Title: Coda to "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Author: Jim Burke <[email protected]>
Rating: PG-13? Would really depend on camera angles.
Summary: John's shipmates rescue him after "WGFA"
Spoilers: Won't Get Fooled Again
Archiving: Anywhere, so long as you ask first.

* * *

file://Frell, it stinks in here.//

Not that that was a surprise, since he was sharing a room twenty feet
in diameter with the body of a Scarran so badly mangled that it
looked like something out of "Doom." The smell of ozone that he'd
come to associate with the use of energy weapons didn't mix well with
the scent of burning chakan oil and barbecued alien.

file://So leave, numbskull.//

Now there was a good idea, John mused. Fine except for two problems:
right now he was too exhausted to stand, and he wouldn't know how to
get back to his friends even if he could.

file://Call them. Comm. The Scarran didn't take your gun, he probably
wouldn't bother with your comm, either.// No, that was bad reasoning.
The comm was more dangerous than the pistol. It could be traced,
could call in reinforcements.

Crichton glanced down at his chest. It took a surprising amount of
effort. Even in the darkness, he could make out a glint of gold from
the comm unit pinned to his jacket. file://Funny. I wonder why he let me
keep it.// John reached up and switched the unit on: the Scarran had
shut it off. The simple act of reaching up to his jacket seemed like
a herculean effort. He got a burst of static for his
trouble. file://Jamming. No wonder. I bet no signal gets out of this
room.// Why go to the trouble of locating and removing every
potential signaler your prisoner had when you could simply jam the
frequencies and call it good? file://To be thorough, that's why. This
Scarran doesn't seem very bright. If he'd confiscated my pistol, he'd
still be alive.//

With a sigh, John began to drag himself towards the door.

* * *

It turned out that he only had to make it out into the connecting
passageway to escape the jamming. He only had a vague recollection of
what he'd said, but he remembered Pilot saying that they'd
triangulated the location of his signal. John had had to resist the
urge to compliment Pilot on how well he played the bongos.

Aeryn was good. Okay, so that was an understatement. Aeryn made
ninjas and Navy SEALs look like two-year-olds in bright yellow
clothes. Despite the fact that he was wide awake and there was just
enough light to see by, he hadn't realized that she'd slipped up next
to him until he felt her fingers checking his pulse and heard her
quiet voice in his ear telling him that it was okay, and to stay
quiet, least he inadvertently betray the fact that she was here.

It wasn't until later that he realized the risk she'd taken in
checking him like that, when he could have been booby-trapped, or
bait for an ambush.

He caught a brief glimpse of her silhouetted in a torch-light, and
realized why he hadn't seen her. She'd worn all black, and painted
black on her exposed skin. With the exception of her eyes, she was
darker than night itself.

She slipped into the room he'd just vacated, pulse rifle ready.
D'Argo passed by a moment later, acting just the opposite way as
Aeryn. He seemed to be making extra noise, slamming his feet into the
ground extra hard to make rumbling foot-steps. file://D'Argo's a
distraction. They notice the obvious attack of a charging Luxan, and
don't notice the Peacekeeper commando who's snuck up behind them.// A
pity that the strategy was wasted. The only enemy in that room had
been rather messily dead for over an arn.

It didn't take long for Aeryn and D'Argo to confirm this, and return.

"A Scarran," D'Argo said, with that particular tone of disgust he
usually saved for thieves and Peacekeepers.

Aeryn crouched over John. "Was it just the Scarran, John? Were there
any others?"

"Just him," John said quietly.

"Are you all right, John?" D'Argo asked.

"What did he..." Aeryn started to ask, then cut herself off. John
could almost see her telling herself that now was hardly the
time. "Come on. We're getting you out of here."

He didn't remember when Zhaan and Chiana showed up. Being carried
back to the transport pod was a blur, although he had a vague
recollection of Aeryn on his right side, with his arm slung over her
shoulders, and her holding him a bit more tightly than was necessary
to keep him upright.

He vaguely remembered Zhaan asking him some questions and doing a
brief physical examination during the flight. She said that she
couldn't find anything physically wrong with him besides exhaustion
and bruising: common aliments for Commander John Crichton, fugitive
space explorer. But she cautioned him that she was hardly an expert
and would want a full medscan later. He cajoled her into letting it
wait until after he'd gotten some sleep.

By the time the transport pod docked, some of the feeling had
returned to his legs. He still had to lean on Aeryn all the way back
to his quarters.

She helped him out of his jacket. She didn't comment on the bits of
Scarran splattered all over it.

"How do you feel?" she asked as she helped him over to the small
shower in the very back of his quarters.

