Chapter 4

[itsallovernow]

Chapter Four


Aeryn Sun walked through the hallways of the Royal Palace, hearing the familiar slap of her boots on the shined floor echo around her, coming to a halt at the sight of Teyvn sitting in a chair in front of small table. The past three weekens had been incredibly long and exhausting, and she had executed to formerly loyal soldiers. She wanted to see her daughter, and she wanted to get the frell away from this system. The latter was looking more and more unlikely, but she could do something about the former. Returning to the palace, knowing what awaited her was bad enough. Finding one of her most trusted men lounging in a hallway, playing some sort of game, well, she just didn't have an adequate response to that.

Teyvn's chair was tilted back precariously, one knee up against the table, and he was flicking squares of plastic onto the surface next to one of his pulse pistols. She stopped, resting on her hip and arched her eyebrow. He looked up, silvery grey eyes meeting her own and shrugged.

“It’s called Solitaire,” he said as if that made all the sense in the world. “Crichton’s idea.”

She raised her other brow.

“Frelling hard to win though.” She made a low noise in her throat, which seemed to impress the commando very little. Finally Teyvn, relented. He jerked his head to the side, “She’s in there, sparring with the royal consort.”

Aeryn waited, in a quest for clarification.

“She’s been spending a lot of time with him,” Teyvn continued.

Aeryn stared at him levelly. She’d known Teyvn for five cycles, had recreated with him on occasion, and trusted him completely with her daughter. Anix had been his responsibility since shortly after he entered her regiment and she wanted to know where he was going with this.

“The human needed to recover his strength,” he said finally. “Anix wanted me to help him, but I almost killed him.” She nodded. That had happened the day she left.

She had deliberately not gone to see the human after Anix announced that he’d woken up. The city had been in chaos, the palace in turmoil, and most of her energy had been spent spent trying to avoid the Empress, manage her troops, keep her daughter out of trouble, and handle a potential disaster on a ship in this system. She simply didn’t have the personal resources to deal with John Crichton at that point. Seeing him made flesh again, hooked up to medical equipment, but breathing deeply, young and beautiful and alive, had almost been too much for her.

Teyvn shrugged. “She’s patient, and he doesn’t seem to mind getting his ass kicked by a 14 cycle old girl.”

Aeryn grinned at that. “I trained her Teyvn. If given a mind to, she could probably also kick your ass.” The commando smiled humorlessly.

Sixteen cycles ago, Aeryn Sun had stood in this palace as her world fell apart for the second time. The feelings that came with losing Crichton had surprised her, leaving her numb and reactionary, fueled first by rage. The loss had come much later. Today, she watched the lean form of her daughter flow gracefully through moves that Aeryn couldn’t even remember learning.

Anix danced around Crichton, laughing but focused, her hair pulled back, wisps of curls escaping to tumble into her eyes. Although somewhat slower than he had been cycles again, Crichton still moved with that easy fluidity, the economy of motion that she remembered from their own sparring matches. Anix was being far more careful with him than she herself had ever been, and Aeryn steeled herself against falling into that memory. It had been her job to teach him how to survive, how to become a weapon. Anix was playing, helping him regain that muscle memory and as his fist connected with her daughter’s abdomen, Aeryn felt sharp pride. Maybe she had done her job after all.

She shook her head, turning away from the scene, the ease between the two of them. Anix, being here, teasing and taunting Aeryn’s past signified one thing, and one thing only. She had fulfilled a promise to herself. Her child had not been born a Peacekeeper. It had been the single promise she’d been able to hang onto over the years, the only one that mattered. Crichton had told her once that he’d never leave her. But he had lied and Aeryn finally understood that.

She was going to have to tell Anix about her past, or at least some of the details of her past with John Crichton, but she simply wasn’t ready. First, she had to say hello, which was when she heard a body drop to the floor and turned quickly to see her daughter standing over the human, a puzzled look on her face.

