Somethin' a little different
Oct. 23rd, 2003 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowI'm not so sure about this. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crankygrrl looked at an earlier version yesterday. It's way past BT, probably seven cycles or so. It's an ending of sorts. Beta free, as well as free of sexual content and bad language. Damn, who knew it was possible. And I think someone else used this title recently, so I'm apologizing to them as well as to Beck.
Sea Change
The glass slipper cracked. This is how the fairy tale ends.
***
The grass tickles her palms. Crichton says it’s bright green and she tries to see the color in her mind’s eye, but it’s been a long time since she saw green, and really, green doesn’t mean healthy and growing on every world, but Crichton can’t shake his upbringing completely. He says it’s not the same color as Rygel. It's a brighter hue, sharper. She thinks of plants the color of Rygel and giggles. Regardless the grass strokes her ungloved hands like a lover.
The sun beats down and she feels sweat beading on her skin, imagines that she looks shimmery, silvery in the light, but it’s been an equal number of cycles since she looked in a mirror. She can see shape and form, but color and shading is completely gone. She truly has become monochromatic, living in black and white.
She wears a white dress, a gift from Aeryn, which also makes her laugh. Through the dark sunglasses Crichton bought her, she can make out the pale material standing in sharp contrast to the shadow of the grass. Detail has become everything to her. She spreads the skirt around herself, enjoying the fall of the soft fabric. It scritches underneath her fingertips and Crichton says she looks like a kid, that she looks beautiful, and that’s still oddly important to her.
D’Argo snores softly beside her, one hand flopped on her thigh. He smells warm and male, and when she reaches back absently to rest her fingers on his chest, she finds that he’s taken off his shirt. The skin stretched over his torso is marred by scars, by battle and the last few cycles of war. But it’s still heavily muscled, solid and sure, and she trusts the feel of his body against her skin as much as she trusts anything in the universe.
She hears Ka’aia giggling and splashing in the water, John’s laughing instructions and sputtering responses to his child’s gleeful disobedience, and when Aeryn settles down beside her, she hears the other woman’s soft puff of laughter as she watches her family gambol in the water. She won’t go in herself, but Chiana knows she sits out here at night with Crichton, quiet and close, dangling her feet off the dock.
Chiana has been in the water, felt it's silky coolness, the caress of the algae and the tiny fish. She ducks her head under, opens her eyes in the murk and sees a whole seperate world, plants dancing and swaying, wrapping and curling with the lapping movement of the water. It's an odd sort of revelation for her. She likes how her toes dig into the sand and silt on the bottom of the lake. She likes how her skin dries in the sunlight, the water evaporating in patches.
“How are you feeling?”
Aeryn’s question catches her attention, and she realizes it's the second time she’s asked, the words hesitant and stilted even after all this time.
“Tired.”
But she puts another smile behind the words, showing her teeth as Aeryn’s cool fingers touch her own. This is something else that she’d never expected, friendship with a Peacekeeper, loving her child, loving the woman herself just as much.
Kai runs out of the water, dripping and shaking herself like a young animal. Aeryn wraps her in a towel and holds her close while they watch John walk out of the lake.
“He’s still beautiful.”
And he is, body long and lean, still muscular. He is sleek, underweight, but so is Aeryn, and she thinks their bones grinding together during sex probably keeps them centered and present. Pain and pleasure and love in every motion.
Kai lays down on the blanket next to Chiana, curling up in her towel and resting her wet head on Chiana's thigh. Damp soaks into her skin through the thin material of the dress. She tickles Kai, and the child giggles, that high sound of joy that had caught them all the first time they heard it.
John stands over his wife, dripping water on her, and she leans on her palms, lazily fighting back with her bare feet. He catches her ankle, tipping her onto her elbows and draws patterns on the inside, over the bone. Aeryn hooks her other foot around his waist, pulls him forward, tilting him off balance, and he falls forward, catching himself before he thuds onto her. Chiana can smell his wet skin, tangy and sharp from the lake water. Aeryn pulls him close, clutching him, her emotion naked in the sunlight and Chiana looks down at Kai as her parents whisper to each other.
***
War rages throughout the Uncharted Territories, and they’ve all played a part in it. All lost something to its unrelenting sweep. Children, trust, sight, identities.