"Like dren... which is probably what I smell like."

file://No,// Aeryn thought, file://You smell like death. It's a smell I've
grown accustomed to over the cycles, so don't worry about it driving
me off, John.// "Yes, well, let's get you cleaned up." She turned on
the water, checked the temperature- file://A bit warm for me, but then,
he's not Sebacean.//- and then helped him out of his clothes.

He sincerely doubted that he could have gotten undressed without help
at that point. It was like he was moving in a gravity field of twice
earth normal, his limbs seemed heavy, and everything was sluggish and
took too much energy.

Aeryn took one look at how unsteady he was on his feet, and realized
that he wasn't in any condition to shower himself, either. She
checked her own reflection in the mirror. She'd wiped some of the
camouflage paint from her face after they'd found Crichton, but there
was still quite a bit on her face, neck and arms. A shower wouldn't
kill her, either. She sighed. "Don't take this the wrong way,
Crichton," she said as she shrugged off her jacket and began to unzip
her vest.

"Beautiful though you may be," John said with a weak smile, "I'm too
exhausted to take it any way."

She practically had to hold him upright throughout the whole shower.
His knees seemed to be constantly on the edge of giving way and
collapsing under him. Since she had to have at least one arm occupied
with steadying him, he had to scrub most of the camo makeup off her.
Not that he minded. Exhausted though he may be, the beauty inherent
in a wet, naked Aeryn was impossible to ignore. But he frankly
couldn't spare any blood to go to the south parts of his body, and
sex would have been as impossible as telekinesis for him at the
moment. Assuming that Aeryn was even interested. She was helping him,
to an extent that she'd probably never helped one of her comrades in
the Peacekeepers. He wasn't about to take advantage of that.

It was a shame that he couldn't fully appreciate touching her skin,
though.

"What did he do?" Aeryn asked a few minutes into the shower.

"Aeryn...."

"John, please. You've asked me a thousand times not to shut you out.
That's all I ask. We have to know what he did if we're going to help
you."

"I'm... not sure if you could help. And I'm not sure if I want
everyone to know about the latest intrusion on my brain." John
suddenly leaned on her, wrapping his arms around her in a hug. After
running into two separate fakes in the Scarran's hallucination world,
the simple presence of the real Aeryn was inordinately
relieving. file://Real, normal, Aeryn. Not claiming to be Dr. Fairchild.
Not making out with a fake D'Argo and Chiana in some disco bar. No
hair curlers the size of soup cans. Everything back to normal.//

Normal? Could that word apply to Moya?

What was once insanity was normal. Moya had been a sort of home to
him for over a year, now.

"Shh... it's all right, John. You're safe." Aeryn stroked his hair
gently. "What was it? What was so awful?"

"He put me into this... false world. This hallucination. I was back
on Earth... had never left, actually. No wormhole, my module just
crashed. But everything was screwy... I kept seeing people from Moya,
claiming to be people from Earth. And after a while, they didn't even
try to keep it consistent. The whole thing just went nuts. Hell, the
whole point of it was to drive me insane, break me."

"But you didn't break. You got out. And you killed the Scarran. That
took strength, John. That took will."

John frowned. Funny, he couldn't really remember exactly _how_ he'd
gotten out. Or how he'd known that the pistol wouldn't work, thus
forcing him to come up with the idea of overloading it and forcing it
down the Scarran's throat.

"John," Aeryn continued. "I don't say this often, but I'm proud of
you. You've survived things that even most Peacekeepers shouldn't
have handled."

"I wouldn't last five microts without you," John replied.

"True," Aeryn said, the hint of a grin tugging at the corners of her
mouth. She shut off the water. "Come on. You need some rest, and I
want you to promise me that you'll see Zhaan for that medscan
tomorrow."

"Promise," John said, retrieving his boxers. After a shower, he felt
almost human again.

"Good. Because I _will_ force you to go." Aeryn redressed herself in
her pants and tank top, and was pleased to see that John had regained
the ability to dress himself. file://He's recovering. It drained him, but
he's bouncing back.//

She still helped him to his bed, partially because he still didn't
seem very sure of his footing, and partially.... Well, partially
because she missed being near him. She tucked him in and sat down on
the edge of the bed next to him. "You're going to be okay, John.
We'll get you through this. I'm going to stay right here until you
fall asleep."

"Lay down," John said. "Stay the night."

"You're in no condition. You said so yourself."
"Not for sex, Aeryn. Just because I wouldn't mind some company.
Because I'd like to hold you."

"That's... a slightly more complicated issue for me, John." She took
his hand in hers. "But I'm going to stay right here, as long as you
need me too."

John nodded. "God, it's good to be seeing the real you." He closed
his eyes, but his grip on her hand was still strong. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Everything." That said, John let himself drift off to sleep.

True to her word, Aeryn stayed by his side. When he awoke in the
morning, she had fallen asleep on top of his bedcovers, her hand
still intertwined in his.

END