mountain with just him and a handful of soldiers they’ll be glad to never see again.

Her arms are slack, and he takes it as a sign to start yanking her out because she said there was nothing pinning her.

With a less than manly groan, he gives the first tug, guiding her out from where she’s laying face up, captured between the two slabs. Did she move there on purpose, or was it just dumb, blind luck that both chunks managed to hit each other before they hit her?

Grunts again and her head slides out to her neck, her face covered in dust, in the same sweaty dirt his is, and she’s breathing heavy, starting to panic again. Her hands crunch down on the concrete and she pulls herself. He gets his fingers under her arms and gives a harsh pull with her. She gets one foot out, and against the rock, pushing harder.

Her other foot finally snaps out, but without a shoe.

They tumble back at the same time, her head falls to his thigh and she stares at the ceiling, panting, and he does the same. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, as he sits up again, his hands scaling her face until her eyes cycle to meet his.

Aeryn. Hurt? Pain?

Pain. Yes. Side.

Leans forward, his shoulder absolutely screaming at him—hollering his name and not listening for a reply—calling him into the house for dinner— and he presses into her one side, which she doesn’t react to, then her other which she flinches against.

Holds his hand to her side, over her ribs—it has to be broken ribs. Cracked ribs even. Something light. Maybe a bruise. Just a small bruise. Nothing internal. Nothing paraphoral because there is no Peacekeeper base nearby he can lie his way into and need his ass saved from.

No. Pinch. Baby.

Doesn’t understand her phrasing. From what he’s learned of Sebacean it’s a very abstract language. Basic words are used, and the listener has to construct a sentence, a meaning, a hint, a suggestion of what the speaker means.

Aeryn. Pinch? Where?

No. Pinch.

Doesn’t know what’s pinching—did she pull a hammy getting out?—holds his hands against her cheeks, her head still in his lap, upside down to him, and her lower lip trembles as she turns to her side.

Repeat. Pinch? Where?

Without looking at him, she takes a hand from her face, using the arm on her uninjured side, and directs it down, down, down to her hips and in a little, placing his hand flat against her abdomen.

Aeryn. Pinch? Here?

No. Pinch.

Repeat. No. Pinch?

But then he remembers standing in a hallway, watching the woman being his wife chow down on chicken nuggets with happy bounce in her step and a bag of frozen peas tucked underneath her arm like a fancy clutch. Listened to her as she complained about a pinch in her pelvis, one that wouldn’t go away.

His hand rubs back and forth unsure, not knowing what the underlying issue is. If something happened when they jumped galaxies. What if it was a blood clot?—nope it’s a bruise, a tiny, minuscule, faded bruise that just stings a bit.

Aeryn?

No. Pinch. No. Baby.

No. Baby?

Yes.

And he gets it.

Just like that.

Just as quick.

Where his hand is rubbing back and forth like he did before she got scanned by the Diagnosian, when she said she felt weird, but not pickle ice cream weird.

Where she said the baby always was.  

Knows exactly what she’s saying.

Baby isn’t Deke.

He’s not a gambling man. He doesn’t like to play the lottery, doesn’t like to stake bets against sports or horses or when a baby is going to be born. Sure, he’ll take a risk on a mission if it’s the only way to save his ass, but he’d rather have a well-formulated plan that someone else has thought of, but that he understands completely. Will ask them to explain it to him in two sentences. Two not run-on sentences.

He doesn’t play the odds.

But in a million years, he never thought he would be the one to make a move on her.

If someone told him he would eventually kiss Vala Mal Doran of free will, before she ever made a move on him, he would flat out call them a liar and then ask for an apology against his character.

It’s not like she’s bad to kiss.

She’s not.

He knows because he is currently kissing her.

But it’s also not like she’s tainted in some way—that’s not the reason he wouldn’t kiss her—it’s because she’s his teammate, she’s an alien who is currently under the regulation of the SGC, and to quote his grandma, ‘you don’t dip your pen in the company ink.’

Only he’s dipping—his fingers through her hair, his nose brushing against hers, his tongue touching her lower lip cautiously—oh man, is he ever dipping.

But he can’t stop, because she was here, and she was somewhere else—she was somewhere else and as basic as he can lay it out—poor choice of words—it worried him, saddened him, made him distraught that she wasn’t here with him. Not that she wasn’t safe, because she was back at the SGC, and he knew they would help her, take care of her, they’re all teammates after all, but it made him upset that he wasn’t with her.

He missed her.

He cared for her.

Although he’ll never admit it, part of him likes the thing they have here, where they cuddle and take care of a baby together. It’s a small part, infinitesimal in comparison to the part of him that is a decorated air force pilot, and team leader of SG-1, but sometimes there’s an itch that’s just got to be scratched.

She flickers her tongue against his lips, and hooks her good arm around his neck, pulling him closer, close enough that the fur blanket is flush against his bare chest, and sighs through her nose, keeping the rhythm of the kiss, the puffs of air cool against his face.

His hand slides up her arm, her bad arm—avoiding the roadwork area—over her shoulder to caress the skin across her back. He wants to nuzzle against the side of her neck, kiss his way down, convince her to drop that blanket and just—just—but he doesn’t.

He’s scratched the itch that showed up the first night they did on Moya—ignores the fact that he still remembers perfectly what she looked like in Daisy Dukes, or a Qetesh gown, or waltzing through the gate like she owned the place in a tight leather get up—and his military attitude seizes him again, closes his mouth and ducks his head back.

She observes him with a smile, and God, she’s gorgeous, a flush creeping into her cheeks, pale skin glowing in the low light he set. Her eyes are heavy, but sparkling, lit up and alive in a way he’s never seen them before and somehow her hair has gotten more enticing, more perfect when it’s been messed up just a bit.

“Cameron?”

Uses his name with that accent.

Saying it like no one in his life has ever said it.

He shakes his head at her, letting her know this is over, letting her know that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but he was just so weak because she was in pain, and then she relaxed under his fingertips as he worked to heal her, pressed his heel into her, eased away blisters and burning, the same way she did for him, and her touch, her fingers, delicate but dept, so cold yet warmed him perfectly.

Felt better than amazing against his skin—felt right against his skin.

Was weak because the way she looked up at him, speaking so lowly of herself when she’s accomplished so much, when she’s been dragged through hell, and just keeps bouncing around with a hop in her step and a grin on her face and a glittering barrette in her hair. She could complain about so much constantly, she could pour her heart out to any therapist at the SGC, she could use any number of things that have happened to her as a sob story—maybe Jackson wouldn’t fall for it at this point, but he’s pretty sure—he knows he would—but she doesn’t.

She keeps it all bundled away because she’s ashamed of herself.

Thinks that she wasn’t strong and that’s why all the bad things happened.

Thinks that she wasn’t smart, and that’s why all the bad things happened.

Thinks that she trusted the wrong person and got screwed over and that’s why all the bad things happened.

She looked up at him with those huge, expressive eyes drowning in sadness, having to admit she’s worth so little, and he needed her to know that she’s worth her weight in gold to him.

But he’s not the right guy, in this circumstance or any other.

He’s just a guy with an itch and she just happened to be around to scratch it with.

He’s military and has been for so long that it’s who he is and kissing her was a big fuck up—but man, did it ever feel good.

“We—” sighs because this isn’t going to go over well at all. Vala may be tough as nails, may be self-sacrificing to a fault, but she’s drama, and although she thinks lowly of herself, she wants everyone else to hold her in high regard. Telling her this is going to set her off, and she’s probably going to give him the silent treatment—did it once to Jackson when he told her purple wasn’t really her color and didn’t speak to him for days. “We can’t do this.”

Her lips twitch, and he thinks she might cry. If she cries, he doesn’t know what to do, because he can’t handle crying women to begin with. If she cries, he’s going to break, and he can’t write down in a mission report that they had sex on a living ship because she cried, and he panicked.

But to his surprise her lips twitch into a grin, it’s not exactly a happy grin, more rueful, the words sort of fall out of the side of her mouth, “I know.”

“What—” He flinches, knows his face must be real attractive right now with hunched eyebrows and squinting eyes because he’s completely lost, and it’s not just the semi-hard problem in his pants because he got to touch her hip—the hip from his dreams, it was like meeting a celebrity. “What do you mean.”

“I know we can’t, how did Daniel put it—” She cocks her head, trying to think of the proper phrasing probably, and comes up with “—‘fraternize’?”

He should agree with her, thank her for being professional where he wasn’t, should shake her hand, call it a day, go to the showers before he remembers he’s on a living ship, and just scream from frustration—but he doesn’t. “Why were you and Jackson talking about fraternizing.”

“When my apparent attempts at flirtations kept going unrequited, I questioned Daniel about the matter, and he told me it was strictly against military policy to partake in sexual activities with anyone from the same team.”

Her words all make perfect sense.

He can picture the conversation, her draped over the corner of Jackson’s desk, Jackson paying more attention to the computer screen than whatever charisma she was giving off. But he doesn’t understand, because despite understanding the words completely, and the words being completely from Vala and valid, it doesn’t seem like something she would do. “So, you just gave up?”

“On Daniel, yes.” She snuggles deeper into the fur blanket, wraps her bare arms around it to hold it to her chest and he tries not to look. “What’s that Tau’ri saying? ‘No sense in beating a flaccid m—”

He fails at not looking, but then to make it more obvious at the comprehension of her words, he whips his head to the side, wrenching his eyes closed. “Dead horse. No sense in beating a dead horse.”

“Well, whatever you’re beating, there’s no sense in chasing after unreciprocated feelings of desire.”

“But that’s all bullshit,” laughs scornfully, he doesn’t understand why this conversation has taken the direction it has, or why he feels so offended at her words. Maybe part of him wanted her to be disappointed that they couldn’t continue making out, because part of him definitely was. “You flirt with Jackson all the time. In front of people. In front of state officials.”

“All playful banter meant to unnerve him, which it does quite well I might add.” She waves away his accusation, leaning back on the bed, her arms still hugging the blanket to her chest. “To clarify, it’s far more entertaining to pursue who actually shows interest in me.”

And there it is, the reason he’s so pissed.

Sometimes he wants to believe she’s changed, needs to believe it because he’s seen her be so different, but maybe she’s just really good at acting, she spent almost ten months in the Ori galaxy and none of them were the wiser.

Maybe she’s just great at the long cons.

“So, is that what flirting with me is? A form of entertainment?”

“While I do say or do things to unnerve you, it is hardly for my entertainment.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“I play off you, Darling.”

“You want to be a little more direct here?”

“You kissed me, Cameron.”

“Yeah.” Nods, and stands, his thigh trembling from overexertion, from dealing with so much shit in the last five hours. How did he let himself be wrapped up in this? “And now I’m regretting it.”

She sits again, grunting as she pushes herself back up against the bed, her eyes wrenching closed in pain, her bad arm going limp again. She looks like shit, exhausted and probably starting to get a bit of the pain back, because he is too. But not tired enough to not rub in, “you kissed me.”

“Yeah, because I thought you were different,” shouts at her because he can’t take all the shit that’s happening. Dealing with her straying on that planet, and flirting with squid-faced men, trying to sacrifice herself, not telling him about her injury, and then using the stone to just zap back to the SGC.

Five hours.

Five hours all this shit happened, and he’s concerned for her—then angry because she just does whatever she wants, apparently with anyone willing.

“I am different.”

“No, I thought you were, the way you take care of the baby, the way you were actually working with me instead of going off and doing your own thing.” Marches to the door, waving his hand over the sensor to open it. “You may not be stealing anymore, but you’re still just as selfish as ever.”

“Cameron.” Her good arm quakes as she pushes herself from sitting to standing, her body teetering and he doesn’t care if she takes a dive. She’s so ready to sacrifice herself, might as well let her take care of herself to because he’s done being her plaything. She stoops a bit, leaning back against the bed, and her voice rasps, “I have changed.”  

The doors whoosh open.

He’s done being anything but a leader.

Has to figure out how to get home, because the longer he’s stuck on this ship with her, the angrier he’s going to get.

Steps out into the hall, planning on examining the device. Hell, maybe he’ll put the stone in and get to go home for a bit.

But he makes sure his last words to her sting.

“You can call me Mitchell.”

Chapter Text

“Aeryn.”

He coaxes, uses the placating tone she hates as it always means something worse is happening, something more uncontrollable than the tumbling landscape of her nightmare. Presses his nose tightly against her cheek as she rouses in another frelling white room, greeted by beyond blinding fake light.

The stars.

What did her star look like again?

A fraction of her wants to protest the blatant placation of him petting a hand over the back of her head, but the majority of her fights that it is soothing her, and her constant chest repetitions settle.

“S’okay, Baby,” mumbles as he continues nuzzling into her.

She brings her hand to cradle the side of his face, closing her eyes into the sensation of him, of his breath hot against her skin—noting for the first time in almost a week that she doesn’t feel ill at the temperature. “What happened?”

“English.” His grin grows against her cheek. He taps a kiss to her skin and bows back so they can view one another as they converse. How he knows these things comfort her is still shocking. He tucks a piece of hair out of her face, keeping his smile tight, fake, for show, and she knows something larger is conspiring. “You’re speaking English again, that’s good.”

“When was I—” Pushes herself to sit up in the flat cot, but the weight of her own body crashing down on her left side hits her hard as a fist, knocking the air from her lungs and drying the words in her mouth.

“Easy. Easy.”

Again placating.

Reaching around her to the metal frame of the bed and snapping something in place, pushing the top of her body into a sitting position along with the mattress. His hand touches the side of her face again, gritty, calloused fingertips over her cheek and she longs to be back in her dream before it curdled. To be aboard Moya with him, Deke, and—

“Does that feel okay?”

She doesn’t answer him, doesn’t look into the softness of his eyes because there is no pinch. There is no pressure. Swallows, narrowing her eyes over the dull ache in her side, shifts her thighs to stir up some movement, hoping with a hollow chest to feel something, to feel anything, any sign.

But there is nothing.

There is only emptiness.

“Is that okay, Baby?”

The quaking in her chest grows larger with each inhalation, the inability to find something so previously plaguing, so forced to the background, so suddenly there and then just as quickly whisked away. The same emptiness she felt on Katratzi under the malice hand of Scarrans, under heat rays and mind-altering drugs.

The pain, the fear, and one prayer.

“Aeryn, breathe.” It’s a command, his hand gripping hard on her shoulder, his face pushing itself into her vision as it clears from the white beyond him. Her fingers twitch at her side in memorandum, phantom pains striking through them, a greater pain than giving birth, a greater fear than carrying a body that was just inside hers, protected and safe, on the outside, a mewling newborn ensconced against her chest in a warzone.

“Talk to me.”

An explosion, one she predicted in some sense, the sibilant sound of escaping air, her constant griping of the heat being excessive and the human’s refusal to correct the situation, the temperature, the exchange.

Her sacrifice once again, her, a piece of her, paused but living, was living, ceased living.

“Aeryn, say anything.”

His fingers slip between hers as they grasp blindly at the air, still twitching, still seeking to find herself between galaxies, between wars, between families.

His exhale is palpable, hot, sticky, full of concern and his left eye twitches as he scratches at the back of his head.

Aeryn. Hurt?

The Sebacean is basic, his accent is horrible, but she can make out the words because he knows his vernacular in English. Sebacean itself is an abstract language with words holding meaning only in specific conversational context, as a militaristic race it makes pertinent knowledge harder to cultivate for enemy forces.

But the Sebacean itself is calming, grounding, placating. Her mother tongue not spoken to her under friendly pretenses without the aid of translator microbes in over a solar cycle.

Not since Crais.

Aeryn. Hurt. Side.

Side?

He tries to translate the word, to calculate meaning specific to them. With her uninjured arm, she takes his hand, and places it delicately against her side, the largeness of it engulfing, the warmth oddly offering relief as she sighs into his touch.

Side. Hurt?

Yes.

His thumb strokes over the t-shirt, over the multiple wires she’s now noticed are running from her body, attached to what appears to be a screen depicting a parabolic graph and a readout of numbers which she assesses equate to her basic functions.

Female. Want. Test.

Her mouth sours as she slants her head, unsure of what she heard. His frelling accent is so thick.

Repeat.

Female. Want. Test.

Shakes her head, pressing his hand into her side tighter as she shifts her weight again and the pain flares up, gripping into her lungs. “Just speak English, John.”

His huff is meant to be jovial; she knows it is, but it’s more of a scoff. They’re both growing so tired here. So old and pained. “The doctor wants to do a scan.”

“No scans.”

“Not a full one.” His hand replaces under her arm and helps shift her so her injured flank is raised. “Just a scan of here.” Fingers curve around her side again and she feels the disconnection within herself, not just the lack of pinch and pressure, but the broken pieces. “To make sure there’s no internal damage.”

“No sc—”

“Aeryn.” The caress of her cheek is so tender, meant to distract, meant to settle, of course meant to placate, but his expression betrays him, and no longer does he keep the genial visage of her joking husband. His eyes are shimmering, hiding, and he doesn’t know—couldn’t—but he does. “For me.”

Cannot give him affirmation, but can not turn away from his broken composition, injury not withstanding, his timidness is problematic, doing the opposite of placating her, riling her up in panic. But his thumb strums across her cheek again and his eyes cycle down to her abdomen, grief twitching his lips, wetting his eyes, and he throws his gaze to the dozens of numbers on the monitor, watching her parabolic waves, free thumb hooking into his lower lip. “For me.”

*

She submits to the scan, just the scan of her area of impact, offering him what little solace she can. Lays on her side as the female doctor with the hardened face holds a portable device apparently shooting rays into her body in order to show a simulation of her internals.

When John questions the doctor about it, she says it’s technology from the ass guards.

After a few minutes the doctor sighs, pausing the device. “You’ve broken two ribs and cracked a third, but I’m not seeing anything indicative of internal damage.”

John breathes out in relief, hot against her fingers fanning within his own. He places a brief kiss against her palm, and his expression hasn’t changed, still bothered and disjointed. “Should we ask her to scan and see?”

Respects him too much to play stupid on the subject. Doesn’t know how he found out—perhaps her in lapse of heat delirium—but she owes him at least a dialogue. “It would be too small to see.”

Yet he still holds her hand, keeps her in his grasp, unlike last time when he pushed her away for refusing to hold a conversation until he refused it as well. Dire circumstances change reactions. They’re all they have here, and they have apparent ample time in which to discuss the conception and termination of their second child.

“Can you see on a cellular level with that thing?”

“Not yet. Colonel Carter is working with Doctor Lee to make modifications that can assess medical issues on a cellular level but—”

“That doesn’t help.” His grip becomes tighter as his words grow more emotional, less stoic.

“Can we—” She shifts, her body aching from remaining stagnant, with the weight of her all on one side, but also to see if she can distract him as he did with her, his gentle caresses versus the pain visible on her face when her ribs contract with movement.

He helps settle her back against a pillow he’s placed behind her which alleviates the pressure in her side by creating a different stance and weight distribution.

Finally, she manages to hiss out, “can we have a moment alone please?”

The doctor nods, slipping out of the room, and shutting the door soundlessly behind her.

John is still leaning over her, adjusting the pillow, and she notes the injury on his shoulder for the first time. A gash deep within his skin blanketed by a clear gel which she assumes aids in reconstruction of skin and cleanliness of the wound. Her fingers drag over it, and his shoulders tense, not in pain, but because she’s tickled him.

“Your shoulder.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Did you—”

Aeryn.

Her name in Sebacean stops further physical or conversational prodding. He ducks his head beside hers, his nose pressed into his cheek as he inhales deeply, his skin growing hot, trembling and she can tell he’s fighting to keep his broken pieces together as she is.

“I only knew for two days.” Pets the back of his neck as she speaks words that spoil in her mouth and numb her tongue. Staring at the monitor, the same parabolic process, the same scaling numbers.

“When?”

“The day you were cleared for duty—”

“No.” Shakes his head, pulling back from her touch, his eyes red and she holds his gaze out of respect, but it harms her to witness him like this, to know she is the sole cause. “When could we—with Deke we haven’t really been getting much handsy time—”

“Except in the shower, and in the tub, and in the bed and—”

“Here?” Pulls further from her, a single tear streak down his cheek reflects in the white light, among the metal and screens. “It happened here?!”

“I’m sorry, I should have—”

“No. I mean—it doesn’t really matter now.” Settles again, sitting on the side of the bed, his hand on her thigh warming through the sheet and blanket. “It’s just—that’s quick.”

“It happens quick, John.”

He grins, rueful, collecting her hand again, playing with her fingers. “No, I mean quick to know.”

Removes her hand from his, not in malice, but folds down the blankets to touch where the pinch originated, where all she feels is empty. “I suppose I recognize the feeling now.”

Leaning forward, he places a chaste kiss against her forehead, re-establishing his love for her in a simple gesture, reinforcing that he is present and comprehending and overtly worried. His hand drops, at first covering hers, then the sliver of free skin. “Does it hurt—”

And like depressing a button or toggling a switch, the pinch, the pressure, returns to the same spot, a spark igniting a flame, the warmth of his hand awakening. She scrambles up the bed, the pain flaring in her side paling compared to the thumping of her heart, the beeping of the monitor.

“What?” Retracts his hand as if he’s burnt, reaching to help her fully sit up, his words jumbling and falling from his mouth. “Are you okay. What—”

“It’s back.”

“What’s back.”

Snatches his drifting hand, trying to find the origin of what he thinks is her pain, and places it back against the sliver of her skin. “They’re back.”

Wants to know if he’s even bothered looking for her.

Doesn’t know if he has, or if he even cares anymore.

Doesn’t know what she did wrong.

He’s a leader—the team leader—and she simply followed his lead, his hands, his lips, the comfort of his warm body undulating against her, his intent growing tantalizingly hard, and she never tires of seeing the physical manifestation of her effect on men.

He grew upset at her unchaste nature, yet he must have known. After all, she was a God of sex for decades. Did he think she remained chaste then? Did he think she’s spent three and a half years tucked away under a mountain like a fictional princess—his moniker of choice for her—and not engage in extra curricular activities?

She has desires, needs, and quite frankly, her choice of pastimes dwindles once the members of SG-1 return to their homes. There are only so many programs available on the television, only so many magazines she can read and reread, only so many shopping sprees she can entertain herself with online before Daniel cancels his credit card.

Three and a half years and her opinion, her ideas are just starting to be taken seriously.

Among a team of seasoned and decorated heroes, military personnel, warriors, and intellects, she felt—feels—invisible, overlooked and malnourished. So instead she flourishes in the physical contact, under the hands and lips and other body parts, of willing privates eager to please her, to give her a run for her money—and her breath—between the sheets.

Regardless of what he thinks of her or doesn’t—although he must find her some modicum of attractive to kiss her, in that manner and for that long before letting his strict rearing seize control again—they’re going to need to work together, in other ways instead of between the sheets, in order to find a way back.

As much as she likes it here, bonding with the other residences of Mayo, enjoying seeing the stars up close once again, the freedom that empty space has to offer, the vastness in comparison to the same gray walls and the same concrete flooring, this is not home.

No matter how rewarding it is to care for a child that she did not birth, but has her eyes, knowing he finds safety and solace in her arms, knowing that he doesn’t judge her for her years spent as Qetesh, or the list of air force privates she’s been entangled with, or the fact that after three years, she still has to reroute her brain not to snatch pretty items or con naïve people.

Knowing that if she raised him, she would be able to explain her entire part of the story, and perhaps someone would finally fully understand plight after plight that’s befallen her and let her know that she’s not horrible, that she has to do the things she does in order to survive because no one has ever taken care of her before without wanting payment or without having an ulterior motive.

No—this could never be her home.

She hasn’t seen Mitchell in what she believes has been half a day, which wouldn’t mean anything to her, nor be out of the ordinary were they back on Earth, but he’s taken the batch of ointment and her burns are starting to get more inflamed and tightening up her movements again with intermittent bursts of hot pain.

Came to Chiana’s room to seek out the old woman, whose intentions appear to be altruistic in nature, yet she knows she would feel more comfortable if Mitchell had accompanied her. What’s troubling is, she’s afraid if she actually managed to find him on this enormous ship, and implored that she only wanted the ointment, or that she was a little trepidacious of approaching the old woman, he would accuse her of lying and their relationship would fall into greater shambles.

She stays put beside Chiana with Deke noisily sucking from the green food pouch, grunting every because he feeds too fast. She adjusts the child in her lap, so he doesn’t choke, then glances to her unconscious companion, whose side and neck have been patched up. She remains still underneath a metallic blanket, and completely uninvolved in the one-sided conversation they’re having.

“I still can’t believe he actually took the ointment.” Shakes her head in disapproval, partly for emphasis in just how disappointed she is in the Colonel. There’s only a beeping attached to a three-dimensional graph of what she assumes are Chiana’s vitals, chiming in on her monologue.

When she folds over the top of the pouch pushing more food into Deke’s mouth, he grunts again, his expression souring, and as she readjusts him, a portion of the skin on her back splits open, feeling much like the dryness that plagues her hands when they gate to a tundra planet. Her skin used to be beautiful, rich, soft, free of most scars and stains, yet even before the shot started masticating her skin, if she looks closely enough, she can still make out the jagged white lines of stretch marks across her navel.

“What’s worst is, he prides himself on being so chivalrous—offering me modesty while rubbing the ointment into my side, sleeping on the couch instead of his own bed when we visited his lovely parents—but he took the bloody ointment with him, when he’s aware the injuries I sustained are far worse than—”

“She can not hear you.” The old woman startles her, shuffling through the doorway, chewing on what looks to be a bootlace.

“I don’t think that matters, no one listens to me very much anyway.” Settles herself, limiting her movements as she retrieves the pouch from Deke’s weakening suction, and tosses it to the floor for one of the horseshoe crabs to deal with.

“No, you misunderstand me.” The old woman has a little hustle, a little jig in her step as she takes a quick glance at Chiana’s vitals and then turns to her, the bootlace hanging from between her lips. “She has been fed many narcotics in order to keep her sedated during the healing process. Nebari have resilient skin but it needs to heal in the correct manner.”

“Speaking of—” she stands carefully, keeping her back as straight as possible to not stretch the skin lest more of it break. “Would you happen to have any more of that ointment?”

“Hmmm.” The old woman twirls the lace around her finger, tugging it down before ripping a chunk off and chewing it harshly, wildly. With a mouth full of black fabric torn into tiny pieces, she speaks, “I just gave a large jar to the colonel, after you returned from Valdun—”

“Yes, but he seems to have sequestered it.”

“I’m sorry.” The old woman’s face takes on an expression, like she knows the sordid details of their fondling session, and the bitter words spoken afterwards. “But the concoction needs to sit for almost a solar cycle to be potent enough to deal with this level of injury.”

As the old woman speaks, as if perfectly timed, a scalding pain flares up in the arm underneath Deke, causing her to fumble, but not drop the baby. The old woman moves close, as close as she was during their debacle in the kitchen, but her arms gently take Deke, he remains calm as she flips him against her chest, using on hand to cradle his bottom and one hand to trace the blemishes on her arm. “That seems painful.”

“It is.”

“Can you not simply ask the colonel to borrow the salve? He presents himself as a—”

“I know how he presents himself,” she snaps, immediately trying to hide that she’s losing motion of her arm, more ashamed at what she now has to explain. “He no longer cares about—”

“Ah.” Noranti hushes her, raising an index finger in the air, and then as Deke fusses, uses her hand to clap against his back to burp him. “I’ve seen the way Crichton observes Aeryn and I’ve seen the way the colonel observes you. There is no identifiable difference.”

Shakes her head, turning away intent on retrieving the fur blanket she brought with her because the ship is always so cold, and returning to her room to hopefully fall asleep and awake with a jar of ointment within arm’s reach. “The only reason Mitchell observes me at all is to make sure I’m not mucking up—”

But Noranti tips her chin up, not restraining her in anyway, merely to bring her gaze to see the validity in her words. “There is no difference.”

“Well, if this is how Crichton treats his wife, it’s no wonder they’re arguing all—”

“You haven’t trusted my words in the past.” Noranti steps to the side, leaving the door to the room free. “But I plead with you to listen now. Just approach him, he will not turn you away.”

*

She doesn’t know why she listens.

Shouldn’t really, but perhaps everything she’s been through has mottled her perception of things..

Sure enough, he’s standing next to the table in the command room, one arm crossed over his chest, the other with his hand pitched up underneath his chin, nodding to himself. Despite their falling out, despite their argument and the harsh words he spoke to her so quickly they had to be true, she smiles, because she can see him trying to work out a problem he knows nothing about.

His extent with the device goes as far as him lobbing it into the oncoming kawoosh in order to bring her and Daniel home safely. Has never inserted stones, or brainstormed how to remove them, has never been himself in someone else’s body and this innocence, combined with his need to formulate a plan, his need to be the hero, even to a consort such as her, is still endearing.

“You know, you actually have to put the stone into the slot in order to activate the device.” Doesn’t know why she chooses gentle ribbing as her way of interacting with him. Perhaps if she chooses not to acknowledge her trampled feelings, then he can forget about the way he treated her, and they can continue on as if nothing happened until he does it again.

It’s generally the way her and Daniel’s relationship works—friends until she becomes too irritating, or he speaks too harsh of words, and then they separate for a day, only to meet up at the regular time the next day, chatty, pithy, as if nothing happened. It’s not the healthiest way to be treated by someone, but in her history with men, it is more than acceptable.

“What do you want, Vala?”

But apparently Colonel Mitchell remains a man scorned, although she’s still unsure what exactly she did wrong. Usually the remedy for this is to cut straight to her point, use as few words as possible in order to garner what information she wants from him.

“I came looking for the salve—”

“I left it for you,” he interrupts, his attention not turning away from the device. He may even turn himself more away from her as an abrupt way to end the conversation, which he seems to have a creative flair for.

“No—” stretches the word because she can’t stretch her arm to reach out and just slap him—only once, just to stick him back in this reality where, yes, they have been stuck on Mayo for a week caring for a baby and dwindling crew members, but also have incurred acid burns on portions of their bodies. “I looked and it wasn’t in the room when I woke—”

“I left it there, Vala—”

“But it isn’t—”

“Why would I be standing here with my shoulder on fire if I didn’t leave it for—” he snarls at her, whipping around on the spot, his eyebrows hard and his face very red.

Only the moment he sees her, it wipes clean, vacant for less than a second and then falls into the classic concerned colonel he’s always played. “You’re bleeding.”

“I know.”

Only she doesn’t know the extent of it, knew she cracked the skin on her back open, but there’s a rivulet of blood, thankfully small, ribboning down her arm.

Without asking, the modesty used up, he tugs the blanket from her back, ignoring her protesting gasp, and sort of pushes her head forward so he can assess the damage. “Mitchell, what—”

“Get back to the room.” Marches by her, though his stride is wider, more anxious than his normal air force gait. She watches him disappear, confused as to what is happening, and where he is going, the muscles in her arm seizing back to her chest and half of the blanket dropping from her back.

After less than a second he reappears in the door, wrenching her around the wrist.

“Vala, I said—”

Unfortunately, he chose the incapacitated hand.

She hollers in pain, similar to the way he did when he was first shot.

The feel of solid muscle being forced forward, the acid on flesh burning and rotting. Immediately, he withdraws his hand, eyes wide, and then his fingers start trembling at her reaction.

She wants to shout at him, let him know he should remember that’s her severely debilitated arm by now, that he’s an idiot, but all she manages is a shaky gasp.

Expects him to yell, to tell her that she should’ve taken care of her own injury hours ago—she tried, there was no ointment, there was nothing she could do, even conquered her fear of Noranti, of him, in order to help herself, but all she did was fail, all he did was hurt her more, whether it was intentional or not.

But his hands slide around her cheeks, holding her head up from where she’s doubled over, panting from pain. “I’m sorry,” speaks it directly to her, staring her straight in the eyes. Again, she wants to protest this apology or unexpected intimacy is not helping her pain, but she finds her breath calming as she feels his exhalations against her skin. “I’m really sorry.”

Before she can answer or communicate in anyway, before she can voice what she feels is allowable and what is not concerning intimacy and her body since the last time she gave him an inch he ran a mile which is always appreciated—but then he switched just as quickly to demonizing her—he hefts her in his arms, her bad arm, her bad side tucked into his chest so that his fingers don’t pierce or bruise the already delicate skin.

It’s weird and surprising, but on the third bounce of his gait, they’re halfway down the hall. She shifts against him, the wetness in her back, the laceration in her skin being aggravated with his steps, and he adjusts her, the same way she adjusts Deke, so calming, so carefully.

Must lose consciousness or her attention span for a moment, because when she wakes, she’s on her side in their bed, peppermint wafting through her nose, and a different blanket—not her preferred one—tucked up around her chest.

He’s sitting on the bed beside her, stretching her bad arm, massaging the muscles, his brows knit as he works earnestly in the silence.

“It doesn’t hurt any longer.”

Must startle him because his hands freeze before he returns her arm gently to her chest. “I just wanted to make sure.”

“Well, you’ve done a bang-up job.” She shifts to reclining on her back, ensuring the blanket is kept in place for his sake, and hers—she doesn’t need another lecture. “I currently have no pain.”

He nods, his mouth tight, the face he makes when he wants to interject something, to ask something, to say something, but can’t bring himself to do it for some reason, a face he doesn’t make that often, and usually only to General Landry.

He starts to raise from the bed, and she can see by the collar of his shirt, he’s applied more salve to himself. “I’ll leave you to sleep it off.”

She watches him leave, the door and privacy curtain engaged in his wake, and can’t explain why she wanted to ask him to stay.

Chapter Text

“Who do you think is in there?”

His fingers draw over her skin, still feeling accomplished when he manages to illicit a shudder from light tickles. His hardcore, ex-peacekeeper, ass-kicking wife is sensitive to the tickles only in a direct line from hip to hip.

“Another hybrid, most likely.” Jitters her hips to knock his hand away, and when he plays dumb, acting like he doesn’t get the intention, she plucks it up by the wrist and directs it back to him.

Chuckles at her a second, still snuggling up beside her, happy that they can actually canoodle without her being fully uncomfortable—exempting two and a half ribs of course—before her jab actually sinks in. “Wait—what do you mean ‘most likely’.”

She relaxes onto her back, half underneath him and his fingers. “There is the issue of seven years—I can still retain an embryo from—”

“Do not—” he points at her, catching the crack of a smile she tries to hide “—start with that dren again, Aeryn. Last time—”

“Was more dangerous and complicated.” Tugs his pointing finger to her lips, kissing the tip before nuzzling her cheek against his palm.

It relaxes him, makes him unclench and settle back into the mattress beside her again, his fingers caressing across her cheek and softly into her hair, enjoying the slight pressure she puts as she leans against him, closing her eyes, sighing.

“This time—”

“This time will be simple and safe.” The words are a bit of a drawl because she’s falling asleep.

He’s so good at relaxing his pregnant wife that she falls asleep.

So good, that he wakes up hiding, snoozing babies.

“Why’s that?” Asks as he leans forward, pecking the hilt of her shoulder softly.

She smiles, her fingers tickling at the back of his neck. “Because we’re not releasing the egg from stasis for at least two solar cycles.”

“Two cycles?” Ducks back trying to gauge if this is another example of Aeryn’s wit which consists of just saying things that freak him out and then laughing. “Honey, isn’t that being a little—”

“I held Deke for over a solar cycle.”

“Yeah and look how that ended up.”

“We have a beautiful son.”

“Not before he spent a quadmester in the belly of the beast, with us scattered at the bottom of the damn ocean—”

Every time his voice raises an octave, her drops one, keeping the calm, continuing to rub at his neck while teetering on the edge of sleep. “We’ll just have to be more careful this time.”

“Last time you were an assassin.”

That gets him an eyebrow arched his way, because they still haven’t fully discussed what exactly she did.

“And you made a wormhole weapon.”

Her voice is a little harder, more edged, and he knows that after all the heat, all the explosions, all the broken bones and slashed shoulders, that he’s gotta ease up a bit. There’s no way to even release the baby now, so why worry about it—because he has to worry about it, just like he worried about Deke, even after he knew he wasn’t fully his.

He leans forward, pecking a kiss onto her forehead, which she thankfully still accepts. “We’ll be more careful this time.”

She hums in agreement, her hand slowing on the back of his neck as he dips down, even with the sliver of skin peaking out from between where her t-shirt and sweatpants don’t meet. He’s cautious with his hand at first, not knowing if she’s in the mood to be touched, but when he glances up, she’s smiling.

“You honestly don’t wanna know who’s in there?”

“Not badly enough that I want another newborn when we’re struggling to raise the one we already have.”

“Well, they say three is the magic number.”

“Yes, but I don’t think they intended for us to count quite so fast.” Her voice starts to get that edge to it, but it’s meant more to end the conversation than as a warning.

Again, he nods, surrendering the conversation to her, as he places his cheek flat against her stomach, feeling her twitch from the tickling of the scruff he’s gonna have to shave off before he goes through the gate again. Wouldn’t want to embarrass the team as they sit in front of another cave for six hours.

“I don’t think we’re struggling with Deke.” Beneath him, her stomach bounces as a dry, laugh escapes her. “What?”

Her fingers still dance across his cheek and over his neck, though. “We’re not even in the same galaxy as him, John.”

“So, we’re a little locationally challenged.” He tucks his chin against the jut of her hip—the birthmark one, not the scar one—glancing up at her, even though her eyes are closed. “At lot of first-time parents deal with worse.”

Now her hand stops, tenses and then falls slack to her side—she’d probably try to flip over if he wasn’t laying over the bottom half of her body. So, he breaks from preening over their itty-bitty baby that’s already good with a disappearing act, and crawls up the bed to lay beside her, facing her, his hand stroking up and down her arm. “What’s wrong?”

“I just want to be with him.” While admitting it to him, she ducks her head in against his arm, either hiding from her answer, or from his response.

“I do too.” He wants to let her know both are okay. “But until we can, at least we have look-a-likes that can.”

“It should be us, John.” She tries to push herself up, manages too, but strains her voice through the pain of broken ribs, “We’re not there to discover things with him. What if he’s sensitive to heat? What if—”

Places gentle fingers on her shoulder to direct her back towards the bed to relax. They have to meet with the team in the morning if they’re ‘up to it’ to talk about the current state of the zen stones and the fact that Aeryn brought interdimensional garbage back with her. “Everyone on that ship is going to—”

“Who? Two humans uneducated in Sebacean anatomy? Chiana who is most likely still unconscious? Stark who no one has mentioned—”

“You know Chiana, she’s gonna be up and slinking around there in a matter of arns—” says it more for his relief than hers because if he keeps saying the words, maybe they’ll come true, like some incantation “—Stark will help if he’s needed. Pilot has our backs, and Noranti is one hell of a babysitter.”

“He’s our son.”

“I know, I know.” Pecks her on the forehead again, though this time she isn’t as into it. He rests back against the pillow, and collects her hair from over her shoulder, beyond relived that she’s a normal temperature. “We’re gonna be back there in no time. Back to midnight feedings and his nonstop crying, and when we finally get used to the chaos, when Deke is walking and talking and flushing our comms—” he drops his hand to the exposed sliver of skin again, tucking his fingertips under her shirt and against her stomach “—then we’ll have this one.”

“Can you promise me that?”

“Done.”

And he kisses her, because he can—he doesn’t know why he doesn’t do it more often, constantly, as he leans into her, aware of her ribs and ready to stop at her first sharp intake of breath, but until then, he lets his fingers splay over her skin, his lips play over hers.

Right around that time the first sharp inhale happens—it’s his fault, because his hand slipped down to pull her shirt up, and he must’ve traced over the wrong ribs. Nudges her shirt back down, the fire stoked between then slowly simmering as he glances behind him—an action that still hurts his saran wrapped shoulder—and notes that it’s time for their pills.

He can take the serious stuff, stuff with an actual effect, but because of the stowaway, Aeryn can only take the over-the-counter crap that barely does anything.

“Something wrong?” Her skin still has that flush he loves trailing, following like a map, and he licks his lower lip out of habit—and hunger.

“Nothing.” Kisses her cheek and shifts to get a little more comfortable in his own pants—well not his pants, but the pants this Earth’s military has lent him. “It’s just time for our pills.”

“Those pills don’t do anything.” Her hand trails his back as he sits at the side of the bed.

He has to remind himself reasons this can’t happen now. She’s hurt. He’s hurt. They need to be rested for a meeting to get home. They have a newborn. They have one ready to be put in the oven when the time is right. They don’t need—

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask.” Stands from the side of the bed, because if he doesn’t, whatever happens next is literally his fault. Doesn’t look back at her because he knows the scow—the glare she’s giving him—so he continues to try to talk nonchalantly while bolting to the bathroom to grab a cup of water and their meds, addressing himself in the mirror, and taking a sec to check out his shoulder. Yep, still wrapped fresh. “I can’t knock you up again, can I?”

“Knock up?” Her eyebrows are knit when he comes back, not really sure why this is an awkward conversation to have, they’re married after all—maybe that’s it, he probably should’ve asked her sooner. He should already know.

She accepts the pills and the cup from him, throwing back two with a gulp before handing him back the cup. “Is it an idiom? I don’t—”

“I can’t get you pregnant again, right?”