Aeryn finally paid her debt to the assassins, her dues for leaving early. When the squad first contacted them, John wanted to take Kai and run. Find a planet to settle on. Start over. Hide. As if they could ever really hide. But Aeryn shook her head, and returned with honesty and answers and a scar down her arm and something fixed inside. He'd wanted a promise that she'd never leave again, and she refused, warm and safe in his arms, and as it turned out, he’d been the one to leave next. Their lives were comings and goings and lines etched into the fabric of their sorrows.
Jothee returned to them as well, harder and better. Spying for a rebellion and she’d had her bags packed, her traveling coat on the microt he’d mentioned meeting Nerri. Didn’t matter that she couldn’t see then. She didn’t need to see to be useful, they’d all learned that. Jothee tried to dissuade her, but she’d ignored him, followed him to the ramp of his ship.
But D’Argo had had caught her hand, cupped her cheek and kissed her, the same way he’d kissed her cycles ago as she’d said goodbye to a part of her past, and her bag fell to the floor. Running away to find her family seemed so foolish when her family slept beside her every night. So she’d stayed, and they fought the encroaching war as well as they could, shackled with her blindness and her visions, with John’s fear, and Aeryn’s past. That D’Argo was the most stable of them now amazed her as it soothed.
Rygel had taken back his throne, and was poisoned a cycle later. She still missed him, cranky and officious and honest. His eldest son, who’d been in hiding since his father was deposed, succeeded him, and proved a competent, powerful and ruthless ruler. He’d been an ally to them, and now was an ally to the Sebaceans. Apparently hatred could be passed down to generations, but so could the benefit of a strong alliance. She didn’t think Rygel XVII would be overthrown anytime soon. His father had slit Bishan’s throat with his own tiny hand.
The tide of the war had turned, Sebaceans slaughtered by Scarrans racing against time. The Peacekeepers were driven back until they came to John, begging, and his wormholes swallowed their enemies in the name of his oldest daughter, and a brand new kind of fear gripped the Uncharted Territories.
A cycle ago, Crichton had disappeared off of Moya, leaving them terrified and alone, trying to move on. You lose someone often enough, you stop believing they’ll come back. Chiana certainly knew that, had it confirmed as Aeryn gave up joy, but kept on living.
"We knew it was a risk," was all she'd say, pulling Kai to her. "Some things you die for."
Weekens ago, a cycle into acceptance of loss, a chip full of coordinates, vectors, and wormhole calculations had been delivered to Aeryn on a random planet, and when they burst through the funnel into space, saw Earth dangling in front of them, she heard the catch of breath, the muttered swearing in Sebacean, and she clutched Kai to her tightly as Lo’La screamed towards the planet.
They’d landed in a field somewhere in John’s vast country, had stayed inside the ship, cloaked in secrecy until a battered truck had pulled up alongside them. D’Argo had released the stairs, ruffled Chiana’s hair after ruffling Kai’s and said to her, “I think your father is outside.”
The child had pulled Chiana out of her chair, and down the steps, careful of her, as she’d been taught, and then she’d been forgotten in an instant by the joyous cry of “Daddy,” and she’d heard the thump and whoop of John Crichton embracing his daughter, his repetition of “I love you” and “I missed you” and “Everything’s gonna be ok”.
Chiana let herself get swooped up into into John’s strong grasp, spun around like a child, her cheeks wet with tears and held onto him tightly. He set her down gently with a welcoming kiss, and she heard D’Argo thunder down the stairs, their greeting raucous. Then D’Argo drew her to him, tucked to his side, and she looked around. She could see Kai and John and D’Argo, could sense them even better by smell and touch. But they were missing someone.
“Give her a few microts.”
D’Argo’s compassion for Aeryn wasn’t new, but it had been honed over the past cycle.
“Should I go get her?” John hoisted Kai up on his hip, the girl’s head resting against his, her small hands holding onto his cheek. He sounded nervous and she didn’t blame him.
“She’ll come out when she’s ready.”
Except, Aeryn didn’t seem to be getting ready all that quickly.
“What happened, Crichton?”
She hadn’t meant to ask, had wanted to leave that to Aeryn, had intended to just be glad he was alive, to revel in his presence, but well, hezmana. He’d disappeared without a trace and now here he was. On his home planet in a field of flowers.