When she knelt beside him, the last sixteen cycles seemed to evaporate. She placed her hand on his chest, as solid and warm as she remembered, his heat sliding into her in a way that Sebaceans just didn’t. She shook him, saying his name, concerned and irritated when he refused to open his eyes, and then caught her breath when he did. Blue and clear and guileless, and her daughter’s voice snapped her sharply out of her reverie.

Quickly wishing that she had at least told Anix that she knew John, she watched her daughters confusion blossom as her godfather boomed into the room, radiating joy at seeing his long lost friend, and she steered the girl out, ostensibly giving the two time to catch up, but also saving herself from this wash of memory.
***
Pulling her heavy hair back, Aeryn Sun watched her daughter in the mirror. Anix looked young and morose, and Aeryn very much wanted to both put her arms around the girl and shake her. She looked back at her own reflection, seeing the dusky bruising of too little sleep and too much worry under her eyes. She dropped the bunch of hair, letting it fall over her shoulders, considering the effect. She’d been a different person the last time she wore her hair down for a male, and this could hardly be the time or place to revisit that impetus. That it had been this place, this human hardly mattered, so she viciously scraped back the mass of hair, plaiting it until she could look Captain Sun in the eye again.

The flash of memory came unexpectedly, causing her to grip onto the edge of the basin. The neural firing an unwelcome aftereffect of the Aurora Chair.

The snip of the scissors is louder than she would have expected. They hiss and click, counterpoint to the silent rain of hair falling around her feet. The long, scented strands slide over her naked body, pool into complex patterns of black against Talyn’s glossy floor. She looks at herself, sees the same eyes, the same set of her mouth, the same white skin and white breasts and flat stomach. She fingers the transponder, the flesh around it still tender. Talyn’s senses pound through her, an electric feeling, like being able to reach out and touch the stars, her self so much more than the vessel containing it. Underneath the throbbing of the gunship, she can feel Crais as he moves through command. He is waiting for her to join him, but she needs a little more time. She feels his desire for her, the constant workings of his mind, and she feels his odd love for this ship, his equally odd love for her, and dismisses it for now.

She left Crichton a statue, trapped in time, trapped in his fear. The empress banished her, blaming her for the death of the royal cousin, for the chaos surrounding Crichton. It didn’t matter. Councilor Tyno secured her a place on a trading vessel, sending her off into space. She shot one of the traders two solar days after they took off. He had seen her long hair, her limp from the healing leg, the loss in her eyes and thought her an easy target. She’d broken his wrist and the fine bones in his hand before shooting him for wrapping his hand in her hair. The others stayed away from her after that, and a monen later, when Talyn appeared out of nowhere, she accepted their dual offer to join their crew.

She has given her life to Talyn, and her body to Crais, and finds that she has no regrets over these actions. But yesterday, standing close behind her in command, Crais had gently moved her hair to the side, his fingers threading through it. It caught her unexpectedly, this unasked for gesture of tenderness, and she had pulled away, finding that, afterall, there were things she wanted to keep for herself.

The flashes felt like that first connection with Talyn, a motionsick wave of sensation blurring the boundries between the past and the here and now. After Crais found her, rescued her she thought sourly, on the trading vessel, after Talyn slammed his senses into the back of her neck, she cut off her hair as her single act of defiance. It hadn’t dimmed Crais’ ardor, and Aeryn took a moment to mourn her former Captain. There had never been love on her end, for him at least. But she’d loved Talyn enough so that it felt shared.

Aeryn closed her eyes against that memory, against the sight of the trader screaming in agony as she crushed the bones, as they tore into his tendons. She traced her finger over the scar from the transponder, long healed over and hidden by her braid.

She heard Anix call her name, saying, ”Mother,” in the scared and hesitant tone reserved for things she doesn’t understand. Aeryn opened her eyes and turned to her child, standing near her, reaching towards her and touched her face, tilting it up, sinking into the blue eyes that have kept her going for the past 14 cycles. “It’s alright. I’m alright.” Anix looked uncertain, started to protest, and then went to sit down again.

