2nd fic for the icon meme!

[prowler_pilot]

for xfairy1013

Title: Luck o’ the human
Rating: PG
Fandom: Farscape
Character/Pairing: John/Aeryn friendship / whatever they were at the beginning of season 2
Timeline: In between 2x01 (Mind the Baby) and 2x02 (Vitas Mortis)
Beta: My wonderful venom69
Summary: “I’m not exactly comfortable with the thought of you flying through a minefield.”

A/N: I hate myself for writing this, because any attempt on my part to write the wonderful Farscape characters could be considered blasphemy, but I made a commitment, and tried not to make John and Aeryn sound too off. As Ben Browder rightly said, 'remind me never to write a goodbye scene' (again, in my case). xfairy1013, I hope you like it.


“Aeryn, wait!”

The voice, accompanied by the heavy thumps of combat boots, brought an annoyed scowl to Aeryn’s face. She picked up her pace, but by then the voice was coming from directly behind her.

Too late.

John’s profile came into her peripheral vision as he slowed his jog and fell into step with her.

Again, she lengthened her stride. “My module is fully operational now, let me do this.” He panted. He stared right at her as they walked, but she didn’t turn to meet his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous Crichton.”

“This is a suicide mission.”

“Just another one on our growing list.” She finally raised her eyes to gaze at him, the sarcasm as obvious in her raised eyebrows as it was in her voice. Her frustration at her traveling companions was often the cause of cynical remarks, but resentment hadn’t found its way to the surface for quite a while.

By then, she had no more reasons to blame Crichton and the others for involving her in their escape and making her a traitor to her own people. She was looking at the Peacekeepers with the critical eyes of the outsider now, and she wasn’t sure she liked what lay behind the thick veils of lies and propaganda she’d been subjected to all her life.

“Sure, it would be if you went out there in that sorry excuse for a ship.” A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth, but she wasn’t amused. “I’m the only one on this ship who’s qualified to fly a vessel through a web of mines. It’s what I’ve been trained for. And even if I hadn’t, my sight and my reflexes are more developed than yours.” A small part of her was pleased to see him flinch as she pointed out her physical advantages and she tried to push it back down.

She was about to touch the control panel that opened the door to the docking bay when he stopped her with a hand on her forearm.

“We could just turn Moya around and find another route.”

She jerked his hand away with a harsh shrug of her shoulder.

“I thought we had already gone through this. We’re still too close to the Peacekeeper base, and Scorpius is pursuing us. Even Pilot thinks the risk is too high.” She looked him in the eye as she pushed the button with unnecessary force. The door unlocked with a hiss of releasing air. “I agree with him.”

John followed her into the docking bay. Aeryn’s prowler sat right in the middle of it, neatly polished, a ladder positioned against its right side. Moya’s lights reflected off the smooth black surface of the vessel, a sharp comparison to the battered, dirty shell of John’s module, parked several feet behind the sleek prowler.

Crichton’s ship was, by all means, little more than a wreck with primitive, unreliable systems. For a long time Aeryn couldn’t really understand his reasons for being so proud of it – if anything, he should have been ashamed of the thing -, but after she had experienced the feeling of accomplishment that came from pushing her boundaries, her perspective changed. She knew the basic mechanics of all the ships she had flown, and could fix most common problems, but she had never been taught how to really think on her own. As she worked to develop her reasoning skills, studying ways to enhance her prowler, she started to look at Crichton’s module with a respect she didn’t think herself capable of.

John sighed. “I’m not exactly comfortable with the thought of you flying through a minefield.”

“I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of you sneaking on a Peacekeeper base just to get a cure for me either, but we can’t always have our way, can we?” Her eyes hardened as the irritation grew in her voice.

There they stood once again, facing each other, the memory of their other recent separations still vivid in Aeryn’s mind.

The thought of death, hers or a fellow soldier’s, had never bothered her before. However, life with these strange species had stirred something deep within her, something she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – yet call friendship, but that brought an uncomfortable pressure to her stomach whenever she pondered a future without one of them.

Especially the human in front of her.

“I just wished we had some time to catch our breaths in between crisis. Murphy’s law sounds terribly like an understatement in this part of the universe.” Aeryn’s brow drew together in a light scowl at the unfamiliar reference, but she didn’t query about it. She knew she wouldn’t understand, and she wasn’t interested in the planet’s customs anyway.

She steered the conversation back on track. “I need to go; we don’t know how much time we have.”

John nodded. “Just be careful.”

“I will.” Her eyes softened even as she tilted her chin upwards in an unmistakeable sign of confidence.

“Take this with you.” John reached under the collar of his white tee shirt and took out the puzzle ring his father had given to him before he left on the Farscape mission. He fingered it briefly, thoughtfully, before he slipped it off his head.

Aeryn bowed her head instinctually as he reached out with his arms and carefully placed the worn necklace around her neck. “You will give it back to me when you return on board.”

She looked down to where the ring rested over her breastbone, gleaming softly under Moya’s yellow lights as her chest moved with her breaths. She touched her fingers to the tiny metal ring, running her pads along the smooth surface. She had expected it to feel cold against her skin, but it didn’t. His body had kept it warm.

She glanced up at him. “It stranded you here.”

“But it’s kept me alive so far, and it worked with D’Argo.” His smile was strained. “Kind of.”

“It’s your father’s…”

All Aeryn knew about family, as Crichton conceived it, was what she had learned from her xenology school texts when she was a child, and she considered his affective attachment to an object even more foolish and useless of his obsession with his planet.

Still, Jack Crichton had earned her respect, and she accepted the trinket with the faint sense of pride she previously associated with receiving praise from her superior officers.

“And the only tangible memory I have of him, so I expect you to bring it back to me.” He cupped the back of the hand that was holding the charm with his palm, his thumb stroking her battle-roughened skin.

She turned her hand around within his, her fingers finding their way between his, palms meeting.

“It’s true what they say. Practice makes better.” His voice was low, but it still echoed faintly in the large, empty space. The smile he offered her wasn’t less bitter than the one that took shape on her face.

Just then, the communication system crackled and Pilot’s voice rang in the docking bay.

“Commander Crichton, Officer Sun, I am sorry to urge you, but we are still being pursued by Peacekeeper forces, and we don’t know how much time it might take to disable the mines.”

The moment broken, John looked upwards and away from Aeryn as his hand fell limply to his side. “Yes Pilot, I’ll be out of here in a microt.”

“I’m on my way.” Aeryn echoed, quickly slipping on a pair of gloves as she climbed into her prowler.

She eased herself into her seat and started the engine. She saw Crichton step backwards and out of the room as the ship lit up and shuddered violently. The charm gave off a faint reddish glow, a reflection of the lights that blinked intermittently on the control panel, and he winced.

Superstitious human.

She raised her thumb at him, her eyes on her hand as she tested the unfamiliar gesture she had seen him do so many times during the cycle they had spent on Moya. From the way he smiled she could tell he appreciated the gesture.

A moment later the doors were closed and she was looking at the irregular patterns of yellows and browns of the door.

She applied the right pressure on one of the pedals and the engine roared loudly, eager to get into action. She closed her eyes briefly, and then flew the prowler into the dark of space.