“I got lucky, Chi.” He wasn’t flippant, merely resigned. He reached over and took her hand, squeezing it tightly, and she guessed she probably didn’t want to know any more.
“Dammit,” he muttered, “ She always did know how to make me wait.”
Chiana squeezed his hand again, hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain from him, and then heard Aeryn’s soft footsteps on the foot of the stairs.
“You’re not dead, then.” She tried very hard to sound angry, but tears choked her voice, lessening the effect and suddenly Kai was in Chiana's arms and John was at the foot of the stairs, his arms full of another dark haired girl, and the sounds of low sobs, pained and wracking, I’m sorry’s, and I love you’s and you frelling bastard, and she turned away from them as they tuned out the universe and clung to each other.
Once upon a time, before she lost her eyes, she’d seen them kiss in an empty hallway, oblivious to anything but each other, hands clutching, bodies yearning, reality suspended. She’d felt a jolt in her spine, in her sex, watching them, but she’d learned long ago never to want anything that badly. It always got broken if you did.
And they broke a lot of things, including each other, more than once.
John and Aeryn were quiet together these days, always sitting close, bodies pressed tightly, no longer disregarding the universe, railing against it, but instead accepting each other. Soft touches, clasped hands, gentle words. Always aware of the elusiveness of fate.
***
Nights are chilly in this part of the country, and John lights a fire which hisses and crackles, warming the small house. Aeryn sits in a chair some distance from the heat source, John in front of her. One leg is tucked up under her body, the other rests against her husband, his hand curled around her ankle, stroking the skin. Kai is tucked up on the other side of her father and it's as idyllic a scene as Chiana can imagine.
D'Argo takes up the entire couch, his heavy feet resting on her lap. He is drinking something warm and fermented. They all are, and Chiana feels very loose, very lush at the moment. There are things to be said. She knows this, doesn't need to be able to see the detail on Crichton's face to know he's finally ready to talk about his absence, their presence on Earth and how they got back when the wormhole was supposed to be closed.
That first time on Earth, well, technically the second, she'd been so young, felt so young, baffled by the repression of John's culture, especially since it had produced bouyant, irreverant John Crichton. Something had shifted inside her when she'd decided to let Jothee go, stay with D'Argo. She still missed her brother, would always miss him, would always wish she'd been able to do her part for the Nebari resistance, but they'd also done some pretty serious resisting of other oppressive regimes. And somewhere in there, peace becamse more important to her than need.
They are terrorists. Wanted terrorists. They've run guns and mercenaries and soldiers all over the UT's. And they've struggled to survive, to do the right thing, but mostly to survive. It would be nice to strive for a little more.
"I need to ask you guys a question," John says, still looking into the fire, interrupting her reverie. Aeryn's strokes his hair and he leans into her touch.
D'Argo grunts noncommittally, and Chiana turns her head to rest her cheek on the back of the couch, watching.
"I made a trade," he says finally. "Einstein's finally gonna take back the wormholes."
She can feel the shift of D'Argo's body as he levers himself up onto his elbows. She has an idea of where this is going, whether from the leftover premonitions or just living with John Crichton for so long, she doesn't know. But she thinks she knows her answer before he asks his question.
"I close all the wormholes to Earth, and he takes the knowledge back." Aeryn's caresses continue and she remains silent.
"And I stay here." He squeezes Aeryn's foot. "We stay here. Figure out how to live on Earth."
"So what's the question?"
D'Argo sounds suspicious, like he knows the answer as well.
"Be cycles, tens of cycles, 60 at least, before the wars could get near Earth without wormholes." He swallows heavily."Which side do you want to be on?"
She doesn't need to think about it, hasn't really since they landed in that field. She didn't lie to Aeryn. She is so very, very tired. But she doesn't want to speak for D'Argo, and for better or worse, that had been the vow, amongst all the interspecies promises, they'd taken that from John's Earth promises. Better or worse, together.
"We'd be leaving Moya and Pilot behind."
"Yes," Aeryn answers this time, rich voice laden with sorrow. "They will finally be free."
"I would never see my home world again, never see my son." He is anguished.
"Probably not," John says.