“You already have.”

“No, I mean—” he downs his pain reliever in front of his pregnant wife, who is in more pain than him, who can’t have the pill, because he knocked her up. “We can’t have two potential Crichtons in waiting?”

“John.” She sighs into her hand. “Without the microbes your phrases—”

“Can I get you pregnant while you’re already pregnant?”

“What?”

“If we have sex, is it possible for there to be a second paused baby? A third?”

“Oh.” Thinks she nods because she understands him, but then she does it again and he realizes she just wants the rest of the water, which he hands back to her. “No, my body will only hold one fertilized egg per donor.”

“Per donor?”

She gulps down the rest of the water and hands him back the cup to take care of apparently, then shifts back up the bed, careful of her bad side, and tucks her feet under the sheets. “Monogamous relationships are nonexistent with Peacekeepers.”

“Yeah, I know that. I wanna hear about this ‘per donor’ thing.”

“If I had one or several other recreation partners, I could potentially become pregnant and withhold an embryo by each.” His face must turn bitter because despite whatever pain she’s still feeling, or whatever vendetta she’s holding against him for stopping their playtime—partly in fear of the crop of children they might make—she holds a slanted grin for him, finding the jest in a situation he doesn’t even want to think about.

She gestures for him, and he reluctantly leans over so she can place a quick kiss on his lips, nudging his nose a bit with hers. “I only want one recreation partner, John.”

When he only grunts in response, because he honestly doesn’t want to think about what it was like on a command carrier, what her previous relationships were like, if she ever considered having a kid before his.

She holds that grin and taps his cheek twice. “Go return the glass and urinate so we can get some sleep.”

He grunts again, mostly just to get a rise out of her. She laughs, and taps his cheek harder, then pushes away his shoulder as nuzzles the side of her neck that drives her crazy. “Go.”

He laughs as he retreats to the bathroom because he does have to piss—she knows him that well—dropping the cup on the counter and pulling the threads of comfort he can find right now. Only one baby at a time, she doesn’t want another partner, at least one of their kids is stuck with them now, so they’re easier to protect

Drops trow—or sweats—at the porcelain throne, flipping the lid up and staring at the gray concrete wall as he starts to piss.

It’s easier to protect the kid while she’s pregnant, but she’s gonna be pregnant for at least a year, and his worry last time drove him so insane he took drugs to quell it. Now he’s got to deal with the fact that if someone—someone not of her choice—decides to—and he doesn’t want to think about it, but now that he’s aware of the consequences, he can’t not—if someone ra—

And man is he tired of randomly falling unconscious

The old woman finds him out on that deck Vala spends so much of her time on. He’s a little intimidated by it, just a glass—if glass is even organic—dome protecting him from a universe, from swirls of comet tails and the rings around planets he’s never heard of. Moya’s not moving right now, when he asked, Pilot informed him that she was tired from starbursting away from Valdun and was taking a nap in some cosmic stardust that shimmers like a metallic rainbow.

“Pretty good place to nap.” Speaks first to the old woman, which usually isn’t the case with anyone here, but Vala. Doesn’t feel like he has the authority, even though all of them turn to him to lead, but when he adds up the population of this ship, it’s not really hard to see why.

“I expected you to be back in your chambers with her.” She stands beside him, and she’s holding Deke who stares out at the glittering colors like a cat at a Christmas tree. “I went to return the baby and found her sleeping away her pain.”

“She tell you that?” Holds out his arms to accept the baby, but she keeps the kid tucked against her shoulder.

“She didn’t have to; I could sense her pain through her sleep.”

He doesn’t owe Noranti any explanation, any reason to why he acted how he did, or for what happened between him and Vala—but she stands at about the same height his grandma did before she became bedridden. The height he remembers her being at when he was in high school and would visit her every Sunday just to get away from the farmhouse that was getting more and more cramped with his dad and his mom fighting all the time, and his brother sneaking out and getting brought home by the cops.

The same height she was when he’d help her into the passenger’s seat of the old beat up car she got him for his last birthday, when his parents said they didn’t have it in the budget, and drive her to church in his Sunday best.

The same height as he sat at her waxy kitchen table and accepted macaroon after macaroon because that’s what it felt like when someone loved him unconditionally. Sure, she would preach the bible until she was blue in the face, but she would collect her china plate littered with crumbs, and the soda she gave him in lieu of coffee, and place a hand on his shoulder and ask how he was—a question no one was asking him those days.

The same height and he thinks that he can trust her now.

“I don’t know—” he pauses trying to keep his voice level, trying not to think of the pain on Vala’s face when he grabbed her arm, remembering too late that without the treatment it was incapacitated. How it was the same face she gave him when he told her that he didn’t want her not because it was against protocol, but because if everyone else had had her, it wasn’t special. She wasn’t special. She wasn’t worth his time. “I don’t know why I hurt her.”

“You’ve both been thrust into a very difficult situation.” Noranti’s voice is calm, even, not a whisper, but at a cadence that it’s not judgemental, not harsh.

“Hey, I think we’re doing pretty well despite everything.”

The eye on her forehead closes into wrinkled lids. “You’re both moderately injured, Chiana returned from your excursion severely injured, a marauder is possibly aware of us, and the most progress you’ve made on returning home is switching your partner for three arns.”

“Touché.”

“Not only have your environment and responsibilities changed, but you’re learning things about yourselves, about each other, about how you interact, and despite how it feels natural, you’re both choosing to fight against it.”

“Now that, I’m not so—”

“She adores you, Colonel.” Noranti turns towards him, a wry grin on her gentle face. “She’s happier when she’s around you. From what I’ve gathered, she doesn’t trust easily, but she trusts you.”

Shakes his head, turning his attention back towards the stars and constellations he doesn’t know. Planets that aren’t gas giants or named after Gods no one thought were real but are actually real and not really Gods—classified bullshit that makes him dizzy sometimes, and he can’t share it with anyone. “She doesn’t trust me.”

Amazingly, Noranti blows a raspberry at him—something she must’ve picked up from Crichton—and when Deke starts to fuss, she bounces him a little, settling him down. “She implicitly trusts you.”

“She didn’t even tell me she got shot.”

“She doesn’t want to disappoint you. Your brain was scattered, you had an injury, you were tending to Chiana. I’m willing to wager that you sought solace in the fact that she was unharmed.”

She’s right, he’s not gonna tell her she’s right, but man, old ladies have the wisdom of galaxies.

Sure, his grandma would always spew some biblical passages, but she would always set him straight, let him know the right thing to do and for the right reasons. Noranti is spiritual from what he knows, and despite not being from any religion he’s familiar with, she sees right through his bullshit.

“Colonel.” She places a gentle hand on his bare arm, and she’s warmer than he thought she would be. Remembers his grandma’s paper-thin skin near the end, how she was as white as the hospital sheets, how the hand that touched his shoulder in guidance was wet and cold and could barely squeeze his fingers back. “She seeks you out for safety.”

“She seeks me out because I’m familiar and an easy mark—”

“No.” It’s stern, a scolding for a dog. “She’s comfortable up here, or speaking with Pilot, or visiting Chiana, but think about it. She seeks you out when she needs to feel protected.”

“We’ve been on the same team for years now—”

“Would she do this to any other member? Would she relax with them the way she does with you?”

Tries not to think about it, how she couldn’t sleep from pain, from cramps, from an acid round to the side, from discomfort and disorientation. How she calmed her shifting around in bed as soon as he scooted in behind her, how her skin warmed up when he touched her, how she relaxed and didn’t want him to leave.

Would she be that way with Jackson?

“I said some—” he huffs out another breath because he doesn’t even remember what he said to her, only the tone of it, only the way her beautiful face fell and he was proud he hurt her “—some really bad things to her.”

“Did you apologize?”

“I did, but I don’t think it was clear.”

“If you apologized, she’ll know. She’ll accept.”

“She shouldn’t.” His eyes are teary as he watches the ebb and flow of space dust, of rainbows he’s never seen or will see again. Ones he’ll never be able to describe and won’t be able to share with anyone.  The space is safe, calm, even Deke isn’t making a sound. “I think I did it because she made me feel like nothing to her—and I wanted to do the same.”

“Whatever she did, wasn’t intentional.”

“You don’t know—”

“I do, Colonel.” She holds the baby out for him now, bending her arms to slip Deke into his. He’s warm and coos at the lights. Like he understands the importance of them. She stands beside him, silent, her eye opening to a bright blue, just like the stones and she nods to the baby. “Look what you’re missing out on.”

*

“Hey—” He walks in on her changing her shirt, the salve and the drainage from the blisters probably drenching the material of the old one. The words die in his mouth as he pivots so quickly on his feet that maybe his grandma won’t be that upset.

“Honestly, Mitchell,” she sighs, and he can hear the exhaustion in her voice, hear her footsteps over the floor and he takes a peek to find her in a similar black t-shirt. “You need to learn how to knock.”

“Sorry.” His lips twitch into a lopsided grin and jeez, that kid does look a bit like him if he thinks about it. “I just really need to show you something.”

When he reaches for her hand to guide her through Moya’s hallways, she snatches it up, eyeing his outstretched palm with caution. “Show me what?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Oh, well, if it’s a surprise—” she rolls her eyes at him, turning back to the three-bed bed, and shaking out the blankets before piling them on the ground.

“No, Vala, you’ll love it.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time. Someone needs to wash the—”

He takes a chance, reaching out again, this time grasping her hand as she reaches for the mound of blankets. She doesn’t tug away but gives him an expression that all warning.

He drops her hand, but makes a plea, “it’ll only take a second and you’ll love it. Trust me.”

She observes him for a hot minute, scouring her mouth to the side, and then reaches out a hand to take his own, nodding her head. “Okay.”

*

He makes her keep her eyes closed the entire way up. Would clasp his hands over her eyes if he didn’t think he was already pushing strained boundaries with her. “You gotta keep them closed.”

“At this point, I’m just expecting you to push me through an airlock or something.”

“What?” He stops point blank in the middle of the hallway just outside the observation deck.

To her resolve, she still manages to keep her eyes closed, except now she’s addressing the door, not him. “It’s a joke, Darling.”

“That’s not funny.”

A beat passes where neither says anything, until she relents, her eyes still smashed shut tight. “All right, sorry.”

“No—no, it’s okay.” Grabs her hand again, slowly to not startle her, and opens the door to the room.

The dust is still refracting perfectly, like millions of marbles dancing overhead. He pulls her into the middle of the room, “stay right there.”

Then slips behind her, his hands on her shoulders, and she doesn’t jolt, just waits for him to give her directions. “Okay, open them.”

She does and she blinks back the brightness immediately, but then falls into the same wonder he did, absorbed by simple dancing colors. He follows her careful steps forward, her gaze still above them, her mouth open in awe. “Mitchell, it’s beautiful.”

“It’s stardust, Moya’s taking a nap in it.”

“Moya?”

“Mayo.”

“Oh, how lovely.”

They stop when they meet the glass and when he glances over, she still has the same look of awe, her eyes tracing the flow, the colors mirror off her skin. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

The same feeling of warmth surrounds them, silent despite the constant shifting of the dust. He can’t bring himself to look at her when he speaks, but it’s important that she hear the words. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

“I know you are.”

“I just—” and the words escape him. Can’t really explain how he feels about her because he doesn’t really know. He wants her to be safe, and happy, and when he sees her with that kid his heart just melts because it’s natural.

He’s always served his county, adhered to the rules set by the military, but when he thinks that she could have that with someone else, he gets jealous, angry, says mean things that make him appear the opposite of what he’s feeling.

Her hand clasps around his, her fingers thin and cold and she swings his arm with hers. “I know.”

He needs to do this. Needs to see the happiness on her face. To have happiness himself. Being in the air force, making sacrifices for his country always made him happy, but maybe not anymore.

Maybe something else could make him happier.

His hand cups her cheek, getting her to turn towards him, and he leans him. They’re so close, growing closer until her hand presses into his chest, halting him, not harsh, just making him aware.

“Mitchell—” Her lips plump together in a worried pout, her eyes a little glassy—just swirling lights.

He’s not gonna turn this around on her.

“Not anymore.”

Offers the reassurance before he swoops in, capturing her lips with his own.

Chapter Text

When she blinks awake, her eyes immediately train on the red numbers on the side of John’s bed dictating Earth’s current time. From their routine for the past now nine days, it’s still early in the morning to be up, yet he is not in bed beside her. Carefully, mindful of her ribs, she stretches a hand across to his side, finding the sheet cold.

“John?”

Forces herself up in the bed, at first resting against the concrete wall, ignoring the burning in her chest as she lets her legs fall off the side, her feet chilled by the floor. He was going to relieve himself, and then join her in bed, with the tempered temperature, having him as a source of heat while sleeping is preferable, yet knows by the ache in her bones, that he hasn’t been to bed.

Stabilizes herself on two feet in the darkness of the room, the only light coming from the washroom, which appears empty as she retrieves a sweater with the military insignia from where she discarded it early against a softback chair.

“John?”

The adjacent living quarters is also empty of any sign of her husband, save for the indents on the couch he made while checking the evening televised newscasts, does so every night to make sure this planet runs parallel to his own Earth, and is not another era in the same timeline.

Hesitates only briefly before entering the digits to unlock the door to their cell masquerading as a dormitory, light pouring in the from the hallway momentarily stunning her, causing her to hunch her shoulders away, irritating, but not further injuring her side. Underneath the ache that pulsates with each of her inhalations, is the constant pinch in her abdomen, causing her to grin coyly.

She is permitted very few areas on the military base, as since she isn’t cleared for combat, and will not submit to a full body scan, they still view her warily. The medical unit is where she’s sent to most often, but knows John’s injury wasn’t serious enough for him to be seeking additional treatment, the doctor was hesitant to release her, but again, her husband’s quickness with words and a promise to return her at the first sight of her injury growing worse allowed them to celebrate the reappearance of a little life in private.

The doctor’s lab is off limits for another reason. They never explained the cause of the explosion, only that it had to deal with the unbearable heat, although keeping silent in the medical unit, she learned that the location of the explosion destroyed many internal support columns and was too well planned to be coincidental.

If she wasn’t already on edge from all the incidents she’s incurred since first setting foot in that dreaded white room, knowing that this military has traitors in it’s ranks, that everyone who still hasn’t earned her trust, may not be trustworthy after all is more than stressing.

Instead, as she depresses the button for the elevator, she focuses on the constants. Her husband, the pinch within her, and even the flaring pain of her side. All things she relies on to navigate her, to let her know what is true.

The hallways are bare, John stated they only keep essential personnel on for the graveyard shift—then explained that graveyard meant overnight. Very few people pass her, and all too preoccupied to acknowledge her. Though they haven’t explicitly said as much, she and John know they’re meant to stay in their accommodations at night, although, they can only trust if it’s night through word of mouth.

She hasn’t seen this Earth’s sky yet.

Her journey ends at the only other room she’s been privy to since the humans have decided to treat her with a modicum of trust. A debate room, or debriefing room of sorts, equipped with a long table, and chairs that swivel, which she learned the hard way.

Doesn’t think to look through the window, as her own mind is addled, preoccupied by other matters, then she opens the door to find the doctor, the general, the colonel, the large one who doesn’t speak, and John sitting around the table, apparently in the middle of an important discussion, which she interrupted.

Immediately, everyone ceases speaking, a hush falls over the room as all eyes travel to her, some wide, like the colonel’s who offers her the weakest of smiles with the basis of pity, the doctor looks perturbed by her action, more upset that she interrupted, than anything else, but what’s most disturbing, is that she cannot read the emotion on John’s face. It’s not the mask of his quiet, but dangerous stoicism, or his snarky optimism; if anything, he appears as though to be submitting to his strenuous exhaustion.

“I apologize for the interruption—” she begins her speech slowly, but is purposeful with her tone and timing, not allowing them any time to create false reasons for their early morning meeting, or more so, their reasons for excluding her. Chooses particular words so that they will still not know the strength and level of her English comprehension “—I was wondering where my husband went.”

But the silence continues to befall the room, which is better than being on the receiving end of bold-faced lies. However, it offers her time to think, to reflect on the notion that despite not having a wailing newborn, who could possibly be suffering from the mismanagement of their genetics, that despite being a galaxy away from their precious son for whom they went to war, her husband still sneaks from bed with no pretense to do so.

Perhaps it’s not the idea of a dirty diaper, or a hungry son, or staring into a version of her eyes that could be suffering from heat delirium without them knowing—he’s comforted her several times, stated that the baby was hot, but not fever hot, which is no comfort at all when his tiny brain could be frying in his body.

Perhaps the reason he strays from her is simply that; her.

He stated that after the war, after he forced both sides into a peace treaty he wasn’t there to see signed, that everything was moving too fast for him. That his body and mind still hadn’t adjusted to being in space despite remaining there for several years in a row.

Despite choosing to remain space and with her when giving the chance to return to his own Earth, his own father, sisters, family, and friends. His own blonde human waiting for him with open arms among other things.

Perhaps he didn’t choose to remain with her in space, perhaps he chose to remain in space and she just happened to be there as well.

The distracting pinch wants to support otherwise, that he truly cares for her, for Deke, for whomever is within her as he so eloquently spoke—but knows why he doesn’t help with Deke. Knows that once this child is born—if this child is born—that he will favor them over their firstborn with no outward indication why, and that she will have to sit Deke down and explain to him the difference in relationship.

No longer cares why he runs from her through Moya’s labyrinth corridors, slipping silently into the shadows and always ending up in the command room, staring out into space and speaking with the ghosts of old friends. It no longer matters why he distances himself from her physically, except during points of recreation when he yearns for her. Why he doesn’t tell her what he does with these humans, and how it’s helping them get back to Deke, or even if he still wants to return to their first, perhaps forgotten, son.

Another wave of emotions rushes through her, ones she can’t control as images of her family, Deke, the others on Moya, the prospective pinch within her, the current situation, and she finds her normally calm, if not brash exterior, faltering because perhaps it doesn’t matter where they are, and what temperature it is, and if they’re injured or healthy. Maybe this is just how their relationship is meant to be. She ran from him first, to Talyn, away from Moya, and now he runs from her because the responsibilities of family are too dire, because his son is legitimate while also illegitimate, runs because his closest friend is deceased, and his body and mind are spent.

Runs because he can. Because she allows him to. Because he allowed her to.

Blinks down at the ground, at the room of strangers staring at her, John included, because whenever she thinks she’s figured him out entirely, there is some portion within him left dark and unexplored. Left foreign to her.

So, she allows him what he requests. Obviously didn’t want her present at this meeting, privy to the conversations or subject matter, so she turns to the hallway dejected, and exits the room without a word.

She’ll have to wait until he’s ready to discuss whatever this is, just as she waited until they thought it was too late to tell him about the baby.

The corridor is colder, and she snuffles to herself, aware of where the emotions stem from, but still unsure as to why they were activated when a cycle ago, simple frivolities wouldn’t affect her in such a way. Associates it with stress but she was reared on stress. Knows this, but still cannot comprehend.

Makes it to the twist in the corridor before the conferring room door opens, and she expects John’s sloppy gait, his footsteps sliding across the frequently cleaned tiles, to follow her down, but instead she hears the footfalls of a soldier.

Assumes it’s the colonel, who only grins at her with pity while explaining things to her, which she already has a vast knowledge on, like a patient parent, or worse perhaps it’s the general who hides things behind his squinting eyes, who speaks with a stern voice commanding respect, yet she can tell he is doubtful of himself, so he places all his reassurances on the members of the team wanting them to succeed where he failed. Wanting a reason to be proud.

Or perhaps the tall quiet one, whom she still prefers the company of, their longest exchange the sharing of a wordless hot beverage in the meal area. It was far too hot for her at the time, and when she sipped the cream-colored liquid, it was sweet enough to burn her tongue. He sensed this, removing the cup from before her with an apology, stating her counterpart preferred it this way.

But it is none of them.

Not even the doctor who’s penetrating stare is still off putting after over a week.

“Officer Sun.” He beckons her with a wave, legs no longer limp and precarious over unknown floors, but walking with stride, with strength and duty. His steps increase when hers don’t cease, and he manages to catch up in a few steps after the bend, a hand falling on her bicep to still her, to restrain her.

She wrenches her arm away, biting her lip and curling her fingers in order not to lash out with a punch. With the pain, anger, and fear she feels, the same she felt when she became aware that he was taking narcotics.

His hands raise in surrender, flat and high before him in a weak self defense. “Sorry, I—”

“Do not placate me, Crichton.” Should bellow it because perhaps the dranit will finally hear her, listen to the broken English that is harsh on her tongue, but the words drop heavy from her mouth, a growl. A warning.

“I’m not, I’m trying to tell you Offic—"

“I’m so pleased that you trust these humans enough to meet in late night cohorts with them—”

“Just stop for a sec and listen—”

“I will not.” Exhales harshly, placing a hand to her ribs at the flare up of pain. His eyes travel from hers, to her side as she reclines against a wall. Her voice hoarser, more strained, “every time I think we finally comprehend each other, we end up at another impasse.”

“Are you okay?” Approaches her, but keeps a respectable distance, unusual because as long as she has known him, even before they recreated together, he was never shy to touched her.

Her brows crease as she examines him, the bags under his eyes rivaling her own, perhaps his shoulder is irritating him more than he’s let on. Perhaps there’s another reason for him to lose sleep. To be concerned for her.

“I’m fine.”

“Is—”

“The baby is fine too.” Waves off his question because she can already predict it, his eyes sort of widen, as if he’s shocked by her knowledge. Examines him closer, how his stance has changed, how he’s favoring one of his legs. “Are you all right, John?”

Despite all her inner turmoil and arguments, despite the conflicting emotions and how she feels as if she could sob for days while simultaneously punching a hole through his body, she reaches a hand out to his cheek, to feel his skin, the temperature, the hair growing in from a recent shave.

But he stops her, softly plucks her hand before she touches his face, and lowering it to rest between them. “I’m fine, Officer Sun, I’m just not John.”

Her hand recoils to her body and her eyebrows drop, knows she can’t keep the tremble from her lower lip, so she allows it just this once, because she was created to endure stress, but there is a maximum capacity which she can withstand. Swallowing away the distant feeling of betrayal, instead implementing the more prominent feeling of abandonment, she corrects, “Officer Sun.”

Despite his reassurances, his playfully dragging her up to the observation deck to share in a wondrous light show with him, a memory only they will share together, there’s a part of her telling her to be wary, the part of her that knows men too well, that knows that sometimes they don’t think with the right organ and that leads to many avoidable shenanigans.

She slows the kiss this time, but he doesn’t initially take her unresponsiveness as an indication to stop, instead moving to trail his lips over her jawline, then bowing to the side of her neck, almost immediately finding the spot that sends shivers through her.

“Cameron.” His name leaves her mouth breathlessly, and she becomes distracted in the movements of his hand tracing over her uninjured side, fingers tickling at the bottom of her t-shirt.

He hums an answers, still preoccupied at her neck, moving his other hand to slowly slide over her behind and she shivers from the contact, arching into him, realizing that perhaps she’s apprehensive for an entirely different reason, the excitement of having a tumble with Cameron unlike any of her recent flings within the last years.

More serious, the idea of being physical with him, more important than the idea of merely being physical.

So, she submits—no, agrees.

Bringing her hands to his body, to trace up his arm, the side of his neck, his responses eliciting reactions from her, encouraging, feeding. Directs his face back to hers, kissing him, breathing in the scent of him as his hand slips beneath her shirt tickling the skin across her stomach to her hip.

And then it stops.

Actually, he stops.

Physically stops, his body tensing in her arms, and at first she assumes he’s had a bite of pain, the same she’s ignoring to continue their exploration. Her lips stay pressed to his, trying to help him through, direct him back, but then she has the fear again, that perhaps he’s realized she’s not good enough—a thought that just happens to coincide with him wrenching his eyes open and shoving her away by her shoulder.

Her bad shoulder.

She yipes out in pain, the level no where near as unbearable as it’s been, in fact after each of the applications of salve, the pain level has dwindled significantly. His eyes are still wide, watching her as she rolls her shoulder out, pressing her fingers delicately into the still blistered skin to determine if it’s cracked, relieved to find that it hasn’t.

“A simple ‘no’ would’ve been sufficient enough, Mitchell.”

“What?” Asks his eyes narrowing, then blinking several times, attempting to focus on her, but being drawn away by the lights.

“Also, if you could possibly stop manhandling my injured arm, I’d greatly—” She stops speaking when she notices the creasing in his brows, the unsteadiness on his feet, and becomes all too aware what’s happened. “You’re not Cameron, are you?”   

“N—No.” He spins in a gentle half turn, taking in the room, his mouth slightly agape, but she’s not sure he’s reveling in the sea of colors. “Observation deck?”

“Yes.” She takes a step forward because the half turn has sent him a little uneven on his feet. “Crichton?”

“Yeah. Vala?”

“Yes.” Reaches for him as he takes his first topple forward. His hand comes down hard, but thankfully on her good shoulder, seems to already learned what Cameron has forgotten time and time again. Manages to stabilize him by slinging his arm over her good shoulder and walking with him to the bench she takes naps with Deke on. “Is this your first time transporting?”

“Second, the first one caused this mess.” His voice is strained, and she doesn’t recognize why, until he sits down and immediately vomits, his head turned away from her, but that doesn’t stop his puke splattering over the floor.

Her nose twitches, and she shifts back while he wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand. He gives her the same lopsided grin she’s witnessed on three different males now, and offers, “sorry.”

“It’s a niche talent.”

“One I apparently don’t have, despite years of navigating worm holes.” His drops his head to his hands, then lowers his head to rest between his knees, she can see the sweat start to bead on his skin, mirroring the colors above them. “Please tell me your boy had a good reason for activating the stone.”

“He didn’t.”

“So, he just did it for fun?”

“No.” Drops to the bench beside him. He attempts to shift over but stops when his feet border on his vomit. “He didn’t physically activate it.”

“So, he activated it with his mind?”

“Crichton,” she groans into her hand before flicking it before her, showcasing the vastly empty room. “Do you see the long-range communication device anywhere?”

“No—”

“We didn’t activate it—you must’ve activated it somehow on your end.”

“The wife and I weren’t anywhere near the stupid hookah thing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Aeryn was asleep and I was taking a piss.”

Allows for one last exhale before clapping her hands together and standing. “Well then, it seems as if neither of us caused this occurrence, but what we need to do is find a way to switch you back.”

“That’s gonna have to wait, I’ve got a big boy headache from the galaxy jumping.” Rubs at his forehead, his skin still very shiny, a little red. “Besides, why don’t you just jump back and then this mess will be sorted out.”

“Because you’re in Cameron’s body.”

His nose hooks, the same upset expression crossing his face. “Do I want to know how you know that?”

“Check your left thigh for a scar.”

He starts to unbuckle his pants, but when he glances up, his face falls slack and may just get a little more red. “A little privacy?”

She rolls her eyes with a scoff, but pivots on her heel, allowing him to discover that he isn’t exactly himself, hoping that he just pops back to the SGC, because her and Cameron were in the middle of something somewhat important.

“Damn, this is one hell of a scar.” There’s the clatter of his buckle and the zipping of his pants, followed by his precarious footsteps forward. “What’s it from?”

“I believe he was in a plane crash.” Slows her pace so he can keep up with her, taking the tiniest of baby steps. At this length, returning to command is going to take an hour.

“He should sue the pilot.”

“Then he’d be suing himself.” She stops at the door, activating the opening mechanism, waiting for him to actually get there, and ignoring the confused expression on his face. “So, do you have any ideas on how we can return you to your own body?”

“I think I need to do a few things. I want to see my son, and check in on Pip, and by then I’ll need to lay down. Then we can have some sort of meeting to brainstorm ideas.” He uses a hand to scale the wall in the corridor, the other still holding his forehead in pain. “Does this guy’s hip always hurt this much?”

“I know it gets rather stiff after he’s slept, but I didn’t know it was overly painful.”

“Maybe, he—” He emits a grunt like a harmed animal as he continues to reinforce himself against the wall, what drives him, she’s not entirely sure, the want to return to his wife, the desire to see his child again after over a week, the need to appear masculine before her, whatever the cause, he is dedicated. “Maybe he’s just used to the pain now.”

“That’s an awful thought.” She stops her steps, then backtracks until she’s able to swoop underneath his arm again, help take a bit of his weight off his leg.  

“Thanks.” He leans against her and after a few steps they find a shared gait. He is very hot, sweat still sheening his skin, and he rolls his shoulder, once, then twice. “Hey, what’s wrong with his—”

“He was shot by an acid round while we were on Valdun.” His arm tightens a bit around her neck, the movement puling at her injured skin. Carefully she resets his arm, so it will not encroach on her injury, and softly explains. “So was I.”

“Sorry.”

They continue in silence for some time, navigating Mayo’s twisting and sprawling corridors until she realizes his intentions of heading back to the bedroom. When she tries to veer him off course, directing him towards the medical unit, he offers resistance, causing them to pause, which might be necessary as both of them are coming close to being out of breath from the strain.

“I want to see—”

“Your son is most likely with Noranti, and she is most likely in the medical unit caring for Chiana.”

“Oh.” In Cameron’s body, with Cameron’s face he creates an expression she’s never seen on him before, so quick, just a flash of doubt, of hopelessness. Then he nods and they rotate slowly to backtrack and take the corridor leading to Chiana. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s medically unconscious, but stable, her skin is healing very slowly—quicker than ours however, which makes me a little envious.”

“She needs the sleep, between the baby and D’argo—” He slows his words, skewing his mouth to the side, though not in the familiar lopsided grin, more like the words he spoke were privileged and she is not worthy of hearing them.

“Chiana, spoke of him to me.” Nudges his shoulder, wary of his injury, so they can keep walking. “I’m presuming that’s where the blade indentation on the table in the command room came from.”

“Things got a little heated after he—” pauses his words now, emotion incapacitating his ability to do so, just as it did to her when they forced her to leave Daniel to battle Adria.

“The hardest part of losing someone is continuing to live after their gone.”

She tries to continue their trek, but he halts in place, his bad leg hobbling a bit, balancing off ground, just watching her, eyes squinting, as if trying to decipher her. To have that deciphering look come from Cameron’s face, it hurts just a tad. It feels like they should know each other better after the last eight—almost nine—days.

“How is Daniel?” Asks, trying to divert the attention away, trying to perk up their dreary exchange.

“He’s fine, kind of a butthole, but fine.”

“How wonderful. And Sam?”

“She’s good. She has the patience of a saint and works too much.”

“Good. Good.” She leans in to resume helping him, but he kindly waves a hand at her efforts, managing to walk, somewhat stunted, on his own two feet.

“So, how are you and this colonel guy?”

“We’re okay, adjusting as much as possible to the current—”

He chuckles, stopping at a doorway and allowing her through first. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“What did you mean?”

“Well judging by what you two were doing when I—”

“We have a problem.”

Thankfully, Noranti scurries into the room quick enough to abort that conversation, though she’s not particularly excited by the tone of her voice, she’s more than relieved she doesn’t have to explain her tumultuous relationship with Cameron to a different man masquerading around in his body, while she doesn’t know how to rightly define it herself.

“Hey Little Man.” Crichton reaches forward, scooping up his son from Noranti’s arms. For a moment Deke appears concerned, his mouth falling slack as he floats in his father’s arms, but once close enough to see his face, his whimpers settle.   

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve just finished feeding the child, and we have no more Peacekeeper pablum on Moya.”

“Whatduya mean?” Crichton’s holding of the baby leaves something to be desired, he holds him more like a weapon, or sports equipment, then the coddling an infant deserves. He flips Deke, so his son is facing towards him, little eyebrows knit in worry about the way he’s being jostled. “We stocked up enough for a month last time.”

“Yes, and it’s been a month, Crichton.”

She points to Crichton and the baby. “He is going to vomit on you if you don’t burp him immediately—” then points back to Noranti “—how did you know that wasn’t Cameron?”

“That’s Cameron.” Noranti’s mouth twitches to the side as she doesn’t even bother to observe the man who is very shortly going to be covered in baby vomit. “But Crichton is in his body.”

“How do you know that though?”

“It’s obvious.”

“Hey. Hey.” He flips the baby to the other shoulder now, and she watches as his little face pinches in the middle with a dislike for the swift movement, while Crichton continues to bop him around in his arms. “Can we go back to the fact that my son has no—”

As if on cue, she and Noranti step back as Deke expels most of what he just ate, green viscous goop splattering with force over Crichton’s cheek, neck, and shoulder before dripping to the ground.

Crichton’s face sours, much in the same way his son’s did moments ago, pinching in the middle, before he lets out a violent, “yuck!”

Chapter Text

He missed the welcoming and warm lit hallways on Moya, the familiar face of Noranti as she bobs along behind him spouting half words and tangled meanings as he ducks into his room—well his, Aeryn’s, and Deke’s room, only to find that woman, the lookalike, Vala kneeling on the ground with Deke resting against one of the fur blankets. His legs aren’t really kicking yet because he’s only a little over a month old, but they sort of jiggle as she removes his diaper, setting it on the ground beside her.

He stops walking, stops pulling the shirt that his wonderful, beautiful, firstborn son—the one to carry his hyphenated name on through the galaxy—blew chunks on—not just chunks, but basically everything he’d ever eaten—dark green and yellow blobs of sour puke just soaking into another one of his shirts.

He clears his throat, intent on making her leave so he can change in peace, maybe actually get off his feet because it still feels like his one leg has been through a bear attack or something.

Vala only glances up briefly, before darting her eyes back down, wiping the baby, whispering things, tickling his feet while she pins down another space diaper.

Is this what Aeryn does?

Just constantly get covered in puke, then change her and the baby while still being head over heels for the kid? Gently tug a onesie on him and coo how good he looks?

Is this what Aeryn is like with Deke?

She’s not like that with him.

Never helps him clean off the puke that their kid manages to get all over every single piece of clothing he owns. Never smiles like that at him, like she’s actually happy to see him, like he’s all that matters. Never coos, saying soft words of love into his ear while she snuggles him.

“Did you need something?” Vala glances up, after guiding Deke’s arm through the sleeve of the onesie. His son has stopped crying for now, but he’s sort of sniveling, hiccupping, like he’s not done puking or like he’s still upset.

“Yeah, I want to change.”

“Oh.” She fastens the last button and pulls Deke to her chest as she stands. He’s whimpering a bit, an obvious frown on his face. She holds him facing forward, his head a little higher than her chin, and as she bounces him, he seems to relax. “The showers are down the hall to the left.”

“I know where they are.” Sort of snaps because it was a long day before it was a long night. Before he got his shoulder plastic wrapped. Before he dragged his wife out of the wreckage of a lab explosion. Before he found out he’s going to be a dad again.

Before he found out just now, that might not be a good thing.

“Then what—”

“I want to change in the privacy of my own room, Vala.” Not so much a snap this time as it is tense words seeping through his clenched teeth.

“I’m sorry.” He knows this apology, has heard it tons of time from a woman he fears more than her. He knows it’s not done. “But after you thrust your recently exploded son into my arms and ran, someone had to ensure he was clean.”

“Great.” Bends at a huge mountain of all the clothes he and Aeryn have ever worn. There are some suspenders in here and he thinks back to when she used to wear them, to when she needed them. Now she’s all plain black tee and leather pants. Now it’s all babies. Just all frelling babies. “He’s clean, can you get out of here?”

There’s a pause, another thing he’s used to, and he doesn’t make eye contact with her because she might be doing that frigid glare Aeryn gives him when he does something really stupid. One that isn’t even undone by life threatening situations or bodily harm or sacrificing. The one that she holds until she’s too tired and then only her sleep cycle washes it away.

“Fine.” It’s a little too snooty to sound like Aeryn. More like a high-class scoff. She zips over to the space bassinet. “I’ll leave him here for—”

“Take him.” Briefly glances over his shoulder, and there’s a tight pull against the skin there as well. What the hell has this colonel gotten himself in to? Whichever body part he moves, there’s just a jolt of pain.

“What?”

“Take him down to command. I’ll be there in a few seconds and we can try and figure out what happened.”

She halts laying Deke in the space bassinet, using a hand behind his head to guide him back to her shoulder. His son is actively screaming now. “Are you upset because he threw up on you?”

“No, I loved it.” Rolls his eyes, turning away from them and back towards clothes mountain to find another suitable shirt.

“He’s been throwing up a lot lately.” Vala bounces his son, not enough to upset an already sensitive stomach, but enough to distract him, quell the rage tears he’s about to scream.

“Well, babies do that.”

There’s another long pause and since his back is to her he figures she must have just read the room and left like he asked.

“I’m sorry, are you upset with me for some absurd reason?”

“No.”

She starts pacing back and forth in a short line with an overdramatic twist at the end, talking with emotion now, if she wasn’t holding Deke, he’s sure her hands would be flying around for emphasis.  “Is this because I was kissing you when you showed up? Because it’s not like I could control that—”

“It’s not—”

“—and I stopped as soon as I realized you weren’t Cameron—”

“It’s not because of—”

“If anything, you should be apologizing to me.”

Stops rummaging through the pile for a clean shirt, any clean shirt, and turns around a bit too quick forgetting that one of his legs is basically MIA. The seriousness, the bit of aggressiveness that leaks into his voice means nothing when he can’t even balance on his own borrowed two legs, and he has no idea how this Mitchell guy deals with her. Last time it was only three hours, and he was more afraid of her frying Aeryn’s body than anything else, but now that there’s no threat and she’s starting to be a Chiana level of annoying.

“Why should I apologize?”

“Because you were being adored by me and you weren’t the man I intended to shower with my affection.”

“Hey—” stabs a finger at her and hobbles around the pile, finally sighting a clean shirt. He does a golfer’s stoop and hooks his finger into it, his hand still on his aching thigh. “I’m the one who shoved you off.”

“You were also the one who knew you weren’t where you were meant to be.” The kid is wailing again. One of her hands go to the back of his head, cradling him as she nuzzles her cheek against the top of his head. “Now can you stop arguing? Your screaming is upsetting—”

“I’m not screaming,” he screams, and she stops moving, he stops moving, and Deke continues to cry over everything. He sighs, wiping a hand across his eyes, forgetting to late that there’s dried puke between his fingers.

“You—you do have a problem with him, don’t you?”

“No—”

“Do you think he’s not yours?” She may be annoying as hell, even more so than Pip, but she’s more intuitive than almost anyone he’s ever met. Should ask when he gets back if she can read minds, it’s probably why the good ol’ doc doesn’t like her because she can see all the dark thoughts in his warped mind. “Because I can tell he is. You and him, and Cameron in fact, share the same stupid—”

“I—” He throws his hands out to the side, trying to redirect some of the energy he’s feeling, trying to get his mind off the fact that Deke isn’t his—not fully his—and all he does is cry, and he might have heat delirium or growing pains, and it’s all because of his stupid genes that didn’t factor in right—not to mention the fact that his babysitters incapacitated Pip, and didn’t bother to get baby food when they were out at the market.

“I just want you to leave so I can get changed.” Takes a big inhalation, trying to breathe out the pain, but it doesn’t work. He shoves the heel of his hand into his hip, then his thigh, then gives up,  spreading his hands and leaning forward facing against the bed. “Hey Grandma?”

“Grandma?”

“Noranti!?” Bellows into his comm, knowing that lady is snooping around the corner somewhere.

“Yes. Yes.” As if on cue, she shuffles into the room, completely unfazed by the mountain of clothing, or the dirty diaper a DRD is trying to drag across the floor. “I’ve concocted more of the salve for both of your area burns. I suggest waiting longer between application to allow yourself to become acclimated with—”

“No, Noranti—” he huffs pushing himself up and away from the bed, trying to keep his voice louder than Deke’s but also trying not to scare the kid. “Do you have anything I can take for my leg?”

“Well, I suppose I have some different herbs that—”

“You’re not actually suggesting taking narcotics, are you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.” At the end of his sentence, he rips his eyes away from her. Hobbling forward on a bone that doesn’t feel connected, a bone that doesn’t feel real, reels like it’s scraping away at the inside of his leg, like a spoon against an ice cream carton. “Noranti, just go get the drugs.”

Vala sidesteps in front of dear grandmama before she has a chance to answer. Her brows are drawn together, and he’s getting that same death glare Aeryn is so fond of sending his way. “You can’t put narcotics into Cameron’s body.”

“I just need to be able to walk—”

“Cameron walks just find with his sustained injury.”

“I’m not him, okay?!” He’s closer to her now, not entirely in her face because she is a woman and she is holding his son, and his mom is somewhere out there watching him, and he still has the intentions of doing her right. He sighs, trying to relax a bit, trying to think of what Aeryn would say in this situation. What would D’argo say? What would Zhaan?

“Look—” tries for a second time to remember his calm and cool demeanor. Is this what it’s like when he’s apart from Aeryn? Sure, they drive each other crazy, but they’re also crazy about each other. The thought of her a galaxy away, pregnant, mirrors her leaving a little over a year ago, smuggling out pint-sized Deke and he hates it.

Hates feeling so helpless, like everything he does isn’t enough. Hates that he loves his son, but when he holds him, and he gets thrown up on, that he can’t siphon the bad feelings away from the good, that he can’t just accept that the him aboard Talyn is gone. Laid the dirty work and fled—well died.

