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prowler_pilotMy Muse should get into advertising. She made this snippet look all bright and shiney and enticed me into writing it, but the actual product? not so satisfying. I think I want a refund. Or a new plot bunny.
Title: Weapon of choice
Rating: PG
Fandom: Farscape/SGA
Character/Pairing: Elizabeth/Aeryn friendship (UST?)
Timeline: Season 2 of Farscape, somewhere between season 2 and 3 of SGA
Summary: Peacekeepers weren’t always like this
“So, you lived on a different planet than Crichton’s?” Chiana’s head jerked to the side and broke into Elizabeth’s personal space. She didn’t flinch, but leant back a little as the Nebari studied her from up close. So close that she could make out all the subtle nuances of white and grey on the young woman’s face. She rested her back fully against the wall. “For some time, yes.”
“See, I told you.” With a twist of her flexible limbs, Chiana sprung into a standing position and faced Aeryn, who sat a table pretending to work on a Peacekeeper beacon they’d found on an abandoned station. She determined there were no hidden messages addressed to the Moya crew or any Peacekeeper regiment a good two arns earlier, but she needed an excuse to hang around while Chiana – as her usual – bombarded the new alien with questions. She didn’t want to look interested, but she was. She couldn’t find – she wouldn’t accept – other reasons than utter boredom for her to concern herself with an inferior race. The skinny human woman had been the most exciting thing that had happened to them in over 30 solar days, which spoke volumes about the current tediousness of their life.
“Crichton’s people couldn’t be so stupid to go into space with that sorry excuse for a ship.” Chiana chuckled in amusement, the ever-present twinkle in her eye sparkling brighter. “Secret colonization of space - I like that.”
Aeryn’s lips curved into an amused, slightly malicious smirk, the only kind Elizabeth had seen on the woman so far, and she popped a food cube into her mouth. “I like that Crichton wasn’t in the loop.” Chiana’s chuckle turned into a cackle.
“We’re not trying to colonize anything, it’s a scientific expedition,” Elizabeth rectified immediately, “A quest for knowledge, even if we were thrown into a millennia-old war as soon as we arrived. We didn’t mean to shift the equilibrium of that galaxy. Once the Wraith are defeated the people of Pegasus -“
“Doesn’t this sound familiar to you, Aeryn? Minimum interference, locals might retain their independence, bringing peace and love to the less fortunate…” Chiana’s dark eyes narrowed and her voice lowered to a teasing, almost sensual whisper.
Aeryn lost her smile, her lips setting into a thin, straight line. If there was something she had learned from her short stay on the ship, was to avoid getting into D’Argo’s or Aeryn’s way unless they approached her themselves. It was difficult not to get on their wrong side, considering that they didn’t seem to have a good one.
“Cut the dren, Chiana.” The warning was clear in the Sebacean’s voice. She set her tools on the table and pushed herself up from the stool, her stance as eloquent as her voice.
Chiana didn’t look the least taken aback by the other woman’s attitude. If anything, she looked thoroughly amused and more than a little satisfied at her sudden change of mood. It took very little to set off Aeryn’s temper, and Chiana knew exactly which buttons to push. Hers, and those of the rest of the crew. “I just want Lizert here to know what the risks are if they keep meddling into other people’s business. One set of Peacekeepers is more than enough for this universe.”
A thick eyebrow arched into Aeryn’s forehead. “Well, then you should take your own advice and leave me the frell alone!” Her voice rose considerably on the second half of the phrase, causing some DRDs that were resting nearby to whirr into activity and move away from the sudden commotion, their antennas rotating in time with their anxious buzzing.
Chiana hissed loudly, her body moving with serpentine grace even as she stomped angrily back to where Elizabeth was sitting. “Should have gone shopping with D’Argo and the others.” She muttered to herself, sulking.
“I’m a woman of words. I use dialogue to interact with people on other planets. We don’t impose ourselves with weapons.” She didn’t bother to correct her name, but she wanted it to be absolutely clear that the Atlantis expedition didn’t come stomping in the Pegasus Galaxy with their guns at the ready. Which is, from what she’d picked up from John Crichton, what Peacekeepers did in this part of the universe.