"They're still at war." D'Argo is angry now. "How can you abandon those people." He turns his wrath on Aeryn. "Can you leave the Sebacean race to fight for themselves?" Aeryn barks out short bitter laughter, and Kai mews and curls up more tightly.
"D'Argo," she says incredulously, "What more do you think I can do?"
He growls and sits up completely, swinging his feet off of Chiana's lap.
"The humans didn't want us here before. Why would that have changed?" he challenges.
John shrugs, and Aeryn leans down, rubs her cheek against his hair. So much tenderness from this ex-soldier, and John sounds choked when he answers.
"Lotsa things humans don't want. It's not gonna be easy. But they'll adapt. So will we."
"Do you want this?" D'Argo asks Aeryn. "How can you want this?"
He lays his hand on Chiana's back, and repeats the question gently. "Do you?"
Aeryn's low, "I don't know." is matched by Chiana's nod. She knows the other woman is being honest for John, that there have already been discussions and fights and tears about this. But some things, you do out of love.
"Chi?" John's voice is soothing, calm. He's made his decision, waits for his family to make theirs.
"I don't want to go back," A weight rolls off her shoulders as she says it and D'Argo sighs her name.
"The doctors here don't know anything about your physiology." he says. "What if things get worse?"
There is a spot growing in her brain. The last diagnosian that they smuggled from one system to another had discovered it, guessed it was probably connected to the return of her vision, doesn't know if it will grow, change, disappear, and she hasn't been to a healer or a doctor since. What does it matter? She's proud of her life.
This is a chance, maybe a final one. A beautiful world. People to call out the colors to her. D'Argo and Kai and John and Aeryn, and no more war. It doesn't seem like a bad solution.
"I want to stay," she says more sharply. " I like it here."
"D?"
He breathes out a heavy Luxan sigh of resignation, and Chiana takes his hand.
"We stay,"
"Ok. I, Ok" John wordless is always a sight, so she smiles at him, at Aeryn, at D'Argo, at a new life.
Kai will go to school with human children. She'll know her grandfather and her aunts and uncles and cousins; and they will all struggle to find a place on this planet to belong. They will try and prepare Earth for space, for war, for the unknown. And from now on grass will always be green, and green will mean growing.
crankygrrl looked at an earlier version yesterday. It's way past BT, probably seven cycles or so. It's an ending of sorts. Beta free, as well as free of sexual content and bad language. Damn, who knew it was possible. And I think someone else used this title recently, so I'm apologizing to them as well as to Beck.Sea Change
The glass slipper cracked. This is how the fairy tale ends.
***
The grass tickles her palms. Crichton says it’s bright green and she tries to see the color in her mind’s eye, but it’s been a long time since she saw green, and really, green doesn’t mean healthy and growing on every world, but Crichton can’t shake his upbringing completely. He says it’s not the same color as Rygel. It's a brighter hue, sharper. She thinks of plants the color of Rygel and giggles. Regardless the grass strokes her ungloved hands like a lover.
The sun beats down and she feels sweat beading on her skin, imagines that she looks shimmery, silvery in the light, but it’s been an equal number of cycles since she looked in a mirror. She can see shape and form, but color and shading is completely gone. She truly has become monochromatic, living in black and white.
She wears a white dress, a gift from Aeryn, which also makes her laugh. Through the dark sunglasses Crichton bought her, she can make out the pale material standing in sharp contrast to the shadow of the grass. Detail has become everything to her. She spreads the skirt around herself, enjoying the fall of the soft fabric. It scritches underneath her fingertips and Crichton says she looks like a kid, that she looks beautiful, and that’s still oddly important to her.
D’Argo snores softly beside her, one hand flopped on her thigh. He smells warm and male, and when she reaches back absently to rest her fingers on his chest, she finds that he’s taken off his shirt. The skin stretched over his torso is marred by scars, by battle and the last few cycles of war. But it’s still heavily muscled, solid and sure, and she trusts the feel of his body against her skin as much as she trusts anything in the universe.
She hears Ka’aia giggling and splashing in the water, John’s laughing instructions and sputtering responses to his child’s gleeful disobedience, and when Aeryn settles down beside her, she hears the other woman’s soft puff of laughter as she watches her family gambol in the water. She won’t go in herself, but Chiana knows she sits out here at night with Crichton, quiet and close, dangling her feet off the dock.