Why can’t he just accept it?

“Colonel Mitchell sounds like a good guy, a boy scout even—but he’s been living with this injury for years now. I’ve been with it for a little more than four hours.” Again, tries to massage the pain out of his thigh, but it’s deeper than he can reach, under what feels like layers of scars running in grooves over his fingertips. “My thigh is killing me.”

Her voice drops in tone at least and octave or two, and he doesn’t know how he hears her over Deke, but he does. “That’s not your thigh.”

“Well, I’m the one who—”

“When I was inhabiting your wife’s body, I listened to your guidance, didn’t I?”

“Yeah but suffering from heat delirium—which can turn my wife into a vegetable by the way—is a little different than trying to walk with what feels like a bear trap around my leg.” 

“Who are you to judge what goes into Cameron’s body?”

Figures she’s got him made, but he snaps his fingers and points at her. “You ate chicken nuggets.”

“So?”

“Aeryn is allergic to them, or something.”

“Or something?” She shakes her head, laying Deke down in his crib, using her pinkie to curl away the hair from her face, still carrying on a conversation with him as she swaddles the baby. “Your knowledge of your wife’s medical conditions are of no importance to me currently—however, if I had known she had an aversion to chicken nuggets—say, if you told me—I wouldn’t have eaten them out of respect for her body.”

He groans, staring towards the ceiling as she finishes bundling up his son. “You’re really going to be a stickler on this, aren’t you?”

She shrugs but holds a sly grin as she stands, walking towards him and placing Deke in his arms “Maybe Cameron has an aversion to narcotics that we don’t know about.”

Doesn’t respond, just low-level glares at her as she turns, finally leaving, but sticking him with a kid and the shirt full of dried vomit he’s still wearing.

At the doorway she throws him a wave and offers a final parting point as her voice echoes down the hallway. “How awful would it be to die of an easily avoidable allergen leaving Cameron marooned in your body.”

Sam’s shooting her techno babble at them, trying to piece together what happened, while using a handy diagram of a long-range communication device—a thing they’ve seen so much of, a thing he never wants to see again in his life.

Looking back, he can’t believe he thought bringing one into the SGC was going to go smoothly.  How in the world did he think that he could bring a device that’s fucked them over twice—one he knows is dangerous—through the gate and into a nice Area 51 stasis chamber or something, and then go to bed and then wake up with a stiff leg because he didn’t get to go for a jog, and a stiff something else because he was still ignoring his dreams at that point.

Vala was way beyond right on this one—doesn’t know why after four years he doesn’t listen to her more, because she’s right most of the time when it comes to other planets and alien devices.  

Sure, she brags.

Loudly.

Never lets them live down how she saved them by destroying the supergate. Has told him how she was burnt alive so many times, sometimes he mumbles the words with her. But maybe she does it because she’s tired of not being taken seriously. Maybe the way him and Jackson and Sam treat her—

Man, he misses her.

He’s been here all of three hours but that’s how long she was gone, and while they keep trying to formulate a plan of attack, trying to dissect what exactly happened, he keeps hoping that he’ll get zapped back to a dim lit living ship that has the constant background noise of a rotating fan where he gets to see what life would be like as a space explorer.

What it would be like to raise a family—shed some light on the thoughts he’s been having since he first saw her in that leather get up, and in that Qetesh dress, and then in her own version of the stargate uniform.

Knew that his thoughts weren’t just physical in nature when she overtook Jackson and found him in the change room, eyeing him and it took two seconds to figure out it was her.

Knew they were dangerous when she told them she was pregnant, and his stomach dropped half out of envy, half out of worry because no one was helping her a galaxy away.

Oddly, the same way he felt when Officer Sun let it slip that she has a bun in the oven.

He doesn’t have a direct connection to the woman, aside from fostering her son for the last nine days, and maybe that she looks exactly like a woman he has interests in. Investments in. A woman he would slap a stone back into that goddamn device for in a second.

Still feels concerned for Officer Sun, strangely like Vala, a galaxy away from anyone who really cares for her, and pregnant.

Sam’s still spitting words that he doesn’t understand and by the look on Officer Sun’s face—if it’s anything like the one Vala gets— she’s telling him she’s about to lose it.

“—What we can tell from the fluctuation of the field being emitted by our pseudo device is—”

“I’m sorry.”

There’s the interruption.

Officer Sun’s eyes are tired, dark rings beneath them as she holds a hand against her forehead. She looks pasty but space will do that. She looks sick and exhausted. If he concentrates hard enough, he can make out the slight slant of her eyebrows, the one she’s trying to hide, the way her teeth keep scratching at her lip, and her pinkie keeps twitching.

All Vala tells.

Things she does when she’s worried. Won’t hold eye contact, will let her gaze drift around the room, will try to fight the outward appearance of concern, the tears that wet her eyes as she scrambles to find the location of Jackson when he was taken by the Ori. As she demands he hand over the salve so she can work it into his wound as well.

“My English is not idiomatic, and—” she sighs into her hand, her chest heaving, another tell, but she straightens right away, opens the eyes she forced closed for too long, and blinks her way into an emotionless state “—I am losing my patience.”

“Well we wouldn’t want that.” Jackson huffs from where he’s fighting to stay awake a few seats away from her.

When he transferred here, found himself in Commander Crichton’s body mid piss power stream—after the shock of being somewhere else, sometime else, and figuring out he was back in the SGC by seeing his reflection in the mirror, but knowing it was someone else’s body because for the first time in years, there was no dull ache in his thigh—he snuck out of the room where Officer Sun was lightly snoring in the bed and it was like tiptoeing through a sleeping lion’s den, and found Sam in her lab.

Sam believed him without much convincing and sent him to the conference room while she found everyone—who unfortunately were all asleep. Thinks she pulled Jackson from a desk nap in his office.

“I know I don’t.” The General huffs from the head of the table. He’s the only one who showed up in full military gear. Sam, Jackson and Teal’c all have their BDU pants on, but different styles of black shirts. He’s in a white tank and gray sweats. Not his attire of choice. “She put down fourteen privates the last time she lost her patience.”

“I’m sure you have questions.” Sam smiles wearily. He’s not sure he’s ever seen her sleep, but she doesn’t look any more physically tired then he’s seen her before—it’s more like she’s tired of the situation, which he would definitely toast to. “What’s troubling you?”

Then Officer Sun turns and stares directly at him, and he really gets to see how tired her eyes are, how they stared up at him as he fed her son. How they closed as he moved closer to kiss Vala under the reflecting swirls of space dust. There are differences he can see, like if Vala ever gave him this expression, he wouldn’t be this afraid and he realizes it’s because he can talk Vala down. Sure she doesn’t respect his authority or listen to his judgement most of the time—the way they all do with her—but if she ever looked this close to choking someone, like she did with Noranti, he could guide her away, talk it out of her.

“You’re not my husband?”

Her question is simple, but he doesn’t know how to answer it.

She knows he’s not Commander Crichton, because he told her so in the hallway about an hour ago, before they got the debriefing of a lifetime—Knows how hopeful she is that she’s wrong, that maybe her subpar English made her translate something wrong in her head.

Thinks about how Vala felt a galaxy away from them, pregnant, and terrified.

Without a single movement, with a word that’s barely above a whisper, he confirms, “no.”

“You’re Colonel Mitchell?”

This one’s a little easier to answer.

“Yes.”

She rolls her lips, another nod, she’s starting to get into the anxious territory now. “How long have you been back?”

Likes that she says ‘back’, that she hasn’t become too used to living at Stargate Command, but then only a few people could go days and weeks without breathing fresh air and seeing the stars. This is still his home. Still Vala’s home even if her gulps of fresh air are few and far between. “Almost five hours.”

“Do you know when you’ll be transferred back?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam interrupts as the question gains her attention, leaning in a bit where she’d taken a seat during the conversation. “But the power of the stones vacillates making the duration of the transferences unpredictable.”

“When I was transferred back to Moya, I knew that my stay would be brief.”

Sam almost jumps out of her chair for this one, glad someone in this room is excited about the situation because everyone else looks pissed off, fed up, and falling asleep. “How could you tell?”

“I could feel the energy.”

“You felt—energy?” Jackson’s eyes are either narrowed with doubt, or he’s been trying to take a quick nap.

“Yes, the same manner I feel the temperature.”

“Okay—except we all feel the temperature.” Jackson sighs and he leans forward on the table. He’s definitely not fighting sleep as good as he usually can. “It’s a basic human sense.”

“And as far as I’m aware, so is having a sense of passing time, and passing distance—” while her voice remains flat, there’s a flare of threat to it “—but not being human, I experience these sensations differently.”

“Differently how?”

Officer Sun actually sighs at all the questions.

From what he’s heard and experienced on Moya, she’s not the most patient of people and SG-1 have warned him since he’s been back that she’s not all together helpful, especially when it comes to revealing information about her species.

“I don’t see how that is pertinent to the current—”

“But it could be, Officer Sun.” Sam interrupts her again, looks like she wants to reach out towards the other woman, but knows better. “We need to know as much about this situation as possible. The more information we have, the more easily we’ll be able to—”

“I sense them physically.”

“So do we.”

“Optically.”

“You can see—”

“The energies—yes.” Ends the conversation as she turns her attention back to him and for a second he sees that same, vulnerable expression he’s seen on Vala when he gets mad, when he reprimands her, when he pushes her away, and the guilt he feels lasts longer than her break in expression. “Why did you engage the stones?”

“What?”

“Why did you engage the stones? For what purpose?”

“I—uh—” He sits back in his chair, and scratches behind his ear “—I didn’t touch the stones.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I figured that Commander Crichton—”

“Why would he touch the stones?”

“I don’t know.”

“The last time I saw John, he was in the washroom urinating.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Waves her off, because the General and SG-1 don’t need to know he started this mission pantsless.  

Teal’c, who he assumed was meditating through the whole meeting finally speaks. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s not important.”

“But Colonel Carter said that all of our personal issues and constructs were of the utmost—”

For a second there, he thinks she’s actually Vala, that she’s been playing him this entire time because both women have the same sarcastic sassiness in their voice when they’ve had enough.

“Actually—” Thankfully Sam saves him from a scolding from a wife that isn’t his. “What’s more important is if neither Cam or Commander Crichton touched the stones, how did they switch?”

Chapter Text

It’s entirely too cold in this room. Stirs up vague memories of her sitting on a box of frozen goods, careful not to dent the top lest the kitchen staff inform Daniel or General Landry that she’s been purposefully naughty in wrecking Stargate Command property.

A similar, darker thought races through her mind as she stares vacantly at what she assumes is the ceiling through a pitch-black room.

Is she just property of the Stargate Command?

Was she to perish, what form would they fill out for her? Most likely a damaged property form.

If she were to remain shipwrecked here for the rest of her life, in a galaxy where there is no reality television, where there are no Goa’uld, and therefore, no basis for all those who matter to her to judge her by. Where her likeness already has a reputation much preferable to her own—would they fill out a missing persons report or a lost objects form?

Familiarized herself with all the forms by spending lonesome and sleepless nights breaking into various offices. First financial and accounting, then ancient artifacts, and  more then a few offices in the technological wing. After perusing through the offices of the highest profiled military professionals she knew—the general, Cameron, whichever personnel was visiting—her choices became a bit slim.

She started reading up on old mission reports while sitting at a dusty desk in archives with a flashlight and a tea, learning about proper occupational conduct in a sector dedicated to resourcing humans.

Finally found herself in the area of the SGC where they controlled the quality—she assumed it was quality of life and spent her time reading through forms hoping to create a forgery to garner her a better room, or at the very least, an extended wardrobe of black shirts and new boots. But she found that most of the forms had to deal with products going to waste.

Products that shouldn’t have even been in the mountain to begin with.

Products that were being transferred out.

She was transferred out against her own freewill.

Therefore, she stumbles upon the same philosophical question of if she’s seen as a person or a thing.

The Tau’ri don’t exactly respect her. The better term for occupational affairs is what Daniel calls ‘putting up’ with her. Not one to be disappointing, she lives up to her pestering nature, to her curiosity as she still sneaks around at night and snacks on forbidden chicken nuggets in the early hours of the morning between the shift change because some of the cleaning staff have taken pity on her—she’s read their files and asks questions about their spouses, their children, and strikes up the only rapport she has within the mountain that isn’t about missions, gates, guns, and death.

If those she works with at the SGC expect her to act a certain way, she’s not one to disappoint. Why try to prove everyone else wrong when it’s so much easier to give into their ideals. Then in her spare time, share secret moments speaking with a custodian about his nine-year-old’s recent recreational activity game.

Before she was transferred here, she assumed all Tau’ri—at least those in positions of power—would treat her in the same respect, as a nuisance who proves herself useful during times of duress. That the kind-hearted custodians who allowed her to tag along from room to room as long as she didn’t muck up the freshly polished floors were rare.

This idea has only been further reinforced with Crichton’s extended return.

Ceded his room back to him of course, as it is his room, along with his son, who has taken to quite frequently vomiting an hour or so after his meals. With the Peacekeeper pablum becoming very scarce—their current destination is a commerce planet along the lines of a black market to remedy Deke’s lack of food—it’s concerning to say the least.

Also concerning is the loneliness she feels while inhabiting a living being. The sensation of being afloat in space, abandoned a forethought in her mind as she tosses and turns—or would if her injuries weren’t becoming tight again.

Heeding Noranti’s words, she limited the application of the salve to her injuries from almost a dozen times a day down to a handful, but the skin isn’t as pliable under scars and even worse, the new skin growing beneath is driving her insane with itchiness.

Once on a mission, Daniel was plodding along in the forest beside her outside of some medieval village and stumbled into a thatch of a beautifully vibrant green plant. Unfortunately, his socks weren’t tugged to their fullest and he developed a dreadful rash across one of his ankles that he would stop every few steps to scratch at in an animalistic nature.

When the novelty of his injury, and subsequently, his foolishness wore off, she offered to help him, knowing of a salve she could concoct using many of the plant species within their reach.

He scoffed, told her it was something he was willing to leave for Dr. Lam, willing to leave to the professionals, because he didn’t know she’d trained in medicine before being corrupted and held hostage by Qetesh for so many years.

Staring directly at her while his nails bit into his skin, the redness glowing in the low sun, and pin pricks of blood developing from his overexertion, he told her that this was something he didn’t trust her with. He didn’t trust her knowledge, didn’t trust her word, didn’t trust her past and therefore her present.

She only nodded her head, her teeth biting into her lips to keep the pain from her eyes as her vision blurred with tears she swallowed back down. She absorbed back into herself because this situation wasn’t worth it.

At the campfire that night, as Cameron slung jokes at Daniel, and Sam chided him for constantly itching and spreading the rash, and Teal’c lips grew into an amused grin as he said nothing, but sipped his tea, she acted the character they expected, and never brought up her spurned knowledge again.

Knows better than to pull at her skin now. To razor it with her nails as she wants to.

Knows better than to do anything but stare up where she thinks the ceiling is and try to not let her thoughts run to dark places, tries not to let her ears overexaggerate every single sound she hears echoing down the hallway. Tries not to think about how nice it would be to not be solitary in this awfully cold room despite wrapping her favorite fur blanket around herself like a cocoon.

Even if the baby were here, it would be someone to distract her, the crying, the cooing, the dirty diapers, and the green colored vomit all served to occupy her time quite well. Doesn’t know if Crichton’s gotten up to do the feeding that was scheduled at the start of this hour, but she did the last feeding after supper, while Crichton was checking in with Pilot and being caught up in how they may be being pursued by a less than friendly ship called a marauder—at least that’s what she’s gleaned from positioning herself briefly to eavesdrop while Deke gobbled down his dinner. Crichton was blissfully unaware, but Pilot must have been knowledgeable. If he saw her snooping as a problem, he didn’t speak of it.

Handed Deke back to his father to care for during their sleeping cycle, and around the time that she did, Deke’s face soured with the aftereffects of his dinner. Crichton got to the end of the hallway before the baby started wailing and vomited all down his shirt again. Around the same time, she started getting a stomach ache but it’s probably correlated to being utterly alone, or perhaps she’s just emphasizing with the baby too much.

An infant, that has her eyes, and the grin that Cameron sometimes gives to her. Ten days ago, it wouldn’t have had this much of an effect on her.

Every time she tries to admit to herself how much she truly misses Cameron, she strays away from completing the equation in her head as to what it could truly mean. Being stranded on the ship by herself is infinitely worse than having any sort of partner, be it a baby, a gray girl, or Cameron. Although now she lacks the safety she felt with him, the kind she assumes she would feel with any other member of the team, because if something happens, they could work together to overcome it.

He has protected her before, chased after her by motorcycle and foiled The Trust’s plan to kidnap and torture her again over things she didn’t know, things she didn’t want to know, things she’d buried so deep inside of her in order to forget. She handcuffed him, still not trusting completely, never completely, but here—here on Mayo, it’s different. She doesn’t have a choice, and perhaps this is the first time in her life, that not being offered a choice is preferable.

Does she occupy his thoughts as he does hers? Does he worry about her here practically on her lonesome? Is he trying to get back to her, or is he happy to bask in the glory of being returned to his country’s military a hero again, having survived a whole ten days in another galaxy? When she returned after ten months, there was no fanfare. There was no hero’s welcome. There was abdominal pain from where Tomin had shot her, and something Dr. Lam called postpartum depression, that she received pills for which made her tired and noncombative for a few weeks until lightening the dose and weaning her off.

There were stretchmarks and physical changes in her body, and rampant exhaustion as she adjusted to Tau’ri life again. Not being waited on by five or so Ori maidens meant having to procure her own meals, having to justify her needs of a smaller pair of pants after just asking for a bigger set.

Entertain the worry of being ferried away, jettisoned through the gate because she didn’t fit into their standards that were tighter than her newly acquired smaller pair of pants.

After the debacle with the psychology test, as the fear gripped her from within, she tempered her already satiated appetite—satiated after ten months of nurturing another being—and they mocked her want to study, to not be denied a chance at feeling safe from old enemies, from new enemies, from the numerous groups of people who wanted and still want her dead in the security in what her mind labelled as a family.

Supposes she’s in the general’s favor now, as he allows her to have private conversations with him. To sit in his office and try to figure out the black and white patterned game he has in the corner. Allows her to speak for the team when it suits him, when no one else will volunteer the whole group, she will.

There’s a knock at her door. Not the light rapping that Cameron has adopted in order not to scare her further. She blinks to the side, to where she thinks the door is, and slides her irritated arms beneath her, pushing herself up and off the slim, metallic bed.

She will never complain about the accommodations in her cell masquerading as her room at the mountain again.

Shuffling her feet over the floor, sounds adjust away from the white noise of the ship, from the tricks her ears play on her in the agonizing silence of voices and music that she can no longer hear, and over her own thoughts comes the familiar noise of Deke’s crying.

Engaging the door, she steps back, flinching at the light that spills over her face and into her room as Crichton bounces the baby before her, facing towards her, most likely so if he vomits, it’s on her.

“He just threw up on my last clean shirt.” Speaks the words like they’re indicative of something other than their logical meaning.

“All right?”

“He won’t stop crying and throwing up. I don’t—” he tries to adjust Deke, who squirms, shifting his little body away from his father “I can’t—”

“You can, you just don’t know how.” She crosses her arms before her, but still guards access to Officer Sun’s premarital room, now masquerading as her own. She doesn’t allow the analogy to go further than that.

“Aeryn would—I mean—” he huffs, still trying to adjust a baby that doesn’t prefer him, trying to find the words to explain a situation she already understands. “For tonight, can you—”

“No, I cannot.” Shakes her head, because as much as she wants to scoop that baby from his arms and change his diaper that is rotten with stench, it’s no good for either of them. This child is not going to be a permanent fixture in her life, and while at least one of his parents are present aboard Mayo, she is respectfully declining to take part in his care.

“Vala, my leg is killing me.”

“How do you think your wife felt after giving birth?” Checks and eyebrow at him, and something about the tone of her voice, the deepness, alerts the baby, settles him just minimally. “I guarantee you that hurt more than whatever Cameron’s old injury feels like.”

He sighs in resignation, the dejection upon his face rivalling that of his son, and they’ve never looked more similar than now. “What am I supposed to do?”

“He needs to be changed.”

“That I can kind of do.”

“Have you fed him yet?”

“No, I didn’t know it was time.”

She mimics his sigh, leaning her head against the frame of Mayo’s exceptionally crafted door. “I will show you how to do this once, but while you are on this ship, I will not be taking care of your child.”

“Deal.”

They sit up on the observation deck, the DRDs still cleansing the area where he vomited approximately twenty-four hours ago, and she shows him how to change his own son. Didn’t have to show Cameron, and when she posed interest in it, he told her he had two nephews.

“Did you bring the food pouch?” Glances up from where she’s fastening a new diaper, dropping the dirty on the ground, immediately the horseshoe crabs start to haul it away.

“Yeah.” Nods and retrieves the pouch from his pocket. Two different splatters of vomit at different levels of dryness on his shirt, indicative that he’s not a bad father, but just an absent one.

She shows him how to insert the feeding apparatus and squeezes the pouch until a little pablum drip from the opening. Swiping it with her finger she then tastes it, watching him crunch his face in disgust. “Always taste it. You never know if it has rotted, or if someone has malicious intentions.”

Crichton copies her actions, tasting the pablum and keeping the crunched face as it doesn’t taste like anything really, and has the texture of woodchips.

She adjusts his arms to hold Deke properly, so that the baby doesn’t aspirate the formula, so that he can digest it well and hopefully keep some in his stomach. “Do you miss your wife?”

His eyes meet her, Cameron’s clear eyes but with something different behind them. Not darker, just—different. “Every second.”

She nods, slipping the tip of the food pouch into Deke’s mouth and then replacing her own hand with Crichton’s.

He chuckles, deep in his chest, full of mirth, at the silenced baby suckling on the food, and for a moment the tenseness leaves his body.

As she leans back on her heels, he stares down at his son, but asks, “do you miss Colonel Mitchell?”

So intent on his son, that he doesn’t see her face fall, or what the question means to her, the physical answer on her face.

“When he’s done eating, burp him and place him in the bassinet. If he still has a rash on his behind, you can unfasten the diaper to let the air circulate.”

Doesn’t wait for an answer, or response, or gesture, or his gratitude.

Just leaves the room before she says something she may regret.

She sits in the commissary alone at one of the large tables ready to accommodate groups of a dozen or more, but it’s either too late or too early for many soldiers to be eating. Doesn’t recognize the food on her plate—when they stayed on John’s Earth, he introduced her to many foods which she enjoyed, like popcorn and pizza, and many she hated, like any relating to poultry products which are apparently a cheap source of protein because it is rampant on this military base—observes her food carefully, some form of fluffy carbohydrates, round and flat, and three wavy sticks of what looks to be animal fat.

Unsure of if it’s from a bird of any kind, she leans into her hand and pokes at it absentmindedly with the pronged eating utensil.

Senses him from her periphery before he sits down across from her.

When she and John have odd meals here, when they don’t take the food back to their room to eat in the solace of each other’s company without having to be the subject of others’ conversations, he always mentions how this room reminds him of his high school cafeteria. Regales her with tales of him as a young adult, the classes he took, the people he knew, the trouble he repeatedly got into, and how him and his father never saw eye-to-eye.

When the conversation turns to her, and he asks what she was like at that age, she doesn’t know how to answer because their ages are as comparable as their lives. She was reared on a command carrier, she didn’t set foot on a planet until she was well into adulthood, but she had killed so many before that point.

He never responds to her, just slips his hand within hers and squeezes while using the other hand to shove the pronged utensil loaded with food into his mouth.

“We could use your help.” Colonel Mitchell’s voice is softer than John’s which is unusual for a man in a high-ranking military position.

The affluent in the military get results by demoting all emotions except for rage and anger. Deflect any misdeeds or punishment on them by forcing their underlings to live a more exhausting and horrible life. It’s a partial reason why she decided to become a prowler pilot, because she could do so alone, only had to follow one set of instructions and was only reliable to herself.

It’s also why being part of a marauder was so appealing, a small crew, only one person in charge, no set of declining authority.

“I think it’s common knowledge that I’m unwanted during meetings and decisions affecting me and my husband.”

Will not offer him the consideration of eye contact, because in outward appearances, he is John whom she misses to an effect where it is causing her indigestion, and also whom she hates with a growing irritation.

Apparently, according to Colonel Carter, his current absence is not his fault. There was a miscalculation with the stones—stones which there are none of currently at this facility, but that Colonel Mitchell and Vala managed to procure one of off of Valdun.

The lack of stones, or rather, their disappearance, is offset by the stone Colonel Carter fabricated negating the ability of finding any stone off-world. This much she’s learned from sitting at the table speechless, staring at a man who is her husband, but is not, for the second time in her life.

If she squints her eyes enough to skew her vision she can almost imagine she’s back on Talyn.

That she has a crew to talk to if she felt compelled to. That she had a ship who would listen and trill at her words—an unstable vessel, but a companion nonetheless. That she had a former Peacekeeper much like herself who had a violent past of following strict orders and taking lives without blinking. That she had a loving partner, who curled up next to her at night and spoke words he didn’t think she would hear when she feigned sleep, words she speaks in Sebacean to her son because one of his parents should say them.

Colonel Mitchell sighs, cupping his hands against the table, that smile quirking it’s way onto his face. “You know we value your opinion.”

“Every time I offer my opinion, I’m turned down with nonsensical military talk meant to spin me in a circle and placate me into complacency.” She pushes away the dish, done with the circular piece of starch soaking something very thin and sticky into it, and the pieces of flesh that she hasn’t touched out of fear that it’s poultry and will upset her stomach.

He raises his eyebrows at her, because at first it looks like she’s offering him her meal, but then he clues in, aware she won’t be partaking. “Not hungry?”

With her arms crossed, she directs her gaze away from him, towards the doors. Should return to their room, as she knows nothing she says will be taken seriously. Doesn’t know why she feels calm divulging personal details to him just because he wears her husband’s face.

“My stomach is a bit upset.”

“Oh.” He nods, seemingly understanding her predicament, until he questions, “because of the morning sickness?”

Stares at her, his face oddly not blank, a little bit of eagerness showing up in that grin.

She doesn’t grin back. Holding on to her callous exterior but allowing for a dench of an eyebrow raise. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Oh. Uh—It’s when—” he adjusts in his seat, almost squirming under her gaze, and leans in a bit, lowering his voice as if what he’s telling her is clandestine knowledge. “It’s when you’re nauseous because you’re pregnant.”

Darts her eyes away from him again, because for as long as she remains here, she will always be divided down to the commonality of her being female and her being with child and therefore utterly useless.

“I’m sorry.” Shifts away as he apologizes, his voice of a normal cadence again. “It must be difficult for you to be here and be—well—” he scratches behind his ear, a nervous tell she’s learning “—and him, not.”

“What’s difficult is constantly being defined by a status of my body, being labeled as deficient, and excluded from military schemas when I was born and raised as a soldier. For you, for your people to prohibit me from participating because you believe me to be unsound of mind—”

“Hey, hey—” he raises his hands, palms flat and facing out, an action indicative that he means no harm. “We’re not excluding you because we think you’re being driven by hormones. We’re excluding you to protect you and by extension, the baby. Isn’t that something you want?”

“You have no idea what I want.” She stands, dusting the grease and sticky substance from her meal plate onto the thighs of her cotton pants.

“I know what you want.” Trails her, growing brave, not exactly beside her though as she moves and dumps the food into a receptacle labeled to receive it.

“How could you possibly know when you haven’t taken the time to ask?”

“Because you want the same thing I do.” Leans beside her against the bins as she slams her tray down atop. “You just want to go home.”

“Then I’m sorry Colonel, but we don’t want the same things.” Pivots on her feet, striding with a routine march towards the door.

He scoffs, and she hears the soles of his boots skid against the floor as he chases after her. “You’re really going to try to argue that you don’t want to go home.”

Continues marching ahead of him down the corridor. Doesn’t move out of the way for soldiers who overcompensate their position to her. They’ve no doubt heard of the many guards she incapacitated and are making sure there is ample room between them.

“No, I’m going to argue, that what you and I want is definable through one grave difference.”

Stopping at the elevator, he leans forward from behind her, depressing the button to travel downwards, knowing she’s returning to her room as she’s not setting foot in the medical area unless dragged there, and cannot help research in Dr. Jackson’s lab which is currently under rubble and investigation.

“You want to return home. I want things to be as they were before I left.” She has lost too much time with her son. Spent too much time on recline with injuries caused by alternate Earth buffoonery. Has been away from those she cares for and an environment she feels comfortable in for far too long.

They board the elevator together, which is unusually empty, but it is still early in the morning for too many of their soldiers to be scurrying about. It amazes her how their militaries differentiate, there was never a slow arn on the command carrier. There was never a time when she wasn’t meant to be doing exactly as she was. Suspects this is why their base is so easily infiltrated, from what she overheard, this is why their people are so frequently injured.

As the elevator begins to descend, he stands beside her quietly, his hands captured behind his back, but his fingers fidgeting. John used to act the same way before they entered into a relationship. Start civil and stupid conversations when she left her room to eat, trail her in the corridors, just happen to be washing his clothes at the same time as her.

It makes the concern, her missing him, overshadow the ire of him disappearing again.

While lost in her thought, a quick movement happens at her side that she only registers while it’s occurring. Colonel Mitchell snaps forward, his arms coming from behind him, and his thumb slams into the panel hitting a button with a symbol she has yet to translate and forgot to ask John about.

The elevator shudders and falls into a quick halt. The lights dimming and blinking off before a red emergency light, much like the one in the doctor’s laboratory after the ceiling collapsed.

As if he can sense her thoughts, knows she thinks he’s trying to be aggressive, and knows that she will disable him quicker than he can tell her not to, he compensates with a large step away, placing his back against the far side of the elevator. His hands again raised before his body in surrender.

“Please don’t get upset—”

“You have exactly one micron before I—”

“I just wanted a place where we could talk without other people overhearing us.” In the red light she can determine the sheen of sweat spreading across his forehead. “I wanted a place where we could catch each other up.”

“I have nothing to—”

“I wanted a place—” he speaks louder than her, his voice monopolizing the conversation, his eyebrows falling stern. “Look—I can’t make it so this never happened, but maybe if you share some important information with me, we can help each other get home.”  

It’s a fool’s play really. Is certain all she has to do is depress the correct button on the panel before her to jolt the elevator back to life and allow herself to return to her room to mull on the situation alone.

Is also sure all she has to do to determine which button will release her will be answered if she depressed a certain area of his throat.

It’s an idea based purely on emotion, and lacking logic entirely, and perhaps this is why she respects him because John pulls dren like this all the time and seems to walk away mildly unscathed.

“What do you want to know?”

He reclines against the panel, crossing his arms, a bemused expression on his face. “You okay?”

She narrows her eyes, trying to appraise his intentions. “Yes.”

“Baby okay?”

Less enthusiastic about this query. “Yes.”

“You need anything from us for it?”

“No.”

He pauses, ruminating on his thoughts for a moment. “You wanna ask me anything?”

“Why is your species obsessed with the safety of an alien fetus?”

“I don’t know.” His face falls serious again, the jovial nature of the questions enacting a game now gone. “Why are you so unconcerned with the health of your own baby?”

“Because I have a pre-existing son, and worrying about him preoccupies most of my time, the remaining of which goes to my buffoon of a husband—and perhaps because this child—” her hand drops to where the pinch is predominant “—is currently in stasis.”

“Stasis.”

“A second-level cell division that is viable for up to seven cycles and must be medically released. Now you answer my question.”

“I don’t remember what it was.”

“Why your people would continue to ignore me, knowing my knowledge and history is specifically useful to this situation, simply because I’m pregnant.”

“I honestly can’t say.” He shrugs but his eyes betray him. She knows those eyes, knows how to translate the feelings floating behind them well. Under her gaze he glances away, then back to find her still staring. “I guess—maybe to protect the sanctity of life?”

“That’s a load of dren,” she huffs, stepping back, away from the panel, but gesturing for him to engage the elevator again.

“Why do you say that?” He reaches forward, depressing the same button again, and the red light flicks off, before the elevator is illuminated brightly by white again.

“Because when my life was in danger from the tumultuously high temperature, no one cared.”

“They cared, they were probably just preoccupied with what happened.”

“It took an explosion to get them to address it.”

“Sometimes there’s so much going on it’s hard to get them to notice the important things.” Again, he jabs his thumb into a button marking the floor where all the conferences and conversations are held without her. “So, let’s go get you noticed.”

Chapter Text

“Where is she?”

The crew is gathered—as much of the crew as he could—to meet in command so they can discuss what’s going on, how it keeps going on, and God willing, stop it from going on. Except that his crew consists of himself, sloppily feeding Deke with Peacekeeper pabulum gluing his still dirty shirt—because he hasn’t had time to do laundry while balancing being captain of an almost deserted ship, a colonel in another galaxy with a gimp leg, and a single parent to a kid who still will not stop crying—and Noranti who’s humming along, doing what looks like dusting around the room, but really she’s plucking knots of hair, scraps of cloth, little things the DRDs missed while working on the mountain of clothing in his room, the puke frequently being left everywhere by everyone, and the dirty diapers everyone is too lazy to stick in a garbage chute.

He tried.

Oh God, how he tried.

Pounded at Stark’s door until he was sure he broke a knuckle—okay, maybe not broke, but definitely bruised up a little bit—then lost his cool and demanded that Pilot open the door, and when Pilot calmly double checked that’s what he wanted, he snapped and screamed for it.

The room smelled like hot, wet garbage, and Stark was still mostly catatonic, staring at the wall, a little bit of mumbling here in there. He asked if he was faking—tried not to think of Zhaan’s photogasisms—then just sat beside him for a second because maybe he just needed company, maybe he just needed to know what was going on.

Explained, as best as he could, about the hookah, about the transfer, about the other Earth, and how they can come home but never together and never permanently. Finished off the killer story with the cherry on top of Aeryn being pregnant again, and chuckling, a little less than sanely, into his sweaty palm.

After a few more minutes passed with Stark failing to acknowledge him, he nodded to himself, an clapped a hand over his old friend’s knee as he stood. “If you think of anyway to fight whatever the hell is going on, let someone know.”

He closed the door behind him.

Then he moved down to Aeryn’s old room, the hallway he would casually pace back and forth on, attempting to look busy until she exited her room and they ‘accidentally’ bumped into each other.

“Vala?” He knocked on the door once, softly.

Then again a bit louder, “Vala?”

Then finally just threw out any conventions he knew and started slamming his balled fist into the door while hollering her name. “Vala!”

“Commander Crichton—”

“What?” He barked as his attention jarred away from the door.

Pilot’s face—and his half-lidded expression at having to interfere—materialized on the clamshell in the corner. “Ms. Mal Doran is currently making use of the refreshers.”

His lips twitched at the inconvenience of everything.

They only have—they should only have—a limited time here, the best thing he could do is organize everyone so they’re on the same page. If he slipped through three different Moya’s and got everyone to work together on that, then two different galaxies should be a piece of cake.

“Tell her to head to command when she’s done.”

“I will do as you requested as soon as she is finished, however, she’s asked that I don’t interrupt her while she is in the refresher.”

“Pilot—”

“I am going to heed her wishes, Commander Crichton.”

He had his own choice of mumbled words after that, mostly how no one on this frelling ship has even tried to find a way home, meanwhile he’s been on at least three different desert planets with a billion suns each, trying to find a stone that they never get to find because Colonel Carter’s computer has a virus.

Before heading to command to wait, he ducked into the medical bay. From what learned from Zhaan, then Jool, then Sikozu, Chiana’s parabolic data looked neutral—no signs of secondary infection, no spikes of pain but also no evidence of regaining consciousness. He sat down beside her for a second, trying to catch his breath, trying to remember what was really important, and fixed the reflective blanket, drawing it to her shoulders, noting the wound on her neck.

“Hey Pip.” Held her limp hand, cold in his and it felt different, her fingers felt smaller. “You faking it?”

Waited for her to grin because she’s awful at playing dead around him, searched the numbers reading off her chart for any sign of change, and exhaled a little to harshly when there was none.

“Mom and Dad go on a vacation for what? Eleven days now and you kids can’t even take care of the ship for that long?” His voice cracked,  and he huff three times to clear away his tears because Crichton’s don’t cry unless they’re him or his son.

“Commander Crichton?” Pilot asked tentatively into his comm.

“Yeah, Pilot?” Snuffled, wiped the back of his hand across his leaky nose and cleared his throat.

“Ms. Mal Doran is out of the refresher. She says she will meet you in command after she puts clothing on.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

Groaned when he stood because this Colonel’s leg has been through a meat grinder. Vala said there was a metal rod in it, and he can’t imagine an ex-air force pilot having to explain why the detector’s going off every time he tried to board a plane.

After he shifted the weight onto his good leg, he leaned in and smoothed back Chiana’s hair, placing a kiss on her forehead.

Doesn’t know what happened, how she ended up so banged up, but they’ve been through worse—no matter what happens, they’ve always been through worse.

“Wake up soon, will ya? You’ve been out for a few days and the whole place has gone to dren.”

Now he’s waiting on the last member, the only other capable member on the ship. Actually the only capable member on the ship because after he factors out the two that are catatonic, he’s left with a newborn, an old lady who’s currently finding dust bunnies for food spices, and him, who on his best day can handle his own, but since there’s barbed wire surgically implanted on the inside of his leg, he gets three steps at the most before he’s got to take a five minute break.

“Perhaps she’s forgotten about the meeting?” Noranti pinches some more dirt between her finger and thumb, examining it for a moment in the light, and then opens a small cloth pouch and places it inside.

“I just told her to come up here.” Holding out Deke, he doesn’t have to say a word before the dear grandmama scoops him up. “Please don’t tell me we’re having another losing time episode.”

“No more than usual with your constant meetings.” Vala walks through the door, but her stride isn’t her usual one—the one that’s a little sensual and a little playful. It’s definitely not Aeryn’s stern and wide stride like her feet have to eat up as much of the ground as they can. It’s more of a shuffle now. She’s wearing Aeryn’s green sweater with the zipper, the one she was wearing when she flashed him so many cycles ago in that tunnel.

He clears his throat, tries not to draw attention to her different movements, because Aeryn wouldn’t want him too, and he doesn’t know Vala well enough to work against the grain. “I think we need to have a good old-fashioned brainstorm about our current situation.”

 “A what?” Her eyes squint at him as she rests against the rickety table that hasn’t stood right since Chiana sword in the stoned it.

“A brainstorm.”

She doesn’t give him a nod of comprehension. What she does do is continue to look like Aeryn does when he pulls out as many Southern euphemisms as he can until she finally shakes her head, breaking into a grin and pushing him away.

It’s been two days and he misses her like hell. They haven’t been separated from each other for this long since she took her prowler to the other side of the galaxy and he just watched her go, all because of a stupid coin toss.

“You don’t know what a brainstorm is?”

“Does your wife?”

The tension in her voice is palpable and nasty—something is definitely up, but again, he’s spent less than three days with this woman—if she didn’t look exactly like Aeryn, he wouldn’t be so concerned.

“No, but when she has working translator microbes, like you do, it’s usually not that much of a problem.”

“Yes, well my native language happens to be English, so if you’re using a Tau’ri idiom, adage, or some other form of syntax that wasn’t widespread over the galaxy—”

“Tau’ri?”

“Earthling,” Noranti interrupts bouncing Deke who is starting to fuss.

He just fed the kid, did exactly like Vala showed him. Changed the diaper and left it for 1812, who he swore gave him the stink eye, and fed Deke that Peacekeeper slop with the consistency of house paint mixed with a bunch of sawdust—it didn’t taste much better.

It didn’t taste like anything at all, maybe a bit like a toilet paper roll and chewed gum, just awful, and tacky, and it’s still sitting hard in his stomach.

“Haven’t you been on Earth for years though?”

“Believe it or not Crichton—” she shakes her head when Noranti offers her Deke to calm, crossing her arms, and shifting away. She wasn’t lying about not having a thing to do with his kid “—Stargate Command isn’t exactly putting together classes for me on normal Earth life. I’m lucky if someone takes the time to stop and explain anything to me when I ask a question. I’ve had to reach to outside sources.”

Can tell by the tone of her voice that he’s treading water, and this time he can’t give a gentle forehead kiss to distract her.

Noranti steps back towards him, giving him this glance that all the women in his life seem to be giving him lately, one where he should know better, one where they’re disappointed in him, one where he should just get to the frelling point.

“Okay, everyone just hold the phone for a second.”

Both women stop what they’re doing, just staring at him even more confused.

“What phone?”

“The communication device from Earth?”

“There’s no phone here, Crichton.”

Well, at least he got them distracted enough to step away from the edge of anger mountain. He ignores the questions, motioning to Noranti to hand him Deke. “All right, come to Papa, Little Man.”

Deke squirms, his nose curling and his face grows red, but he holds the little guy against his chest. Spent all night with him as he cried almost straight through. Told him about his grandpa and grandma and aunts. About D’argo and Zhaan and Jool. About his mom who didn’t want kids but adores him. About the other him.