Aeryn wanted to ask her if she’d been outside, if she’d seen the destruction of this world, if she still longed to be a soldier, but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

***

It was as much a council of war as anything and Aeryn was getting very, very tired of playing the diplomat. She had gained some skill in negotiating over the years, an unwelcome aspect of her place in this universe, as well as the result of having offspring as quick as mercury. But she was born a soldier and would die a soldier and that moment would come much sooner if she throttled Empress Novia.

She took a deep breath, and tried once again to reiterate her point. She caught D’Argo laughing silently at her attempt to reign in her patience and kicked him swiftly under the table before resuming.


“Empress, we cannot protect you from Scarrans or Peacekeepers, or anyone in fact that uses your current situation to try and gain control of this planet and it’s resources.,” Aeryn insisted, repeating the refrain of the past arn. “I do not have the manpower to leave that many troops here, nor would I if I did.”


“You think your petty rebellion is more worthy than rebuilding this empire?” the empress asked snidely, her voice tight and cold.


“We saved your life,” D’Argo said mildly, “ and the lives of many of your citizens.”


“And my daughter lies in a coma, on death’s door as a result of your negligence,” the Empress fumed.


“That is untrue and unfair,” Aeryn said sharply, standing and slapping her palm onto the table. “We saved her, him,” she gestured at Crichton who turned the corners of his mouth up sheepishly,” and you want to blame us?”


“We are in more danger now because of your interference,” the Empress insisted. “If you hadn’t come to this planet, the Peacekeepers would have left, been repelled by our forces. Now, they see regaining this world as part of a vendetta against the trouble you have caused them.”


Aeryn glared at her. “The Peacekeepers see this planet as a world that can be captured and used, Empress. That is all they ever see. You are nothing more to them than resources and people that they want to keep from the Scarrans. You are not safe from either unless you actively fight back. Neutrality is over.”

Comments

[cofax7]

Yay, plot!

OK, I'm going to say this, and it's your story so you should do what you like, but I'd recommend against not telling the beginning of the story four times in four different voices. While this is interesting, there's a whole chunk of this bit that we got from Crichton's POV, and then again from Anix's. In fact, you could probably get away without including Anix's pov-section at all. Trust your audience to fill things in: you don't need to tell us everything.

But then I'm a founding member of the Machete school of storytelling, so I'm probably wayyyy over on the "pare it down" side of the balance. YMMV, and probably does.

Re:

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

No, I agree completely. I'm trying to do this as a rough draft, and am posting because otherwise I'll run screaming from the plot element and quit writing this story:)

I wanted to get the first four voices out there, and then try to move forward a little more. I like the idea of overlap, but I just seem to be doling out the same information over and over againg instead of moving forward which was the intention. There is already significant macheteing needed, even in these first for chapters.

Thanks for the feedback! It is really much appreciated.

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

Well wherever you decide to take this don't stop. I'm really enjoying the story - and that's more than I can say for 99% of the fanfic I read.

Re:

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I know where it's going, I'm just getting bogged down in the details.

[scapersuse.livejournal.com]

I second the "really enjoying this", but I agree - all the back-and-forth is a little confusing. (Of course, that could just be me being dense. *g*) But please keep going!

Re:

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

No, it's confusing. I'm having a lot of trouble balancing three timelines and still making it clear where the distinctions are. But, glad you're enjoying it. Thanks.

[methought.livejournal.com]

Really...eally...eally like...ike...ike this!...is!..is!

Amazing how LJ echoes! ;)

It's interesting to watch a story evolve.

--anomia
PS: sorry if this turns out to be a double posting...I think I just found out what "X" means, and deleted myself! :)

Re:

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Love the echo effect:) It's been interesting for me to watch the evolution, although kind of naseau inducing when I'm less than pleased with the results. Thanks for the feedback!