Work Text:
First, confusion. There was a fight. Fire. She'd been shot? But that couldn't be right. She was here. Alive.
Not that life felt very good at the moment. Her entire body felt scorched.
"Welcome back," said a soft, musical voice, and she strained to recognize its source. "Don't try to sit; you'll hurt yourself. Are you in pain, dear?" And now she knew. It was Zhaan's voice. The Delvian priest.
It hurt to nod, hurt to think about nodding, but she did anyway, without opening her eyes.
"Rest, dear," the voice said, and a cool hand touched her forehead and her pain diminished. And Gilina slept.
Gilina wanted to stay awake more than half an arn at a time. She wanted to know why Zhaan wasn't leaving her alone during the few lucid hours she had. (It wasn't that she didn't like Zhaan, or even trust her; it was just that the constant hovering was a bit excessive.)
She wanted to know why John hadn't visited her yet. Had he kissed her? (Had she kissed him? Had it all been a fever dream?)
She wasn't sure she wanted to know why, whenever she asked anybody where John was, it was suddenly time for her next sedative or painkiller injection.
When she woke up one day and John was holding her hand, it took Aeryn's presence in the doorway to convince Gilina that this time, she wasn't dreaming.
"How're you feeling?" John asked.
"Like somebody shot me."
He snickered. "How ironic would it be if he'd hit your paraphoral nerve?"
"Don't do that," Gilina replied.
"I'm sorry. That was probably too soon."
"No, it's fine. It just hurts to laugh."
Crichton sat next to Gilina's bed and grasped her hand with both of his own.
"Better steer clear of the Johnny Carson, then."
"The what?" Gilina asked.
"Never mind. So, you needed me for something?"
"Just for company. Chiana was getting bored, and I don't want to be alone."
"Fair enough."
Silence.
"So... how about them Yankees?" he asked.
Gilina blinked. "Excuse me?"
"It's something humans say when they can't think of anything else to say."
She smiled.
"I love seeing you smile. It's... it's not something Aeryn does a whole lot, you know?"
"Let's not talk about her right now."
Crichton nodded vigorously at that sentiment. Gilina wasn't sure exactly what had transpired between them during their absence -- nobody who did know what had happened would talk to her about specifics -- but she was willing to live with that for the moment.
"What, then?" he asked.
"Tell me more about your entertainment."
"OK. We've been over all the good action movies already. Have I told you about science fiction?"
They were halfway through his retelling of The Empire Strikes Back when he cut off mid-sentence and looked up.
"John? ...John?" Gilina followed Crichton's stare to the doorway, where she saw a dark-haired figure leaving. After a few microts of uncomfortable silence, she spoke again. "So, uh... what happened next? Did they unfreeze Han?"
Crichton continued the story, but all the same, the moment had been ruined.
As soon as Gilina started insisting that she felt completely better, and trying to leave her room to prove it, Zhaan put a set of restraints on her bed.
"I do believe you, dear, but your internal wounds need a little more time to heal before you start moving around the ship," she said as she clasped the final lock around her wrist, and Gilina was inclined despite herself to believe her. "Chiana, D'Argo and Aeryn just got back from the planet, and they need me for something. I'll be back in a few arns. Do you need anything else in the meantime?"
"Not at the moment," she replied.
It was nearly a full solar day before anybody returned, and even then nobody was too willing to talk about what had happened, or even to explain why every single light on the ship had been turned to maximum for a good deal of that time.
She was finally free, or at least as free as a fugitive from injustice could truly be, and it felt good.
It felt somewhat less good to see Aeryn's own part in those injustices played back for all aboard Moya to see.
She'd defended her, of course, and Chiana of all people had agreed wholeheartedly, but she couldn't help feeling she was in the wrong when Rygel started pressing her about what she herself might be hiding.
When John and Chiana simultaneously grabbed chunks of Rygel's ear hair and tossed him out, she realized she might have a place in this crew after all.
Gilina pulled herself out from the underbelly of Aeryn's prowler when she heard footsteps. She'd been waiting for this.
"What the frell are you doing with my ship?"
"You know that glitch Prowlers had where if you banked haman too fast the indicator lights would all flicker?"
"Yeah, and it's frelling irritating. They always said we'd have to get used to it because it wasn't dangerous and they couldn't fix it without overhauling everything."
"Well, one tech got a commendation for figuring it out not long after you left. They had every available tech working on these -- I must have done a hundred of them in a weeken. Never wanted to see another one in my life. But I'm doing this for you."
Aeryn said nothing. Gilina wasn't surprised; as a soldier, asking why could get one court-martialed or worse. They weren't Peacekeepers anymore, though, and Gilina chose to answer the question Aeryn would never ask.
"I'm doing it because even if you don't want to be my friend, I don't want to be your enemy. Because I want to be sure we're allies. And maybe just because I wanted to do something nice for you. Kind of stupid of me, isn't it?"
Aeryn didn't move, didn't talk, just breathed deeply for a few moments as she thought.
"Not at all." Another breath, another silence. "Thank you, Gilina." Aeryn turned, took a few steps away, and turned back. "I'm going to be practicing my shooting later, if you want to come along. I don't know how much cross-training you've been getting, but around here you need to be as good a shot as you can."
"Sure, as long as I'm not the target."
As Aeryn left the bay, Gilina smiled. That was more than she'd hoped.
"What the frell are you doing all the way up here? Pilot's commed you about a billion times and it took us an arn to find you," Chiana shouted from across the clutter filling the top tier.
"I didn't hear anything," Rygel replied, a bit too smugly for his own good.
"That's because your comms unit was under your pillow," Gilina replied. "Do you have any idea how that could have happened?"
"Well, if you knew I was here, you'd take me away."
"That depends on what you're doing. Spill it, frog-face."
"Isn't it obvious? I'm looking for more video chips. If we can find something with her on it--" he gestured to Gilina-- "doing something particularly heinous, we could sell her for the bounty and maybe buy some food before the rest of us starve to death."
Gilina froze. Part of her knew that as a tech, she had only enabled, never commited, atrocities such as Aeryn's murder of Moya's first pilot. The other part, the emotional part, the part she had never officially had until Moya, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Rygel couldn't do this, he couldn't. Could he? He would if he thought he could. It wasn't like he had proven himself to be honest in the past.
A flash of grey startled Gilina out of her fear and the next thing she knew, Chiana landed not half a metra in front of Rygel. Rygel steered his throne-sled up, but Chiana could move faster than Rygel and within a fraction of a microt she held him in a chokehold, one arm wrapped around his torso so he couldn't bite.
"I'm going to ask again. What the frell do you think you're doing all the way up here?"
"Chiana, you don't have to--"
"Yes, I do. Somebody has to remind this toad every once in a while that he's not the only living being in the universe. Usually it's me. You'd think the greebol would learn after the first twenty times he's tried to sell us out." And she leaped back, Rygel still in her arm.
"My throne-sled's still back there..." Rygel protested weakly.
"You can get it back yourself. After you tell everybody on Moya what you were just doing and explain to Gilina's satisfaction exactly why you will never do it again. Let's go."
"But..." At Chiana's glare, Rygel's complaint trailed off, and for the first time since they had found Rygel, Gilina allowed herself to breathe.
"All right, then." Chiana said, opening her arms and letting Rygel fall to the ground. "Move it, froggy."
Gilina waited until she was certain nobody could see her before she smiled. She knew she had lost a lot -- her empty stomach reminded her of that fact every chance it got, lately -- but she finally felt like she'd come out ahead.