Amazingly, after rocking Deke a bit, his cries soften into little whimpers. It’s the first time that his son has actually calmed down in his arms—well, the first time when there wasn’t a galaxy switching hookah around—and there’s a heaviness in his chest that suddenly disappears.

“He recognizes me.”

“That’s what happens when you spend time with your child.” There’s a saltiness in Vala’s voice that’s a lot different than Aeryn’s despite both women giving him dren about the same thing. Aeryn’s is more sad, exhaustive, while Vala sounds bitter, maybe even a bit jealous.

Before he answers her, she shoves away from the table, moving back towards the door.

“Hey, we need to have this meeting sooner or later.”

When she turns back, she winces, her arms crossing over her stomach again.

“Okay, what’s—”

“Nothing.”

“That was too quick for it to be nothing.”

Not only can he hear her overdramatic sigh, but she darts her eyes away so quick, he might actually hear that too. But he waits, because he’s finally got a semi-happy son whose cry is actually lower than the motor of a lawnmower, so he has all the time in the world.

She starts to get antsy, bouncing her leg, still not meeting his gaze with a crooked set jaw. Figured waiting her out would be the way to deal with this because from what he saw of the interaction between her and the other members of the team, when she gets all huffy, no one seems to wait her out—the good old doc just skimmed over her and to the next topic.

“Fine.” She finally breaks, and he ducks his head to hide his grin of success. “If you really must know, my stomach is upset, and I’d prefer to go lay down.”

“Was it something the school lunch lady fed you?”

“Actually, her cooking is quite preferable to the commissary food back on the mountain.”

‘Then—” but he gets it, just hasn’t had to deal with it for a while because all the woman he lives with are aliens with different working ‘systems’. “Oh, I get it.”

“Get what?”

“There’s some—uhh—useful products down in the cargo bay—”

“What—” she stops talking to slam the palm of her hand into her forehead. “This isn’t moontides, you idiot.”

“Moon—what?”

“This is my actual stomach, it’s stinging, I have a bit of a high temperature, and earlier in the refresher I—”

Without any warning at all, Deke blows chunks all over him—the third time on this shirt and the brownish colored Peacekeeper sludge rolls down his chest as his son starts wailing. “Come on!”

“—I did that.”

Hands Deke to her, his mind racing, trying to figure out if everyone’s just got a bit of the space flu, or if it’s something worse—it’s always something worse. Using as little of his hand as possible, he sweeps the puke from his shirt and back onto the floor.

Deke gurgles in her arms as she uses the sleeve of Aeryn’s shirt to wipe away the food leftover from his mouth, and it doesn’t hit him until they both and his son share the same queasy expression.

The food.

The meeting happens later that night—much, much later that night. So much later that they’re almost out of day two and into day three—but everyone needed some time in order to process what’s happened.

The forensics came back midday on Jackson’s lab explosion that was inconclusive on foul play, which just put people more on edge with Aeryn, despite her being in the actual blast from what he’s heard. Jackson also pointed out that the explosion didn’t damage much in his lab, his computers being all intact, but completely obliterated the maintenance room above, destroying some of the water heaters, a furnace, and part of the air-conditioning system.

Fortunately, in a show of good faith, Landry finally had maintenance reroute the air conditioning from the higher floors down to where Officer Sun’s room is located and the floor holding the conference room and mess hall. So, for the time being, she’s able to roam those few floors without any medical issues, but eventually there’s going to be an overload on the air conditioning system which will probably take out the whole thing.

They’re hoping to have this situation sorted by then.

He was hoping this situation would have been sorted by now.

Jackson and Sam have huge cups of coffee in front of them, and his tongue absently touches his lips because, man he could use a big cup of that to wake him up—normally he’d go for a jog, but as good as he is at multitasking, he never would have been able to corral Officer Sun in, while brainstorming ideas with himself, since no one seems that eager to sort out this situation.  

Officer Sun is a little more awake than he is, a little more alert, and seems like she actually like might to participate in the round table to have her input heard.

She leans over the table, just a little, almost not even noticeably—he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t hanging around Vala so much, becoming aware of all her little ticks and her mannerisms—this action doesn’t hold the playfulness that he’s used to seeing, though.   

If she were here, she’d be spinning around, thrown lazily in her chair, barely listening to what they’re supposed to do for the day, hair pulled into pigtails and her head tossed back out of boredom.

He smiles thinking of her, really missing her now because at another glance to his watch, it’s now day three. He’s been away from her for three days, but he’s gotten used to her being around, like after she came back to Auburn with him.

Hated the idea of two whole days with her, but when it was over, he didn’t want to say goodbye to her, and ended up walking her to her room because he didn’t want to part.

Focuses on Officer Sun speaking to Sam and Jackson about their coffees, her head almost angled in question, and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the drink. Focuses on her so that he doesn’t focus on how afraid he is that something might happen—have already happened—to Vala because he’s not there.

Something might happen when he’s there anyway, but at least he would know he tried his best to help her.

Here, he’s just an idiot standing at the head of the conference table, trying to get attention, and brainstorm methods to get him and his—uh—Vala—back from another galaxy, while Sam procures another disposable cup, pouring some of her coffee in it for Officer Sun to try.

She smells the half-full cup, her nostrils twitching, and her eyes narrowing because the coffee the mess makes on base is so thick and so strong, it’s almost like a paste and sometimes when he has a late night and he drinks too much of it, it gives him heartburn.

It’s not until Officer Sun starts bringing the Styrofoam cup to her lips, ready to take a sip of the hot liquid, that he remembers his brother’s complaints when expecting his second kid—how his wife was craving coffee, but couldn’t drink it because the amount of caffeine in it could harm the baby.

They’d suffered a loss between his first nephew being born and his second and were overly cautious the entire duration of the pregnancy to make sure they didn’t do anything that could harm the baby.

The baby.

“Officer Sun—” stretches over the table less than gracefully—maybe a little more gracefully than if he had this own body because he doesn’t think that his hip could take the weight of his whole body on it like this—and carefully brings her arm down from her mouth, and with it the cup of coffee, before she can take a sip.

Doesn’t realize he’s actually touching her before he is, and only realizes he is because her skin is ice cold. Colder than Vala’s skin gets when exposed to the cool temperatures in their bedroom on Moya. So cold that it almost stings his fingers when he touches the bared skin on her arm.

Always thought that if he touched her—even in a situation that required it, like saving her from drinking something that may or may not harm her baby—that she would just use him as an example and just kick his ass.

She just sort of gives off that aura.

So does Vala.

But she doesn’t flip her hand around his arm and break it, or swing out of her chair to hurl it at his face, instead she watches him, a little curious, like he’s a cup of coffee, and a little bit irritated, like he’s an old, stale cup of coffee with that cream swill on the top.

He can almost see the seconds he has before her calm demeanor fades away and she becomes aggravated with the touch.

Carefully, he reaches his other hand forward—the one not holding her arm—and reclaims the cup from her hand, holding it by the rim with his fingers, and disposing of it in the trashcan behind him.

When he turns back to the table, not only is Officer Sun waiting for an explanation, but so is Jackson, who has been watching their moves, their interactions since he got back, Sam, who sacrificed a bit of her coffee, just to have it thrown out, and General Landry, who is standing in the mouth of the door, confused with the silence and how they all seem to be examining each other.

“We don’t really know how caffeine—ugh—will react with her system.”

He scratches the back of his neck, turning halfway back to the board behind him where he plans to write down what they know of the device and what they don’t. It’s as basic of a plan as they have, but sometimes even the knowns and the unknowns can get confusing.

Sam seems to understand as she nods thoughtfully at something she might have overlooked, because Sam is pragmatic and smart as all hell, but sometimes the little things sneak by her.

Jackson doesn’t appear fooled though, and the way his eyebrows knot as he fixes his glasses on the bridge of his nose—careful to avoid the near shiner he got in the lab explosion making the one side of his face a little puffy and a little bruised—lets him know he’s suspicious.

Opening his mouth—probably to ask what the hell that was—Jackson falters a little.  

Vala was sort of his area of expertise—not in that he knew everything about her, because hell, they barely know anything about her—but that he was the one who was able to reign her in during the times that called for it. He was probably her first real friend and true confidant in a long time, and that’s still got to amount for something.

But Jackson is still having a hard time discerning that the war hardened soldier sitting in Vala’s seat with tired eyes and a blanket expression, is not Vala.  

She’s not Vala.

Not even close.

Even though the physical similarities are off the charts with comparisons, the emotional and mental similarities are separated by an ocean of difference. He never knows what Officer Sun is thinking, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever know, so he never tries to, hoping instead she’ll tell him when it’s important.

With Vala, she displays a wide range of emotions but it’s all an act—deep down, Vala definitely feels different than what she lets on, than what they know about her as a teammate, than what he used to believe about her.

Jackson never gets to ask his question though, because Landry—who’s now had to stop the schedule of his day twice—interrupts him.

“Colonel Mitchell, I have a list of items I need to see to today—” he walks in, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table “—so if you could start your presentation—”

“Of course, Sir.” He stands at the whiteboard, ready to have a good old round robin brainstorm, with the marker in his hand. “I just wanted to make sure that we’re all on the same page about what’s happened, and what needs to be done.”

Everyone keeps quiet, staring at him, maybe waiting for him to elaborate more, but when he doesn’t General Landry scopes out the table and then adds with just a slight chuckle, “I think we all know what the main goal is.”

“Okay, then I think we all know that the main problem is that we don’t have enough intel.”

“Intel on what?” Sam’s voice disappears into her cup as she takes a sip of whatever little coffee she didn’t sacrifice.

“On everything.”

“Can you be more specific?” Jackson sighs, tossing his hand out a bit in aggravation.

Never thought how hard it must be on all of them—to deal with two people who look like, but don’t act like their teammates, like people they know and go to bat for on a daily basis. How disheartening it can be when they can’t trust someone they have been on at team with for years, or when that person suddenly doesn’t trust them back.

“Okay—” tries to grin with a little patience, but he’s never been the patient kinda guy, that’s why he doesn’t read much, because he just wants to skip to the end, to hit the punchline so he can put the damn book down and go do something else “—for one, we need to know how this happened.”

“But—we know how it happened,” Sam angles her head at him curiously, like he’s been taken over by a third guy which would be the definition of too many cooks.

“Officer Sun and Crichton shoved the stones into the long-range communication device, which initiated the transfer—” Jackson, as if falling into his rightful spot, begins to retell exactly what they know, how they know it, and how long they’ve know it for, which also doesn’t help at all.

“Then why did Vala and I switch with them?”

“Because we put the stones in a specific recess with a dedicated link to your planet.” Officer Sun seems to be the only one who cares about furthering their knowledge, about untangling the one hell of a knot they’ve got going on.

By the way that everyone becomes silent, this might be new information and it might not be. Maybe they’re just as surprised to hear her talk.

“Noranti showed us the spaces we have to use.”  

“I would be reticent to trust her endeavors.”  

“But you trust her with Deke?”

“Out of bare necessity.”

“I’m sorry—” Jackson waves his hand through the air, a little more ticked off than usual—they all are, lack of sleep, the hot temperature still a threat, lab explosions. “Who’s Noranti?”

“An old lady.”

“A Traskan”

They both answer at the same time, sort of shrugging off the other’s retort, because neither answer  is important, because Noranti isn’t really important in all of this, even if she is a subpar babysitter.

“Look—” he turns his back to them as he starts to write on the board, feeling like a different person, like someone in a board meeting with a real reason to use a PowerPoint presentation. “I think that we need to concentrate on finding out everything we can about this device.”

“But, we have, Cam.” Sam glances back at Landry, who’s said nothing during the entire exchange—he might actually just be asleep with his eyes open. “We’ve exhausted all our means for understanding it.”

“Yeah, and what about the means that aren’t ours?” He keeps the marker on the board, continuing to listen to it shriek as he writes down his list of ideas.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters we could—”

But the familiar feeling of light-headedness clouds behind his eyes, makes him feel really tired, and all he can do is hope Crichton’s not pissing this time.  

Chapter Text

Sitting in conference, she tries to persuade her mind to keep steady on the discussion, however, everyone keeps interrupting causing the purpose of the gathering, the importance behind the meeting, to be constantly derailed by interjections that end up in a cacophony of voices struggling to gain dominance.

Her husband’s body stands at the head of the table, which becomes the foot after the general enters the room, accepting a seat directly across from him. Again, causing a halt in the meeting, in her inclusion, and the possible outside sources they can utilize in order to obtain more information.

But then, as Colonel Mitchell maneuvers back to the large white wall, an implement which they scribble English words to converse about on—all these frelling humans do is talk.

To each other, over each other, with each other, against each other.

If Peacekeepers spoke even a fraction as much as these humans, they would be many solar cycles behind on technology and military strategies.

Although she doesn’t wish to change her life as it is now, with a loving husband and son, she misses the organization of military professionals without emotional capabilities frelling things up.

Misses entering a conference and being told exactly what’s going on and what is required of her so she may carry out her portion of the implemented plan which was approved by a board of military advisors.

Also misses formulating plans with a patchwork family aboard Moya. Quickly compiling information and hatching a plan that very rarely ever work but at least being able to get something frelling done whereas here she sits again, trying to pay attention and waiting to participate, yet the opportunity never arises.

With a shrill shriek, the writing implement cuts across the while wall, while Colonel Mitchell falls directly to the side, leaving a large red line elongating the end of the ‘t’ he’d written. The only word he managed to scribble for them is ‘at’, which again, offers no evolution to the knowledge they already know, no ignition to a plan that could be put set in place, and no solace that she will see her son or her husband any time soon.

Despite this knowledge coursing through her mind, she hops from the chair and pillows her husband’s, now probable empty head, on her lap as the others panic, their emotions as palpable in the room as the klances of increase in temperature are.

They call for medical, a place she detests.

The others frighten at the sight of blood that is not their awarded Colonel, but her husband’s, terrified that he’s suffered from some unknown injury, ideas that bring paranoia to a flare ever so briefly, while John’s large head backs against her stomach, and the pinch in her becomes more prominent again.

She clears his bangs away from pasting to his face, and then tries to stem the blood pouring out of his nose with the bottom of her sweater, leant to her by the military, as the others poke and prod his body, their hands on his neck, his wrist, telling her to lay him flat, then demanding that she does it.

Her teeth crack as the mounting anger grows against  people who tell her what to do with her body, with her unborn child, and now with her husband, yet will not stoop to hear her words.

Although she wasn’t born into an environment filled with love, she wasn’t coddled and ensconced in the arms of an adoring parent as she grew, she learned through practicing how to care for people, how to nurture the sensation within her telling her to be concerned or proud when those aboard Moya.

She learned how to stop ignoring the nagging within her whenever John was around, how she wanted to be with him, near him, care for him when he needed it—how she allowed him to begin to care for her despite not really needing it.

How she rewrote the basis of her existence by birthing a baby, and while it is not flying on a marauder under the watch of the Peacekeepers, how it can be rewarding in it’s own sense. Having her child stare up at her with eyes that are her own, that she gave to them within her, and allow herself to be consumed by the warm feeling of embrace.

The panic around her ceases, voices becoming muted the more she begins to concentrate on John. The other’s are still moving, but less frenzied, almost in a decreased motion, mouths still demanding actions from her although she knows better.

Fingers softly stroke over his cheek, creating streaks of blood as they go, but she can sense him reawakening—perhaps even before he regains consciousness himself—feels the energy within him, an essence swirling underwater, contained before breeching the surface and becoming whole again.

The muscles near his temple tickle beneath her fingertips as his eyes flutter open. They’re wild and unfocused, the pupils dilated and fixated on the ceiling. Coming back into a room as hectic as this cannot be welcoming.

Much like how it was to awaken in a cold shower, water flooding her eyes as she literally resurfaced and made ripples.

To compensate she arches her body over his, protective, concealing, and lowers her lips nearer to his ear, whispering soft words—not in English—but in Sebacean, as she does with Deke, trying to coax him into settling like their son in her arms.

Despite the other’s rushing around the room, shouting something at her, that the medical team needs to check him, she doesn’t move her body or her hands, stroking at the side of his head as he takes his first deep breathe, his eyes adjusting, focusing closer, onto her face.

As he raises one of his hands to graze her cheek, he grunts, “hey, Baby.”

“Are you hurt?”

When he shakes his head to answer, he winces, his eyes briefly fluttering shut again before attempting to sit up. She moves her hands to his shoulders, mindful of the healing tear, and supports him.

With a hand on his head, he keeps his eyes downtrodden. She pets a hand through his hair, searching for any secondary injuries while under the mask of comforting him.

“I fell on my face. This guy couldn’t even land so I wasn’t on my face?”

“Commander Crichton?”

The overlapping sounds of the conference room have truly died away when her ears tune back into those in the room, all standing solitary from each other in a semicircle around the table with a few medical staff crowding the doorway.

Waiting for someone to yell another command proves useless as they seem to be stuck in awe, experiencing the sudden return of her husband for the first time.

Providing the usual scaffolding to evolve the conversation, move the dialogue beyond the moot point, John’s groans when he touches his nose. “I think my nose is broken.”

“Well, I suppose it’s safe to say that Commander Crichton has graced us with his presence once again.” The tone of the general’s voice insinuates that either she or John had a say in how long his sojourn would be, had a choice in who would go back and visit Moya who is more and more in shambles as her population dwindles while being pursued by some of the deadliest hunters in the galaxy.

Helping John, he manages to get on his hands and knees, the blood once running down his face now dripping freely from his nose to the floor. Staggeringly, he removes one of his hands acting as support, and immediately she compensates by wrapping an arm around his back, and one under his chest to help keep him in place.

Again his hand goes to his nose, touching lightly but allowing more blood to flow.

“He broke my nose.”

“I don’t think Mitchell intended to have you land on your face,” Dr. Jackson’s voice sounds nearer than before, and when she glances over, she finds him just over her shoulder witnessing them, examining them.

There’s a flash of white before her eyes, and suddenly she’s being held captive on the Scarran base again, each of her moves being observed, each of her words questioned.

“That bastard broke my damn nose.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t his intention.” The doctor’s words are more curtailed when they leave the general’s mouth. He stands from his chair, pushing away from the table as it’s obvious no exchange of information can happen now. “Why don’t you have medical take a look at you, Son?”

“I told you—” John huffs through the pain before he wipes the mixture of blood and sweat from his face onto the short sleeves of his fatigues “—you’re not my dad.”

The general doesn’t acknowledge John’s insolence with any form of reply, instead speaking in a hushed tone first with Colonel Carter, and then with the medical staff before exiting the room.

“I though this guy was a pilot?” The question is rhetorical as he maneuvers his body into a sitting position with her guidance, waiting only a micron before attempting to stand with her aid. “Shouldn’t he be graceful or something?”

But she stops, her hands on him, how she’s envisioned growing with Deke, keeping her hands on either side of him as he takes precarious steps forward, ready to catch her child if he falls, ready to protect him from whatever harm may befall him, ready to give up a portion of her freedom in order to ensure his safety, that his childhood rivals John’s in memories, and not her own.

John’s bemoaning does something to her—something she’s missed in the three days since the switch occurred, since she woke and trailed down serpentine corridors by herself, a solitary alien on a world away from her family—it’s something familiar, how he acts in hysterics over each miniscule injury that happens, each inconvenience becomes a mountain to climb.

She can’t help but hug his stumbling form against her, right him when he loses his footing momentarily, taking the time to curl a lazy arm around her body, warm as he normally is, though nominally more sticky than usual.

He smells of Peacekeeper formula, the refresher on Moya, and spit up—several types of spit up—and she chuckles to herself because she does not expect more from him.

They start to walk as a unit over to a chair that the medical staff are directing him to sit in, repeating mantras of “easy” and “take it slow” as she feels her core body temperature raise from his proximity, from the heavy arm slung around her hips like the holster for a pulse pistol, his hand not so professionally landing on her posterior.

“You okay?” His voice is a low grumble, one they’ve used to communicate on several occasions in situations when they were gunned down, trapped, and couldn’t alert whoever was hunting them to their whereabouts. One implemented in the early morning a few weekens ago when he woke and the adjacency of her body, of her cool skin, roused something primal in him that he growled at her, which, unfortunately, also woke Deke.

Must be confused by her near jovial nature, for the first time feeling emotional relief since arriving in this galaxy because she is no longer alone, she is with a partner who respects her input, who allows her to voice her own opinions of the mess devolving, who respects her right to her own body and the secrets housed within.

Holds onto his bicep as he sits, the medical staff immediately prodding around his nose, the rest of his face, enticing different levels of hisses and threats from him until he finally swats away the last hand pinching down his nose, attempting to find the lapse in its construction.

His hand then grabs her own, trying to draw out a response to his question, the area around his eyes growing darker with trauma and there is nothing more like him than breaking his nose by falling on the floor. Suffering blunt force trauma, created machines of mass destruction, birthed a malignant wormhole, but injures himself on the stability of a floor constructed of cheap plastic tiles.

“I’m fine.” Squeezes his hand, in response his shoulders lose their rigidness, his jaw unclenches, and he continues to let the medical workers assess him, poking, prodding, pinching, all while never dropping his eye contact with her.

“I don’t think it’s a break—” the doctor, the one with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, declares as her bright blue gloves grow dark brown with the addition of John’s blood.

The doctor’s hand recoils as John lets out another yip of pain and resumes swatting her hand away.  

“I still need a scan to see how bad the damage is.”

“I can tell you without one, that it hurts like hell.”

The doctor retreats, standing next to Colonel Carter, her fingers deftly ridding her hands of the gloves, balling them as to not spread any of John’s blood further. “I need a scan in order to determine if there’s any damage to the—”

When she speaks, it’s odd, almost like she’s addressing John and herself, but she’s angled towards Colonel Carter, having a dialogue with her about the methods and reasoning behind the medical stay.

“Just give me an aspirin, and I’ll be fine—” John tries to shoo them away again, standing from the chair, more solid on his feet, but favoring his right leg for an odd reason, lurching in his first few steps towards the white all with ‘at’ scrawled across it. “Anyone know what this means?”

In the middle of his reprimand his eyes rolled back into his head, his finger flaccid in pointing at her, before toppling over like a chopped down tree. She sidestepped him, managed to miss his heavy form landing on hers, possibly taking her down with him, or trapping her beneath.

Initially, she doesn’t know the reasoning behind his dramatic action—possibly his fainting—as she can’t wake him up with a kick from the side of her foot, then a harsh nudge to his shoulder with the tips of her toes, then a violent shake of his body.

Then she clues in on what’s happened.

“Cameron?” Her question is frantic as she struggles to flip his body over from being slammed straight down into Mayo’s hard floors.

Kneeling beside him, she’s able to preform the same style of flip she did when they initially arrived in this galaxy, careful of his old thigh injury, and the scarring at his shoulder that should feel more like a bad sunburn now, than anything else, as she tips his uninjured shoulder to get him onto his back.

That’s when she views the blood coursing down his face.

“Cameron?” Even more frantically, she calls his name, her hands cupping both his cheeks, becoming tacky and wet with his blood. She can’t feel his body move beneath her, cannot feel any intake of breath and she’s at a loss of what to do.

Her whole persona developed upon the absence of people to care for, and by the need to constantly think on her feet—to be mentally one step ahead of anyone else, lest they try to turn the tables on her. Throughout her lifetime, she’s been on the bad end of a few chewy deals, but she’s always managed to slip out by a hair because she’s become aware of the inherent danger before the predator enacted them.

But the downside of never having anyone around, is just that.

Until she came to the SGC, she didn’t know she missed joking with someone. She didn’t remember that there was a reason for completing a mission for an entirely different reason than just the payment. She didn’t want to abandon these people in the midst of a heist in order to obtain the full amount of treasure—she wanted to help them, learn with them, grow with them if they would let her.

In the years she spent at the SGC, she’s had to think on her feet for various reasons—Cameron’s favorite method of brainstorming ideas at that stupid conference table comes to mind—but it’s depleted her ability to avoid the shock.

Four years ago, if she was pulling a con with someone and they double-crossed her, she half already expected it—entered into the partnership expecting it—if they attacked her, she was one step ahead of the perpetrator, having already studied their weaknesses while in conversation, while they were at rest.

What she isn’t prepared for is not being able to do anything for someone she trusts, for one of the people who would do something for her.

All the medical knowledge she’s acquired over the years drains from her mind along with her equilibrium as she’s no longer able to keep crouching beside him and has to sit. She’s panting, terrified because the environment is unknown to her, the equipment is unknown, and the extent of his injuries are unknown.

Decides to start probing, see where the blood is coming from on his face, decides this after more than a few breathes, but doesn’t move either of her arms to do so, instead just staring at him, embracing the swirling storm of feelings in the pit of her stomach that make her want to vomit, the gnawing, the indigestion from whatever alien food she’s consumed, the whole situation making her frantic.

But before she lifts a finger to his face, before she can even compile a list of duties to complete, before she can mentally scan through the checklist in her brain that she learned during SGC training, and get him into a recovery pose, his eyes flicker, blinking in fast succession, until they remain open.

“Cameron?” Plants her hands on the ground, creeping forward to observe him better.

At the sound of his name he exhales, bringing a hand to his head. “Man, what happened?”

She doesn’t even offer him an explanation—he’s a rather intelligent man, he should be able to place the puzzle pieces together to discern where he is once he gets more stabilized.

Instead she throws herself over him, unable to contain the relief, the shock still shaking her extremities, laughing against his chest. “I thought you were—”

“I’m fine, Princess,” he groans, dropping a heavy hand to her back, rubbing somewhat awkwardly through the weakness and confusion that accompanies switching galaxies.

She wrenches away from him, jabbing a finger into his chest with each word for emphasis. “Do not ever do that again.”

“I’ll try not to.” His hand strokes up and down her back, through the thin black t-shirt she’s wearing. Despite his half-lidded eyes, and the vast amount of blood still rivering from his nostrils, he’s wearing that familiar lopsided grin.

She shimmies further up his body, tucking her head beneath his chin, dropping an arm around his chest and nuzzling. “I didn’t know if you were going to come back.”

Expects him to feed her some drivel about the mission, about the work he did while temporarily stationed back at the SGC, about the plan set in motion to possibly return everyone to where they belong, and with it the frightening notion that everything they’ve been through together on this vessel will unfortunately be swept under the rug and labelled as nothing more than an other galaxy fling.

But his hand curls around her hip, possibly tugged her closer as he leans his head slanted against hers. She can feel the cold stickiness of his blood mussing her hair, but it doesn’t matter right now, she can wash it later.

“I was waiting to come back.”

She presses her hand into his chest, pulling back so she can gauge his reaction—despite all her follies, her ability to judge others and the verity of their actions remains concrete. “Weren’t you otherwise preoccupied at the SGC?”

“It’s hectic there—loud.” His other hand comes to rest on her arm, and despite just jumping galaxies, he’s far warmer than her. He starts to rub her skin to create friction—to create heat. “We were trying to figure something out, but in all honesty, I was just waiting to come back here.”

“Yes, it is quieter, offers more solitude.” Her voice is incredibly quiet as he shuffles his body into a sitting position, using the bottom of the black t-shirt covered in baby vomit to wipe the blood from his face. “Being out of your body that long must have been uncomfortable.”

“That’s not why I wanted to come back, and you know it.”

He speaks with conviction, like he can traverse the deep recesses of her mind and know that she’s trying to translate if he felt as uneasy without her as she did without him. He must have felt relaxed being in the familiar environment with all his Tau’ri friends, but—

“I was worried about you.” Words with such weight spoken as if they were nothing, as he tries to find a clear area on the shirt to wipe his face on. “I was worried about what could be happening while—What the hell happened to this guy’s shirt?”

“Far too much to explain.”

Tugging on his hand, she helps him sit up, trying to swipe away the blood that’s no longer gushing from his nose, but is moving slower, thicker, more like a syrup. “I think you’re going to need a shower.”

His large hand comes to her hairline, his thumb swiping away the drying blood there, obviously trying not to smoosh it into her hair further, but the action does just that. “I think you’re going to, too.”

Is about to suggest—in the name of water conservation, of course—that it’s a task that they could undertake together, but there’s a hesitancy—one concerning the sexual cues, the idea of being nude with him, when two weeks ago she would have had no qualms.

After all, she has handcuffed him to a bedpost and walked in on him in the locker room before, although she was inhabiting Daniel at the time.  

But now, there’s a lingering weight nagging, telling her that it’s not a good idea right now, that something doesn’t feel right about the situation—not Cameron himself, but that being intimate with him would be detrimental to both of them right now.

Perhaps it’s her newfound fertility, if the old woman really managed to kickstart it, and the fact that they’re in another galaxy with unknown safe sex practices—although that’s never stopped her before.

She doesn’t exactly know how she’s going to explain to him that she’d rather, well, ‘take it slow’ is the term she’s heard frequently stated on television, or how he will receive the information, especially knowing how free she is with sex and a very rough estimate of how many air men she’s had the pleasure of having trysts with.

But before that becomes an issue one of the sensors in the corner of the hallway blinks to life showcasing Pilot’s stoic face.

“Ms. Mal Doran—” the alien pauses, squinting his eyes at Cameron, and nodding his head once as if assuring himself that his assessment is correct “—Colonel Mitchell, Moya and I have been observing a ship for some time we believe may be the marauder that followed us before.”

Cameron stands, stable on his legs although he’s favoring his right again. She won’t tell him how close Crichton came to using narcotics to temper his pain, but she’ll keep aware that he may have physical limitations offset by being in space or another galaxy all together.

“Marauder?” Despite what she assumes is the return to his aching thigh, he reaches down a hand to help her up off the ground.

“The ship that Officer Sun told us to be wary of.”

He only answers in a nod. Stern faced, but holding something back, perhaps another question more private in nature. Whatever it is, he doesn’t voice it, but tugs on her hand, to lead her to the control room so they can have visuals.

“How long have they been tagging us, Pilot?”

“They haven’t been, Colonel—” Pilot’s voice is stoic in their ears, very rarely does he have overt emotions, but she’s witnessed his voice take on a higher cadence when stressed, since he doesn’t sound like he’s speaking emphatically, she supposes they have time in their favor.

When they skid to a stop entering the command room, by the table they both regained consciousness at, how he thought it was her fault for not looking for weapons, how she thought it was his fault that he just immediately adopted ownership of an abandoned baby.

It was only ten days ago, but feels like another lifetime, she’s had enough to know.  

She can still feel the fresh fleece of an SGC hoodie being zipped up around her body while parading as Officer Sun—can close her eyes and still be present, a linger visage, back within that mountain.

A graphic pops up showing the visual of a planet, one viewable through the windows, but still distant enough that the whole circumference of it is visible. However, when she glances back to the graphic, Pilot has enhanced it to show the satellites and other ships orbiting the planet, focusing on just one.

It’s looks to be about the size of a cargo ship, something she has procured many times, however the design is innovated, the angles sleek, obviously used to travel through the soupiness of space with very little force pushing back. There appears to be a deep maroon coloring on the outside, and it would be more imposing but the size leaves something to be desired.

“What’s the problem with it?”

“Moya and I have reason to believe that this is the marauder whose crew attacked you on Valdun.”

At the mention of the planet’s name, she relives the situation. It happens in a fast motion, like she could simultaneously be located back during that time as well. The acid round exploding at her side, eating through the fabric of her borrowed shirt and through her skin, down her ribs and up around her shoulder.

The people who’ve incapacitated Chiana for so long, leaving the spunky girl immobile underneath a reflective blanket, lost in her own mind as her body struggles to recover.

Her breath hitches, and Cameron must take note of her discomfort, because his fingers linger against her hand before intermingling with her own, and he doesn’t start when she immediately clasps to him, relaxing, knowing at least she doesn’t have to figure this out alone.

He purses his lips, his brows sloping as he stares at the at the planet, the various ships moving freely through the atmosphere, the satellites acting as billboards written in a foreign language that she can see in symbols when she shakes her head or blinks fast enough before the translator microbes stitch it back into English.

“I’m sorry, Pilot, but can you fill me in on why we can’t just jet away from them?”

“Because Colonel Mitchell, that is the planet you must travel to in order to procure young D’argo’s food.”

Chapter Text

The only good thing to come out of smashing his nose so hard off the ground that everyone thinks he broke it, is the fact that they give him some downtime.

It’s obvious that aside from Dr. Happy, no one else has hopped galaxies recently and remembers the hangover it brings. Not so much the sensitivity to lights and noises, but more of the airhead feeling, like after riding a real fast rollercoaster.

His mind is all disorientated—like he can feel his brain hitting the inside of his skull.

The doctor scans his head—apparently the medical staff here only know how to do scans—and that doesn’t help the dizziness in his head.

Aside from being amazed that his nose isn’t broken—she’s a but late because back in high school he got sacked while paying football and broke his nose then—but there’s also a little something that shows up on his scan that shouldn’t be there—or at least concerns her enough to elicit a dissatisfied hum.

At first he thought it was her response to his football injury story.

When Aeryn presses, sitting on the side of his bed, twisting to look at the doc because in the past three days—despite only being able to chew on baby Tylenol—her ribs have almost healed. Found it out while everyone was concerned with the bloodbath on his face—a ‘mere’ dislocation as the doc put it—he was concerned with her ribs, with her being left alone with a bunch of bozos who don’t know how to treat her right.

He was concerned about the little one—the itty bitty, miniscule, microscopic one.

The doc shoos them away, and both he and Aeryn are too enticed by the idea of actually getting to be alone with each other—getting to catch up after his three-day vacation back on Moya where things could be a lot better—to push for an explanation.

He figures if it was life threatening—or turning life threatening—that they would tell him anyway, and it’s probably just a side effect from getting Mad Hatter shuffled through galaxies.

They catch up in bed, her hair fanned out and coiled up his arm, and three days is a hell of a long time to remember just how cool, how silky her hair is—see it every day—and not be able to reach out and touch it.

They’re not cuddling in so much as they are reclining next to each other with a few of their less-than-important body parts still intermingling.

When she gets a little tremor to her voice, telling him of how she thought he abandoned her—like she was physically hurt by this thought—his arm curves back, his fingers falling into her hair, massaging at the roots, feeling her chest flush against his side as she heaves out an inhalation.

“I don’t know why I’m like this now.”

It’s a whisper, like she’s sharing a secret.

“You just had a baby,” he reminds like he even needs to—she thinks of the kid more than he thinks of her—"you’re also pregnant—your hormones must be going haywire. Besides—” he shifts, collecting her closer to him, relaxing at her scent, her touch, the way her body curls when his fingers stroke certain areas “—there’s nothing wrong with being like this.”

“It’s not very becoming of a soldier.”

“Honey, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not a soldier,” he laughs, nuzzling into her hair expecting her to react playfully. “You haven’t been for a long time.”

But Aeryn hardens beside him, like he said the exact wrong words. Ducking her head back from his embrace she stares at him.

“I will always be a soldier.”

It’s times like these when he realizes just how different they are. When he remembers how much she’s grown—she’s changed—from holding her, rocking her crying in the middle of the workout space, hearing about how she was ashamed to love—to now when she openly bashes him for not thinking of their son more.

But maybe that’s not how she sees it.

He needs a subject change quick, and his mind scrolls through the rolodex of things he wanted to tell her about Moya when he got back, after they took care of—a few things—then he remembers what he was going to shout out before he warped back suddenly.

“I think someone’s poisoning Deke’s food.”

That’s good enough to get her to forget about the beartrap he almost shoved his head in. She pushes back from him, the palm of her hand digging into his chest, as close to scrambling as he’s ever seen her.

“What?”

“The other you—Vala—was showing me how to feed him, and—”

“Why did you need another woman to show you how to properly feed our son?”

Swerved right around that beartrap to just set up another, his nose so close to pushing down on the pressure point. His mind flickers, trying to think of a way to diffuse the situation before he can possibly make it worse.

Picks laughing, a tense chuckle that he knows she can tell is forced, but maybe she’s so angry about the last two things he’s said not to notice. “It’s funny because that’s what she said too—”

“Crichton—” last name—he’s in it deep “—eventually you’re going to have to—”

“And I will, but right now I’m more concerned with our son.”

Did a spin on her there, flipping her own concern back, making her seem like the negligent parent. When she doesn’t snap his neck, he assumes that it’s safe to keep speaking. “Deke’s been crying nonstop, just being in a really shitty mood.”

“He’s a baby.”

It’s her only argument, but a good one. There’s not exactly a lot that a five- or six-week-old—man, he’s gotta get that straightened out before she finds out that he doesn’t know how old Deke is—can do in terms of communication other than crap his pants and scream.

“Well, apparently Vala’s been getting some stomach aches—”

“Please tell me your limited time on Moya was better spent than inquiring of the health of my—”

“If you wanna let me finish!” The glare she gives lets him know just how thin the ice he’s tap dancing on is. Immediately, he wipes away any form of aggravation on his face to try and save the conversation. “When she told me to test his food before giving it to him, I got bubble gut too.”  

“You ate his food?”

Tries but fails to conquer the returning annoyed expression too late. “I didn’t sit down and have a picnic with him, Aeryn, I tested it to make sure that it wasn’t rotten or—”

“Or what?”

Now this part is tricky.

What he says could have the exact opposite impact that he wants. She could freak out more, because she’s not there herself to protect Deke, or it could shut her up for a second and let her see how serious he is about this.

It’s a risk he’s gotta take.

“Or if someone tampered with it.”

“Tampered?”

“Poisoned, Aeryn.” Glances down at the bed because he does not want to talk about how their son is potentially the target of a political assassination, how even though they forced this peace throughout the galaxy, that it didn’t make them any more allies, or seem any less of a threat to their old enemies, and probably put them on the radar for a whole slew of new ones. “We’re not exactly winning any intergalactic popularity contests.”

Aeryn sputters something in Sebacean, from what he can make out of the guttural gulps, and glottal stops, she’s calling him the equivalent of an idiot. She hides her face in her outstretched fingers, and for a moment he thinks she’s lamenting, she’s panicking, because she’s not there, because baby one and baby two have her hormones set on overdrive.

Through her split fingers, she explains, “that infant pabulum is not meant to be consumed by anyone but Peacekeepers.”

“Yeah, and like I said, we weren’t actively chowing down on it, we were taking toothpaste-sized globs and—”

“That would be enough, John.”

“Enough to what?”

Aeryn sits up, gathering the sheet around her body and it might be because she’s actually the worst blanket hog he’s ever had the pleasure of sharing a bed with—give her an inch and she’ll take a mile—but something about it is so innocent, so naïve, so unlike her.

Normally when they argue—when they ‘debate’—she’s quick to anger, and quick to either strike or walk away, ignoring him until he’s ready to apologize—last time she went and became an assassin and he still doesn’t know why or how—or why or how Scorpy found her—but when he thinks about all that, he just has to remind himself to be happy that she’s actually here with him.

“To cause the upset stomach you’re speaking of.”

“Aeryn,” he sighs into his hand because it’s so hard to keep the timelines clear now. Feels like Einstein is running him through all the possible universes at once. There’s a Chiana-Aeryn, and a Peacekeeper Aeryn that never left, and this galaxy’s version of her—from what he knows about Vala, she’s an adept fighter and shooter, but out of necessity not upbringing and rivals Rygel in her thieving ability. “Just tell me what you’re trying to say.”

“I told you, Peacekeeper pablum is engineered specifically for infants of the Peacekeepers.”

Okay, so she’s still missing the point.

“Why?”

“Because it contains ingredients that would be harmful to other species.”

Okay, he thinks he gets it—species differentiation and everything. How some reptiles can eat bugs poisonous to people, how some plants are only poisonous for specific animals. “But healthy for Peacekeeper babies?”

“Not exactly.”

Wait, what?

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

“The harmful ingredients are intentionally used as additives into the pablum.”

“What ingredients?”

“Chemicals and mixtures you’ve likely never heard of—” When he does his best to glare at her, she rolls her eyes at him, and he ignores the warm feeling that spreads throughout him, because she learned that from him. “It’s fine John, really. I was fed that food. Like everything the Peacekeepers do, it’s done in regiments.”

“Meaning?”

“That as the infant grows, more of the harmful ingredients are added so that as an adult, the soldier will have a resistance to most noxious gases and poisons used in battle.”

“You’re—” he tries to wrap his mind around the sentence, the reason why Vala’s been getting sick, the reason why Deke’s mood is usually dren all the time. “Feeding our son—poison?”

“Not directly.”

“But intentionally.”

“Not with malice intent.”

“You’re feeding him poison for a good reason?”

“In order for him to be able to survive a gas attack or—”

“You’re—feeding our son poison.”

“All Peacekeepers receive the same formula—”

“He’s not a frelling Peacekeeper, Aeryn!” Feels his body grow hot under the revelation, the fact that the little guy has been screaming literally his entire life because of the food they’ve been giving him is burning in his belly. “You said that it had nutrients that he needed.”

“It does.” Her eyes trail him as he flips himself out of bed, getting the overwhelming urge to puke because they’ve been torturing their own son—is this considered torturing him?—there must be some kind of torture in this.

“With poison being one of them?”

