Hard Time

Rating: Very Mild R
Setting: TS
Spoilers: Through Season 4
Warnings: Language. Yep. That’s it. A few bad words. Barely past PG-13.

Notes: Well, this started out as one thing and ended up being something else. It’s just a little different. And it's short. Kinda. For me. What can I say? It might be called ep filler and somebody said to post. LOL! So here it is. As always: My gratitude and props to Eva for beta duty above and beyond the call. The same to my reviewers, Agent Rouka and Susan, for their encouragement, enthusiasm, and everything else. As always: Mistakes remain mine.
Disclaimers: Definitely not mine. They belong to Henson, et. al. No copyright infringement intended. There is definitely no money being made.

Hard Time

She’s sitting in the corridor, between two ribs, with her back up against the wall. Moya’s warmth flows through her, a cocoon and a comfort. She turns a bulb of lakka distillate in her hand and examines it. 

The sound of his footsteps approaching down the corridor unsettles her enough to let loose all the competing emotions she has been trying so hard to cage and control. Suddenly all she wants is to be somewhere else.

The encounter with Talikaa has cut deep. She’d been unprepared, and she hated being ambushed. Rage, terror, shame, guilt, and despair had all been carefully slotted. Now they were threatening to escape their bonds, making her edgy and tense. 

It’s been more difficult than she could have ever imagined since she came back, and right now she feels more raw and vulnerable, more exposed, and less in control than at anytime since her return. And every time she’s felt like she’d been making progress with him, finding her way through the emotional field of landmines he’d set out, every time she’d felt like she might finally be on the right path, he’d shut her down and shut her out.

She doesn’t think this time will be any different, but now it’s too late to run. And she’s finished running. She’s seen how well that particular tactic has worked, she thinks bitterly as John walks up to her. She swallows hard against her increasing sense of unease and impending despair, and lets her underlying anger at the situation, at him, float to the surface. That, at least, is something she can work with. 

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

******************************

The pain of that question and the sound of her voice spikes through the haze still hovering in his head after his run in with the spider girl. It stops him dead in his tracks and goes straight through his heart. He hasn’t recovered anything approaching control over his own wildly fluctuating emotions and he’s been careening between despair, fear, and guilt without the lakka. He desperately needs a hit, and just as desperately does not want to have this conversation with her, naked and unarmed as he is.

He’s come too close to caving far too often since their time on earth. And still he’s needed the constant threat of Scorpius and Grayza, and the occasional threat of skreeths, bounty hunters, and spiders to remind him of the indefensible threat he poses to her. That weakness, his failure, disgusts him, makes him burn with shame.

Hi, my name is John. I am death.

He’s over his anger and his hurt and his need to make her pay. He loves her beyond anything he’s ever known and wants to make his life with her. But he is not over his fear. He knows he’s a plague and a danger to her, and he will not let either touch her again as long as he can help it.

Cowboy the fuck up, John, it’s show time.

"You won the coin toss," he tosses back flippantly as he starts to walk past her, trying to ignore her body’s lithe and graceful movements as she rises quickly to her feet.

"But we lost... didn't we?" The pain in her voice wraps like a coil around his chest and tightens, pulling him up short and squeezing like a fist around his heart.

He shakes slightly at the violence of the visions that assault him. Not the loving visions of Aeryn he’s been getting from the lakka, but more real memories of Aeryn lying broken among shards of glass in his father’s house, Aeryn lying in his arms in the bay, desperately ill with heat delirium in a cooling suit Scorpius had used to save her life. 

Stop this. Now.

John uses those memories and waning certainty that what he is doing is right and necessary to guide him as he turns to her and says, "Aeryn, it's over."

“So,” she challenges him, “your mind is now so full of this dren that you can't even see straight, is that it?"

The tone of her voice and the fact that he knows she’s right shakes him for a microt, and he struggles to control himself as his fear mixes with guilt and morphs into rising anger.

God damn it Aeryn, stop it. Why are you making this so fucking hard?

"Move on, Aeryn,” he suggests unkindly through a clenched jaw, tired of fighting her and her forays at reaching him and his own weakness.

He wants nothing more than to indulge every fantasy he’d ever had for the two of them, every thought that had come to him about how it could be. He needs her to let this go so that he can get to his stash and find the strength to deny her, protect her.