Chiana has been in the water, felt it's silky coolness, the caress of the algae and the tiny fish. She ducks her head under, opens her eyes in the murk and sees a whole seperate world, plants dancing and swaying, wrapping and curling with the lapping movement of the water. It's an odd sort of revelation for her. She likes how her toes dig into the sand and silt on the bottom of the lake. She likes how her skin dries in the sunlight, the water evaporating in patches.
“How are you feeling?”
Aeryn’s question catches her attention, and she realizes it's the second time she’s asked, the words hesitant and stilted even after all this time.
“Tired.”
But she puts another smile behind the words, showing her teeth as Aeryn’s cool fingers touch her own. This is something else that she’d never expected, friendship with a Peacekeeper, loving her child, loving the woman herself just as much.
Kai runs out of the water, dripping and shaking herself like a young animal. Aeryn wraps her in a towel and holds her close while they watch John walk out of the lake.
“He’s still beautiful.”
And he is, body long and lean, still muscular. He is sleek, underweight, but so is Aeryn, and she thinks their bones grinding together during sex probably keeps them centered and present. Pain and pleasure and love in every motion.
Kai lays down on the blanket next to Chiana, curling up in her towel and resting her wet head on Chiana's thigh. Damp soaks into her skin through the thin material of the dress. She tickles Kai, and the child giggles, that high sound of joy that had caught them all the first time they heard it.
John stands over his wife, dripping water on her, and she leans on her palms, lazily fighting back with her bare feet. He catches her ankle, tipping her onto her elbows and draws patterns on the inside, over the bone. Aeryn hooks her other foot around his waist, pulls him forward, tilting him off balance, and he falls forward, catching himself before he thuds onto her. Chiana can smell his wet skin, tangy and sharp from the lake water. Aeryn pulls him close, clutching him, her emotion naked in the sunlight and Chiana looks down at Kai as her parents whisper to each other.
***
War rages throughout the Uncharted Territories, and they’ve all played a part in it. All lost something to its unrelenting sweep. Children, trust, sight, identities.
Aeryn finally paid her debt to the assassins, her dues for leaving early. When the squad first contacted them, John wanted to take Kai and run. Find a planet to settle on. Start over. Hide. As if they could ever really hide. But Aeryn shook her head, and returned with honesty and answers and a scar down her arm and something fixed inside. He'd wanted a promise that she'd never leave again, and she refused, warm and safe in his arms, and as it turned out, he’d been the one to leave next. Their lives were comings and goings and lines etched into the fabric of their sorrows.
Jothee returned to them as well, harder and better. Spying for a rebellion and she’d had her bags packed, her traveling coat on the microt he’d mentioned meeting Nerri. Didn’t matter that she couldn’t see then. She didn’t need to see to be useful, they’d all learned that. Jothee tried to dissuade her, but she’d ignored him, followed him to the ramp of his ship.
But D’Argo had had caught her hand, cupped her cheek and kissed her, the same way he’d kissed her cycles ago as she’d said goodbye to a part of her past, and her bag fell to the floor. Running away to find her family seemed so foolish when her family slept beside her every night. So she’d stayed, and they fought the encroaching war as well as they could, shackled with her blindness and her visions, with John’s fear, and Aeryn’s past. That D’Argo was the most stable of them now amazed her as it soothed.
Rygel had taken back his throne, and was poisoned a cycle later. She still missed him, cranky and officious and honest. His eldest son, who’d been in hiding since his father was deposed, succeeded him, and proved a competent, powerful and ruthless ruler. He’d been an ally to them, and now was an ally to the Sebaceans. Apparently hatred could be passed down to generations, but so could the benefit of a strong alliance. She didn’t think Rygel XVII would be overthrown anytime soon. His father had slit Bishan’s throat with his own tiny hand.
The tide of the war had turned, Sebaceans slaughtered by Scarrans racing against time. The Peacekeepers were driven back until they came to John, begging, and his wormholes swallowed their enemies in the name of his oldest daughter, and a brand new kind of fear gripped the Uncharted Territories.
A cycle ago, Crichton had disappeared off of Moya, leaving them terrified and alone, trying to move on. You lose someone often enough, you stop believing they’ll come back. Chiana certainly knew that, had it confirmed as Aeryn gave up joy, but kept on living.