“I. Am. Not—”

“Do you even remember how all he does is cry?” Snaps, and he doesn’t mean to—really, he doesn’t—but he keeps thinking of the little guy in his arms, flailing his fat little limbs, weighing next to nothing, and just screaming because it’s all he can do. “Do you even remember how—”

“I assure you, I remember much more than you do.” She flips the sheet off of her, stooping and collecting her clothing—not the booty shorts and tank top he’s used to seeing her in, but sweats and an American air force t-shirt. “This is the way that Peacekeeper infants become immune to most—”

“He’s not a Peacekeeper—he never will be—and that one won’t be either.” He points down to her stomach, now hidden under the layer of cotton as she turns her back to him, collecting her sweatshirt off the chair.

“It doesn’t mean he won’t be attacked.” Without glancing at him, she breezes by him and into the other room. “You’re the one who said he was a good target.”

“Aeryn, where are you going?” Doesn’t reach for her, or trail her into the other room, just listens as the doors hiss open, and then closed in as much as a slam as he thinks automated doors can. Craning his head up towards the ceiling, he closes his eyes, running a hand over his forehead, and trying to stay clear of his nose. “Great.”

“The baby’s out of food?”

“Yes.” Noranti answers him in the same manner she usually does with a weird half grin on her face and a vacant happiness despite the current situation.

“And that’s the only place we can go to get the food for him.” His eyes drift over to Vala who’s currently keeping Deke content as she bounces the little boy, her expression dire as she nods along.

“In the next three solar cycles, yes.”

“But the guys who want us—” Before Vala interrupts to correct him, he catches himself “—want Crichton and Officer Sun dead—are guarding the planet.”

“Yes.”

He groans, giving up on the near impossible plan by burying his face in his hand as he leans into the table, stretching his leg because something tells him it’s going to be a long day, only half listening as Noranti tries to explain how the plan is still plausible.

Nothing feels right anymore.

He was at home—in Commander Crichton’s body—but home, got to sleep in his own bunk on the base for two days, look at the pictures of his parents on his dresser, find the keys to his car in the top drawer of his side table, have a cup of the sludge the base serves as coffee, and immediately recoil because in ten days, the resistance he’s built up to consuming it went away.

Worked with the team he has been with for the last three years, saw Sam’s smile, and her ideas, and Jackson’s doubtful glances, that maybe he was just Crichton putting on a good show, or maybe he’s been himself the whole time, and just needed a good long psych leave.

It was all recognizable and maybe a little relaxing because it was familiar, but none of it felt like home.

Is about to stop his lamenting—his complaining—and rejoin the conversation, when he feels the tickle of cool fingers on the back of his neck, and it’s like a fresh gulp of water—like a good inhalation while jogging—something he realizes that he never did during his time back on base—never even went outside.

When he lets his hands fall to the table, glancing over his shoulder, he finds her smiling at him softly, coaxingly, like she knows how hard for him this is—because she might be the only person other than Crichton and Officer Sun who knows just how confusing it is. To have a home that feels right, but no longer suits his needs—and being in an unfamiliar place is becoming more preferred because someone familiar is there—no, not someone familiar—someone in particular.

He grasps her fingers, sharing her smile—though his may be a little wearier—and keeps hold of her hand as he forces himself to stand back up, to ignore the pain that’s been omnipresent for years that he got a three-day break from, and now notices more.

“Noranti still thinks we can do it.” Vala shifts the baby up in her arms, he’s still at a low level of whimpering.

“Of course, she does.”

“It’s more than plausible,” Noranti scoffs back at them, turning away from the graphic of the planet Pilot is still projecting.

“More than that, it doesn’t matter.”  Vala’s hand curls around the baby’s back, coming to rest on his head, while Noranti nods in a silent agreement with her. When he cocks and eyebrow at her—he sort of checked out for a second—he feels her fingers twitch within his. “We only have enough food for him until tomorrow morning.”

“I guess we’d better get dressed then.”

*

It takes them longer than it should. Despite being home three days, Crichton only managed to wash one of his shirts, but forgot to pull it out of the fountain like structure filled with blue fluid so it could dry.

By the time that it did, he’d washed all the other shirts he could find—some his, some Val—Officer Sun’s—and hung them up to dry around the room.

When he finally made it back to their room, Deke was napping calmly in the makeshift bassinet as she fought to pull on the long leather jacket with the bright red interior.

“Here.”

Setting his folded shirt and pants on their bed—keeping his head down a few seconds longer because he thinks of it as their bed—he takes the jacket from her, holding it, and helping her put it on.

“Thank you—” her laugh is sheepish, and when her eyes meet his over her shoulder, she draws them away quickly, back to the ground. “It’s a lovely jacket, but not very practical.”

He knows something’s wrong—why shouldn’t it be?—they’ve had no time to talk about what happened since he left—and no time to talk about what happened before. He knows that it’s not as important as other issues they have to deal with, but they still need to have the conversation.

But there’s no time now.

They’ve got to pay attention to the mission, and romantic entanglements on the team were one of the reasons—practically the only reason—why he didn’t want to start a relationship with her, even though when he sees her with Deke, his heart melts.

Instead, he sweeps her two iconic pigtails over her shoulders. “Might want to do something about your hair.”

“Oh, yes,” she mutters, stepping away from him and towards a mirror on the wall. Her fingers tugging out the ties, and then running through her hair up to her part. “People tend to not take you seriously when you wear them.”

“I love it when you wear them.”

“Daniel doesn’t think they’re professional.”

“He’s just jealous.”

She turns away from the mirror, her hair collected in a single ponytail behind her head, and she looks more military than she ever has.

Completely Vala but dressed up for an entirely different part—it’s not even like when she would act as Qetesh because he could always see her lips tug into a hint of a grin showing that she was enjoying herself. This time there’s no grin on her face, it’s empty of emotion and so stoic it hurts.

“Because he wants pigtails?”

“Because he’s too chicken to break protocols the way you do.”

“Hmm.” She considers his words while fixing a few strands of her hair. “That is solid reasoning, however, on more than one occasion airmen have stopped me for inappropriate dress—”

“Gimmie their rank and names and I’ll have them talked to.”

A grin grows on her face, one he hardly sees because it’s genuine. She taps his bicep once, trying to shift around him “that’s very sweet but—”

Before she gets a chance to sneak around him and through the door, he grabs her hand how he wanted to at the high school reunion. He really wanted to have just one cheesy dance to an 80s one-hit wonder, but there was never a good time to ask.

“I mean it, Princess.”

“I know, Darling.”

Her hand slides up his arm to rest on his cheek, and her eyes held the same glimmer they did underneath stardust in rainbow shades that no one else would ever see.

When he leans down to kiss her, she doesn’t duck away.

*

They have an hour and forty minutes—or an arn and forty whatevers—before they make it through space and atmosphere to the planetside. If the trajectory on this pod is set up right, then they’re going to land right beside the marketplace they need to be at.

“Noranti was more than clear in her instructions.” Despite looking the part of a military bred super soldier, Vala is curled up in her chair, her big-booted feet tucked underneath her.

“She was.” Get in. Get the food. Get out.  No stopping for any other reason. Don’t talk to anyone—or anything—that might engage them. Don’t leave each other’s sides.

“Then why do I feel this nervous?”

The space between the chairs is too wide for him to reach across and touch her hand, to reassure her that he’s not going to be abandoning her in any marketplace on this planet, the last one, or the next.

So, he tries something that doesn’t usually work with her: logic.

“You’ve already been shot by them. You know how bad it hurts.”

When she doesn’t respond, he turns away from the controls to find her bottom lip trembling. She catches it with her teeth in a last-ditch effort not to cry, but the first tear jitters clean from her lashes.

“Hey—” he leans, knowing he’s not going to be able to reach her, knowing that it’s fruitless to try, and overstretching his leg while he does, but he hides the hiss as concern in his voice. “It’s not gonna go bad this time.”

It takes her a few seconds, but she snaps back, blinking away the rest of her tears, and clearing her throat with an exhale. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I just keep thinking of Chiana in that bed because of us.”

“We didn’t shoot her.”

“No, but we should have been more alert.”

“Vala, we’re doing the best we—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Pilot’s voice rings clear over the comm system set in the console of the pod. “But you asked me to warn you when you would be parallel with the marauder in the orbit of the planet.”

“Thanks, Pilot.”

The interruption comes at a bad time. If their lives keep up this way, there’s never going to be a chance for them to just sit down and talk. Two hours ago, he was at the SGC trying to tell them to contact Atlantis so that they could get help with the long-range communication device—or at least an extra pair of stones—and then he woke up face planted on the floor with blood everywhere and one hell of a headache.

They keep their conversation to a minimum as they drift silently through the orbit of the planet and towards the atmosphere, only sharing the same nervous expression with each other. The marauder is almost on the other side of the planet, definitely not visible from here. Other than Officer Sun, no one can be certain of the technology they have on board to trace them, and the last thing either of them wants is a repeat of last time.

Once they break the upper atmosphere, they get a clear view of the planet. It’s not exactly Earth-like, more brown and grey from over industrialization. There aren’t many trees, many fields to grow crops, but he’s seen Noranti eat fingernails, so who knows what alien species can survive on.

“This reminds me of when I was first doing flight training,” breaks the silence once their pod breeches through the last layer of clouds.

“Why’s that?” Her response is hesitant but too quick all at once, and he’s never seen her this nervous before a mission—maybe when she wanted to bring the big guns to Ba’al’s removal ceremony—but it’s helping keep him calm that she’s here and not another galaxy away—that if something does happen, he’s right here to help—not that he doesn’t trust Crichton, but he’s always been a hands-on sort of guy.

Man, does he ever want a chance to be more hands on with her.

“They said that I’d get used to seeing the land break after the ocean, or a desert after a mountain range.” He shakes his head releasing the controls as they automatically kick in, faring the pod directly into the parking area for the market. “They’re wrong. Stuff like this? It never gets old.”

“The first time I flew a ship it was stolen—”

“Of course, it was.”

“No, it was stolen from us—from my father and I.”

“Oh.”

A wistful smile grows on her face as the sun breaks through the clouds to highlight her. “I was asleep in the back when some ne’er-do-wells decided it would be an easy steal.”

He’s not even looking out the window anymore. “What happened?”

“I bested them of course,” the line is said with her usual confidence, but the grin fades from her face as she blinks away from her memory. “I managed to steer the ship back to where we were camping out but crashed it into the ground.”

“You obviously came out okay.”

“Yes, but that’s when my father decided it was best to be rid of me and my antics.” Shuffling in the chair, she wraps her arms around her knees tighter, resting her chin on top of them. “He sold me to an arms dealer the very same day.”

Chapter Text

The hallways are always colder at night, even when the temperature system was malfunctioning. She and John would meander through the complex unsupervised, after bringing their feud to resolution, a feeling of familiarity set in. They would amble shoulder to shoulder, by rooms all secured behind different levels of clearance, and he would explain to her the basics behind each. What an accounting department does, what a custodial staff does, the different responsibilities of those on the base, and how it was so similar to what he knew on his Earth.

She knew it then for him as well, that the recognizable traits he found in these humans were a small solace. That watching the news each night, hearing about the frequent wars, the violence, and the horrible nature inherent in this species—how John ever adapted from their primitive nature, she doesn’t know—comforts him even though so many of their variables are still unknown. 

Though these bright hallways are a stark contrast to the maze of Moya’s hallways that they both know without sight, the ability to move freely, even under fake, bright lighting, is relief in itself.

Now she roams to be away from him.

From the constant burden of his worry which is now teetering on blame. How he doesn’t know what it’s like to be reared on a Peacekeeper cruiser just as she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in a familial unit in a single stationary home.

Although they know so much about each other—particularly about their upbringings—they still know nothing. She keeps making vast comparisons throughout all humans based on what she sees on television.

There is always a victim and a perpetrator.

There is always an act of violence.

He does the same when learning about her background and through his faulty human eyes, can only view giving a small dose of poison with each feeding in a negative context. Can only see the harm in an inherently harmful thing.

Can only watch the news.

Whereas she is more knowledgeable on the matter. Has experienced the benefits of being resistant to aerosol poisons and those injected into water supplies firsthand. Has also seen the negative effects the crippling fumes can have on those not tempered correctly and is it something she will never have her son—her children—exposed to, but there are only so many precautions she can take.

In her jaunt, she finds herself back at the lab which exploded on them, leaving him with a still healing back laceration that has absorbed whatever film they placed on top of it, along with his newly acquired displaced nose—which she doesn’t understand as his nose is still in the center of his face.

Despite not being able to take drugs in order to help her pain, she still heals faster—something again, attributed to her superior genetic makeup, but also to enhanced formulas found in the Peacekeeper pablum that ignite latent genes after birth. Her ribs, the cracks and the breaks are healed, were almost unnoticeable the second day of Colonel Mitchell’s return, yet it went unnoticed in the frantic collections of people.

There is yellow tape strewn around the soot smudged door, which stands open, yet somehow impenetrable by the yellow X they’ve placed from corner to corner. Unsure of what this means, she simply walks through it and into the wreckage of the lab—the large pieces of rubble, the torn and singed pages of books, pieces of building material fallen from the ceiling, office supplies and furniture, and a single standing fan.

Though the debris has been settled for more than a few days, when she steps through to investigate, clouds of dust burst into the air and scatter in the wake of her movements. The few machines littering the counter, the ones she remembers glaring at her with disconcerting blue screens as John helped her to her feet, are still operational.

He managed to get her to hobble a few steps, but her footing was unusually precarious, the explosion still reminiscent in her ears, destroying her equilibrium. When she slipped the first time, he was quick to steady her, waiting as she heaved in particle laden air into her lungs being compressed by jagged bones.

When she slipped the second, she fell further as he was distracted—most likely preoccupied with the same issue she was.

The little life that was, and then was not.

The bigger little life left a galaxy away who was and may not be now.

She thought that she could not do it again if it were true.

She could not spend almost a week nurturing and growing another human, only to have them destroyed so easily. Though it was quick work that exhausted her body, testing her to the extreme—the war helped to preoccupy her from how her body changed, from how she could feel the life draining from her and into someone else—she did not sacrifice all she had for someone to undo it almost as a novelty, marveling at just how easy it was.

When John had walked in on her changing because the clothing she was wearing before they approached the final battle was tight against her skin, he stared at her in awe as her stomach was bared due to a zipper stuck in its track. Try as she might to yank it back into place, it would not cede.

“Honey,” he spoke once words returned to him, stepping into the room, and once again equipping the privacy. His deft fingers overtook hers on the tag. “You sure you want to wear this?”

She fought to keep the offense from her answer, but there was to be much more fighting, and the battle with her attire didn’t seem as important to win. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Nothing,” he sensed her unease, and turned his attention back to guiding the zipper up from where it hitched below the slope of her stomach. “It’s just a little revealing.”

She glanced down at the leather suit she’d chosen because she didn’t need to worry about her stomach being accidentally bared and the color would help to camouflage her among the dark ruins and shadows of a once great city. “Shall I wear gloves?”

Insolent, he rolled his eyes at her, carefully directing the zipper over her misshapen stomach where the little life jostled within her, apparently happy to have even a moment with family. “You know what I mean.”

“Whatever I wear is going to be revealing, John—”

Her rebuttal cut short by his sudden nuzzling of her bare stomach with his warm cheek. He rested against her, using their child as somewhat of a pillow, and his hot breath sent shivers through her. When his large hand appeared, sneaking through the split zipper of her suit, she dropped one of her hands to his head, stroking it through his hair, trying to do as he and their child were—enjoying a brief moment.

“I just want—” he exhaled sharply against her stomach, and the child within her revolted, attacking the spot where his words landed in warmth. His hand felt the tremors, sliding to rub them away. “I just want you two safe.”

Pilot called for them, and he rose from his knees, working the zipper over the expanse of her still growing stomach, but not before planting a single kiss, the only kiss he would transfer to his son for a weeken.

They didn’t speak any more on the matter.

He was terrified for them, and she was nervous—the pain, the all-encompassing pain like nothing she’d ever felt and as she tried to breathe through it, to concentrate on the gunfire blasting just beyond her head, it was a combination of emotions she’d never felt before—the first of many.

In the dust on the table among bits of rock and infrastructure, stands the piece of evidence she came searching for. A silver packet of Peacekeeper infant pablum. The packaging reflects the light filtering in from the hallway, and it’s only adorned with the simple symbol, the one she grew up with, the one she wore so proudly for years until she decided to be better.

There are still remnants of green formula clotting at the nozzle, and she holds it in her hand, swiping it with her swift fingers, blowing in order to clear the rest.

“You know the yellow tape is up to keep random bystanders out.”

Knows it’s not her husband, not his voice, and not his charm.

After disagreements he tends to stray from his usual attitude of what he considers good humor and references, over half of which she still doesn’t understand, and directly try to correct the problem. To use his communication to discuss the root of the issue—always using his frelling communication.

They all do.

Humans rely too much on what comes out of their mouths.

“That tape means nothing to me.”

Doesn’t bother turning to greet the doctor, or offer him the basis of acknowledgement, because she’s learned that once she offers these people a klance of acceptance, of congeniality, that they’ll immediately demand more, their words pouring out of their mouth and ladening the air with insinuations.

They are not friends.

She felt the same way when she first met those on Moya—those who ended up developing into her family—most of whom she lost.

But these people are not hers, and she doesn’t care to know the aspects of their personal lives, and she doesn’t care to divulge those of hers. Ironically, the only one she somewhat trusts, the only one who hasn’t divided her down to the basic parts of her relationship with John and her anatomy, is the one who possesses her husband’s body.

But the ground crunches as he sidles up beside he, his shadow stretching long beside hers over the field of debris. Despite his spoken years of service to this military faction, he’s not stealthy at all and the lack of his training becomes glaringly obvious.

From her peripherals, she’s able to view him crossing his arms, either mimicking or mocking her position. In the murkiness lingering in the crashed laboratory his spectacles appear to be just circles of light.

“I’d ask what you’re doing here, but I know you won’t answer.”

“How astute of you.”

“Huh—” he chuckles, his cadence sounding somewhat bemused as he nods thoughtfully to the packet of formula in her hand. “I’m surprised that survived the cave in.”

“Peacekeeper products: food, clothing, weaponry, vessels, are constructed with expertise.” True to her word, the packet in her hand is in one piece and unmarred by the explosion aside from a few extra sprinklings of dust. “Our livelihoods depend on these essentials; therefore, it is insured they are of high quality.”

“Good to know.” His words are reserved, but also borderline on mocking, since she actually bestowed to him information about her lifestyle—or rather her rearing—that he was uninterested, yet he constantly barrages her with an onslaught of personal questions she refuses to answer.

Perhaps he’s always unsatisfied and it’s her time to interrogate him.

“You stated this inconvenience was caused by a cave in?”

“Yeah,” his brows rearrange confused, off put by her sudden eye contact. “The working idea is that there were some faults in the floor and—”

“It was not a simple cave in.”

“Okay.” Again, the way he elongates the vowel suggests that he’s mocking her, or that he doesn’t believe her. John has employed this speech pattern rarely with her, but from the situations in which it occurred, that’s how she translates his intentions.

“This was caused by an explosion from an improper output in the ventilation system which then leaked, backfired, and combusted.”

“Well, when the experts come back with their theories, I’ll be sure to let them—” his voice trails off as he follows her finger to the end of a ventilation shaft, smudged in more soot, evidence of a brief immolation before an explosion, and as he places the pieces together, he nods. “So, then I’m guessing Peacekeepers are great with sciences.”

“Not at all.”

“So, what are you doing here, then?”

He answers with a grin, and it’s different from the usual smirks or sniggers that he pulls when he’s opposite John and fighting for dominance. The belittling is vacant on his face and is replaced with curiosity.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Well—yes—but not in the medical sense of the word. See on Earth there’s—there’s many different—”

She rolls her eyes, knowing it’s a mannerism that she stole from John through integration, through being by his side. “I assume you’ve sent away a sample of this food to be analyzed?”

“Oh—uh—yeah, I did that as soon as you gave it to me.” But he becomes aware of her not so hidden intentions lowering his brows and his voice once again collecting his sceptic nature. “Why?

“I need to see the results.”

The sunlight is bright white on the marketplace, blanketing over the grey industrialization of the planet. Noranti explained the planet was known only for commerce, being only a home to shopkeepers who sign contracts for various lengths of time. The stores range from stalls similar to the ones they saw on Valdun, to shops with fronts decorated in available goodies, to massive multilevel buildings equivalent to skyscrapers on Earth.

Places like this bring out mixed feelings within her.

She grew up on planets like this, starting out in petty thieving and conning with her father, but then after she gained her own freedom by killing her weapon’s smuggler of a master, she thieved and conned for meals.

It was a long time afterwards that she would speak to her father again.

Something she told Cameron as the transport pod docked itself in the vessel parking lot. Stopped on a metallic landing strip only a few feet longer and wider than the ship itself, and then it was filed away in a circular motion. He has a chip in his pocket to reclaim it and the entire situation is all vaguely reminiscent of the one time when Daniel took her out for dinner.

Her fingers twitch at her side, as the nervousness of the crowd pushes against her. She knows no one in this galaxy and therefore has no need to worry, however, the woman’s face that she happens to sport an extreme likeness too has made more than her fair share of enemies.

Perhaps it’s the burden that comes with being this flawlessly attractive.

“Man, I bet you’d love to spend a day at this place.” Cameron is keeping a steady pace beside her, his shoulders a bit higher than usual as if to block out his face from any scanning enemies they may be unaware of.

“Under different circumstances, yes—it’s been quite some time since I’ve been shopping.”

“Well, as much as I’d love to let you have this planet as a playground—”

“And be my unwitting accomplice?”

“That too—” he shares her grin, though only momentarily until he ducks down, staring at a form of an address written on a scrap piece of paper. “Unfortunately, we’ve got an appointment to keep.”

“And a baby to feed—” her voice peters out once the transportation station gives way to the vast array of stores, of goods and services, of people of all species trying to peddle their wares for an exorbitant price.

The things she knows about how these types of places operate—the memories she’s burden with because of it.

Cameron’s fingers, tickle against her own as he takes hold of her hand, and although her arm stiffens, she does her best to keep her composure and keep walking.

“Sorry, is it not—”

“No—it’s just—Noranti told me that when they—” meaning their counterparts, the ones that are married with a child, the one whose lives they’ve hijacked “—go out on missions, they usually don’t openly show their affection.”

“They have to hold hands from time to time.” He shifts closer to her, allowing a group of hip height aliens to waddle by like a gaggle of geese.

“I’m sure they do.”

“If it makes you uncomfortable—” he lets the word hang, like he doesn’t truly want to know the answer.

It does and it doesn’t.

If extenuating factors weren’t a case it wouldn’t.

But despite her outward nature, she’s never been one to flaunt her relationships—flaunt her trysts with countless airmen and majors. Always makes sure those she does bed know how to keep their business just that—theirs.

However, she’s found that several aspects of her relationship with Cameron have changed—namely, that she knows how it feels to kiss him, that he’s accepted—and is willing—to overlook her less than chaste past, and that he feels openly affectionate towards her.

But she’s unsure how this makes her feel.

How he will act once they return to the mountain—if he will still be as physical with her—as blatantly unashamed.

Adding to her unease about the situation, is that in order to have intercourse and not end up pregnant, they’re going to have to take some precautions. She’s followed other forms of prophylactics on many different planets, but to the Tau’ri, condoms seem to be the main choice.

She doesn’t know about him, but she certainly doesn’t have any condoms on her, and is willing to bet that Crichton doesn’t have any stored on the ship from the mere presence of his child.

Despite her worry, and her uncertainty in areas concerning physical relationships—just romantic entanglements actually—she shifts her body closer to his, because he always exudes a certain security. Even before he expressed romantic interest in her, she knew she could trust him to help her or fight for her, the same way he did on that abandoned highway when she’d lost her memory.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” speaks honestly, as she did in the transport pod, as she told him a few of the trials of her childhood and what it was like to be eleven without any parents.

Expects him to retort with a humorous line about how that isn’t good, or how whatever thoughts she thinks is what she reaps, but instead he gives her hand a gentle squeeze, just enough to anchor her for the moment so her thoughts don’t stray too far. “It’ll go fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Because based on the odds of everything that’s happened to us, it’s about time that something just went as planned.”

Glancing up at him, now actively ignoring the bodies brushing by her, the loud noises of multiple languages all being bellowed at once, and then translated by tiny little machines in her brain, the scents of different species’ cooking wafting thick into the air and curling with the wet humid wind of a world so bleak and gray, he grins at her.

And instead of reminding him, of arguing, all the parts of this stitched together plan that could go wrong, she grins back. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“We could get back to the transport pod within an hour. Spend the hour travelling to Moya just talking—”

“Then tag team a no doubt fussy baby while an old, three-eyed woman makes a somehow delicious supper despite the fact that I’ve never viewed any ingredients in that kitchen.”

“Put the baby down and take a shower to wash off all the spit and puke—” he chuckles for a few steps, then almost stops in the spot as he realizes what he’s inadvertently suggested to her. Wrenching his head towards her, his eyes wide, he trips over words to explain, “I didn’t mean—”

“I like that you did.”

Regardless of her worries of intimacy and what could develop from said intimacy—be it a viable relationship or an accidental child—she wants to be physical with him, and the thought of being in the blue hued shower room, slowly plucking off clothing heavy with sweat from each other’s bodies is still as enticing as ever.  

Wishes she could kiss him, that it weren’t so taboo in this bizarre as it is in their own galaxy—that their counterparts have survived as long as they have by remaining focused on their objectives first when outside the protection of the ship and rewarding themselves with intimate moments when not.

He stops, tugging her to the side so the same group of hip high aliens can pass by them again, this time in the opposite direct, and with added members, bobbling along happily while making throaty undulations.

He’s very close, though not embracing and certainly not kissing, his hand as dropped to her hip, warming her through the leather that she thought she was done wearing. She can feel the front of his body, flush against her back, his chest pressing into the long coat she wears, his leather’s friction against hers, something about it is very protective, but also very provocative.

These little gestures, these intimate moments have to be how their counterparts stay sane.

“This is the address.” He taps at her hip once, pointing to a number scrawled out on a board and hanging by only one bolt above a swerving trail down a tight alley between stalls.

Takes Noranti’s note from him, and then angles her head to the side to better view the same number. When the wind blows the mesh awning holding it up sways and creaks.

“Of course, it is.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Last time we were on one of these planets, you pulled me out of an alley.”

“So.”

“So, now we’re going in one.”

“If you’re scared—”

She cuts him off, not allowing him to finish his sentence and diminish her character further.

“I am not scared.”

“Okay.”

But the expression on his face tells her that he believes anything but her words.

“I’m not.”

“All right.”

“I’m confused, and turned around, and my stomach hurts from earlier, and I may be a little bit peckish—”

“But not scared,” he interrupts this time, holding up a finger to remind her.

“Absolutely—” staring down the dark alley, there appears to be no form of electricity or lighting, and from what she can see, it simply gets tighter and darker “—not.”

Cameron crumples the paper and shoves it in a pocket on his jacket, reaching back behind his belt to ensure his weapon is still secured. “I was going to say that if you do get scared—”

“Which I won’t.”

“But if you do—” this time he raises a finger prematurely to silence her argument. “You can press closer to me.”

“I won’t be doing that.”

*

The alley is longer than expected, and despite having a cover over it made with cheap mesh and scrap pieces of metal, there is a constant leakage of gathering water from atop, dripping down through various openings, leading their walk to be more akin to traveling in a sewer than a covered pass.

Halfway through the passage narrows to half the width it was at the entrance, forcing her to file in behind Cameron, instead of walking beside him, which was comforting as if something came at them, they’d both bet able to respond.

Now her concentration is focused on not banging into his back as he navigates fairly well in the dark—almost as well as her, though his skill is diminished by his obviously aching leg.

“How is your nose?” The question squeaks out of her because if she has to keep listening to the sound of dripping water, and the small scurrying of whatever rodents inhabit this miniscule portion of land, she may go mad.  

“Still aching a bit, but nothing to write home about.” To punctuate his statement, Cameron snorts, trying to clear his nasal passages. “I kinda forgot about it before you mentioned something.”

“Sorry—” her weak apology evolves into a shriek as something scurries down the wall her shoulder is almost dragging against. Jumping in response, she pants for a few breathes, stilling before reclaiming a somewhat calm nature.

Cameron notices, but continues on a step or two before realizing that she’s not at his back any longer. Without a word he retreats, collecting her hand and gently guiding her behind him. Though her heart rate is still quite elevated, his touch allows her to focus on something other than what could be waiting for them.

“How’s your side?” His question breeches through the drippy silence as a welcoming distraction. Though there’s no way for him to address her directly, as there’s no possible way for him to turn around, but she can imagine the expression on his face as he tries to mask his concern, how it rivals his stern colonel image.

“It’s healing quite well, though the scars are itching like mad.”

“Mine are too.”

“It’s near impossible not to scratch them.”

“Don’t scratch them.”

“I haven’t been—” she shrugs her shoulders using the weight of the coat as friction to create a ghost of a scratch “but every piece of fabric against the scars is unbearable.”

“Once we get back to the ship, I can—”

But Cameron’s sentence falls mute leaving her wondering how he was going to end it, if he was going to be somewhat suggestive, because she’s categorized him as what the Tau’ri refer to as ‘old-fashioned’—not one to engage in sex talk.

It’s what she refers to as respectful, though since their work relationship drastically shifted, it’s been leaving her imagination with only a sketch instead of a full portrait.

The ending of the pathway is what interrupts him. A single slit in the wall that he has to turn sideways in order to slip through, while she has no problem shimmying her shoulders through, to stumble out into somewhat of a dark clearing only wide enough to be a thoroughfare to a black door adorned with blue handprints.

Cautiously—and unfortunately—Cameron drops her hand to knock, his jaw setting in the weak reflection of sunlight bouncing off the slanted scraps of metal. The drops of water are still louder than his breathing, but she can see the bounce of his chest, how he’s trying to calm himself, even though his hand floats above the handle of his weapon.

She’s about to ask what they should do if no one answers—they could most likely break down the door and face the wrath of whomever is within, or they could ask around for answers, although in this level of commerce, they’re probably not going to get any solutions for free.

But the door creaks open, wet wood stuttering, revealing a face only half visible in the light. It’s of a man, who has a basic human appearance, with a black tattoo twisted from his forehead down the right side of his face. There’s a coin-shaped indentation on his forehead reminiscent of Teal’c’s, and letters scrawled over the opposite eye.

His eyes evoke sadness, pulling downwards, and when he grins his teeth are in disarray. Along with his earrings, it makes him reminiscent of a pirate.

“Crichton,” he greets, immediately shifting to the side, allowing them entrance into the small hovel. “You and the missus are late.”

Chapter Text

Assumed that when he arrived back at not Earth—especially a few years in the future—that he would get the benefit of technological advances.

Sure, out in the black 40 they’d managed to do away with most of the diseases roaming through literal dead space—maybe from introducing local toxins into baby food, he’ll never know—but they don’t have HBO.

And apparently neither does the United States Air Force.

His thumb depresses the channel button and the eerily flat tv flashes through about twenty different news channels.

They don’t even have Nick at Nite.

After running through the roster seven or eight times, he lifts his thumb and stares at the screen that’s overcome by graphics, ticker tape, pictures, an angry conversation, stock market tips, and a list of shootings and national disasters that day.

Aeryn always complains whenever he turns on the tv because it isn’t like the one they have on Moya— it’s not fed by VHS tapes of old football games, three stooges marathons, and one hell of a documentary.

She gets preoccupied with how violent the culture is, and if he ever needed her to be distracted for a bit, he would know to just pop the channel onto CNN, but he doesn’t have a goofy sidekick or best friend to go pull hijinks with.

What he does have is an extremely attractive wife that the news sidetracks when he’s trying to get his mack on.

But this tv doesn’t even have Star Trek reruns.

Or MacGyver.

Or Buffy.

It doesn’t have dren.

Except for the violence and misery occurring on this planet that he can do nothing to stop. That if he watches long enough, it brings a tear to his eye because he’s seen planets out there where everyone gets along—he’s seen entire species band together to take out others and take over whole galaxies—meanwhile the republicans and the democrats can’t agree on one stupid bill.

Thinks he nods off—he must—because there’s no way he spent two hours just staring at the news and daydreaming of being somewhere else entirely where it doesn’t feel like this is his fault. Somewhere where he doesn’t have to worry about equal pay for equal work and equal rights for everyone.

When he checks the time, it’s way later than it should be, and he grumbles, because Aeryn probably did that Peacekeeper prowl by him so he didn’t wake up because she didn’t want to talk to him about the big poisonous elephant in the room—the kind Dumbo experienced in a not so kid-friendly dance—and snuck back into bed.

Smashing the red button, the weirdly flat tv flickers off—he could probably sneak it back onto Moya under his jacket or something—if Aeryn could do it with the gut eroding Peacekeeper food, then he should be able to do it with a 32-inch flat screen.

He grabs the collar of his shirt to yank it over his head because he’s been stewing on the couch in borrowed clothes that he hates wearing, and despite how many times his lovely wife decides to stomp out and refuse to provide information that could help them get back home or refuse a medical scan because it’s an invasion of her privacy, or refuse about her complicity in poisoning their son, they’re going to need to have that Dumbo of a conversation.

But as he whips his shirt at the occasional chair in the corner whose occasion is to act as a catcher’s mitt to his dirty clothes, he glances at the bed and finds it still unmade, covered in wrinkles with the duvet and the sheets pushed down to the end how he left it.

He stares at it for a micron, like he might have blinked and missed her, but when he does blink and open his eyes, the room is still a mess and she’s not in it.

“Aeryn?”

Pivoting on the spot with such perfect posture that he could definitely score a three-pointer, he stomps into the bathroom, which is dark and also completely empty.

“Aeryn?”

He knows it’s useless because she’s obviously not here, but it’s the only thing that’s offering him a way to blow off steam as he stomps back into the bedroom and peels his newest addition to the stinky clothes pile on the chair off and pulls it back over his head before heading out of their suite.

It’s real late at night—or really early in the morning depending on if he’s feeling like a glass full type of guy or not—and there’s barely any airmen scouting the hallways. Even if there were more, he has permission to go most places that don’t require clearance like the gym, or the cafeteria—the two places he ducks his head into first.

Since it’s between meals, the cafeteria is mostly empty with only a few lingering employees wiping off tables and sweeping up the floors. When he opens the door, each one of them lifts their head to stare at him, not really in questioning or confusion, but more in a horror movie style.

Waving sheepishly, he offers, “sorry guys, wrong door,” and carefully backs away, keeping a fast step until he’s on the next floor, because he doesn’t know what that was, but he knows to high hell he doesn’t want to find out.

That’s how he ends up outside of what he thinks is a gym—a place that should have treadmills, punching bags, and weights to lift—but he opens the door only to find walls that really don’t vibe with a secret underground military alien operation because it almost looks like something from the Karate Kid.

It’s at this point that he starts to think he might be having a fever dream of some kind.

But, that big guy—the one who doesn’t say much, who just sort of stands there and judges because he’s so big that he can—turns slowly towards him, wielding a staff in his hand.

It’s not the only one because there’s some sort of rack on the wall with just a stupid number of staffs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you and—all your staffs.”

For a moment they just stare at each other from across the eight feet void between them and he thinks that maybe he should shut the door and walk away—cut his losses and realize that he doesn’t know his wife as well and he thought—but then he’s the loser in that lifelong challenge because whenever she needed to pawn Deke off on him, she could find him on Moya in less than fifteen microts.

But he figures if this is a fever dream, maybe having the snot kicked out of him by this guy is the jolt he needs to wake up, and if it’s not, maybe he knows where his wife is.

“I was just wondering if you’ve seen Aeryn.”

“You—” the Big Guy stabs the handle of the staff into the ground, and he looks like a statue carved from marble—he literally has muscles he’s never seen on a person before “—have lost your spouse?”

“I didn’t lose her.” Immediately defends himself, getting ornery, crossing his arms over his chest like a kid who needs a nap because he does. “I just don’t know where she is.”

“Indeed.”

They stare at each other for a few more seconds. Neither saying a single word but neither daring to look away. Both just waiting for the other one to leave so they can continue on with their tasks.

“So—” his hands strum against the door as he investigates the room and all the weird weaponry in it—things he’s never seen before, and as much as he wants to try out hitting something with a staff, he’s glad that the only thing he has to fight with are Winona and his own two fists. “You haven’t seen her then?”

“If she is missing, I suggest you find Dr. Daniel Jackson to—”

“No—I was just figuring she might be in here working off some steam.”

“She is upset?”

“She’s always sort of upset—” his fingers stop against the door when he realizes the big guy isn’t laughing. “She’s just a little more upset right now than usual.”

“I can understand the turmoil of being separated from one’s child, especially when they are so young.”

“You know, I think she’s sort of come to terms with that now—this is just—a different—thing.”

The big guy narrows his eyes and in that deep thunderclap of a voice, monotones, “indeed.”

“All right, well as great as this has been—” he juts a finger to the open door. “I should probably find her before she has more time to stew.”

In response, he doesn’t even get an ‘indeed’ as the big guy turns back to the dummy he was practicing pummeling and takes off its head with one swoop of the staff.

Like with the cafeteria, he slowly backs out the door—using that three-point pivot and almost smashing into Colonel Carter.

“Sorry,” she immediately apologizes, blinking her big silent actress eyes. “I just—I didn’t expect to see you up at this time.”

“I didn’t expect to be up at this time.” He crosses his arms over his chest again because he’s in a day-old black t-shirt, and she’s primed and ready to go at ass o’clock in the morning, looking like she doesn’t even need another wink of sleep.

She gestures to the hall, and he takes a gentle pace beside her as they walk and talk. “Something wrong?”

“I lost Aeryn.”

Immediately her footsteps stop, and she turns towards him horrified. “You lost her?”

“I didn’t really lose her—we sort of had—” a shouting match after a rough and tumble “—an adult disagreement, and she left to cool off.” As Colonel Carter opens her mouth to question, he adds, “not temperature wise, but emotionally.”

“Okay, good.” They restart their walk, and he hasn’t asked her how long she’s been working here, but she must have racked up the hours because she doesn’t even look when they slip into a different hallway. “You don’t know where she went?”

“Well, I checked the usual haunts but—”

“Oh.” Her hand covers her mouth before gesturing to his face. “Your nose?”

“My no—” bringing his hand up to his face, his fingers touch the sticky wetness at the top of his lip where apparently a small nosebleed has decided to pool. Examining his fingers, rolling them together at the drying blood—it’s thick, and will probably stop pretty soon.

“Great.”

“You should probably go to the medical bay and get that looked at.”

“The doc gave me the all clear—said I just had a displaced fracture.” Sure, there’s bound to be a little bleeding, and a little tenderness for a while, but he was counting on that to score him at least one round of sympathy points.

Guesses it already did.

Aeryn nuzzling his face, littering it with small, soft kisses—cooing words at him, and holding him close. Honestly, with no permanent cosmetic damage done to his face, it’s almost worth the crescendoing pressure under his nose for the points with his wife whose an emotional teetertotter right now—if he tells her that, she gets angry.

Colonel Carter steps up on the tips of her toes to investigate the nosebleed, and he’s never felt more self conscious about his nose in his life. With that tight smile that must hurt her cheeks to wear so often, she pressures, “it still might be something serious. Want me to walk you to the infirmary?”

“Nah.” Not really happy about having to go back there again with all the medical staff that seems to be permanently pissed off at him. “I know the way.”

“All right, I’ll come down in a half an hour to check in you.”

Gee, thanks Mom.

“Just do me a favor?” Colonel Carter pauses before starting her march away, eagerly listening, actually, generally—or colonelly—wanting to help. “If you see Aeryn, send her down to the med bay?”

“I’ll let her know.”

With a firm nod, they separate in opposite directions—her going God knows where this early in the morning, and him heading to the elevator to take it down, his forefinger and thumb pinched as tightly as he can handle it over the tip of his nose.

When the elevator dings he steps out to more airmen in the hallway as the day is starting for them, maybe shifts are changing. He has no idea what time it is, but he must be on hour four of the Aeryn hunt if he counts the two hours he spent asleep on the couch.

Despite the airmen—some running around all headless chicken—he manages to slip his way through the crowd towards the medical bay or infirmary, or whatever they want to call it today.

The doors open automatically for him—they must know him pretty well by now—but he doesn’t find any nurses or doctor’s inside. He doesn’t find anyone at all, which is just poor customer service, but then he remembers this is basically a hospital and they might have had an emergency.

So, he stands patiently for a few minutes, then spends about five looking at the nurse’s station for a bell to ring, then he just starts yelling, his voice almost shaking the walls from the emptiness. After no one comes for him—after all this still might be a fever dream brought on by an infection in his displaced nose—he starts wandering around like a lost kid, looking in all the rooms for someone who can give him a pack of gauze.

But he gets distracted when he hears a voice, low at first, but it grows as he traces it down a short hallway and into a large room for triage.

There, sitting up on a cot, is Aeryn, her legs decked out in sweatpants and space boots dangling off the side kicking, and that doctor—that classicist dick—brings a piece of gauze to her lip. She winces, turning her head a bit, her hair buoyant from falling curls at her back, and slips her fingers around his forearm, squeezing in pain.