Her stance and the tight line of her lips tell him that she has no intention of letting this go. She’s angry and thinks she’s right. She’d fight him to the bitter end.

"You see,” she begins, “I did everything...  everything I could to keep us together. I did exactly what you told me to do and the whole time you have been cheating."

"Yeah,” he spits, stepping toward her. His anger rises and takes the edge off his caution, making this easier to do. “I'm a coward. Move on. It's over."

"No.” Her voice is guttural and harsh, and she refuses to give up the fight. “I'm gonna tell you how this is gonna go from now on.  You are going to stop sniffing this dren..." 

She waves the package of lakka at him. It’s like a red cape in front of a bull, and he’s moving without being aware of it.

"Shut up," he growls, walking past her.

"Don't you tell me to shut up!"

“Well then let me tell you this.” He turns on his heel, seething and spinning out of control, and invades her personal space. He’s nose to nose with her and angrier than he can ever remember being at her, so he lets that ride along with his fear for her, of her, lets it roil into a toxic mix that fuels his rant.   

“I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not your husband. I’m not your anything right now. You wanna tell me something? I told you what to tell me.”

“And I told you I can’t. I can only tell you that I love you and ask you to please trust me. You used to be able to do that.”

“Love you? Trust you? That’s a relationship, Aeryn. I told you that. You know. The relationship we’re not having, the one you won’t let us have? Back off and move on. It’s over.” 

She’s listened with her mouth open as he backed her up against a rib. She looks down at the bulb in her hand and then raises her wide, glistening eyes to his, her head tilted, lips drawn tight, a look of unbearable sadness and loss on her pale face. She opens her mouth to speak, but can’t.  She closes it and bites her lip, then shakes her head a little and tries again. Her voice, when it comes, is quiet and broken.

“So,” the word bleeds from her, “it’s over.”

John looks at her, then away, unable to process her pain and his. “It’s over.”

"There's nothing more between us," she clarifies hopelessly.

"Nothing," he whispers. His rage is suddenly gone, leaving only a sudden inability to breathe as his chest tightens and his throat constricts.

Suddenly he can’t be here, standing hip deep in the carnage of his hopes and dreams, carnage he has willingly created. And he can’t look at her right now, this ultimate sacrifice he’s finally had to make. He spins on his heel and heads down the corridor, hand going to his pocket, finding the spare bulb that will make everything bearable, hold the pain at bay, when he finally makes it to his quarters.

At least until the haze wears off and he finds himself laying there in the dark thinking about her.

******************************

She takes a step and leans back against her spot on Moya’s warm, welcoming wall, then slides her spine down toward the deck as her legs fold beneath her. The warmth cloaks and comforts her, and the leviathan’s gentle hum synchs with her own breathing to calm her. She wraps her arms around her knees, buries her head in them and waits.

The cold rush of air envelops her and sucks her down, her body rebelling against the sense memory of icy water and the weight of an ejection seat. She wills the panic to subside as she curls in more tightly on herself. Wind whistles in her ears, her pulse pounds, and waves of blue undulate against her closed eyelids as she waits for this to be over.

She’s gotten very good at waiting.

It’s all you ever do anymore.

******************************

She’s standing once again in the center of a chamber she thinks might have been hollowed out of stone. It’s dark, as it always is, and when she reaches out her arm her hand disappears into the inky blackness. She reaches up her other hand, tries to stem the flow of blood she feels coming from her nose.

She doesn’t move from her spot, wary and uncertain of her footing in this place. What she is certain of is that he is here and that he wants something. And that he always comes to her.

She doesn’t have long to wait.

Soft illumination from an unknown source allows the shadows to lift from the far edges of her vision and she sees him standing there, observing her with the empty black pools of his eyes. She knows that this image of him has some meaning for John, but it is lost on her.

She simply prefers this incarnation of him to the one of Jack. As much as she didn’t like her last visit to Earth, she did like John’s father, and she refuses to grant that feeling she has for Jack to…

“Time,” he intones.

“So you’ve said,” she replies, bone weary and waiting.

“Is running out,” he continues.