Aeryn snorted. “What about your superiors? Are they people of words, too?” Their eyes locked briefly, steel grey on emerald green, and Elizabeth read the challenge in them and something else; the shadow of a tale of which she only knew fragments. She wished she could answer positively to that question, shove in Aeryn’s face that people on Earth were never going to turn into trigger-happy commandoes who shaped the universe to their liking through the use of weapon fire and fear.
Or breed kids, rather than raise them.
The lie didn’t found its way past her lips.
Her point made, Aeryn looked away, shaking her head. Whether she was disappointed at her, for not fighting the accusation, or at Earth’s people in general, Elizabeth couldn’t tell. The room echoed with a metallic clang when she rammed her tools into her box and then she emerged from between the desk.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than hang here and pester me,” she shot a sideways look at Elizabeth, “and the human?”
Truth be told, she didn’t like being called “the human”, but it didn’t look like the right time to make a formal complaint.
Elizabeth saw a rather nasty insult form on the Nebari’s lips, but she never voiced it, deciding to take the cue and leave the room instead.
Aeryn’s stance relaxed a little, but a string of swearwords emerged from her mouth, some of which Elizabeth had never heard before, not even on this ship. She was fairly sure that the same words were running through Chiana’s mind at the moment.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” Oh, if she could have a dollar for each time she’d heard that phrase since she came onboard. “That little tralk can’t keep her mouth – or her legs, for that matter – shut unless explicitly threatened.”
“She’s little more than a child.” Elizabeth offered.
“She’s a pain in the ass.” Aeryn drummed her fingers on the pulse pistol resting at her hip. She looked at the woman, sitting less than a metre from her, in her red shirt and black, slightly baggy pants. It looked much more like a real uniform than the ridiculous yellow outfit Crichton had showed up in.
For being a woman of words – or so she’d been incessantly claiming since she set foot on the ship -, she talked much less than Crichton, and when she did, she was infinitely less annoying.
On the other hand, she had less than zero knowledge of their technology and she wasn’t fit for any kind of physical duty, and after a quick assessment of her fighting potential, Aeryn resolved that the situation wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.
A waste of resources, that’s how the Peacekeeper in her would have deemed the human. Luckily for both her and Elizabeth, she wasn’t that person anymore.
The Aeryn who’d been living on Moya had even developed a sort of curiosity about the human that knew about interplanetary travel and fought her battles with words rather than weapons – and had lived long enough to tell the story.
It seemed that the lack of physical strength had caused her to develop other abilities to fool the enemy, like Rygel. As much as she hated to admit it, the Hynerian had saved their collective asses a couple of times thanks to his diplomatic skills.
If this human proved as good at bluffing and manipulation as Rygel was, then she’d have a perfectly fine excuse to dump his green, disgusting ass on the first planet they encountered – provided she didn’t flush him out of an airlock first.
She smiled to herself, and then turned back to Elizabeth. “She’s not exactly wrong, I’m afraid.” She added.
Elizabeth looked up, delicate eyebrows meeting over her nose in a frown. A brown mass of loose ringlets fell back on her shoulder, and Aeryn found herself captivated by that movement. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to eliminate the distraction.
“Peacekeepers weren’t always like this.” Aeryn exhaled a tired breath and crouched down next to her, elbows resting on her knees, hands dangling between them. She stared straight ahead. She’d never been so close to the human before, and she didn’t dare to look at her from the new perspective, even though she felt the woman’s eyes on her.
She’d rather not meet anyone’s eyes when hers wasn’t shielded by a thick wall of anger. If Lirs – Elz – the human was anything like Crichton, then she would be able to penetrate that wall, too. Somewhere beneath the surface, she wanted her to. But not just yet.
“When did they change?” Elizabeth asked, her voice a whisper. She brought her knees closer to her chest, put her chin on them.
“When words stopped being enough.”
Title: Weapon of choice
Rating: PG
Fandom: Farscape/SGA
Character/Pairing: Elizabeth/Aeryn friendship (UST?)
Timeline: Season 2 of Farscape, somewhere between season 2 and 3 of SGA
Summary: Peacekeepers weren’t always like this
“So, you lived on a different planet than Crichton’s?” Chiana’s head jerked to the side and broke into Elizabeth’s personal space. She didn’t flinch, but leant back a little as the Nebari studied her from up close. So close that she could make out all the subtle nuances of white and grey on the young woman’s face. She rested her back fully against the wall. “For some time, yes.”