"We knew it was a risk," was all she'd say, pulling Kai to her. "Some things you die for."
Weekens ago, a cycle into acceptance of loss, a chip full of coordinates, vectors, and wormhole calculations had been delivered to Aeryn on a random planet, and when they burst through the funnel into space, saw Earth dangling in front of them, she heard the catch of breath, the muttered swearing in Sebacean, and she clutched Kai to her tightly as Lo’La screamed towards the planet.
They’d landed in a field somewhere in John’s vast country, had stayed inside the ship, cloaked in secrecy until a battered truck had pulled up alongside them. D’Argo had released the stairs, ruffled Chiana’s hair after ruffling Kai’s and said to her, “I think your father is outside.”
The child had pulled Chiana out of her chair, and down the steps, careful of her, as she’d been taught, and then she’d been forgotten in an instant by the joyous cry of “Daddy,” and she’d heard the thump and whoop of John Crichton embracing his daughter, his repetition of “I love you” and “I missed you” and “Everything’s gonna be ok”.
Chiana let herself get swooped up into into John’s strong grasp, spun around like a child, her cheeks wet with tears and held onto him tightly. He set her down gently with a welcoming kiss, and she heard D’Argo thunder down the stairs, their greeting raucous. Then D’Argo drew her to him, tucked to his side, and she looked around. She could see Kai and John and D’Argo, could sense them even better by smell and touch. But they were missing someone.
“Give her a few microts.”
D’Argo’s compassion for Aeryn wasn’t new, but it had been honed over the past cycle.
“Should I go get her?” John hoisted Kai up on his hip, the girl’s head resting against his, her small hands holding onto his cheek. He sounded nervous and she didn’t blame him.
“She’ll come out when she’s ready.”
Except, Aeryn didn’t seem to be getting ready all that quickly.
“What happened, Crichton?”
She hadn’t meant to ask, had wanted to leave that to Aeryn, had intended to just be glad he was alive, to revel in his presence, but well, hezmana. He’d disappeared without a trace and now here he was. On his home planet in a field of flowers.
“I got lucky, Chi.” He wasn’t flippant, merely resigned. He reached over and took her hand, squeezing it tightly, and she guessed she probably didn’t want to know any more.
“Dammit,” he muttered, “ She always did know how to make me wait.”
Chiana squeezed his hand again, hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain from him, and then heard Aeryn’s soft footsteps on the foot of the stairs.
“You’re not dead, then.” She tried very hard to sound angry, but tears choked her voice, lessening the effect and suddenly Kai was in Chiana's arms and John was at the foot of the stairs, his arms full of another dark haired girl, and the sounds of low sobs, pained and wracking, I’m sorry’s, and I love you’s and you frelling bastard, and she turned away from them as they tuned out the universe and clung to each other.
Once upon a time, before she lost her eyes, she’d seen them kiss in an empty hallway, oblivious to anything but each other, hands clutching, bodies yearning, reality suspended. She’d felt a jolt in her spine, in her sex, watching them, but she’d learned long ago never to want anything that badly. It always got broken if you did.
And they broke a lot of things, including each other, more than once.
John and Aeryn were quiet together these days, always sitting close, bodies pressed tightly, no longer disregarding the universe, railing against it, but instead accepting each other. Soft touches, clasped hands, gentle words. Always aware of the elusiveness of fate.
***
Nights are chilly in this part of the country, and John lights a fire which hisses and crackles, warming the small house. Aeryn sits in a chair some distance from the heat source, John in front of her. One leg is tucked up under her body, the other rests against her husband, his hand curled around her ankle, stroking the skin. Kai is tucked up on the other side of her father and it's as idyllic a scene as Chiana can imagine.
D'Argo takes up the entire couch, his heavy feet resting on her lap. He is drinking something warm and fermented. They all are, and Chiana feels very loose, very lush at the moment. There are things to be said. She knows this, doesn't need to be able to see the detail on Crichton's face to know he's finally ready to talk about his absence, their presence on Earth and how they got back when the wormhole was supposed to be closed.