He’s only trained in two weapons, and Winona’s not here right now.

The guy ushers them through the barely ajar door, his eyes wide and paranoid as his pupils tick across the two-foot space between the end of the alleyway and the beginning of the door, like someone could have followed them to what is essentially a dumpster.

“You guys weren’t followed—were you?” He asks, keeping his head out the one foot opening still scanning, his earrings swaying with his head movement and clacking against the metal door.

“No.”

“You sure?”

He glances to Vala who is doing her best to keep a stoic face, to remain in character and not show how nervous she is. “We’re sure.”

“Because if you were followed, this can all go so dren so quick—”

“You asked us to come alone.” Vala takes a step forward, and he tucks his hand into one of his pockets, so he doesn’t reach out and grab her—so used to directing her behind him in order to keep her in line, in order to keep her safe. “We honored the agreement we made with you.”

“Yes—out of necessity I bet.” It’s said in a huff, like the man is longing for something, but he turns in the room, which is just a little bigger than a closet, moving over to the loveseat by the boarded-up windows. Tossing the blanket covering it off, he pulls out two large duffle bags, dragging them back across the room. “You just came for this?”

With stern eyebrows and an unwavering glare, Vala asks in the coldest voice he’s ever heard, “should we have come for something else?”

Despite the guy’s hardcore look—his face tattoos and multiple cosmetic indentations over his forehead and cheeks, his sad eyes still win out, and with a rejected sigh, he appears like he actually might start to cry. “Would it kill you to be a little more personable?”

Vala glances at him, wide-eyed, unsure of what she’s meant to do in this situation, because this guy is not the shady character Noranti made him out to be when she told them how to make the exchange.

“No, you just use up good ol’ Staanz’s kindness. Only call her up when you need to secure a month’s worth of Peacekeeper chow at once, and then don’t call for another month.”

It’s so hard to tell if the guy is being legitimate or not as his words are going directly against his appearance—weirder things have happened when dealing with aliens though.

Maybe he’s just really emotional.  

Deciding that he needs to act and not just stare at Vala—who is now more amused than anything, even a flash of a grin working it’s way onto her lips—he takes a step forward, tossing down a bag of currency Noranti counted out for him.

“We’re paying you, aren’t we, Staanz?”

“Well—yeah.”

“Then why does it matter if we contact you more than once a month?”

“I just feel left out is all.” The dejection in his voice is enhanced by his sad eyes, and he’s really beginning to think that Crichton and the crew should be spending more time with the guy. “You won’t tell me what happened. You won’t bring D’argo, Zhaan, or Rygel to see me—”

He doesn’t speak, not recognizing the names, unease seeping through him because it feels like this might be a trap.  

“You won’t even bring down the little biscuit that I risk my coat and tail to get the food for.”

“Maybe it’s because you refer to my son as ‘a biscuit’.” Wanted to steer the conversation in another direction, but there’s a certain unimpressed nature in his voice that he doesn’t really recognize as his own.   

“Aw, you know I mean nothing by it.” Staanz waves a hand at them, shuffling the two large duffle bags across the ground. “Auntie Staanz just wants to meet him is all.”

“Yeah, well—” turning back to Vala, he widens his eyes, asking for help, for any way to just get this over with. Never thought that he’d want the safety of a living ship so badly, but he feels like they’re sitting ducks out here, even with all the alleyway twists and turns.

Vala steps forward now, keeping the harsh expression on her face—and it’s makes the whole situation even more alien. “You know that in order to keep him safe, our son must remain hidden for the time being.”

“Yeah—but you could always—”

“We cannot invite you up to Moya for the same reason.”

“Oh, I get it—I’m good enough to do your frelling scutwork: tracking down shipments of Peacekeeper formula and greasing the right hands so a batch goes missing, but I’m not keen enough to evade—”

“Staanz—” Vala places a gentle hand on his—wait didn’t he call himself ‘auntie’?—arm, and the gesture is more Vala than not. “You know this is for the safety of our son.”

But Staanz shrugs away, only a little effected by her touch  “Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re the only one capable of feeding our son.” Vala takes a step, the tails of her coat swaying with the movement, even in such a cramped quarters. “You’re the only one we trust.”

Perking up, Staanz turns back around, examining them for a second, like maybe she can read the truth of people, and he hopes to God that his garbled and confused mind gets them a pass. “You’re serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, what are you waiting for, you gotta little bugger to feed.”

Stooping and all smiles, Staanz picks up one of the bags, handing the straps to Vala who almost immediately topples over with the added weight. While she’s strong, she’s not a trained soldier, and she tries to hide the fact that she’s barely managing.

“Oh, I wanted to warn you—”

He pauses, holding the straps of the second bag in his hands as Staanz still has hold of the other duffle. “There’s been a weird guy around here the last week or so asking about you.”

Figures that maybe the marauder trailing them made here knowing eventually the kid would need a refill on food. “One with a burnt-up face.”

“That’s the one.” Staanz helps him tug the strap up to his shoulder so he can wear the bag as a pack, evening out the weight. “His eyes were red, and he had on a black—”

“Staanz, we must be going,” Vala grunts out, taking a precarious step as he grabs one of the side handles to her bag yanking it up so she’s not bearing the entire weight.

“I know.” Their new ally—their counterpart’s baby food provider—laments as she stoops to grab the bag, dumping the currency out in her hand to count. “This is more than we agreed on.”

He starts to explain, “because of your loyalty and our need for privacy—”

Vala shoves an elbow back into his ribs and he does his best to suppress a grunt while still holding up her bag.

“We know that since the war, it’s been harder for you to secure currency.”

Staanz stares at them, wide sad eyes inlayed on a half black inked face without speaking for a long time—so long, that he thinks Vala’s just blown their cover—that now, Staanz knows they’re fakes, and is going to reach behind her for big guns, like seven or eight guys are going to file out of the back room and he waits, his hand hovering over the handle of his pistol until—

“You guys!”

Staanz embraces both of them, while openly crying.

*

“How did you know that Staanz wasn’t going to make us with the currency you added in?”

Vala’s waddling before him through the canopy of leaking metal, down an alley, and he can barely see her in front of him. He’s still got the side handle of the bag clutched in a fist as he helps her with the added weight, enjoying how her playful gait clashes with her pin straight hair and her attire of an ex-soldier.

She doesn’t bother looking over her shoulder to him—she wouldn’t be able to see him anyway—but he imagines that she’s speaking about Staanz with one of those confident small grins, that gives him a matching one on his lips.

“Noranti told me a bit about her while getting the money for me.”

“Yeah, and about this whole ‘her’ thing—”

She scoffs, and he knows that she’s rolling her eyes, because she’s picking up her pace too, as if she’s trying to get away from him. “Please tell me you’re more enlightened than that, Cameron.”

“Of course, I am, I’m just saying if—”

“A few days ago, we spoke to a lovely gentleman who had a face made of tentacles.”

“So?”

“So—” this time she does glance back, and he can see the want in her face—like she needs him to understand the truth behind what she’s speaking and how important it is. “Non-humans comprise a very large part of every galaxy.”

“Okay?”

Still doesn’t quite understand as he steps out into the open with her. The white sky from earlier—the kind he’s seen in Auburn when there’s not enough precipitation in the clouds to warrant a storm, so they ride high and block out the sun—has evolved into a darker gray either indicating rain is coming soon, or night is.

“It would be very prudent of you to stop comparing alien bodies to your Earthly ideals.”

Okay, Ouch.

“Hey!” He drops the handle, watching as she almost sinks to the still damp ground with the added wait, and plods over the concrete street to stand before her. “I think I’m pretty open-minded—”

“Then Staanz’s gender, and her outward appearance shouldn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” his voice softens when he can finally fully see her expression, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that this whole ‘alien’ talk is just a flimsy pretext. “I’m just not used to it.”

“How is that any—”

“It’s different because I’m not offended by what anyone wants to be called or how they look.” He gestures to the huge array of different aliens walking through the less crowded street now. To his left, more of those blue guys who waddle like geese pass them. “It just surprises me sometimes.”  

He doesn’t have a reason to dislike anyone—until they give him one usually—but maybe that’s how he treated her when they first started working together—to be fair, she didn’t make it easy, by constantly undermining him and—it doesn’t matter anymore.

Maybe he’s a better person now.

He probably is, because Vala’s hand slides to his cheek as she grins at him—not happy but understanding his explanation.

Definitely against protocol—and maybe out of character, he doesn’t know how Officer Sun acts around her husband—she leans in, kissing him. It’s not overly sexy—they are just square stopped in the middle of the market—but more of relief.

Just relief.  

Whatever it’s meant to do, it works because now instead of upsetting her, all he can think of is how she still smells like herself despite the layers of rainwater and leather. How the kiss is plying and gentle, and one of the best kisses he’s ever had in his life.

Wants to tell her that he’s ready to handle whatever surprises she throws at him, wants to whisper it into her ear and feel the grin bloom as her wet, cold cheeks press against his.

But of course, he doesn’t get the chance.

“John Crichton,” someone greets him with an accent that sounds a little like Officer Sun’s and even against the darkened sky, he feels the shadow approach them. “Officer Sun.”

When he glances up, he’s met by the burned-faced guy who could be the horror villain in any move made in the last ten years. He’s in a leather get-up similar to their own—of course he is, this is space after all.

Cautiously, he turns so his back is to Vala, nonchalantly trying to stretch his body as wide as possible, because last time they both took an acid round, and they were lucky to make it out with just that pain.  

“Nice to meet you, face-to-face. Again.”

Ignores the low swing of an insult there, considering this guy is missing an eye from burn scars. It makes him look vicious, but maybe he was just loading the acid rounds into his gun and had one go off on him.  

“What do you want?”

It’s probably not the best thing to ask, because he immediately gets shot and goes down knowing only two things: that it wasn’t an acid round this time, and that Vala—somehow—went down first.

Chapter Text

The impact of someone nudging her shoulder rouses her. A touch far too strong to be Deke’s, yet too gentle to be the shove of John’s hand. Doesn’t have the urgency that his morning touches usually have because he has intentions—what he may consider tasks, though pleasurable at that—to complete before rising for the day.

The hand doesn’t carry the temperature that John’s does, how the heat of it almost burns against her, searing, leaving a trail of red-flushed skin in its wake.

In fact, it doesn’t carry any discernable temperature at all.

Recognizes layers built over her skin, thick and thin, different materials of construction, but not the one she left their room in. Not the softness of what he said was fleece as he rolled the material between his fingers before tugging her closer to him to fit in the nooks of his body, but instead hardness—no, restriction—tightness in an unforgiving material that licks against her skin in smooth strokes, cold with a memory of wetness.

Indistinctly she hears a voice.

Words too accelerated to identify, for the graveyard of destroyed microbes to band together and translate, but what she can define is a cadence and a tone. Deep, familiar, with tenses and stresses fabricating a sense of unease and worry.

The hand returns to her shoulder again, not the two-part boyish shove of a man with objectives and very little time to attain them, it’s quicker and a jounce, a code set out to her that, again, she does not have the prerequisites to be able to comprehend.

The ringing in her ears begins to settle, the loud, low-tone reverberating through her skull in a pitch she did not intentionally create, yet she knows is naturally manifested and not produced by any sort of machine these humans have tucked away in a closet just moments away from triggering another explosion because as John says, “bad things come in threes.”

Three is a very scary number.

Through the constant force of sound created by pressure—by a trauma for which she doesn’t remember—the voice gradually gains clarity, no longer sieving through a million different inputs, but braiding together and strengthening until words accomplish meaning.

“Come on.”

They are repeated in time with the shoves to her shoulder, which are also growing in force from a light tap closer to what she’s come to expect from John.

Two taps and two words.

Everything in English because there is no Sebacean equivalent for his pleas.

It is John after all as his voice returns to the sullen emotions she’s experienced, like the grit biting into her forearms as she twitches, not really intent on reviving yet as her body is suffering from the same weighted exhaustion that she felt after delivering a baby.

There was no time for rest then—deeply exposed though fully clothed in a fountain—shots pelleted the massive pillars of the ruins which once stood tall and imposing. Comrades, acquaintances, and friends were surrendering their lives for the opportunity that they might make it out.

A Scarran held that pistol to her newly appointed husband’s head as he also wore the mantle of father freely and proudly for the first time although his interaction with Deke was extremely limited which she attributed to him harkening to her promise of getting her and the baby—and by extension everyone else they cared for—out of a warzone alive.

She shot the woman, the Scarran, who had been responsible for so much of her anguish in the last monens from her capture and torture, to taunting her concerning her unborn child’s life, threatening to extinguish such a little flicker before it was even able to take reeks of malice.

The Scarran, the means of her mutilated body in more than one way.

In the intense heat in the captivity away from Moya, from those she had just reunited with, from John whom she sat beside on something called a press tour on his planet and no longer felt like she mattered, that the little life in her that pressed in on her pelvis in an unforgettable pressure, was no longer important when the others confirmed to her that he had traveled through the uncharted territories in search for her, mounting a on whatever planet they landed on as if to scavenge the stars for her.

For her star.

To feel loved and then unwanted so quickly was worse than any poison she’s grown immune to through resistance therapy.

The emptiness that hardened in her stomach was worse than any starvation training she’d gone on, dragging her body across verdant jungles and arid deserts with instructions not to eat until reaching the waypoint nearly a weeken later.

The coldness that consumed her was worse than any below freezing water she’d freefallen into from her prowler after being shot by the love of her life, the father of her child—children.

To just sit beside him and be unnoticed by one human while the rest either reviled her or celebrated her, while they asked her personal questions about her physiology, about her body, her rearing, and she answered honestly, under the presumption that if she gave John’s people all the information they wanted, perhaps he would see that she was worth trusting.

That she was still worth being with.

But he spent more time with his father, with his family, with the institution he worked for, letting them explore the treats he’d return from space with, than noticing the passive effort she’d made in order to sway his opinion.

Despite him being newborn to space, having only remained there for cycles whereas she has been space fairing since she was born, he tries to dictate rules and impose methods on circumstances he is still learning of.

Doesn’t understand the importance of poison therapy because his life has never been in danger due to one of the many various gases used maliciously. Doesn’t understand that newborns, that infants, will not remember the pain of the curdling stomach, but will benefit from the sacrifice for the rest of their lives.

Doesn’t assume that he’ll ever be away from Deke long enough for one of the numerous enemies they’ve made on their exploits to come in contact with their baby. More importantly, he assumes nothing can hurt the baby as long as he’s present, and she already knows the vast falsity in this allegation that she doesn’t need an example of it becoming reality.

The hand returns to her shoulder, fingers digging in and shoving her, stretched and hard as if it’s impossible to reach her, as if she’s getting farther from him with each micron that passes.

“Hey, come on.”

This is John’s voice and hand, but not his vernacular or touch.

With a critical amount of her concentration, she manages to stir further, sliding her arms forward in the familiar caress of a coat. Rubs her face, her cheek against the cold ground discerning that the floor is constructed of metal, meaning that if she’s still inside the complex, she’s not in any room she’s been in before.

More likely she’s aboard a vessel as when she focuses her hearing, the dim hum of atmospherics, life support, and engines float to the foreground.

Those at the SGC have not allowed her to even see their space faring vessels, but now she is embarking on one?

There is a white space in her memory, in the specific and direct order of events that happened, that her memory—becoming slightly eidetic with the addition of Pilot’s DNA—stores in chronological order for her to recall easily.

A white space.

Prior to waking she was in a lab with that doctor, the one who yearns for her, although she’s not entirely sure his intentions are sexual. He’s never spoken to her in puns or innuendos, hasn’t touched her inappropriately since she punched him as a warning, whereas John makes himself known from the moment of waking.

Has never asked this doctor what his plans are or why he desires her counterpart so voraciously when it seems that all she does is annoy him, yet she learned that if she showed him a modicum of respect, of answering his most basic of questions, that he was more likely to bend to her whims.

To offer his aid.

That is how they ended up in a lab not his own, but of a more scientific nature. From walls to floors machinery whirred as it worked, scanning, examining, creating, acting as fabricated parts of a body but stemmed to only preform one task.

One of the other scientists greeted him, then her as her counterpart, but when the doctor shook his head, the scientist quickly lost his grin.

They handed over the Peacekeeper pabulum in order for a complete breakdown of it’s contents to be listed. She didn’t know the extent of the poisons present in the food—most likely the same food she ate as an infant—but she was willing to approach the argument with the facts instead of listening to his demands as he speaks of what he has not experienced.

They stood astride each other, watched as a nozzle headed machine advanced on the immobile formula packet from all sides. The way the metal bent, how the head moved down in curiosity as it flashed a holographic white light over the food, reminded her of the manner in which Pilot’s arms move.

Whenever she thinks of him, she is able to take at least one inhalation of peace, because he is her dearest friend, and one she trusts without warrant. She knows Pilot would not allow anything to happen to her son, because when he promised and pledged his fealty to her, there was not a piece—no matter how small—that thought to doubt him.

The other scientist, a larger man, again bespectacled, with a smattering less hair than the doctor who’d been her companion for the last few arns, stood on the far side of her, speaking very nervously, and halting his words whenever the doctor lifted his hand.

“You’ve—uh—had the formula for more than three days now.” Neither she nor the doctor acknowledged the shaky words. “Why are you—uh—interested in it’s composition now?”

There was a pregnant pause as they watched the machine work and then ascribe more words to the screen before them, words she didn’t understand because they weren’t in her vocabulary yet, because John had never thought to spell them out phonetically in a notebook for her.

“I dunno,” the doctor finally answered with an exaggerated sigh and shoved his hands in his pockets while watching the beauty the machine crafted, a three-dimensional model on the screen giving measurements and compound construction.

The number at the bottom of the screen dictated that it was ten percent away from completion.

“Why are we doing this now?”

Both men looked at her, their heads lined up much in the way she used to trick her targets into staring at her in order to save on the ammunition and energy. It’s always easier to aim when she doesn’t have to swing her arm around trying to catch someone fleeing, alerted by the death of their teammate.

She never did answer, nor did she ever get a list of compounds and ingredients in the food she was responsible for feeding to her son, because as she opened her mouth to retort that it was absolutely none of their business and they should be thankful she’s allowing them this level of insight into her species, the white came over her like a flash from the many cameras reporters brought to their interviews, and she teetered forward with a crash.

Her eyes open, flutter against the dark interior of a ship vaguely reminiscent of a Peacekeeper vessel—she was right, although this is not any form of human ship. The atmosphere is thick with something akin to nostalgia.

As she sits, a voice exclaims in a harsh whisper, “thank God,” before wrapping an arm frontward around her shoulders.

Without a single forethought, she digs her elbow backwards landing against the soft tissue of a torso, resulting in a harsh intake of breath and something she presumes is an Earth curse. Turning she views John, his nose still recovering from its earlier displacement, the circles around his eyes growing darker with the trauma, and his body hunched over as he holds his ribs.

“What the hell?”

“Do not touch me.”

“What’s gotten into you?” He rolls his shoulders back, trying to regain his stance in order to draw attention away from the hurt expression on his face. His hand rubs over the area she impacted, his eyebrows falling sternly. “You got shot and didn’t wake up—for a long time you didn’t wake up and I thought—”

She glares at him, listening to his breathing, watching the way he favors his one leg even though his movement is stunted in the prison cell adjacent to her. Whomever captured them decidedly did not give them the opportunity to work together.

When he was trying to rouse her from the ground, he was stretching through the bars in order to do so, placing pressure on his leg, which she believes has a chronic injury.

“Sorry if I scared you—but you gave me one big—”

“You are not my husband,” she interrupts, turning away from him, feeling the current created by the tails of her coat.

He’s stunned silent for a moment, before asking and answering, “Officer Sun?”

“Yes.” She angles her head, trying to view as far down the hallway as possible. Keeping her eyes on the dark corridor she asks, not particularly caring about his discomfort or his fear for her counterpart. “Now, tell me whose vessel this is.”

“It hurts.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Vala, you’ve definitely been through worse.”

Crossing her arms, she pouts at him, refusing to look at him or continue on with their conversation. She was perfectly happy having philosophical breakthroughs with Cameron on that commerce planet—although the pack provided to her was quite heavy—before being tossed back underneath a mountain with a friend who didn’t think to catch her as she fell.

“It’s bad, I can feel it.”

“If it’s so bad, then why are you a low medical priority?”

“I am not.”

“Lam literally looked at your lip and told you she’d get to you when she could.”

She sighs, not enjoying the cold steel of the examination table digging into the back of her thighs, even if Officer Sun has started wearing more acceptable clothing.

Maybe she can masquerade as her and request more black shirts for her own wardrobe.

“Well, I’m done waiting.”

Shoves her hands into the edge of the table in order to boost herself off, intent on finding Crichton, or anyone else who can give her any idea what’s going on. Cameron didn’t speak of his plans last time, but he did say they needed outside help—that they might need more brains working on this ‘teaser’ idea which to her sounded blatantly sexual.

“Vala, you have to stay—”

As she attempts slides from the side, Daniel catches her, but the jolt to her body causes her to lose contact with the piece of gauze she’s been pressing into her lip. He is right, the injury isn’t that bad, and probably won’t warrant stitches, but the pain is a little higher than usual.

Even the pressure in her—well, Officer Sun’s—pelvis isn’t hurting as badly.

“My head hurts. No one is able to tell me how long I’ll be here for, and I want to lay—”

“Whoa, whoa—put the gauze back—” Daniel’s hand flips up from his side, grabbing the white cotton square from her hand and taking it upon himself to pin it to her lip with his fingers. “You’re still gushing blood.”

“But it’s fine,” she replies with a voice distorted by the fingers pinching her lip.

Daniel waves her away, his spare hand coming up to rest on his forehead, a classic sign that he’s getting irritated, and a stress migraine is forming behind his eyes. He keeps pain relivers in the top drawer of his desk just for that reason.

“Just—settle down, okay?”

“You did not just tell me to—” her attempt to wrench away from him is thwarted by the fact that he wasn’t expecting her to be agreeable, so his hold on her didn’t loosen one bit, and in return the cut on her lip from where she’s sure her own teeth pierced the flesh is widened and leaking more.

Unintentionally, she whimpers, and he catches her before she accidentally topples from the table, placing one hand on the far side of her and adjusting the other one over her lip, lighting his touch a bit.

“Better?”

He’s very close to her, usually the type of closeness she would revel in because despite it being obvious that Daniel is anything but interested in her. She’s always on task to seek out his attention but now that she has it—is overly aware of the warmth spreading off his body, and the newfound gentleness of his thumb against the tear in her lip, that when their eyes lock—she’s the one who turns away.

Her fingers come up to relieve his of caring for her as she is able—and more than ready—to reclaims the gauze for herself, because the intimacy between them no longer feels natural to her, instead feeling a bit awkward and almost forced.

Before, if any man had stopped and did what Daniel is doing now, it would have resulted in an awkward situation as even though she’s a highly sexual person, she is not overly intimate. She keeps her secrets locked away, and instead drowns out her need to share, to bond with a flood of carnal acts.

But now this intimacy, this caring, feels uncomfortable because it’s not Cameron’s hands and Cameron’s hisses of worries.

Not to say that he would worry, but she’s sure if something like this happened back on Mayo, even a small papercut, he’d play along with her until she started to feel better, because perhaps he’s starting to understand the way her mind works. That she draws attention to the small injuries but leaves the big ones unaccounted for because she doesn’t want to be a nuisance—she doesn’t want to be written off a physically weak or not capable of handling herself.

Feeling good for a minute in a tumble between the sheets, or in an empty conference room, or a deserted workout room is fine, but it’s not long lasting, and perhaps how she views Cameron, how she’s come to quite literally rely on him for a lot of her needs is slowly letting her be more intimate with him, whether it be sharing true stories with him about herself, or explaining to him why he’s done something to upset her, and knowing that he will listen and not take it as a chance to pursue equal recriminations.

When her fingers move to reclaim the gauze, he mistakes her actions, instead thinking that she’s vying for touch, for physical affection, and instead of shirking her away as he usually does with a wild flail of his arms and some usually very choice nasty words that she immediately forgets in order to continue to have a semblance of a professional and friendly relationship with him, his finger, aware of hers, curls around them to rest in her palm.

Her heart starts to beat faster because this isn’t what she’s after anymore—is not completely sure it’s what she was after initially either—but she starts to panic because there is no way to refuse this without infuriating Daniel or divulging her relationship with Cameron—if it is a relationship, wishes they could just have a calm few minutes to discuss it.

A few simple seconds alone under a canopy of space dust.

Luckily, before the interaction evolves into something much more tactile and physical, Cameron—or rather, Crichton—charges in from the doorway. The skin around his eyes is darkened much in the same way that Cameron’s are due to the impact on his poor face. She wanted so badly to sit and cradle his head in her lap more, to place a cold compress and offer him some relief as he dealt with shock of returning back  to Mayo in pain.

Crichton doesn’t speak a single word, just marches into the room stomping over the ground with his fingers drawn into fists at his side.

Daniel doesn’t drop his hand, but turns to greet him, to explain that she is not Officer Sun though she does have her body and is thankful that someone finally found it necessary to fix the blockage in the HVAC on the floor above the lab—one she’s been hinting that could turn sour for months now—but before either of them can get out a word edgewise, Crichton lifts one of his bounded hands and slams it directly into Daniel’s face.

The force makes her flinch backwards and causes Daniel’s glasses to fling from his face and skitter across the ground, as he topples over like an old sack of wheat, also slightly skidding across the ground.

“Daniel,” she expresses, surprised although it really wasn’t not expected, after all, from what she knows of Crichton, he’s a very emotional person who rides his feelings high, when he’s sad he cries, when he’s happy he laughs, and when he’s angry he tends to become physical.

“I didn’t think I’d have to tell you this—” Crichton shakes out the hand he used for the punch, waggling his fingers, and clenching his teeth with a hiss “—because we’re not in high school and third-wave feminism is happening, but if you’re gonna make me say it Doc, then I’ll say it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Daniel is rightfully upset, resting on his back, raised up a few inches on his elbow, the palm of his hand covering the impact area just below where his glasses sat. There are tears in his eye from the pain as it came as a complete surprise—to him—and his voice is wavering probably from sorting through pain, through emotions.

“Don’t touch my wife!” Crichton’s face is an unnatural color of red and she thinks it might be growing redder. “Don’t think about her—in that way—and don’t talk to her—about naughty stuff—just—just leave her alone, because she’s my wife and I’d hate to call finder’s keepers but—”

“Crichton.” The hand not hopelessly holding the gauze to her lip, reaches for him, placing an anchoring hand on his arm because she can see him getting more worked up, one of his hands is still wrapped in a fist, his jaw clenched, and his eyes haven’t left Daniel yet.

“I—” he sighs, reclaiming his arm from her, and rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip. “I’m sorry, Baby—” his hand curls around the back of her neck, as he leans forward and plants a kiss in her hair, another move that makes her freeze on the spot again. “I know you hate all this alpha male shit, but sometimes the big dog’s gotta bark before the neighbors finally get it and shut the hell—”

“She’s not Aeryn.”

Crichton freezes, his hand still tangled in her hair, warm and welcoming against her skin which is growing cold from being in the cool medical area and seated on this table for so long. She stares longingly at the fleecy sweater hanging over the back of the chair.

“What?”

“Aeryn and Vala switched.” Using the side of the exam table, Daniel pulls himself to his feet, albeit rather wobbly. “That’s Vala in Aeryn’s body.”

When Crichton looks at her, all she can do is flash a wide grin, hoping that he’s not going to be as grumpy as he was during their last meeting. His hand goes heavy at her neck before falling and then bolting back to his side.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Daniel sputters, using a nearby circular mirror to examine the damage to his face which appears minimal. “Oh.”

“Sorry, I—”

“You hit me for no reason.”

“It was an honest—”

“Enough!”

Both men stop their bickering at her exclamation as she bounces off the table, onto her own two feet, intent on grabbing the sweater and then searching for Samantha in order to relay information. “You two need to—”

“Put you hand back to your—”

“Jesus, keep the gauze on—”

Again, both men step forward, ignoring their differences—and their own, probably greater injuries—and dash to meet her, both almost ramming into each other.

Crichton grabs her hand, bringing it up, and Daniel helps direct it to the fat lip, as little dribbles of blood tumble down onto the black tank top Officer Sun chose for sleeping purposes. They both pass off little glares towards each other, and it’s like being on a soap opera—the ones she watches during the afternoon on her stagnant days spent in the mountain.

“What happened?” Crichton gently directs her hand away from her mouth again so he can examine her injury.

Immediately Daniel directs it back.

“She fell.”

“How?”

“Officer Sun transferred out and I transferred in. Daniel didn’t catch me so I—”

Now Daniel openly glares at her, and Crichton glares at him in return.

“You didn’t catch her?” One day, if she ever gets to speak with Officer Sun, she’ll ask about Crichton’s latent anger issues and the way it roils within him until he erupts. “What are you, a sore loser?”

“It’s not that bad, her teeth hit her lip—”

“They went through my lip,” she corrects, sending her tongue out to test, but only getting the unpalatable taste of blood in return.

“Through her lip?”

“They didn’t.”

“Well, it certainly felt like they did.”

Daniel, realizing that if she were a more malicious person, if she had an angle to play, she could very easily send Crichton after him, decides to change the subject. “What do you care anyway, she’s not your wife.”

“No—” Crichton answers over his shoulder as he walks towards the chair, retrieving the fleecy hoodie from the back and bringing it back to her to put on, like he can sense how cold she is. “But she is running my wife’s body, and I have certain stock in that.”

“If you two are done,” she grunts, unfamiliar with the way Crichton holds the sweater for her, until he gestures how she can put it on. She slips her arms through, happy to be caressed by soft, warm material reminiscent of her favorite blanket back on Mayo. “I’d like to speak to Samantha about Cameron’s ideas.”

Chapter Text

“All right, Dr. Jackson—” the grumbly old general with a fondness for calling him ‘son’ grumbles from the head of the table. He’s dressed up in full uniform, completely professional, but even he can tell that the man is on his last straw. “Whatever reasoning for this meeting, start it and finish it so we can all get some sleep.”

“I didn’t want to call the meeting,” the good ol’ doc argues because it’s one of the only things he does. He should’ve gone to school to be lawyer, he doesn’t know how much the military is paying him to know what type of underwear Alexander the Great wore, but it’s gotta be way less than a high-profile lawyer.

“Then who did?”

Also, if he was a lawyer, then he wouldn’t be in this base and trailing Aeryn around like a lost puppy—he’s probably got the fierceness of a pup, but there’s something buried in that doc, maybe not a sordid past, maybe not bad things, because he’s got the personality of a wet blanket, but the ability to do bad things if the right standards are met.

If the crackers are right.  

The doc doesn’t answer, just uses the hand holding an ice pack to his cheek to gesture across the table to Vala, who’s looking perkier than he remembers Aeryn ever looking—maybe since he was running her and alone fixing one of the modules with a very unzippable vest.

Vala removes the ice pack from her lip, the big old fat tire all red and flush, and Aeryn is going to absolutely hate coming back to her own body and finding it damaged. “You could show more enthusiasm, Daniel.”

“Sorry, I think all my excitement got knocked out of me with a stiff left hook,” the classicist sneers back.

He doesn’t care if these two are back to their arguing like him and his sisters in the back of the old minivan when his folks would drive them cross country on a summer trip, then that means that the lingering streaks of whatever is between them aren’t being played out, and he doesn’t have to worry about keeping the sanctity of his wife’s body intact.

“Officer Sun, the meeting,” the general booms from his end of the table, like it’s Thanksgiving dinner and the kids won’t be quiet during grace.

Maybe he should try speaking to the doc with language that he understands. Tell him to treat Aeryn like a museum exhibit because he’s willing to bet that the poindexter has spent countless hours around those.

No touching and no flash photography.

“Right, well to start, I’m not Officer Sun,” when Vala speaks, she has to direct the ice pack away, holding just a few inches away from her face in the worst ventriloquist act he’s ever seen.

“Well, how am I to keep track of who is in what body?” The anger stems from a mixture of the dicking around and also looking a bit like an idiot before his staff, but no one is really completely awake.

“Uh, I could—” Colonel Carter explains as she leans into the table from beside him, and points down to Vala, “Officer Sun doesn’t really talk much.”

“Well, someone can type of the notes on distinguishing characteristics and give it to me later, but for now—” the general gestures down to Vala, who keeps sitting still, leaning into the ice pack a bit and completely oblivious that she’s got the table again.

It’s then that he really starts to miss Aeryn—not just because they had somewhat of a fight over the ethical and parental responsibilities of poisoning their son on purpose, but because he misses explaining idioms to her, watching her face crunch as she tries to understand the actual meaning behind words that all mean something different.

No, she doesn’t actually get to take the table.

Because the table has to stay here and what would she do with a huge conference table anyway.

It means she has everyone’s attention at the table.

Yeah, I guess you can say it other places to.

No, it still stays them same.

Look, Aeryn, I didn’t make up the—

“Ms. Mal Doran,” the general booms again, shaking the table and jolting most of the participants awake in their chairs.

“Sorry, I just have a bit of a—” Vala points to her temple, closing her eyes for a second, but when she opens them and no one questions her on what she means—well, it’s obvious that she’s referring to a headache, but no one seems to care—she sighs, giving her head a little shake, making the ponytail Aeryn slipped in bob, and he really never did get over the playing and pulling pigtails phase from kindergarten.

“Well, I wanted to express Cameron’s plan to you since it appears that—” she turns to look at the board, at the two letters his counterpart was able to scrawl out before being hoovered back into a neighboring galaxy “—he didn’t get very far.”

“We sort of spent most of the time catching him up.” Colonel Carter is resting her chin in the palm of her hand and appears about two microts away from falling asleep sitting up.

Across the table and beside the doc, the big guy who loves staffs has been sitting with his back completely straight and hasn’t said a word before or after sitting down, so he might be meditating or something.

He could sleep with his eyes open.

All he knows is that no one in this room is close to being a hundred percent present.

“Yes—he’d said as much—” Vala continues to stare at the board from her chair, craning her neck and trying to understand the two letters left  behind.

‘At’?

At what?

“He also told me that he had a plan on how to figure out what was actually happening to us temporally, and even a way in which to precure more stones.”

The icepack he’s holding is starting to lose it’s only redeeming characteristic—even his hand starts to get more feeling back into it—so, he tries shoving it against his nose a little harder, only to almost see blue birds singing Roger Rabbit style.

But the room is starting to get into the full swing of conversation when he drops his slushy pack to the table, effectively derailing everyone from where they were going. Most of them look pissed, Vala looks confused, and the big guy is still staring directly ahead.

Starting to push away from the table, he explains, “Sorry, I just need to grab a new icepack.”

“Can’t you wait until the end of the meeting?” The doc asks, crushing his completely usable icepack to the half-shiner he gave him. It wasn’t even that bad really—basic middle school level of fighting—because he used his nondominant hand.

“Not if you want me to keep breathing,” he sort of snorts, all the mucus, blood, and brain matter jiggling around in his sinuses.

The doc opens his mouth to respond and just by the cavalier expression on the guy’s face, he knows that it’s gonna be snarky. He’s ready to shoot that shit down, but Colonel Carter, the mom of this ragtag group of idiots, who once revealed  to him that she worked with Dr. Happy for going on close to twelve years, steps in.

“Why do you all have ice packs anyway?”

“I was under the impression that the deal I made with you guys concerning my wife’s need for random icepacks also extended to me as an extension of her.” It’s not his best comeback, but Mama Crichton always wanted him to be a lawyer or a doctor—she didn’t want to see her baby boy blasted into space like a chimp, and she never lived to.

“Like I said, I got hit with a heavy left-handed hook,” the doc reiterates as an explanation, his expression sour, and the rim under his right eye growing dark with the same trauma his is.

“I barely tapped you.”

“My glasses fell off!”

“It was a third-grade punch!”

“I fell to the ground!”

“Well, then you’re not hit nearly as much as you should be!”

“Atlantis,” Vala finally screams from where she’s now standing beside the chair she was entertaining herself in by doing slow rotations. She’s got a different color marker and her penmanship looks like it belongs on the front of a sympathy card, but she fills in the letters on the board.

“Like the underwater city?”

Luckily, everyone ignores his comment—they’re all aware that he made it, but no one wants to explain what it has to do with anything.

“Cameron wanted to contact the Atlantis team in hopes of securing help from Dr. McKay.” Ending her written letters on the board, Vala draws a smiley face and then caps the marker again. “Also, to answer your question, I when I was transferred here, Officer Sun lost consciousness, and since Daniel failed in catching her—”

“I didn’t know what was going on!” The doc squabbles, in a weak attempt to explain why he wasn’t man enough to catch her. “One second we were looking over the results of what that stupid green food is made of, and the next she’s smashing her face off one of the machines.”

That, that makes him forget about how warm his defective icepack is.

“You were doing what?” 

“She wanted to analyze whatever was in the food, so I took her down to the lab.” 

“Did you get the results?”

The doc furrows his brows, trying to understand the eagerness in his voice. Maybe wondering why they didn’t check the back of the package first to make sure there were no arsenic additives. “Yeah—I left them with Dr. Lee—”

“So, Atlantis,” Vala knocks on the board trying to win back the attention. “Cameron figures that if Dr. McKay can bring whatever research he’s done on the stones—”

“I’m sorry, but are we sure this is the best idea?” Colonel Carter pipes up from beside him. Apparently, this is a controversial subject because her voice gets gentler—if that’s even possible—as she addresses the idea a guy bulleted a galaxy away came up with.

“You disagree, Colonel Carter?” The general finally joins back up with the conversation, just sitting, waiting while the kids fight because they’ll tire themselves out unless they’re not cranky for the sake of being cranky, but because their food is laced with alien poisons.

“I need the list of those ingredients.”

“I think this is a precarious situation as it is—”

“Why are you and your wife—”

“You don’t think McKay will be able to help?”

“Her name is Aeryn, you can say it—Aeryn—she’s not Beetlejuice.”

A bang brings the room out of their Jerry Springer style freeform arguments, and at first he thinks the general got all dictator with the table and slammed a fist down. When that wasn’t it, he thought maybe the big guy actually fell asleep and bashed his big old dome off the finely polished hardwood, but he’s still contentedly staring ahead.

Turns out it was Vala again, who’s maybe trying too hard to pitch this Atlantis idea, until he notices her trying to steady herself against the lip of the table.

“Vala,” the doc asks without budging from his seat. “You okay?”

“Yes—” but she does this weird squint thing, something he’s never seen Aeryn do, something he’d do if he had a sharp pain somewhere—Aeryn doesn’t get those, at least he doesn’t think she ever does. Maybe she does, but they just don’t bug her that much—“My head just really—”

She stumbles again, and he leaps from his chair, his hand catching her arm, as her head hangs limply under a curtain of her hair.

“Vala?” The doc jumps up, grabbing on to the other side of her keeping her stable.

“What happened?” Colonel Carter bursts from her seat as well, as Landry opens the door, calling for a nearby airman to call for medical.

“I don’t know she just—”

But the doc is cut off as Vala’s muscles tense under their touch, and her feet stop from dangling, flattening to support her again. She places a hand down on the table and stands straight again, giving her head a shake. “Sorry—”

“What the hell was that?”

The doc immediately jumps to being angry—setting off swears—while he stays quiet covering her forehead with his hand, seeing if this is from heat delirium or being too cold, but she feels fine.

“It’s nothing,” she grins, but he can tell it’s fake—can see right through it to the fear in behind her eyes, because Aeryn gets the same way. But she taps his arm, telling him to let her go, so he does. “It was probably just from bouncing around galaxies too much.”

“How long was I unconscious for?”

If there’s one thing he has to commend her on, it’s getting straight to the point. A minute ago, she was out cold, face down on the ground and now she’s already calculating plans to escape.

Vala and her aren’t so different in that way.

Vala is cunning, she’s scheming—way more so than he is. He can’t think of plans on the fly, he can’t come up with ways to get out of a burning building aside from the front door. He has a dangerously one-tracked mind, and that’s what got him shot on a dusty freeway after commandeering someone’s motorcycle to get her.

Man, it was so long since he rode a motorcycle that he’s honestly surprised he remembered how— after he started flight school, he traded up the speed and pop of adrenaline getting them from jet engines instead and his old Harley stayed in his parent’s garage under a tarp.  

Even more shocking was the amount of paperwork he had to fill out—not only because he got shot and injured on duty, but because he took that vehicle in the name of the law—something the IOA slapped his wrist about and told him not to do unless the world was going to end, not caring if there was no other way to get Vala back.

He was even more surprised that  none of the team asked if he had a valid cyclist’s license—which he doesn’t—but he saw the problem, saw an answer obvious to him, and took it. Didn’t think about leaving the rest of the team behind, because it took them two weeks to find Vala—two weeks where none of them slept, where Jackson kept beating himself up because she went missing on his watch.

At first none of them were even sure she was taken against her will.

They were still getting to know her—she was mischievous and most of all, she didn’t like to sit still.