“See, I told you.” With a twist of her flexible limbs, Chiana sprung into a standing position and faced Aeryn, who sat a table pretending to work on a Peacekeeper beacon they’d found on an abandoned station. She determined there were no hidden messages addressed to the Moya crew or any Peacekeeper regiment a good two arns earlier, but she needed an excuse to hang around while Chiana – as her usual – bombarded the new alien with questions. She didn’t want to look interested, but she was. She couldn’t find – she wouldn’t accept – other reasons than utter boredom for her to concern herself with an inferior race. The skinny human woman had been the most exciting thing that had happened to them in over 30 solar days, which spoke volumes about the current tediousness of their life.
“Crichton’s people couldn’t be so stupid to go into space with that sorry excuse for a ship.” Chiana chuckled in amusement, the ever-present twinkle in her eye sparkling brighter. “Secret colonization of space - I like that.”
Aeryn’s lips curved into an amused, slightly malicious smirk, the only kind Elizabeth had seen on the woman so far, and she popped a food cube into her mouth. “I like that Crichton wasn’t in the loop.” Chiana’s chuckle turned into a cackle.
“We’re not trying to colonize anything, it’s a scientific expedition,” Elizabeth rectified immediately, “A quest for knowledge, even if we were thrown into a millennia-old war as soon as we arrived. We didn’t mean to shift the equilibrium of that galaxy. Once the Wraith are defeated the people of Pegasus -“
“Doesn’t this sound familiar to you, Aeryn? Minimum interference, locals might retain their independence, bringing peace and love to the less fortunate…” Chiana’s dark eyes narrowed and her voice lowered to a teasing, almost sensual whisper.
Aeryn lost her smile, her lips setting into a thin, straight line. If there was something she had learned from her short stay on the ship, was to avoid getting into D’Argo’s or Aeryn’s way unless they approached her themselves. It was difficult not to get on their wrong side, considering that they didn’t seem to have a good one.
“Cut the dren, Chiana.” The warning was clear in the Sebacean’s voice. She set her tools on the table and pushed herself up from the stool, her stance as eloquent as her voice.
Chiana didn’t look the least taken aback by the other woman’s attitude. If anything, she looked thoroughly amused and more than a little satisfied at her sudden change of mood. It took very little to set off Aeryn’s temper, and Chiana knew exactly which buttons to push. Hers, and those of the rest of the crew. “I just want Lizert here to know what the risks are if they keep meddling into other people’s business. One set of Peacekeepers is more than enough for this universe.”
A thick eyebrow arched into Aeryn’s forehead. “Well, then you should take your own advice and leave me the frell alone!” Her voice rose considerably on the second half of the phrase, causing some DRDs that were resting nearby to whirr into activity and move away from the sudden commotion, their antennas rotating in time with their anxious buzzing.
Chiana hissed loudly, her body moving with serpentine grace even as she stomped angrily back to where Elizabeth was sitting. “Should have gone shopping with D’Argo and the others.” She muttered to herself, sulking.
“I’m a woman of words. I use dialogue to interact with people on other planets. We don’t impose ourselves with weapons.” She didn’t bother to correct her name, but she wanted it to be absolutely clear that the Atlantis expedition didn’t come stomping in the Pegasus Galaxy with their guns at the ready. Which is, from what she’d picked up from John Crichton, what Peacekeepers did in this part of the universe.
Aeryn snorted. “What about your superiors? Are they people of words, too?” Their eyes locked briefly, steel grey on emerald green, and Elizabeth read the challenge in them and something else; the shadow of a tale of which she only knew fragments. She wished she could answer positively to that question, shove in Aeryn’s face that people on Earth were never going to turn into trigger-happy commandoes who shaped the universe to their liking through the use of weapon fire and fear.
Or breed kids, rather than raise them.
The lie didn’t found its way past her lips.
Her point made, Aeryn looked away, shaking her head. Whether she was disappointed at her, for not fighting the accusation, or at Earth’s people in general, Elizabeth couldn’t tell. The room echoed with a metallic clang when she rammed her tools into her box and then she emerged from between the desk.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than hang here and pester me,” she shot a sideways look at Elizabeth, “and the human?”
Truth be told, she didn’t like being called “the human”, but it didn’t look like the right time to make a formal complaint.