“No,” she exhales harshly, igniting a coughing fit that shakes her entire frame. Her hand, when it comes away from her mouth is smeared with blood. She doesn’t understand this bleeding, why it happens every time he brings her here, but at least now it doesn’t frighten her anymore.

Wormhole surfing.

That’s what John had called it. He might have an explanation, but she doesn’t imagine that she will be asking him about it any time soon. She wipes her hand against her leg before taking a half-step forward. “I can do this. I just need…”

“More time?”

“Yes,” she breathes fiercely.

“He is a target. He is a liability which must be dealt with.”

Wormholes and black holes went to war. Spinning out of control and ravenous. Whole sections of space where there was nothing left to save. No one left to care.

“Isn’t that why you…called me?”

“His choices have been and continue to be…”

“I can do this. You told me. Choices. Random choices. Yes. No. Stay. Go.”

Standing on a dead Leviathan unable to get a shot. Facing off against two Scarrans. You were going to have to remember to kill that frelling tralk the next time you got the chance.

“Do this often enough and he will make the right choice.”

You’ve tried and you’ve failed. Because you don’t know how to reach this John, make him trust you until you can help him understand.

“He still has not gotten this right. He is dangerous.”

Something’s happened to him and you don’t know what it is or how to deal with it. Bad intel. Bad tactics. Bad strategy. You’ve been yourself. You’ve been someone else. Someone you thought he thought you should be.

“He’s close. Very close. He just needs time.”

You tried to talk. You tried retreating. And he still has not given you any sign that he still loves you or will listen to you.

“So you wish to continue?”

Inside a cell. Sitting in a chair with your arms and legs bound. Fire in your veins, melting you from the inside out. Critical heat delirium. Round after round of interrogation.

“Yes.”   

“That may cease to be an option available to you.”

The weight of his words settles over her like a shroud, seeps through her bones, stiffens her spine. It’s suddenly very clear to her now, crystal clear, standing here in the half-light with this Ancient.

They are all running out of time.

“Please.” She’s not above begging now. “I am a…tactical advantage. A precise allocation of your resources.” She strives to keep her voice even and quiet. “There is still time.”

“He can be removed…”

“No. I can do this.”

“You have failed to complete your mission.”

“When have I ever failed to complete my mission?” My duty. She wonders briefly when that word had turned to ash in her mouth. “I will complete this mission.” 

“You can endure?”

Bound on a different table, in a different room. An injection gun pumps something into you that crawls under your skin and into your head. Prongs stab your abdomen and sometime after you finish screaming, your baby is ripped from you.

She allows herself the indulgence of anger, bitterness, and resentment. Lets it roll over her like the icy water of a frozen lake. Uses it to let her do what she must.

She wants to see her child.

“Yes.”

She feels the pull of the gaping void dragging her down and desperately ties to push her rising sense of panic, that sense of drowning, back into its cage. Her chest tightens as her lungs seize, trying to force the necessary act of breathing. Tunnels open and close as she spirals through the swirling blue, every muscle in her body cramped and aching.

Then, suddenly, it’s over.

******************************

She’s sitting in the corridor, between two ribs, with her back up against the wall. Moya’s warmth flows through her, a cocoon and a comfort. She turns a bulb of lakka distillate in her hand and examines it. 

The sound of his footsteps approaching down the corridor unsettles her enough to let loose all the competing emotions she has been trying so hard to cage and control. Suddenly all she wants is to be somewhere else.

The encounter with Talikaa is fading. The one with the Ancient cuts more deeply, fresh and raw.

Dereliction of duty. Frelled.

She hated being ambushed. Rage, terror, shame, guilt, and despair had all been carefully slotted. Except now they were all threatening to escape their bonds, making her edgy and tense. 

It’s been more difficult than she could have ever imagined since she came back, and right now she feels more raw and vulnerable, more exposed, and less in control than at anytime since her return. And every time she’s felt like she’d been making progress with him, finding her way through the emotional field of landmines he’d set out, every time she’d felt like she might finally be on the right path, he’d shut her down and shut her out.

She doesn’t think this time will be any different, but now it’s too late to run. And she’s finished running. She’s seen how well that particular tactic has worked, she thinks bitterly as John walks up to her. She swallows hard against her increasing sense of unease and impending despair, and lets her underlying anger at the situation, at him, float to the surface. That, at least, is something she can work with.