When their shifts ended, whoever was left in the mountain was her means of entertainment. She’d torture Jackson down in his lab, asking him questions about all the devices he had in storage, about the texts he was reading, correct him when he pronounced dialects of Goa’uld wrong, and then accidentally break another pair of his glasses.

With Sam she broke an ancient device left on her desk once and then was too scared to return into that lab without her present, even then she’d just poke her head in from the door and refuse any invitation inside.

Teal’c actually volunteered to teach her meditation, but he said she kept bouncing around on her ‘end’ while she was supposed to be deeply lost in thought. The final straw came when she gently poked his shoulder, drawing him out of a deep relaxation and asked if he wanted to go get food.

Even Landry’s had his share of Vala camping out in his office, asking him questions about the pictures on his desk, about chess, about the creeping ivy and fan palm in the corner. Once he saw him open the door and push her out in the hallway like the Flintstone’s cat.

Before, well—everything—changed, he didn’t really like having her tag him around. It was like having a sidekick—someone with a really specific set of skills that could only come in use one time out of a hundred.

He’s still never needed her to break into any offices, and the one time when he told her specifically not to—because the IOA’s papers of recommend punishment were in there and he wanted to know just how hard the slap on his wrist would be—she didn’t listen.

The next time he passed the office, she rolled out of the airduct stating that he told her not to pick the door lock but said nothing about the attaching vents.

He was too worried about being caught to blow up at her, afraid that if the IOA found out their offices had been broken into, his punishment would be greater or continue for longer. It was also obvious that she was the only one on base capable of doing this and with the IOA already not that fond of her, he didn’t want her to get reamed out for no reason.

“Put it back,” he demanded, pushing her towards the wall and the vent she’d just appeared from like a magic trick.

“Don’t you want to know what they think of your little vehicle commandeering stunt?” She asked over her shoulder as he used his only hand—the other being wrapped up in a sling—to shove her until she was against the wall.

“No—put it back now.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before.”

“Fine. Fine.” She swatted his hand away from her, making him take a step back to wait for her to clamber up into the vent while he stood guard in case any of the IOA suits decided to round the corner.

But she just stood there in front of him, her arms crossed like she was waiting for him to do something.  

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“Vala, I’m not kidding—you need to put that back or—”

“Blah, blah, blah—I know. I obviously need a boost.”

Then he stood before her, trying to understand what she wanted, as if she had just asked him—while he was still recovering from getting shot for her—to just lift her up to the vent.

“What?”

“A boost? To help me get to—”

“I know what it is, Vala.”

“Good, then hold still.”

Her hands landed on his shoulders, but before she could get her foot up, he backed away, so when she stepped, it was just a large topple forward.

“No.”

“Mitchell, how do you expect me to get up there?”

“The same way you did before.”

“I got a boost before,” she huffed because he was apparently wasting her time now.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I—”

“From who?” With his mobile arm he gestured around the hallway which was mostly empty of airmen save for two who stood at the doorway to a more prestigious IOA office with more confidential files, not just the ones punishing him.

“A nice gentleman actually offered to help me as he walked by—”

“He did not.” He almost laughed because none of the airmen he’d ever met or served with would just volunteer to help a woman break into a records office—no matter how attractive she was.

“He did.”

“He did no—”

“My Dear Colonel, are you calling me a liar?”

He did laugh this time. “You know you’re a liar.”

But she just grinned, placing her hands back around his shoulders, directing him back towards her and the wall, like she was guiding him in dancing. “Put your money where my mouth is.”

“Mine.” His hand came up to hide his face as he groaned.

“Your what?”

“The saying is ‘put your money where your mouth is’.”

“Well, if that’s what you’re into, Darling.” She winked at him, and for a second he remembered finding her without a memory on the side of that highway. How terrified she’d looked, how relieved he was that she was okay despite being shot. How she didn’t trust him but still patched up his wound—well, after she stole about eighty bucks from his wallet. “I just thought that I could make it a little more intriguing for you.”

“Just go,” he grumbled, squatting down a bit so that when he stood he’d be able to give her the extra height she needed to get to the vent.

She tilted her head at him, confused by his approach. “That’s not how the airman boosted me.”

“Of course not,” tried to keep whatever emotion was creeping up his spine out of it and nodded back down to where his hand lay palm up against his thigh.

“Why, Colonel—” she clasped onto his shoulders again and adjusted herself so her one boot sole was in his hand. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“I’m not.”

He kind was though. Had a feeling he was starting to like her more than he should on a few of their previous missions—probably acted too hard on it when he just basically stole some guys motorcycle and drove it without a valid license in order to retrieve her.

“Good, because you’ve no reason to be.”

At the end of her sentence, he stood up as best as he could, and with an extra push of his hand, tried to launch her the best he could towards the vent—he also tried his best not to put his hand where he didn’t want—but kind of, actually did—but as she bounced up he might of accidentally—truthfully, accidentally—touched her ass.

“Colonel Mitchell—” when he finally got the confidence to look at her, she was perched in the open vent hole. Vala didn’t exactly have tact and he’s just given her enough ammo to put him through the ringer for at least the next five years. She was going to say so many inappropriate things—and probably not just to him, but to anyone who would listen.

“You—” but she stopped when she looked at him, and instead grinned softly. “I told you, you have no reason to be jealous.”

And that was it.

Doesn’t know why she didn’t say anything about his traveling hand, about him getting frisky with her when he didn’t mean to be, when he tried so hard to direct his hand somewhere else, but he was only working with one, and the sudden absence of her weight from him, made him stagger back a bit.

After that, she did start bugging him less, but when she was around him, she’d stay for longer.

He taught her the right way to play basketball—not whatever way Jackson had taught her which was basically granny ball. She was still pretty good without Teal’c—who is almost as tall as the net—on her side. She’s the best at layups, she’s zippy, and fakes him out nine times out of ten, and then just dunks the ball.

He didn’t know why he kept falling for her fake outs, but he did.

She learned how to play video games from him, everything from Call of Duty to Grand Turismo to Tetris. Her response time is ridiculous, something like less than a microsecond, and her hand-eye coordination was almost perfect. She took to anything she played well but didn’t like war games because they were too realistic, which was weird because she liked fighting games and from what he’s seen of her, she throws her weight around all the time.

“Your lip is bleeding.”

Officer Sun stands in the adjacent cell next to his staring down the dim hallway. These aren’t regular prison cells, almost like they were constructed for weirdly shaped animals and closing in over their heads so there is no way of weakening the bars from the top.

Curiously, Officer Sun lifts her hand to her lip to find the blood. When read stains the tips of her fingers, she rubs them together, like she doesn’t understand what the liquid is—maybe her body doesn’t bleed in the same way, or at all.  

“Here—” he reaches into his back pocket to retrieve a cloth he originally put there to deal with Deke’s spit up but forgot he had it and eventually used a different one. Between the bars of the cages, he slips the cloth into her cold fingers, and for a second it seems like she knows what to do with it before she wipes the blood from her fingers off.

“No—No, it’s for your—” he fattens out his bottom lip and points, showing her where “—put it there, it’ll help stem the blood.”

Judging the small burp cloth—something they obvious got from Earth—their Earth—she raises a questioning brow at him. “I don’t think she needs this.”  

In a deadpan voice because he’s trying not to be threatening, he answers, “humor me.”

She does, placing the cloth against her lip, and continuing to scan the environment. “I think she hit her face when she fell.”

“The creep who brought us here, shot us. She went down hard.” He doesn’t like to remember it, or talk about it, or worry how she’s doing in the other galaxy. “He called you guys by your name—you probably know him.”

“Was it one of the people from the marauder?” Officer Sun paces around the small space of her cage, her free hand coming to the bars above and giving them a yank, trying to make them bend with no result.

“Yeah—I think it might have been the guy with the burnt skin.”

That statement gets her to stop her movements, to drop the cloth with the little yellow duck from her lip, “the burnt skin?”

“Yeah, and his had a thing—” gestures at his chin, but footsteps tapping down the hallway interrupt them.

Chapter Text

“Officer Sun.”

His voice rings vaguely familiar in the files of her mind—women she’s worked with, men she’s recreated with, superiors that she’s taken orders from—his attire is the classic burgundy and black fitting so appealingly to his body, which only accents the horrific features of his face.

He strolls before the cage she’s in—not a cell for a prison or a jail, but rather a makeshift cage constructed out of crude metal materials fit for animals, for creatures of a lower stature.

As she awoke to Colonel Mitchell grasping onto the set of bars the cages share, the fill of the ship removed instead replaced by the innards of a hollow lair—one constructed in either a poor amount of time, with a poor amount of materials, or by someone with a poor amount of intelligence—which is juxtaposing because in order to be a Peacekeeper intelligence is of the highest order.

It’s dark inside of most of the Marauder vessels, but there’s a dankness to the walls—to the floor—which would be inexcusable by any self-respecting officer. A ship in this degree of disarray would be scheduled for demolition along with any pilots who allowed it to become this homely.

Even in his presence, she can still hear the distant reverberation of liquid dripping down from the ceiling, the constant sound distracting enough, but overlaid with the muffled sounds of street businesses, of people haggling and buying wares.

Colonel Mitchell filled her in as she regained her consciousness—the flip of realities a harsh awakening, but her body managed to adjust without any lingering side effects. Was sure to take a micron and check this time because when John regaled her of his tales on Moya as they lay reclined in bed, his hand stroking lazily through her hair and his voice a satisfied growl from where she heard it against his chest.

Apparently, the shift in dimensions was harsh on his equilibrium as well as his digestion and he revealed that he vomited over the expanse of the observation floor and watched as the DRDs streamed forth to clean it up. It took almost a solar cycle for him to regain his momentum, for him to become hungry enough to partake in the unknown and dangerous meals  Noranti concocted.

When she queried about his balance, he laughed, his arm curling around her head so his thumb could rub against his lower lip in thought. “That poor bastard has it rough.”

“Who?”

“The guy where I’m supposed to be.”

“Mitchell?”

“Yeah, not only does he seem to be the only level-headed one on the ship, but he’s doing it with a huge amount of pain.” His hand dropped back around her shoulders, trailing up and down her skin, sparking her reaction in a shudder and his grin pillowed against the top of her head.

“Is he unused to space?”

“Nah, he seems to be doing fine with that.” Crichton’s voice grew softer indicating that he would soon be falling asleep, satisfied at his prolonged, but violent return, and the reduction of fluid between them, and the several minutes he spent conversing with her navel despite her frequent reminder that their second offspring was currently microscopic and in stasis.

Rotating her body, she laid flush against him, her chest pressed into his and her chin dug into his shoulder, but it allowed her to view the euphoric expression on his face when she started running her fingers from his cheek, tracing around his ear and into his hair.

“Then why is he pained?”

As she rolled his earlobe between two fingers, and tugged on it gently, he let out a dry laugh, before capturing her hand and placing a kiss on the back of it. “He’s got an old war injury.”

“So? I have several.”

He leaned forward, his nose brushing so softly against the side of her neck, his hot breath stirring within her again, yet she knew that due to his inferior biology, he wouldn’t be ready for more recreating yet.

“I know about the one.” A single finger chased down her side, slipping over the slope of her breast, over the grooves in her ribs, and the jut of her hip to an almost indiscriminate scar where he saved her life a second time. “What about the others?”

“A story for another time,” she responded, reclaiming his hand, and placing it back on her breast as she tilted her head up to kiss him again.

After being proven wrong by just how inferior she thought his biology to be—and reminded that John, when doing anything, is never discretionary—they picked up on conversations they’d abandoned when their mouths became otherwise preoccupied.

“I guess he drove a plane into the ground.”

His fingers drew through her hair, relaxing overly so as her body, still shuddering for a different reason, riding out the crest of her last satisfaction, was falling into a sleep of utter exhaustion. She couldn’t distinguish if he was rebirthing the old conversation or if he’d started a new one and in her stupor, she failed to hear his words.

“Who?”

“Mitchell.”

“I thought Colonel Mitchell was a decorated pilot?”

“He is.”

“Apparently, not a very good one.”

“Hey, don’t make jokes—” he tapped the end of her nose where she reclined against him. “His leg is in constant pain. I bet he has pills here he’s supposed to take for it.”

“I’m sure Noranti could create some concoction in order to alleviate his pain.”

“Vala wouldn’t let me take anything when I was him.”

“You weren’t him, you were in him.”

“Yeah, but my way sounds a lot less creepy.”

The tracing of his fingers up her arm and through her hair continued and in all the recreation she’s had with Peacekeepers before him, she’s never felt as pampered as he makes her feel after consummation is complete, partially do to not exploring feelings of attachment, of love, feeling illegal and punishable by termination—but even with Velorek, she didn’t feel as synched as she does with John.

He chuckled again, mirthful since his return, despite his displacement of his nose, perhaps because he didn’t have to deal with a pain enforced on him which was not his own, likewise, they’d recreated quite a bit, and it was enough to keep her mind and body at peace even as she bounced with his laughs.

“Cat’s got another reason he’s gonna be in pain.”

“Which would be?”

“He’s fallen hard, real hard.”

“Did he injure himself again?”

“Not in that way, Baby.” He adjusted her, pulled her tighter against him, like he might wake and find her gone—how right he was soon to be—“He’s got it hard for Vala.”

“When I queried if the were partners, he denied it.”

“You can’t just come out and ask them.” When her body started to absorb more of the cooling air of the room, her skin covered in that excretion he does when he overheats, the salty perspiration transferring to her through their recreation, he reached forward to retrieve the coverings located at the end of the bed. “Don’t you remember how it was?”

“How what was?” Barely cognitive, she felt uncomfortable with his sudden demise, but pillowed her head on her hand. When he returned, turning in bed so he faced her, his hand found her hair again as it always did.

“When we weren’t together but—”

“But we’d recreated?”

“I don’t think they’ve had sex yet.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because—” he paused, aborting his sentence, almost swallowing down the words.

“What?”

“I just have a feeling, okay?”

Her thumb swirled around the cleft in his chin as he began to close his eyes, his head sinking to the pillow below. “Do you think they’ll recreate?”

“Oh yeah.” When her thumb stopped it’s ministrations he pulled the digit to his lips to kiss the tip before keeping her cold fingers wrapped up in his own. “I just hope that they don’t do it on Moya.”

“Why? You’d rather them use our bodies?”

“God no.” His eyes burst open at the question. “He’s not exactly graceful.”

She stifled the laugh in the back of her throat at his dramatic response. “Then why?”

“Remember when we came back from Earth, our—my Earth—and we brought all that swag with us?”

“Yes—”

“Well, I didn’t bring condoms—I mean if you were gonna be pregnant you were gonna be pregnant for years.”

“Condoms?”

“It’s a form of birth control.”

“Birth control?”

“A way to have sex without having kids.”

“I don’t understand.”

Bringing their clumped hands to his lips, he dropped another kiss on hers. “If they have sex on Moya, she could get pregnant.”

“So?”

“So, humans have babies in nine months, Aeryn.”

That statement effectively ended their conversation—not that she was worried about their counterparts recreating, or using any of their supplies, when thrown into this situation, she hopes they use what they need—but John’s statement suggests that they’ll be aboard Moya for nine monens or more.

She doubts that their son would even remember them.

All of the hard work they did, the war they ended, the allies and family they lost would mean absolutely nothing while their counterparts reaped all the benefits, and despite his large body giving off the amount of heat it always did post-recreation, she felt a sudden shift of cold.

“What do you want?” Her stance is rigid, her arms remaining stock at her side. She has no weapon—most likely it was removed when she was unconscious—but she stands ready for combat, nonetheless.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you.” As an act of insolence, he ignores her question, her demand, degrading her further. “I picked this commerce planet because I knew eventually that you two would come here in search of food for your bastard.”

“Don’t—” Colonel Mitchell begins, but she holds out her hand, a barely perceptive action that dictates he should be silent.

“How is it anyway?”

“You will not ask questions about my son.”

“Hmm—” when he turns, his face accepts reflection from the lights glowing weakly above which only work to deepen the trenches of burnt skin and the craggy surface where an eye should be.  “You see, that is quite interesting.”

“I don’t give a frelling—”

“That you refer to him namely as your son when he reeks of humanity—the same stench as his father.” Despite his array of previous injuries, this man stalks outside the bars of her hold without a trip in his steps—without a hair on his head, a sign of inferiority in the Peacekeepers—and by his mannerisms, his words, she can tell that he believes he still belongs although it’s quite obvious that if he returned, they would offer him a less than sought after retirement. “Tell me, was he able protect you in your fragile state?”

“As I remember, I wasn’t that fragile.”

“No, perhaps not—” he halts, his hands pinned behind his back, and a twitch of a grin affecting his skewed mouth. “But it’s interesting how fragile the bastard is now.”

“Whatever you want, we will not—”

“What I want is very simple Officer Sun—” he leans in close to the bars of her cage, and in her peripherals, she witnesses Colonel Mitchell, sidle closer, as ready for an attack as she is. “I want to  know where John Crichton went.”

“Look, are you ever going to tell me about this ‘Atlantis’ thing? Is it like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea or what?” He trails behind her in line at the commissary, slowly poking his way around people in order to be directly beside her.

After explaining Cameron’s suggestion and merely only getting a ‘maybe’ from the general—his first ever—she burst out of the room before anyone had plans to stop her and redirect her to medical for her stumble and down to the commissary so she might actually indulge in food.

While she doesn’t mind whatever Noranti seems to create in the kitchen—one she’s never seen food present in—she misses the common extravagances of Earth food. Ice cream, chocolate, pizza.

She’s never eaten as well as she does on Earth.

She was planning on having a nice quiet meal where, perhaps, she would not mull on the fact that Cameron is still stuck on the commerce planet.

Isn’t certain but thinks they may have been shot at.

Would be more concerned that perhaps she passed away and has returned to her own body, but again, that incessant little pinch in her pelvis is letting her know this is Officer Sun’s body.

Her plans of a calm meal, however, are ruined before they’re even birthed.

“Ah, ah—” he tears the tongs away from her and grabs her plate, dumping the dozen or so chicken nuggets she’d been craving back into the big metal bin full of them. “No chicken.”

“I’ll eat whatever I—” but when she picks the tongs back up, he snatches them from her, keeping them tight in his hand. “Crichton, you’re seriously going to deny me—”

“Aeryn’s body has a bad reaction to poultry—” he pauses, absently clanging the tongs together while he does so, holding up the line behind them. “Well, it might—I’m not taking any chances.”

“Well, I want—”

When she reaches for a golden nugget with her hand he snaps the tongs at her, making her recoil in shock.

“No. Poultry.”  

“And I thought you were demanding on Moya.”

She grabs the red tray, switching tactics and zipping to the other side of the line where delicious muffins and pastries stay. They’re not exactly homemade or fresh—from the food the others have been kind enough to procure for her off base and from her chilling, yet exhilarating, two weeks spent on her own eating diner food—but for a sugar rush, for a comfort, she can eat a slice or two of apple pie and pretend that she’s back at a farm with Cameron, the warm summer wind billowing her pigtails as his mom regaled her of stories from something called ‘the sixties’.

As she grabs the slice of pie and places it on her relatively empty tray, currently only burdened with a tiny clementine, he grabs the other side of the porcelain plate holding it in place. “You need to have an actual meal first.”

“Well—” she tugs, trying not to show just how annoyed she is with his constant wheedling into her affairs just because she’s borrowing his wife’s body. “I was planning on having chicken nuggets but—”

When she tugs again, he doesn’t let it go, just stares at her until the rest of the line starts to grumble behind her, yelling for her to get a move on, and how has she upset so many people when she’s only been back on Earth for an hour and a half?

“Fine—” releases the pie just as he tugs on the plate and he fights to reclaim balance and keep the pie centered as she leans over the partition, abandoning the tray in the pile which need to be sanitized, and heads for the exit.

“Hey.” He manages to snag her by the arm before she makes it fully through the exit of the food area within the commissary, and hauls her back in. “You need to eat.”

“I’m sorry—I’m confused.” She reclaims her arm without much hassle, standing before him with a grave face already tired of his interloping. “I was under the assumption that I inherited your wife’s body.”

“You didn’t ‘inherit’ anything, she’s just letting you borrow it.”

“Yes, and at no point during our swapsies do I remember you becoming part of the—” when one of the airmen behind them begins to fuss, very akin to Deke’s whines when he’s hungry, she angles herself around Cameron to address them. “Do. Not. Even. Think. Of—”

“I wasn’t part of that equation—”

“Which is my point—you’ve no right to tell me what I can and can’t eat.”

“No, see—” when the complaining doesn’t stop from behind her, Crichton maneuvers so he can get sight of the guy. “Just shut up, you’re not starving to death.”

While he’s turned, she starts to tiptoe away only to be caught again by his finger in the collar of her shirt—fortunately he doesn’t wreck this one the way Cameron did with her last. “I wasn’t part of the equation, but you inherited me.”

“I don’t want you.”

“I don’t care.”

She places a hand to her head, feeling very overwhelmed by the bright lights, the constant noise and heat rolling off and out of everyone around her. The din of the commissary offset by the smells, by sounds doors away, by conversations she’s not supposed to be a part of, they swirl around in her head and make her dizzy—make her stumble forward a step.

He catches her, his hands on her elbows, keeping her upright. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she lies, still not entirely unsure the whole atmosphere isn’t brought on by her constant shift in location.

“Maybe we should go down to—”

Before he can hit the idea of medical back into her head, she uprights herself, intent on not being chained to her bed during her short duration here. Last time, she only visited for a little over three hours. Perhaps she’ll be anchored here longer than this time. Enough time to contact Dr. McKay and fill him in on what she knows of the stones and what’s going on in the other dimension—not that Cameron couldn’t do it himself the next time he was zapped down, but they don’t know when that will be.

Cameron also has a small distaste for the scientist since conversing a little with Sam, and still carries one of those yellow citrus fruits around whenever he’s present.

Thankfully, her stomach—or rather, Officer Sun’s—picks the perfect moment to growl loud enough that she knows by the expression on Crichton’s face that he must have heard it over the din. “Perhaps, I am hungry after all.”

With a surrendering grin, he steps out of the way, gesturing his hand back towards the food. “Try to get something halfway decent.”

The airmen complain again after they cut back in line to view the offerings again—spaghetti, which she despises, chicken nuggets which are apparently off the menu despite how tantalizing they appear, and some sort of thick stew she could very well get in any of the planets she’s visited.

However, at the end of the line is the salad area, and the thought of a hearty garden salad makes her stomach growl again.

Not one to argue with basic functions, she steps around the people before her, knowing he’s trailing, and grabs the biggest bowl on hand filling it with a variety of leafy greens and vegetables.

When his hand snakes around, trying to grab the bowl to put it back, she sidesteps him so he can’t.

“You need to have a meal.”

“Crichton, consider this your last warning.”

If he chooses to squander her food again, she will flat out leave the commissary and not return to it for the duration of her stay despite whatever protests her stomach may put up.

“Look—” his hand touches her arm gently, as if for a moment he forgot he wasn’t dealing with his wife, directing her to the side, his voice lowering to a whisper. “She’s pregnant, okay?”

Her eyes burst wide with shock, her voice keeping his harsh whisper. “Who is?”

Apparently her question is a stupid one, because his teeth grate together in a way she’s only seen done by Daniel, as his hand grows hotter against her arm. “Aeryn.”

“Oh.” Her face scrunches as she tries to discern what exactly this—“Oh!”

“Yeah.”

Doesn’t particularly know how she feels to be pregnant again. Supposes that if her pregnancy with Adria was normal, and that she had stayed married to Tomin, she would have likely gotten pregnant around this time again.

It’s not something she desires—not something she wants, particularly at the state of her life now, even before she was catapulted to another galaxy—she’s too injured from the failure of her firstborn.

How she wasn’t able to help, to comfort, to protect—all tasks mothers undertake.

“Wait, is that what this constant pinch is?” Suddenly brims with excitement to be celebrating someone else’s pregnancy and not her own, happy not to be the vehicle of delivery or the object of want by any deities, she touches a hand to her pelvis where the constant pressure is still distracting.

Crichton grabs her hand flailing with excitement and directs it back down towards her side. “Yes.”

“Oh, isn’t that darling?” She beams down her hand smoothing back the material of her shirt. “Hello little—”

Crichton snatches up her hand again. “It’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Straightening out her back she reclaims her tray from where she set it beside the salad bar, trying to act the epitome of calm. “I suppose you’d like me to eat a bit more protein then.”

“That would help.”

“Of course.” She starts spooning out hunks of bacon, until almost half of her salad consists of about ten broken slices.

Glancing at him for approval, he doesn’t look particularly pleased, but he sighs loudly, shrugging his shoulders, apparently giving up. “Sure. Why not.”

Passing the refrigeration unit, she reaches in to grab a soda before he takes it from her and sets it back down.

“Oh, come on—”

“Water.”

“But I’ve been craving a Coke since—”

“Listen Missy, it is two—” he gestures to himself and then her stomach with a quick twitch of his fingers “—versus one here, so—”

“Crichton, in all severity—” she pushes her tray into his chest, jostling the mostly bacon salad. “I feel like if I cannot have this soda, that I will die.”

“That bad, huh?” While his words sound sympathetic, the tone makes her know that he isn’t the slightest interested.

“You can ask, Daniel, I never drink soda—I prefer juice—but I feel like if I cannot drink this can of soda after seeing it—”

“Okay, okay—compromise.”

She seethes as he replaces the can of soda in the fridge but returns with a different can. “It’s the same thing, just caffeine free.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That means that it’ll taste almost the same, but without the kick.”

“Fine.”

She snatches it from him, opening it and taking a few gulps before slipping her way into the line in front of people who start to grumble until both her and Crichton turn around, and the noise stops immediately.

After her card is scanned, she bounces out into the main floor, happy enough to have a soda that she needed to have and spots Daniel waving her over to a table, still holding the icepack to his face.

When she grins, starting towards him, Crichton groans behind her, his words muffled by his hand sliding down his face, “can we go five minutes without seeing this guy?”

Rolling her eyes, she plucks up a piece of bacon, slipping it into her mouth, then another, then another. “You’re just salty because you thought your wife was cheating on you with him.”

“No, I didn’t—” doesn’t understand why he’s so defensive all the time, it’s obvious that he cares about his spouse and while he doesn’t mind showing it, whenever he’s called on it, he balks. “I thought he was trying to violate my wife—there’s a difference.”

“You should give him a chance, he’ll grow on you.”

“So will fungus.”

Ignoring Crichton’s last barb, she bobs towards the table, happy to be in the company of a friend—a familiar face that has the true person she knows within—but all that’s dashed when Daniel speaks.

“Finish your lunch as fast as you can.”

“Jeez, Doc, no ‘hi’, no ‘how are you’—”

Daniel seems to have adopted the defense of just outright ignoring Crichton now,  as he turns his head to address her directly. “Landry wants to send the team to Atlantis as soon as possible.”

Crichton takes a seat next to her, somewhat watching her shovel food in from his peripherals.  “Anyone gonna tell me what this Atlantis place is?”

Daniel sends a disapproving glance at her bacon with salad on the side, and then shakes his head at the utter euphoria she feels while enjoying her first rounded meal.

“You’ll find when you need to.”  

Chapter Text

When they told him about this Atlantis place, he didn’t know what to expect—either some cheesy downtown hotel turned tourist attraction with a crazy number of mounted fish on the wall, or a washed-up Disney ride where the cart goes through plastic tubes under an aquarium.

He was wrong about both.

The basis of the thoughts was kitschy—something outmoded, outdated, that would have been state of the art in a 1960s B movie.

Figured they wouldn’t have to go far—maybe it was a secret meeting spot like in one of those 1960 spy movies where they exchanged money for a roll of film or something. It didn’t really matter to him because he was getting tired of looking at concrete or rock wall faces anyway.

The stupid rock, the stupid concrete, the lines on the floor that he still doesn’t understand. The bed wasn’t as comfortable when it was half empty, and the room he usually shares with Aeryn is a mess because she hasn’t been around to give it her old Peacekeeper once over and chuck his dirty clothes back at him to toss in the laundry.

Most of all, he hates the stupid mess food, with only three options a day—plus salads, if you even consider that a plus—which is usually, chicken, beef and either a vegetarian or fish option. It feels like he’s at the longest and worst wedding  in the world.

So, he jumped at the chance when they said the team was going to Atlantis—maybe it was a code name for another military installation where they had more information on the zen stones—it really didn’t matter what the hell it was, because he just wanted to get out from underground.

He’s been hibernating for too long.

But when the General looks at him over Vala’s shoulders—Vala, who expertly took his wife’s hair and separated it into two pig tails, which did nothing to help the cheerleader fantasies he already has—and told him that he specifically couldn’t go, he didn’t understand.

“Atlantis needs a high clearance to—”

“Doesn’t Mitchell have the highest clearance allowed?” He interrupts Dr. Happy, not even looking at him and instead addressing the general directly.

“That’s the problem,” the general sort of grumbles out on the end of a dry laugh. “Colonel Mitchell has the clearance—not you.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” he turns away, fighting the need to toss out his arms or say any of the thousands of words in his head that might be inappropriate at this time. “So, me and Vala just get to hang back here and do nothing?”

“No, no.” Vala wags a finger at him from where she’s perched on the end of the table, she’s back in what is probably her uniform, but he’s still having trouble overlooking the hair. How hard would he have to ask Aeryn to—“I’m going.”

“What?”

“Yes, I have a certain level of security clearance—” the way she trails off leads him to believe she got it through the wrong methods, like maybe she saw the right senator do the wrong thing. “Anyways, it was through my rapport with Dr. McKay that—”

“What?”

This time it’s not him with the flailing arms and the wild eyes, but the doc who stares at her from the other side of the table. They’re all in the same uniform, the kind they lent him—black shirt, green pants, and jacket—and it’s starting to make them all looking like the children of the corn.

“What?” Vala answers back calmer, her legs pumping over the corner of the table like a kid on Christmas, ready to go.

“You’ve been talking with Dr. McKay?”

“Yes.”

The doc lets out a scoff, crossing his arms and turning away from her, like he can sense her lies. “Since when?”

“Since our last trip to Atlantis.”

“You didn’t even meet with him that long. How—”

“When he was kind enough to explain his dog joke to me, I stated that not many people on Earth take the time to define idioms and things he calls ‘colloquialisms’ to me, so he volunteered.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“My, Daniel, are you perhaps just a squish jealous?”

“I’m—”

“Enough!”

Thankfully, the general is benevolent enough to decapitate the squabbling of his similarly dressed kids before it devolves into just babbles and grunts.

But he also gets out of the chair to leave, which means that from what he knows of these two, they’ll be back arguing in a few minutes.

“Once Colonel Carter and Teal’c send approval, you’re to go directly through the gate.” He stops his shuffle at the doorway, turning back with the stern brows every dad gets. “And Dr. Jackson, try to keep the debating to a minimum.”

“Why just me?” The doc asks as the door closes behind the general, Vala sniggers, still swinging her legs.

“Because you’re the one who started this.”

“No, you did by asking McKay to teach you things.”

“And why is that a problem, Daniel?”

“Well, first, he’s McKay—second, you could have asked me.”

“Hey, Kramer versus Kramer!” He steps between them, holding them apart with his hands, pretty sure this isn’t going to turn into fisticuffs, but if it does, his money’s on her. “Can we talk about how I’m not allowed to go to Wally World, but she is?”

It manages to silence them for about half a second—both probably trying to understand the references because she’s not from Earth and he doesn’t look like he’s the type to get out much.

The doc removes his glasses, his fingers tapping a little too closely to his bruise because he hisses out, “you want to know why Vala—who’s already stated she has clearance—is allowed to go to Atlantis and you’re not.”

“That’s not Vala, that’s Aeryn.”

“Excuse you, I know when I’m me,” Vala snaps back, slipping off the side of the table and onto the ground. Her lip is still bruised and a little swollen, and her pigtails wavering when she walks.

“Not that—” he points to her temple as she slides past him and to the door, opening it to take a peek out “—this.”

Maybe gesturing to her body while she’s halfway leaning out the door wasn’t a smart idea because the doc is glaring daggers at him, or he’s just having a really hard time seeing without his glasses, but he’s glad that the somewhat lecherous doc—if excursions to the medical bay have anything to say about it—can’t see Aeryn’s perfect ass as she leans forward.

Just as quick, Vala shuts the door and stands, “I have clearance.”

“But you’re in Aeryn’s body.” He repeats tossing his arms dramatically because this whole thing is starting to feel very teenage soap opera. The nerdy kid is in love with the strange girl, but the strange girl lives in his wife’s body, who is currently pregnant—sounds like a primetime smash, which is sort of what got them into this mess to begin with.

“It doesn’t matter,” the doc shoves his glasses back on his face and pulls out one of the conference chairs. “It’s still Vala’s consciousness.”

“Yeah, and what happens if she jiffy pops back to my dimension leaving Aeryn marooned on Atlantis.”

“Well, she’ll have to be escorted back.” The doc pulls out a book—a really old, leather bound one—that he must have been reading before and flips to the page he was on. “Really, Crichton, it’s pretty straight forward.”

“I think you forgot how easy Aeryn can kick seven or eight asses.”

Vala’s still quiet which is weird.

He’s hardly been away from her, except when she told him she needed a bathroom break, and he waited outside the door for almost twenty minutes because she gave him the slip. He found her speaking with Landry in this room almost half an hour later, and before he could give start in on her, the general started speaking about Atlantis again.

It was bad enough when Aeryn was going through heat delirium, and the guilt of abandoning Deke, but now he’s got to deal with Crichton’s kid 2.0—It was easier keeping her safe on Moya in the middle of ship eating vines and radiation and torture.

“If something happens, Atlantis is only a gate away,” the doc mutters, his fingers trailing under the line that he’s reading.

Vala leans over the table, her pigtails grazing against the surface, and again her ass in the air. He feels like a creep for staring at it—but then again, he’s married to the rightful owner of that ass.

In a completely backwards way, he has more ownership over that ass than Vala does.

“You’re more upset that I’ve been having conference with Dr. McKay, then anything that’s happened, aren’t you?” She’s got this smirk on her face, pulling her lips to one side in a smirk.

But the doc won’t acknowledge her, his nose still buried in the book. “He’s not exactly a good influence.”

“Are you willing to tell me that every time I had a question about your planet, the metric system, the political strife, the geological climates, taxonomy, biology, finance—" She’s leaning in on her elbows now, her knees in the seat of the chair, and her head resting in the palms of her hands “—that you’d drop what you were doing and give me an answer?”

The doc drops the book, and stares right at her—if their faces get any closer, he’s gonna flip the conference table. “Of course, I would have.”

She blows a raspberry right in his face, before bucking up and returning to spinning vacantly in her chair—the whole thing is very Pretty in Pink. “Daniel you get upset with me when I ask you what the difference is between tangerines and clementines are.”

The doc’s voice gains volume as his face grows redder. “Because I’ve told you four times already.”

“Well, excuse me if I have so much roiling around in my brain that I can’t remember the specific species distinction of all sibling fruit.”

And he can’t take it anymore.

Can not take it.

It’s bad enough being stuck here under a military regiment when everyone knows he’s never been good with following rules, and having to take a back seat to returning home because of clearance issues, because everyone else is too busy screwing around with other things than to just come up with a frelling answer—but now he’s here, in this room with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum arguing about fruits that have nothing to do with anything.

He doesn’t even have Aeryn anymore, and he’s really starting to lose his chill.

So, he smashes a hand down into the table.

“Will you two shut up?” It’s not meant as a request but as a rhetorical question that he bellows. “You argue about everything, food, missions, Dr. Mckai—”

“McKay,” they both correct.

“I don’t care. I don’t—because you two need to realize that I’m gonna be going to Atlantis with you, because “Vala”” he uses air quotes around her name because even though she’s here—she’s not really here— “isn’t taking my wife’s body out of my sight.”

Still doesn’t know where they are, or why they’re still being kept in cages, or why Darth Vader keeps playing a game of twenty questions with Officer Sun, while actively ignoring him. Doesn’t really remember how he got here. Just knows that they have a baby who’s going to be crying for food soon, that they need to negotiate or fight their way out of being a zoo exhibit and get back to Moya before they get worried.

If he loses that baby, no one is ever going to forgive him.

He’s not going to be able to look Vala in the eye and tell her that because he was dumb enough to get shot—even after Staanz warned them—that the six-week-old baby up on that ship is gone.

Doesn’t even think he’ll be able to tell Officer Sun or Crichton before they plant a cold one between his eyes.

“What do you mean to do with us?”

“I already explained to you, Officer Sun,” the guy’s voice is really soft and has a slight slur from the wat his mouth is permanently  positioned from what looks like skin grafts, but he holds himself with respect—almost the same style as the military—back straight, eyes—well, eye—engaged actively listening to Officer Sun’s responses. “I want to know where John Crichton is.”

“He has nothing that you want.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not.”

“Yeah, because being cryptic is going to help this right along,” he mutters, louder than he thought he did, because the guy’s shocking blue eye turns to him, set under tight wrinkles and really red irritated skin.

“And who would you be then?”

When he walks forward, his pacing is slow and deliberate, like each step he takes is purposeful, with meaning, and he clasps his hands behind his back like Teal’c, though the big guy does it to show no harm—by keeping his hands linked, he’s basically holstering his weapon, whereas this guy—whose name he doesn’t even know yet—is more threatening when he can’t see his hands or the weapons he contains within them.

Doesn’t stop before the cage, like someone holding a regular interrogation—like he did on that dusty desert planet when Vala was being judged through a Mal Doran. How after Jackson fell asleep she just slipped through the bars ready to make a break for it, and how him and Teal’c had to talk her into following the trial through.

“Tell me, how is it that you resemble Crichton so thoroughly?”

He was never really good at this part.

He can play the captain, play the hero, even play the sacrifice by driving his jet into the ground. But he can’t play the prisoner—not when people are trying to sap him for information. Not where there’s the stake of his own Earth, and their double’s lives online.

Not when he literally has to protect a baby that looks exactly like him, but he can’t say that, or it’ll be weird.

Officer Sun is on the flipside of the military ladder than he is.

Where he didn’t have such hard ass C.O.s, it seems like her military career was anything but gentle because she’s awkward around emotional people, like she knows the rules of the game when it comes to having feelings—she still doesn’t engage because it’s awkward for her, and if she does it  the wrong way she might be punished.

That the bad of loving and caring might outweigh the good.

As much as he hates to admit it, he wishes Vala were here.

Not because he’s grown used to her company, and not because he worries about her whenever she zaps back to their galaxy, but because if anyone could sweet talk this walking nightmare, it would be Vala.

She has a way with charm, a way with words where charisma just oozes from every sentence she speaks.

Before—all this—when she would speak to him about missions, or questions about shirts that he didn’t know how to answer because it’s not his job to order her more—and because she started talking about bras.

If he’s not tomato red with embarrassment, then he would feel like the only guy in the room.

Despite what differences they may have had—how she complains at almost everything, and how he has a hard time of letting go who she was, so it’s hard for him to enjoy who she is now—when he would talk about missions, give a debriefing, she would make him feel like the only person in the room.

Sure, she’s got this weird relationship with Jackson—one he’s honestly a little jealous of, because she prefers him more—maybe she used to prefer him more—and sure he’s a little apprehensive about her being back there alone, because maybe that will be the however many hour window that Jackson needs to see that he’s an idiot and realize how great she is.

He told Landry that he knew he didn’t have authority over anyone on his team but in the last year or so, she’s started listening more.

Thinks it happened after Jackson got highjacked by Merlin—how scared she was, how emotional she was, how she actually felt like the rest of them did whenever she drove herself to her self-sacrificing bullshit.

He was so frustrated with her—and maybe a little jealous—to see her worry over Jackson the way he worried over her just a few weeks before. How they split up and called places she might go when really he felt so guilty that he’d never taken the time to show her the town outside of the mountain.

She was only a slight flight risk then, and even if he just showed her how to get back to the complex, it would’ve been helpful.

She mirrored his guilt when Daniel was gone, tearing through his office trying to find some way to return to the planet they were last on. She said she had contacts, and even took a day to venture off on her own—against his authority, but then she overruled him by going to Landry—and came back even more heartbroken because not only would her contact not give up the goods on the planet, but she apparently had to shoot him to get away because he’d led her into a trap.

Told him she was worth quite a bounty. “And if I could think of a way to get it for myself without perishing, believe me, I already would have done it.”

No, she definitely wasn’t listening to him at that time, unless the words he was saying were spiteful—unless he allowed the envy he felt to seep through each on of his words.

He wasn’t proud at making her cry, he searched for her afterwards to apologize and ended up finding her in Jackson’s empty lab. It was the first time he truly meant it. He hadn’t known what came over him on that planet, or why he put his hands on her, or shook her to clear all the shit out of her head—it had to happen that way—that this time someone else had to be the sacrificial lamb?

But after that his words became more generic, and he apologized because it seemed like the right thing to do, not because he felt bad about hurting her in anyway.

It got to the point where he would sit across from her in the mess, talk to her about the football game the night before while peeling his apple, and then just apologize for how he treated her the day before, and then go back to telling her how the game ended even though she didn’t care.

But he did.