Elizabeth saw a rather nasty insult form on the Nebari’s lips, but she never voiced it, deciding to take the cue and leave the room instead.
Aeryn’s stance relaxed a little, but a string of swearwords emerged from her mouth, some of which Elizabeth had never heard before, not even on this ship. She was fairly sure that the same words were running through Chiana’s mind at the moment.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” Oh, if she could have a dollar for each time she’d heard that phrase since she came onboard. “That little tralk can’t keep her mouth – or her legs, for that matter – shut unless explicitly threatened.”
“She’s little more than a child.” Elizabeth offered.
“She’s a pain in the ass.” Aeryn drummed her fingers on the pulse pistol resting at her hip. She looked at the woman, sitting less than a metre from her, in her red shirt and black, slightly baggy pants. It looked much more like a real uniform than the ridiculous yellow outfit Crichton had showed up in.
For being a woman of words – or so she’d been incessantly claiming since she set foot on the ship -, she talked much less than Crichton, and when she did, she was infinitely less annoying.
On the other hand, she had less than zero knowledge of their technology and she wasn’t fit for any kind of physical duty, and after a quick assessment of her fighting potential, Aeryn resolved that the situation wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.
A waste of resources, that’s how the Peacekeeper in her would have deemed the human. Luckily for both her and Elizabeth, she wasn’t that person anymore.
The Aeryn who’d been living on Moya had even developed a sort of curiosity about the human that knew about interplanetary travel and fought her battles with words rather than weapons – and had lived long enough to tell the story.
It seemed that the lack of physical strength had caused her to develop other abilities to fool the enemy, like Rygel. As much as she hated to admit it, the Hynerian had saved their collective asses a couple of times thanks to his diplomatic skills.
If this human proved as good at bluffing and manipulation as Rygel was, then she’d have a perfectly fine excuse to dump his green, disgusting ass on the first planet they encountered – provided she didn’t flush him out of an airlock first.
She smiled to herself, and then turned back to Elizabeth. “She’s not exactly wrong, I’m afraid.” She added.
Elizabeth looked up, delicate eyebrows meeting over her nose in a frown. A brown mass of loose ringlets fell back on her shoulder, and Aeryn found herself captivated by that movement. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to eliminate the distraction.
“Peacekeepers weren’t always like this.” Aeryn exhaled a tired breath and crouched down next to her, elbows resting on her knees, hands dangling between them. She stared straight ahead. She’d never been so close to the human before, and she didn’t dare to look at her from the new perspective, even though she felt the woman’s eyes on her.
She’d rather not meet anyone’s eyes when hers wasn’t shielded by a thick wall of anger. If Lirs – Elz – the human was anything like Crichton, then she would be able to penetrate that wall, too. Somewhere beneath the surface, she wanted her to. But not just yet.
“When did they change?” Elizabeth asked, her voice a whisper. She brought her knees closer to her chest, put her chin on them.
“When words stopped being enough.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 11:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 12:09 am (UTC)Btw, glad you liked!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-27 11:13 pm (UTC)So, since time to write lacks, I build my own stories in my head in the time it takes me to fall asleep at night. :P
And you should definitely watch the rest of Farscape. Simply awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 12:13 am (UTC)“I like that Crichton wasn’t in the loop.”
*snickers*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-27 11:15 pm (UTC)And glad you liked!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 03:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-27 11:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Liz and Kathryn are more alike and would probably get along from the get go...Aeryn is a much more complicated matter. And we love a challenge, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 09:54 pm (UTC)Liz and Kathryn would either get along like gangbusters, or hate each other. I like to think the former. But Aeryn and Liz is a fascinating challenge for both of them.
Did you ever read [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s series of Aeryn/Liz drabbles?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 11:50 pm (UTC)Oh, I did read (and recced) them. Absolutely fabulous.
And if you haven't found this yet, I suggest you read this short piece by
It's not femslash, but there's Jolinar and Qetesh and torture.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 04:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-27 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 12:41 pm (UTC)Would like to see more of this fic and is there something before this?
Liked the voices you have for both Aeryn, Elizabeth and Chiana they fit well. BTW when is this set in FS universe just so I have my bearings :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-27 11:26 pm (UTC)As of now the fanfic is a stand alone, but I'd like to write more about Elizabeth and Aeryn in the future. If I can find the time, that is.
I'd set this story in mid-season 2 ;)