That first time on Earth, well, technically the second, she'd been so young, felt so young, baffled by the repression of John's culture, especially since it had produced bouyant, irreverant John Crichton. Something had shifted inside her when she'd decided to let Jothee go, stay with D'Argo. She still missed her brother, would always miss him, would always wish she'd been able to do her part for the Nebari resistance, but they'd also done some pretty serious resisting of other oppressive regimes. And somewhere in there, peace becamse more important to her than need.
They are terrorists. Wanted terrorists. They've run guns and mercenaries and soldiers all over the UT's. And they've struggled to survive, to do the right thing, but mostly to survive. It would be nice to strive for a little more.
"I need to ask you guys a question," John says, still looking into the fire, interrupting her reverie. Aeryn's strokes his hair and he leans into her touch.
D'Argo grunts noncommittally, and Chiana turns her head to rest her cheek on the back of the couch, watching.
"I made a trade," he says finally. "Einstein's finally gonna take back the wormholes."
She can feel the shift of D'Argo's body as he levers himself up onto his elbows. She has an idea of where this is going, whether from the leftover premonitions or just living with John Crichton for so long, she doesn't know. But she thinks she knows her answer before he asks his question.
"I close all the wormholes to Earth, and he takes the knowledge back." Aeryn's caresses continue and she remains silent.
"And I stay here." He squeezes Aeryn's foot. "We stay here. Figure out how to live on Earth."
"So what's the question?"
D'Argo sounds suspicious, like he knows the answer as well.
"Be cycles, tens of cycles, 60 at least, before the wars could get near Earth without wormholes." He swallows heavily."Which side do you want to be on?"
She doesn't need to think about it, hasn't really since they landed in that field. She didn't lie to Aeryn. She is so very, very tired. But she doesn't want to speak for D'Argo, and for better or worse, that had been the vow, amongst all the interspecies promises, they'd taken that from John's Earth promises. Better or worse, together.
"We'd be leaving Moya and Pilot behind."
"Yes," Aeryn answers this time, rich voice laden with sorrow. "They will finally be free."
"I would never see my home world again, never see my son." He is anguished.
"Probably not," John says.
"They're still at war." D'Argo is angry now. "How can you abandon those people." He turns his wrath on Aeryn. "Can you leave the Sebacean race to fight for themselves?" Aeryn barks out short bitter laughter, and Kai mews and curls up more tightly.
"D'Argo," she says incredulously, "What more do you think I can do?"
He growls and sits up completely, swinging his feet off of Chiana's lap.
"The humans didn't want us here before. Why would that have changed?" he challenges.
John shrugs, and Aeryn leans down, rubs her cheek against his hair. So much tenderness from this ex-soldier, and John sounds choked when he answers.
"Lotsa things humans don't want. It's not gonna be easy. But they'll adapt. So will we."
"Do you want this?" D'Argo asks Aeryn. "How can you want this?"
He lays his hand on Chiana's back, and repeats the question gently. "Do you?"
Aeryn's low, "I don't know." is matched by Chiana's nod. She knows the other woman is being honest for John, that there have already been discussions and fights and tears about this. But some things, you do out of love.
"Chi?" John's voice is soothing, calm. He's made his decision, waits for his family to make theirs.
"I don't want to go back," A weight rolls off her shoulders as she says it and D'Argo sighs her name.
"The doctors here don't know anything about your physiology." he says. "What if things get worse?"
There is a spot growing in her brain. The last diagnosian that they smuggled from one system to another had discovered it, guessed it was probably connected to the return of her vision, doesn't know if it will grow, change, disappear, and she hasn't been to a healer or a doctor since. What does it matter? She's proud of her life.
This is a chance, maybe a final one. A beautiful world. People to call out the colors to her. D'Argo and Kai and John and Aeryn, and no more war. It doesn't seem like a bad solution.
"I want to stay," she says more sharply. " I like it here."
"D?"
He breathes out a heavy Luxan sigh of resignation, and Chiana takes his hand.
"We stay,"
"Ok. I, Ok" John wordless is always a sight, so she smiles at him, at Aeryn, at D'Argo, at a new life.
Kai will go to school with human children. She'll know her grandfather and her aunts and uncles and cousins; and they will all struggle to find a place on this planet to belong. They will try and prepare Earth for space, for war, for the unknown. And from now on grass will always be green, and green will mean growing.