Would you believe me, John, if I told you I was tired of this?

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

The desperation and pain she can hear in her voice seems to spike through his haze. He stops dead in his tracks…shoulders slightly rounded, head cocked ever so slightly toward her. She knows that he’s been careening between despair, fear, and guilt without the lakka and that he desperately needs a hit. So she waits.

Turn around, John. Listen to me.

She’s come too close…on Earth, on Moya, in corridors, to fail them now.

She wonders again if he’s over his anger, his hurt and his need to make her pay. He’d once told her he loved her beyond hope and wanted to make his life with her. She’d once told him that he was a plague and had ruined her life. But this one didn’t know that.

I have my story straight. Listen to me.

"You won the coin toss," he tosses back flippantly as he walks past, ignoring her as she rises.

Well, here we go again, then. One more time.

"But we lost... didn't we?" She’s desperate now, running out of time.

He flinches at the sound of her voice, but then seems to recover. "Aeryn, it's over."

“So,” she challenges him, “your mind is now so full of this dren that you can't even see straight, is that it?"

The tone of her voice and the fact that he knows she’s right shakes him for a microt. She can see him draw himself up, chest rising as he takes a deep breath and struggles to control himself.

"Move on, Aeryn,” he suggests through a clenched jaw.

She’s wanted nothing more than to indulge every fantasy she’d ever had for the two of them, every thought that had come to her about how it could be, if he’d only give her that chance. She’s shaking with rage as she holds the lakka clenched in her fist.

Not this time, Crichton. We don’t have it to waste.

"You see,” she begins, “I did everything...  everything I could to keep us together.  I did exactly what you told me to do and the whole time you have been cheating."

"Yeah,” he says stepping toward her. “I'm a coward. Move on. It's over."

"No.” Her voice is guttural and harsh, an officer giving an order.

I will not give up.

“I'm gonna tell you how this is gonna go from now on.  You are going to stop sniffing this dren..." She waves the package of lakka at him, and he moves like he’s not even aware of it.

"Shut up," he growls without much heat and walks past her.

"Don't you tell me to shut up!"

Frell you, John. Listen. Listen!

His back is to her and she can’t see his face. She doesn’t have to. She knows that tilt of his head, that set of his shoulders, that stance. She knows right now that a little furrow is creasing his brow because he’s thinking. Hard. She allows a brief glimmer of hope to flicker along side her fear as his voice floats back to her.

There’s always a choice, John.

"Pilot.  My comms are a bit buggy. Can you test the system, please?"

"Yes, Commander, but that will take all comms offline for about thirty microts."

"I thought so.  That'll be fine, thank you." He turns and walks back to Aeryn, pointing at her.

Choose carefully.

She’s staring at him warily now, watching, waiting. Her entire body radiates unease. This is new, different, and suddenly she’s unsure. She presses her lips into a thin, taut line and waits for him to continue.

Choose right.

"Shut up and listen to me. Scorpius is here... looking for the key to what is inside my head.  Neural chips, aurora chair, threatening Earth... none of it works because he does not understand me."

Grief, vivid and sharp, electric fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure overcome the brief flicker of hope. 

I know you haven’t forgiven me for that. But not everything is about that frelling bastard.

"Stop using him as an excuse."

John holds up two fingers and interrupts her. "Please! You're the key. My Achilles. You. If he figures that out... the world and all that's in it's nothing. He will use you... and the baby... and I will not be able to stop him."

"So you think he's been using the comms?"

When he doesn’t reply, the grief and fear dig a little deeper.

"Look what it's done to you.  You're completely paranoid."

There is a crackle of static just before Scorpius' voice comes over the comms.

"Pilot?  Are we having a problem with the comms?"

"I was just checking them,” Pilot’s voice calmly informs him. “Some slight irregularities, but they appear to be functioning normally."

Aeryn listens with her mouth open. She turns back to John, closes it and bites her lip.

Take what you can get.

"S... so, it's over."

John looks at her, then away. "It's over."

"There's nothing more between us."  She turns her eyes up and looks at his face, looks deep into his eyes, clear, wide open, and so brilliantly blue. 

"Nothing," John whispers, smiling at her.

It might just be enough.