Always tried to make things right with her, and he told himself it was because he was trying to make up for the fact that he was always just a little bit sterner with her than he had to be. He saw the way Jackson treated her and the way she reacted by giving him more of her attention, and he figured if he did the same—

But all he ended up doing was hurting her feelings, making her afraid to be around him, afraid to overstep when they were on a mission, afraid to trail off the protocols that had been drilled into her head for the last year.

It was easy to blame her, so he did, and he started doing it more often because she wouldn’t give him the attention she was giving everyone else.

He’d heard the rumors—they weren’t easy to ignore—but he stood up for her, told the airmen that were saying things about her body in explicit detail that if they ever mentioned her name again, he’d have them marooned on some planet.

Then they just became a stalemate to each other.

Knew she wasn’t interested in him, knew she didn’t respect him, and despite the dreams that he’s been having since she wore that one dress—her and her outfits—about the soft curves of her body and the way she moved, he told himself he wasn’t interested either and somehow that personality that belittled her or sometimes even manhandled her took over.

Even though every time he saw that expression on her face, how her eyes welled up with water, and tears danced on her lashes and he knew he was responsible—how every time she was in a hurry to do something, ignoring that he’d told her not to do it, and he reached out, grabbing her arm and yanking her back in place, she wouldn’t meet his eyes afterwards .

He felt like garbage.

How he turned her away because all those rumors—those stories floating around the men’s locker room where she waltzed in on him once shaving—returned to him, and he couldn’t touch her without thinking of all the other men that had.

Vala is good at everything he’s not.

She’s stealthy while he’s lead-footed, she’s mischievous when he’s strait-laced, she can come up with an escape plan on the fly and it takes him more than a few minutes, she shoots then aims while he aims and then shoots.

She’s free with her feelings, and he’s burdened by his.

Wishes he could just go back to the hour they had together on the transport pod. How she was curled up in the seat wearing a kick ass jacket, and still cold. How he wanted to reach over so badly and just hold her after she divulged the details of her life that she did.

After she finished her story, he turned to ask if this was one of her tall tales that she spun whenever anyone on SG-1 asked about her life prior to coming to Earth, but just the look in her face—the same one she got whenever he reprimanded her—told him everything he needed to know.

It was silent after that, Pilot interrupting before he had a chance ask her more questions, but more importantly, before he had a chance to comfort her.

Maybe all she knows him as is the hard ass leader—the one who doesn’t care about what happens as long as they get results—when he’s anything but.

Again, it’s his own fault for not being adult enough to acknowledge his own feelings.

To tell her that she looked amazing in those daisy dukes and how he was proud of her for trying to take down Ventrell before something bad happened—even if she was two sheets to the wind. How relieved he was that she was safe the time she took a two-week excursion with no memory—even if she did take his pants—and man did he have to recite some bible verses to get through her fingers unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them down.

“I don’t have to tell you shit,” he mutters, pacing away from a guy so burnt, he can still smell his skin.

The soldier turns his attention back to Officer Sun who’s face reads like the side of a mountain. It’s been through so much that he can’t tell what she’s thinking or what she wants to do, but he can tell which part of her expression are her own responses and which ones are Vala’s.

God, he hopes it’s going better for her—maybe she’ll get a chance to tell them about his Atlantis idea. Thinks that maybe McKay and Sam put together could probably have this stone problem solved by lunch time.

Then they could go home.

Go home and what?

“Why are you pursuing him? The signed treaty offers us amnesty.”  Officer Sun’s voice is disciplined and carries through the small space. “We’ve done nothing to receive this treatment.”

Could they really have a relationship back on base—they couldn’t have a permitted one, that’s for damn sure. Even though she’s not in the military, he’s still her boss which isn’t exactly ideal.

Jackson would get a pass because he’s a civilian, and Teal’c would get one because he’s an alien.

But because of the job he’s chosen, his path on life since his dad first let him climb up into the cockpit of a jet, from the first time that he got his adrenaline pumping in a flight simulator, he knew what he wanted to do.

Just didn’t know that it wouldn’t allow him to do something else he wants.

“You know exactly what he’s done.”

The guy turns away and he thinks that this back and forth might last forever, that eventually Vala will pop back into her own body, and she can pop the cage doors or something with a hairpin. Maybe that’s their best bet.

But the guy’s slow pace stops right in front of Officer Sun’s cage. He leans in—too close for comfort—but she doesn’t show any signs of unease, instead glaring at him from the side of her eyes, a look that could kill.

He takes a deep inhalation, reminiscent of all horror movie villains, and his stunted mouth morphs into a grin. “Officer Sun, you’re smell absolutely human.”

Chapter Text

She stands in the corner of her containment cell, her back turned towards Colonel Mitchell, effectively halting the slew of questions being burped up from his mouth at a greater and greater velocity.

They were left mere microts ago as their capturer went to see to something—the manner in which he was pulled away indicated that whatever preoccupied his time, was of importance as he immediately aborted their conversation and instead chose to leave.

Hadn’t been able to smell the aroma of humanity on her own skin but supposes that her nostrils are so used to translating the lingering scent from John that she’s grown accustomed to having it present, although it is somewhat more overbearing in the mountain complex where there is no access to fresh air, particularly when the heat level is raised a few klances over her liking.

Then it becomes unpalatable, and almost induces vomiting.

Peacekeepers, particularly those reared on a command carrier, are delightfully odorless, despite the genetic enhancements to their own olfactory glands, in order to aid with basic tracking. The idea of having Peacekeepers moving around with the stench that humans carry —particularly the males—is barbaric.

If they created such and odor, they would simply just be terminated.

But as she shrugs out of her jacket, the room growing a little hot for her—thankfully not as detrimental to her counterpart’s human body—she allows herself to take a deep inhalation of her skin and realizes, that yes, to any nonprimitive being—herself and their capturer included—she is damagingly human.

A silence pours over their encasements as she continues to stare down the corridor where the Peacekeeper with the scarred face disappeared, her mind racing to attempt to unravel his plan.

Why is he hunting John?

“You gonna tell me why you just sniffed yourself?”

Colonel Mitchell’s voice carries from behind her, mingling along with the constant dripping of liquid from the ceilings in colored puddles captured in indentations in the floor, offering white ripples as they go.

If she was in her own body, she would be able to listen to the various different sounds—the dripping, the distant speaking, the sounds of machinery humming—in order to determine where exactly she’s located and use that to her advantage.

If she was in her own body, she would be able to use muscles and skills cultivated within her since she was a child in order to escape.

“How did we end up here?”

The question is meant to be rhetorical, her addled brain forgetting that she has a partner in her captivity, although not the one she seeks.  

What a cruel trick to play.

To bring her back home, only to abandon her in a random prison away from the soft skin and gentle gurgles of her son.

“Vala and I were walking back to the transport pod parked in that spaceship Ferris wheel.”

His voice startles her, though she only reacts internally, finally taking note of the emptiness in not only her pelvis, but also her stomach, indicating that her counterpart has not eaten in quite some time. Along with the pangs of hunger is a roiling in her stomach, like the emptiness is full of contents that should not be there.

Her innards are tight and growling, a pain rising up her back, and flowing down her side, light but steady, like being stabbed with a small implement.

“How long ago did you leave Moya?” Pivoting on her feet, she turns, half meeting his gaze, to examine outside the front of her cage.

“I don’t now exactly,” he glances around, as if to find a time device, as if he would be able to properly tell the time if he found one.

“What’s your closest estimate?”

“We left when it was early afternoon here, and judging by that window—”

He points at something she cannot see, drawing her closer to the intersection where the bars of her cage meet with his.

Were she in her own body, she’d be able to bend and destroy this faulty construction with ease, but despite how the humans back at the mountain keep imploring how strong her counterpart is, her hands are too weak to bend the metal—instead growing hurt and stained with the corrosion.

“What window.”

“There’s—” he steps back at her sudden presence, but settles quickly, ensuring that none of his body is leaning up against the same bars as her. “There’s a small window about ten feet that way.”

Still attempts to strain her position, then takes a few careful steps back in order to try and circumvent the thick wall which blocks her view. “Could we get out of it?”

He glances at her sideways, an expression John gives her when he’s unhappy with her, with the words she chooses to communicate with, when he discovers that Peacekeeper infant formula is laced with substances he would never feed to an adult let alone a baby.

It is a judgmental expression; one she does not enjoy.

“You probably could.” Stepping further away from her in order to observe the window, he glances back again, his eyes falling over her briefly in a gesture that she’s seen frequently from other men, some Peacekeepers, John, and several at the mountain.

Usually when this expression occurs, he’ll situate himself in front of her and direct attention elsewhere. Sometimes he verbally berates whoever is staring at her with such intent.

However, in this situation, it’s hardly avoidable. She’s sure John is staring at her counterpart, maneuvering her body around in a different style, in different attire, with a different attitude, and while the novelty is still fresh, she’s well aware that he’s staring.

This is also permitted, because it’s her body he’s attracted to, in that sense, not her personality, and she knows he won’t enact anything, because it’s her personality he’s attracted to predominantly.

“Umm, you’ll definitely fit.” There’s a brief pause before Colonel Mitchell turns away, a light flush of color coming to his cheeks. “Sorry, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen her without the jacket in clothes she might actually wear.”

“You miss her?”

Is unsure why she asks the question when it’s so obviously unimportant to their current predicament, but it’s calming knowing more about him, about her counterpart.

The more she learns, the more she trusts them.

The more she’s reassured that Deke is being cared for to the best of their abilities.

“Like hell.”

His answer is accompanied by a grim smile, as he’s fully aware of the situation, of what the likely outcomes could be.

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” her offering is weak along with her grin, but she’s still not good at comforting those she doesn’t know, or perhaps those who are exact in appearance to her husband.

“Well, the longer the transfer lasts, the better—” at her narrowing eyes he continues, “she’s trying to get more big minds thinking about the stones. Hopefully one of them comes up with a solution.”

“She seems like a very adept person.”

“Oh, Vala wastes no time,” he chuckles, turning away, his fingers ringing around the bars but only return with the same dark corrosion as hers did.

“John spoke fondly of her.”

“Not too fondly, I hope.”

“He also deduced that you two had entered into a relationship since switching to our galaxy.”

“He did, did he?”

“In the very least he was worried you might conceive aboard Moya because there’s no—what was the word he used?—Protection?”

When she turns back to Colonel Mitchell, his face is entirely red now, and he hangs it quickly, turning his back to her, stammering out several words but not commencing any sentences.  

“He said he hoped you were using—”

“Can we talk about how we’re going to get out of here?” Colonel Mitchell bursts in interruption, the red slowly draining from his face, but returning when he sees her sniggering expression. “What?”

“Your people are so ashamed to talk freely about recreation.”

“That’s because—it’s not the sort of thing—it’s not really something—”

But the soft glow of the overhead lights draining, the room becoming unseeable within—if she were in her own body, this would be an advantage, one she would use in escaping—stops his stuttering argument. Followed by a loud boom, not quite the level of an explosion, more of the noise of a distant scuffle.

“What the hell was that?”

“Shh,” softly commands his silence, her hand moving back to their shared partition, as she turns, trying to angle her body in the direction of the sounds.

In the dark, the constant dripping of water grows stronger, each drop against the ground echoing on the background, behind her breathing, her elevated heartrate, her growling stomach.

“Maybe someone came to get us,” he whispers close enough to her that she can feel the warmth of his breath land on her skin.

The banging grows louder, but never come to a crescendo, never break through the blockage between where they’re being held, and where the man with the scarred face disappeared to.

“Maybe they’re just moving furniture.”

As he keeps speaking, his breathes growing louder, his feet kicking at the concrete floors beneath them, the calmness within her inserted by years of dealing with situations and scenarios mapped out to be exactly akin to the one they’re in, snaps, and she turns, to where she estimates he is.

In a hard whisper, she demands, “we need silence in order to—”

But as she speaks, a spear of light breaks over their compound accompanied by the sound of a heavy metal door opening with a loud clang.

When the light splashes over his face, she finds she was correct in her angle, and that he is only mere inches away. Without another word of reprimand—or one of apology—she turns away from him, moving only two steps to retrieve her jacket from the ground.

“Who do you think it is?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue.” Absently, she reaches down for the second time to retrieve a pulse pistol she doesn’t have. “But we should be ready to fight if we have the chance.”

He nods, his face void of any of his earlier humor as he readies himself at the opening to his cage as they hear plodding footsteps grow nearer.

As she squints to see against the light—against the dark—a familiar face pops up in her sight, one she hadn’t seen for ages, one who rescued her before, and was one of the only people they trusted to procure the proper food for their son.

“I told you that scarred-face weird guy was after you.”

Staanz bends forward, her hands tracing along the edge of the cage until finding the weakness in construction and tapping at it with a tool that easily disintegrates the bars.

A bit bewildered—as she and John both agreed it was best to keep Staanz on the boundaries of their lives, lest she was captured and immediately spilled secrets—an emotional grips her, something of guilt which only allows her to mutter, “thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, but maybe mention it to the little guy at home, eh?”

“What’s the matter?”

Daniel’s voice echoes through the Atlantis version of the gate room—she’s not sure if they call it by the same moniker or if they’ve decided that it needs to be called something else as there are quite many more desks present than the one that Walter uses back home.

Home.

It’s been part of her late-night conversations with herself lately if Earth is truly her home.

The doubts started about six months back after a particularly bad mission during which the whole team had to collaborate in order to save their lives—it also took all of them failing at each of their own parts of the mission in order for it to turn so sour so quickly.

Teal’c’s weapon snapped in half from the force of gravity in areas of the planet, one of those electromagnetic impulses that they rely on so heavily ended up malfunctioning and destroying Samantha’s computer, Daniel’s Ancient text fell into a raging river, she was caught in a basic level trap laid by inexperienced thieves, and Cameron fell down a rather large hole, resulting in spending almost half of their mission time trying to retrieve him.  

Once they grumbled back to the mountain and sat through Landry’s debriefing—which was more of a berating than anything because they’d been so sloppy—they each went their separate ways as they mostly blamed each other.

Not once during the debriefing had they mentioned all the cruel words spat at each other in moments of rage.

Later the MALP would confirm that something in the atmosphere effected brain chemistry or something along the line which gave them shorter tempers with each other, but by the time the reasoning was found, she was far from caring.

The malicious words were said out of spite, though that spite was concocted and forced. But it didn’t really change anything as the whole situation only reinforced the way she thought the team felt about her.

That night, tossing and turning in bed, was the first time in over three years that she’d considered leaving the SGC and Earth because it wasn’t worth it—no matter how hard she worked, she would never be able to convince these people that she was nothing better than a two-bit free agent with glorious hair.

Before that incident—rather quickly actually—she came to think of Earth as her home. The peculiar foods filling and heavy in her stomach as she was used to only eating basic meals constructed of wheat flour, water, and meat. She ended up sticking with fruit for the first few months until at a checkup she was forced to go to, Dr. Lam told her she was too thin—“something sought after on most planets,” she had answered—and demanded she gain weight.

There was no way she could explain that fruit and vegetables were saved for those of affluence on not only her planet, but also when she was Qetesh. She would attend banquets with full and ripe fig trees grown in her honor, only for her to demolish the whole sapling like a plague of locusts.

There is still no sense of home for her on Earth—or less so of one than she initially felt—but she doubts she’ll ever be able to call one place home. Her upbringing, her spirit is not one for rest, for being stationary and stagnant out in the universe, which is the reason why being part of the SGC was so appealing—she could explore different planets but have a safe hub to return to.

But perhaps it’s time for that hub to change.

Then again, some of these people are the closest family she’s ever had—the only people she’s known not to backstab her for a guaranteed pay day.

She’s also curious to see where her new relationship—if it could even be labelled that—with Cameron will go.

After all, it’s easy to playhouse on a living vessel in space, but not so easy once returning to Earth and having to deal with the ramifications of roaming hands, and interlocking body parts.

When she glances up, Daniel is still staring at her, and she realises that she’s been holding her head in the gate room for the last few seconds. There’s a strange lingering feeling—different from the presence of life, the odd weight in her pelvis—as it’s more of a throbbing, like if she concentrates hard enough, she’ll be able to count out her pulse.

“I’m fine I—” hesitates before she tells him of her ailment, because if he was Crichton, he would drag her right back through the gate without another word. But thankfully they were able to ensure Crichton understood that he was not welcome in Atlantis until he was given a security clearance approved by Mr. Woolsey, who wanted more details on the situation first.

The way they did this was by locking Crichton in his guest suite—which is much bigger and much more lavish than the piddly room they offered her as part of her work with the SGC.

“I just can’t believe we actually left him behind.”

“He didn’t seem too happy.” Samantha pushes by them—while her face is stoic, she knows her friend isn’t too keen on seeing McKay, because again, it’s hard for anyone at the SGC to accept that people change—they grow and flourish in different environments and perhaps being stationed here and forced to offer aid and backup on missions has taught the doctor to be a little humbler.

Maybe it hasn’t—she really never knew Rodney from before—but he was nothing but courteous to her in answering any questions she had once a week through video conference. Like learning a new language, she would scrawl down in a notebook all the questions she had that week be it from missions, from television, or something she simply overheard in the commissary, and he would devote an hour of his time to defining them for her in the context of the situation.

Something Daniel isn’t apparently a fan of.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t come to me,” he griped while they were packing a short overnight bag for Atlantis in case of emergency. He was picking from the tomes he’d managed to rescue from his completely unusable lab, although he stated that clearance and construction to rebuild were supposed to begin within the next few days.

“Daniel, whenever I ask you anything, you just revert to being annoyed.” She picked a tome from where it had fallen off the table in Samantha’s lab—an area that she despised being in since accidentally destroying a priceless device. Although she was never punished and no wrath flowed her way, she’s still wary of recriminations.

“Well, maybe if every question you ask wasn’t a stab at my integrity—” The words he spoke were mocking, in a sing-song type of cadence, yet his enunciation portrayed that he was speaking the truth, albeit indirectly.

“I don’t mean for them to be—” she paused, flipping through the first few pages of the text and finding nothing but words. “Well—not all of them.”

She gave him a bright, mischievous grin, and wondered if he knew just how much she cared for him. How her first advances were genuine—being blatantly straightforward was how she knew how to get men interested in her—she was usually on the run from either bounty hunters, debtors, the Lucien Alliance, or any number of  a multitude of people and organizations that believed she owed them something.  

She didn’t have a lot of time to spend on pretense.           

If she attempted to explain it to him, she wondered if he might understand—if she went into the detailed version of her life, and all the twists and turns in order for her to end up here on Earth with him now—if he might understand the way that she acts and how all her relationships before now were two dimensional and based on a give and take basis.

After all, he is a learned individual and must have some sort of respect for the psychological implications of her rearing—all tests about tortoises aside.

“I—”

But before she was able to pose the question to him, before she could find out if her intriguing hypothesis was true, he snapped his head up to her.

“Where’d you get that?”

“What?”

“That text.” He tore it from her hands and flipped through the pages to ensure she hadn’t damaged it in any way. “I was looking for this.”

“It was—”

“You know how much time you just wasted?” He exhaled harshly, settling the tome carefully inside his bag. “You’re always messing around.”

She finds it infinitely interesting how men, how people—how the Tau’ri—can be so critical of something while ignoring themselves for making the same mistake. How they can be so self forgiving, yet ready to pounce when finding another’s faults.

So, she kept her words to herself.

“Ah, SG-1,” Mr. Woolsey, who still slightly scares her from his days as an IOA operative, stands in uniform behind the first console of mechanics for the gate. “Running late as usual.”

“Well, someone had to have an emergency bathroom break,” Daniel speaks snidely while side-eyeing her .

“Yes, of course it was me,” she argues back, entirely ready to be switched to Moya because nothing she’s met in that galaxy has as much attitude as he does. “Not the man who’s my counterpart’s husband rampaging like a wild gorilla through the corridor.”

“Yes—” Woolsey stands with his hands behind his back, directing himself towards the level they’re on in order to formally greet them. “General Landry told me about the mishap you’re experiencing.”

“Oh, it’s a lot more than that.” Daniel stills ready to greet, along with Sam, as she works her way behind them to the far side of Teal’c who raises an eyebrow at her.

In response she smiles nervously.

“Your general is requesting that I give this man—the one inhabiting Colonel Mitchell’s body—clearance, but I wanted to ask a few questions to clarify the situation first.”

“Well, I don’t even know if we can do that for you,” Sam interjects.

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s been a long week, Sir.”

“It’s been ten days,” she grumbles, because for ten days they’ve merely had to deal with the rotation of bodies on their base—bodies who mean them no harm, who have no malicious intent, who only wish to be reunited with their son—meanwhile, she’s had to deal with people shooting her, people on the ship being hurt, an old three-eyed woman force feeding her something, and the resulting kickstart in her fertility, her growing feelings for Mitchell—oh, and caring for a newborn during the interim.

“Ah, Ms. Mal Doran,” Woolsey directly speaks with her, causing her internal complaint to herself to die out as Sam and Daniel split revealing her. “As I understand you’re inhabiting another body that appears to be your own, but is not?”

“Well—”

“This is quite an interesting addition to the long-range communication device.”

Samantha hikes her bag up on her shoulder, now engaging Woolsey instead. “Yes, I remember getting intel that you had your own experience with it last year.”  

“Oh, not myself—” he chuckles, “but Dr. Keller did, we were barely able to retrieve her on time.”

“Excellent confidence booster—” she stops shy of giving a thumbs up—an action she’s seen Mitchell do before, but that Crichton frequently does usually after a moment of intense sarcasm.

Woolsey appears as if he’s going to address them more, and the last thing she wants to endure is another line of questioning, another hour of multiple-choice answers, and a stupid machine hooked up to her.

But from the last row of consoles comes a familiar voice—though not as garbled as it usually comes through on the screen of laptop she highjacks from Daniel’s lab each night.

“There you are—the clocks running slow on Earth or something?”

To her left Samantha huffs, and it appears that the attitude is shared by everyone but her.

Rodney taps down the steps towards them, carrying something akin to a data tablet, and with a grin, swiping the tablet over her body quickly in a scan.  

“Rodney,” she sighs with a grin, Daniel glancing at her from the side at the use of his personal name. “You have to figure out a way to end this body swapping.”

“Hmm, give me two seconds,” Rodney’s brows droop and he slides the tablet over her to scan again, but his eyes widen when he reads over the information it delivers. “Okay, maybe a little more than that.”

Chapter Text

He’s halfway through dismantling the lock through the control panel when they come back and get him. It’s just like when he was younger, and his mom had to discipline him for whatever stupid thing his brain came up with that day.

If it was his dad, they’d jump into a shouting match. If he was still too young to stand up for himself, his dad would give him a chore list and basically tell him that whenever he was done, his punishment was up.

But not Mama Crichton.

His mom didn’t know how to discipline probably because his dad was such a hard ass that she barely got the opportunity to be anything other than a shining beacon of respite from dad’s constantly pissed mood.

But there were the rare times when his dumb ass couldn’t wait until his dad got home to stir up trouble, to blow out a fuse, or a muffler, or a mouthful of smoke he’d been holding in since she knocked and entered his room.

Her choice method for punishing was a version of the silent treatment, except it was more house arrest and silent treatment. She would keep him locked up in his room, or the basement, or make him sit on the living room couch where she could see him, and just ignore him for the rest of the day—or however long she decided the punishment should last.

When he was in his room, or in the furnished basement, it wasn’t as bad—sure he felt guilty that his mom was mad at him, and that he added stress to her life as a housewife, and that maybe supper would be a little late that night, and sometimes he even had the cojones to reply with, “meatloaf again?” when she finally allowed him down for the family meal.

But when he was sequestered to the couch it was the next level of psychological punishment. She’d put the tv on whatever she’d usually have in the background at that time—mostly shows about spirituality and mediums—and just busy herself around him like he wasn’t even there.

Dust around his feet up on the coffee table, flip the cushions of the couch except the one that he was on, move all the furniture except the couch as she vacuumed. When she was finished with her daily task list and he still wasn’t out of the doghouse, she’d plop down on the other end of the couch and take to her knitting.

When he asked her a question, she would turn up the volume on the tv and just keep on ignoring him.

At the time it was more annoying because he wasn’t getting the attention he liked from her. Susan was the smart one, always a few years ahead with her nose stuck in a book, and Liv was the cute one, the youngest who was just this bouncy, happy little girl.

But he was the only boy, sure he was stuck in the stupid middle spot of the birth order—but he was the only son.

He was Mama Crichton’s baby boy, and when she didn’t pay him any attention, it meant that all he was going to get that day was just mean words yelled at him from his dad.

She knew what was going to happen—she must have known—because a few years before she got his dad would be all he would have.

His dad became more supportive, and he became less of an asshole.

And his mom—well, Mama Crichton became a little less alive.

“Woolsey finally gave permission for you to board Atlantis.” The doc stands in the doorway, watching as he doesn’t even try to cover up the mess of wires he’s pulled out of the wall. One of them might be smoking.

His mom would just be happy that it wasn’t him this time.

He stands, kicking the pen he was using as a crude tool to the side and wiping his hands onto his pants, getting ink stains all over them. “What was the hold up?”

“It’s only been an hour, Crichton.” The doc sighs, and it’s almost along the same style he uses for Vala when she gets into her debating and shenanigans—he just really hopes that the doc doesn’t feel the same way about him.

He’s a married man after all.

Trailing the doc after he nods out the door to the hallway, and still trying to clear the blue ink off his fingertips, he questions, “she come back?”

“No, unfortunately Vala is still talking with Dr. McKay in Atlantis.”

“Unfortunate for you or for Dr. McKay?”

The doc actually laughs, cracks a semblance of a smile on his constantly frowning face. “Actually, it seems like she and him get along well.”

“You think it’s because he answers her questions without snapping at her?”

Just as quickly the grin vanishes from the doc’s face, and he covers the crack in his façade by clearing his throat and pressing the button for the elevator. “I think what’s more likely, is that he has only had to deal with her for an hour a week, while—”

“While you have to put up with her all day, every day?”

“Exactly.”

The elevator doors slide open, revealing only two other airmen inside. The doc doesn’t say anything as he pushes the button for the gate room floor.

Man, he’s not looking forward to that wormhole screaming in his ear again.

It’s part of the problem of the people here. They’re nice enough—seem nice enough from what he’s seen—but they don’t look at the consequences of their actions. They don’t think about all the bad hoodoo that can happen when you try and tame a wild wormhole to take you to a place they’re too bad lazy to travel to by ship.

They’re innovative—innovating—like the human equivalents of a conveyor belt factory. Everyone on in this mountain has their place because it’s military-based, but everyone on the team has a purpose and maybe their problem is, they won’t let Vala fit into her purpose.  

“You ever think about how she feels about it?” Asks his question just before the elevator dings to their level, not wanting to start an argument, just frelling exhausted of the run around, of the chase, of flipping back and forth and from galaxy to galaxy, when he just wants to be home with his wife and son.

“About what?”

“About how you treat her.”

The doc sighs again, this time definitely the same sigh he uses for Vala when she won’t fit into his plans. “She’s the flight risk here, Crichton.”

“Oh, I’m aware, but she’s also the one who doesn’t belong.”

“Exactly.”

They walk into the gate room, the doc tossing a wave to the guy who apparently controls the gate—the mountain’s equivalent of the guy who pops his head out at Emerald city and won’t let anyone through.

“You ever think she doesn’t belong because you won’t let her?”

The doc doesn’t answer him, at least not verbally, but gives him a stinky look, his face souring—not like he caught the doc in a verbal trap or anything, but more like he had the audacity to try.

“Until you’ve dealt with Vala everyday for the last three years—with her breaking your glasses, hacking your computer, stealing your credit cards—then I don’t think you’re qualified to speak on her.”

“Man, that sounds real rough,” his words agree, but his tone is still lighthearted, still just a little sarcastic. “I mean, it sounds like she just wants some attention. You ever try giving her some?”

The markers on the gate start loudly clanking into place, and the doc sets his jaw beside him. “I’m done talking about her with you.”

“Fine.” Nods as the clanking continues, and they wait a few feet away from the ramp because he remembers what Colonel Carter said about the ‘kawoosh’ of wormhole burping in. Funny how things that don’t want to be tamed lash out.

When the gate is ready, just a puddle of blue liquid, of Windex shimmering and caught in a vortex, and as they take their first heavy steps up the ramp he adds, “but when I asked if she was back, I meant if my wife had transferred back, not Vala.”

*

Atlantis isn’t like any ride at Disney he’s ever seen.

There’s gold, and too many designs for him to settle on one—for him to analyze one—and weird columns of bubbling water marking every corner like this is just a huge set for a 1970s porno, and he can’t get over that this is how it looks—that this is how the Ancients that they keep referring to, wanted it to look.

The doc parts ways with him at the end of the hall as he heads towards the mess where Dr. McKay and Vala are apparently chatting about what happened. He says it’s so he can head down to the labs and help out Colonel Carter and someone he called Zumba—or something like, he only half pays attention to what the doc says—research the stones, but it doesn’t take an idiot to see through it.

He watches him like an after school special, and he knows that the good ol doc, doesn’t like the competition.

Like Mama Crichton’s precious and only baby boy, he doesn’t like to be without attention.

Figures it might take him some time to track them in the mess, because it must be big to feed an entire city, but once he gets there, he realizes, that there’s no way an entire city is going to flood one area like Black Friday in order to eat.

A lot of the chairs are vacant, so he spots them almost immediately sitting near the window, the backdrop of the city and the overcast skies playing against their conversation. There’s an empty tray before the new doc, and Vala’s nodding intently at something he’s said while sucking up something green in a straw.

“You’re a hard lady to track down,” he purposefully interrupts their conversation because he wants to make sure that Aeryn’s body is in good health, that Crichton Jr. 2.0 is still kicking—well, not kicking because player two is currently paused, but still—not disappeared again.

“Crichton.” Vala greets happily, almost throwing her hands up to invite him to the conversation. Not exactly how he figured she’d act after their chicken nugget debacle in the cafeteria a few hours ago. “Have you finally made bail?”

“I apparently, got approved, thanks to this guy—” he juts a thumb at the new doc “—so thanks.”

“Well, I needed to run some tests on one of you, and since Vala refused because she’s not in her own body, I sort of needed you here.”

“Great.” He turns his attention away from the new doc, who more or less is what he expected considering he knows the old doc pretty well, and back to Vala and the green sludge she’s drinking that looks like Peacekeeper pabulum. “They serving up toxic waste here?”

Her brows skew as she tries to understand his question, and the new doc butts in. “It’s a kale smoothie.”

“Mmm,” she agrees, pulling her lips away from the straw and licking a bit of the green that’s stuck to the corner of her mouth, “it’s delicious, it has a bunch of fruits, and protein without being poultry,” she leans back and taps her gut twice, “perfect for growing a fetus.”

His eyes grow wide at the information she’s just divulged, even though she’s so elated and grinning—probably from the sugar rush—her pigtails thick and bouncing all over. “I thought we were keeping that hushed.”

“Mmm—” she shakes her head at him, sucking the smoothie from the bottom of the glass until it’s obvious that she’s just getting air—then she twists the straw around, sucking at the circumference of the glass. “I didn’t tell him. He did a quick scan and found it.”

The new doc hands him a heavy tablet looking thing with a screen. It’s scrawling words in a different language—one that would be great to have translator microbes for—and when he stands, leaning in a bit and tapping a button, it shows Val—Aeryn’s—body, pinpoint areas of question.

“I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to bring any alien parasites on board—we’ve had enough of those.” When he doesn’t answer, just staring at the readout of his wife’s body, the doc adds, “congratulations.”

Staanz is actually an okay kinda guy—person—lady. He’s still having a little bit of trouble with the pronoun issue, but he makes it a point to correct himself whenever he’s wrong and instead tries to refer to Staanz by her own name.

She seems to appreciate it enough, not only singlehandedly breaking them out of that spaceship petting zoo, but accompanying them back to the transport pod, with one of the bags of Peacekeeper baby food—the only one they managed to wrangle away before they hightailed it out of the building.

“Who was that?” Staanz walks along beside them, they’re walking briskly, but not fast enough to draw attention to themselves, which is just basic protocol.

After all, the guy who’s after them could have guards stationed, and three relatively human looking forms bursting out of the sewer and towards the ships, is definitely suspicious.

Oh yeah, the sewer—definitely not his favorite destination on Earth, let alone any other alien planet that’s progressed enough to have the forethought to construct aqueducts. He just spent fifteen minutes wading through a heavy slurry of rainwater and what was most likely shit from a multitude of different alien species.

Officer Sun hasn’t said a word since they’ve gotten away—none of them really has, well Staanz has, but she really never stops talking, like any teenage girl in any tv series ever—her coattails, including the vibrant red interior of the jacket have been stained with the grease and variety of flowing colors from the sewers.

He doesn’t even want to begin to get into the smells.

He grew up on a farm, and it made him gag to the point of throwing up.

Of course, he was the only one that did, Staanz stopped and rubbed a thick hand over his back, telling him they were almost at the end of the route, but Officer Sun didn’t speak a word meaning that she was close to tossing her own cookies, or that she’s dealt with a worse smell.

He’s willing to bet it’s the second option.

Once they get more integrated into the crowd, and with Staanz still talking—mostly to herself—and he has a feeling that if her and Vala ever get a chance to meet again, they’re going to end up pretty good friends.

Part of him smiles at the thought, but then the situation quickly looses it’s novelty once he realizes that means they’d be stuck here for at least another month.

“Are you all right?” Officer Sun questions from where she’s been marching silently beside him. Her leather pant legs still stained in a swirl of what they just crawled through.

“Yeah—it’s nothing.”

A wry smile grows on her lips. “For as much as you resemble my husband, you’re so very different.”

“Yeah?”

The question is meant to build conversation, a rapport between them, because he has a feeling this switching bodies and dimensions thing isn’t going away anytime soon, and he’d like to know that he can trust her.

Doesn’t really have a reason not to—hell, she’s entrusting the life of her kid with them—but she’s not exactly the most open person. Maybe, this is what it was like when Teal’c first came to the SGC and held very little trust in everyone. Actually—he still kind of doesn’t trust everyone—not SG-1, just other people on base.

“Whenever something is plaguing John whether it’s a thought, or a noise, or a memory, he speaks to me about it.”

“It sounds like you and him have a  great relationship.”

He thinks about when he and Vala arrived here a week and a half ago—how he wasn’t exactly pleased to be here with her, especially because she was right about the long-range communication device—but how he immediately worried for her when they were apart.

She’s seasoned, and she’s been through a lot, but there’s a certain quality of her that’s childlike as she bounces around with her pigtails, and trips over things. He wouldn’t exactly call her naïve or innocent because she’s not—but it’s a quality he didn’t notice she had back in Earth.

One he’s come to like more when they’re here.

Thinks about how she started to open up to him, to trust him. Not just telling him stories about her past that he knows are true by the way she delivers them—either that or the academy needs to put her up for an Oscar—but the way she sticks near him to feel safe, the way he does the same thing with her.

The way she told him about why she’s always the first one to sacrifice herself, and he thinks that—maybe—maybe it could work—even—even back on Earth.

Sure, they haven’t really done much together yet—aside from taking care of a cranky baby—but he’s sure they’re compatible—at least he knows they’re compatible in other ways aside from physical—but if his dreams have anything to say about it, he’s sure that’s not gonna be a problem.

Thinks—no, knows—that since they’ve been here she’s started trusting him more, stopped just acting on her flight or fight sense, and has actually clued him into her plans before enacting them.

Officer Sun chuckles, but like everything she does, it’s rueful.

When she’s in Vala’s body, the playfulness drains, the mischievous side-poking, and hair braiding disappears instead replaced with Officer Sun’s stoic expression, the one that looks like she’s been in so many wars, done such horrible things she can’t forget because they’re always constantly in the back of her mind.

Vala could be like that too.

The team never asks her about her time as Qetesh, and aside from the random yearning for gems, gold, or tiaras—despite not knowing her very well at the time, he did fight for her to get to keep that crown she found down in that underground chamber, it was one piece of treasure, and she’d given them a big breakthrough with the Merlin thing—also she sort of forced Jackson in to staying which helped him out a lot.

He doesn’t know how long she was controlled by Qetesh—doesn’t even think Jackson knows, though he’s made vague assumptions, saying something about how Qetesh preferred to switch hosts often—all he remembers thinking is that having someone else pilot his body for even an hour while he had to take the backseat with no control over his actions seems like it would last an eternity.

“I’m not special in that sense.”

With his mind straying, probably because he’s coming down from the adrenaline rush of the close escape—and so he doesn’t focus on the stench that he thinks is stained into his skin—he hasn’t been paying attention to Officer Sun actually talking, which she rarely does.

Doesn’t know how to react. To laugh and let her know he didn’t get the last few sentences of her story, or to just stay quiet and grin, hoping that she’ll either stop talking or speak of something else.

“John isn’t exactly coy with his feelings.”

Their boots squeak as they cover more ground, both staying a few feet behind Staanz who is now retelling the tale of how she broke into the hideout after trailing a guy who looked like a Peacekeeper but wasn’t one and how she knew something was up.  

“And I never had feelings to be coy with.”

“You know, I don’t think that matters.”

“How so?”

“Vala is usually pretty straightforward with her feelings, and I still can’t even begin to understand her.”

“Perhaps that’s what makes for a great mate—” the grin she offers is still weary “—never understanding each other means that there’s always something to strive for.”

“Yeah, but it also makes for a bunch of useless fights.”

“Again—always something to strive for.”

The paved streets start to give away to a more tar-like trail as they turn towards the parking depot, hoping he can just toss the chip to the guy and spin the big Price is Right wheel of ships, and get out of here.

White overcast clouds blocking the sky are heavy again, turning gray and then a little black either with a premature sunset or the suggestion of a massive storm. Banking on his deduction, a huge gust of wind sweeps around them, waving their wet and sticky clothes, and drying the sweat against his skin.

Officer Sun pulls a strand of hair from her face, one that’s wavy and a bit frizzy from the alleyway full of garbage water and the sewer—also full of garbage water—she briefly rolls Vala’s hair between her fingers, observing it for a moment, like something is off.

“You all right?” It’s more of a pleasantry that anything, but he still can’t shake the nagging feeling of needing to be a bit protective of her, even though she can snap necks as easily as he pulls the lid off the pickle jar.

“My presence is waning.”

Well, that stops him in his tracks.

Reaching forward, he touches the side of her arm before stopping himself. She’s not Vala, she’s nothing like her, but maybe it’s her voice, the little waver in cadence that lets him know she’s upset or scared or something.

But when she stares him directly in the eye, obviously not amused by the touch, he drops his hand

“What do you mean?”

“The energy around me is depleting, I’ll soon be sent back to your galaxy.”

When her hand drops from her hair, her fingers aren’t stable, but bouncing around a bit. Not fidgeting, not shaking and cold, but trembling from something she’s not controlling, something he gets when he’s super hungry—an inability to concentrate, to keep his body stable.

A sapping of energy.

“How much longer do you think you have?” Gestures that they should keep trailing Staanz who’s now more than a few feet ahead of them and is disappearing  more into the crowd with each step.

“Not long.”

Words that mean so much, because he understands her sorrow, what she wanted out of the visit that they can’t control, the radiation or wavelengths or magic or whatever the hell controls the stones and compels them to ricochet across galaxies not even blessing her with a visit to her son.

“Once we get to the ship, it’s only about an hour until we’re back at Moya—”

But she reads between the lines of what he’s stating, understands maybe that he’s thinking about her, about Deke.

“Not that long.”

“You can fly the transport pod, can’t you?” Picks up his pace, almost breaking into a low run in order to board the ship faster because she can’t zap back with a picture, but she could with a memory. “Is there anyway you could—”

But she’s slowed almost to a stop, her head hanging heavily, frizzy black hair like a curtain around her face, and her movements are stunted, like she’s trying to take a step, but the body won’t obey because it’s not her own.

Like Vala’s body has finally realized for the second time in her life that someone else is at the wheel.

“Can you—”

But she halts him by bringing a hand down hard on his arm, grasping, her eyes closing, trying to concentrate or she’s in pain.

He doesn’t know how it works for her and Vala—or for Crichton for that matter—only knows that when he pings back, it’s like fainting. Like it’s a hot summer day and he hasn’t been hydrating enough while working out in the back fields. An intense heat sweeps over him only for a second, only long enough for him to remember after the fact, and not long enough for him to warned about the loss of consciousness that’s coming.

Maybe it’s painful for Officer Sun because of her species because she can sense when the energy is waning—that must make it more stressful, scarier even. Like knowing when the day you die will be and counting down until then.

“Please—” her voice is strained and her teeth clattering off each other, as her other hand falls to her forehead.

He straightens her, still mildly afraid that she could kick his ass, but also knowing she’s more focused on other things right now. With a hand on each shoulder, he’s able to watch as she inhales a heaving breath, speaking out the words like she’s outside in zero-degree weather. “Please watch—” she’s full out convulsing now, and he doesn’t remember last time being like this “—over my—s—s—”

“We’ll take care of him, however long it takes.”

Doesn’t think he says the right thing, because instead of a sigh of relief, of falling gently into unconsciousness, she looks appalled—frightened even—as her eyes roll back into her head.