NEW: Contredanse (Thelma and Louise GalPal Ficathon entry), Farscape/Firefly
Contredanse
Author: cofax
Rating: PG, gen
Summary: Serenity has to hire on new crew. Aeryn Sun is looking for a job. Universes collide.
Notes: For Thea, whose request was for Aeryn/Vala/Sam, Farscape/Firefly, or West Wing. Beta by the most speedy and considerate Minnow.
****
Allemande
In which Aeryn and Zoe find themselves in uncomfortable circumstances.
Aeryn allowed herself to scowl as the door closed, and slapped her thigh where her pistol should have been. Had been, until ten minutes ago, when the plan collapsed into shouting and an ambush where there should have been a clean run to the landing pad.
Their captors--erstwhile comrades, if not friends--had taken their helmets, so Zoe's sardonic expression was clear in the bright overhead lighting of what looked like an empty storage locker. "That went well."
Aeryn shook her head, putting her ear to the door for a moment, and then flashed two fingers at Zoe. She waited until she'd moved away to the far corner of the room before replying. "Could have been worse."
"We could be dead?"
"There's worse than dead."
The other woman nodded, her expression dark. Aeryn suspected she'd seen more than Zoe had, but not worse. But that wasn't a conversation Aeryn ever intended to have.
"What went wrong?" she asked instead, staring up at the point where the wall met the ceiling. If she was right, those were ceiling tiles, and maybe above them were ventilation shafts.
Zoe tapped her on the shoulder, offering her laced fingers. Aeryn nodded in comprehension. Zoe was taller; it made sense for her to do the lifting. A step and a heave, and Aeryn was prodding at the top of the wall with the small blade from her boot. She'd learned a lot since the days she'd been caught sneaking a dinner knife up her sleeve.
"Don't know," said Zoe, her voice strained as she braced her back against the wall. "Something blew up over by the labs. Figure it was Jayne."
"Think they got away?" Aeryn grunted as she dug the tip of the knife in and then levered it sideways. Captain Reynolds' mysterious and eccentric client had never named the object of the job, merely provided its code name and enough cash to get them outfitted in Hector City. But getting into the secret facility, locating the object, and getting away again--that had all been Reynolds' plan. Aeryn suspected that her agreement to the arrangements was clear proof she'd spent far too much time with humans. They were all crazy, and they were making her crazy too.
Zoe eased them one step to the left, giving Aeryn a better angle. "Hear that?" Zoe cocked her head; the sound of footsteps pounding down the hallway came faintly through the door. "Wouldn't still be running around, otherwise."
It made sense. "You don't think," said Aeryn, forcing the knife close to the point where its tensile strength would give, if it were Peacekeeper manufacture, "we should wait--"
"Hell no." Aeryn swayed as Zoe stiffened in outrage. " 'sides, Captain's rescues can be a mite chancy. And Jayne, well."
Aeryn grinned through the sweat pouring down her face: the Alliance didn't waste air conditioning on storage units, not even secret Alliance labs conducting nefarious--one assumed--research. Jayne had needed rescuing himself on the last job but one, and he was still on kitchen cleanup duty to make up for the damage the mule had taken as a result. The chore would otherwise have been cooking, but Reynolds had long since learned the folly of letting Jayne near the food in any capacity other than that of a consumer.
Kaylee's prize story about that debacle, which had paid for drinks on three planets, involved Jayne, a slab of protein, and a sack of walnuts, and took nearly an hour to tell. To be fair, the mercenary was useful in a fight, but his strategic planning was usually limited to screaming and leaping. Aeryn far preferred working with Zoe, who at the very least could be trusted to watch her back--and not for the view of Aeryn's eema in her worn Peacekeeper leathers.
As the ceiling panel finally gave, there was a rattle of gunfire in the distance. Aeryn grunted in satisfaction and dropped lightly to the floor, steadying herself with one hand on Zoe's shoulder. "You think--?"
"That'll be the Captain," said Zoe with certainty. "But I don't think--"
"--we should wait, no," finished Aeryn.
*
Gypsy Turn
In which we learn how Aeryn Sun found a new employer.
For the first time ever, it wasn't a shabby dark room behind a bar, or a booth in a greasy eatery. These people took their meetings in the sunlight, on the porch of a hostel at the edge of the spaceport. Aeryn shifted her weight, leaning against the bronze pillar, eyes flickering across the faces surrounding her.
Most of the men sat on the edges of the worn wooden benches at this end of the porch, hands plucking at raveling edges of their coats. Aeryn knew what those brown coats meant, here at the edge of the sector where the vegetation was thin and the buildings lopsided. The man next to her fondled a long knife, the hilt wrapped with leather that might once have been green but was now stained with more than sweat. When she glanced at his face, his eyes met hers, white-circled and wild.
This is not a soldier, she thought, as she looked away, keeping her face calm, non-responsive. These men fought and died in their war, but they had none of the cool professionalism she was trained in. She felt too much anger around her, too much despair; it made her pity them--although she was in no way better off than they were. The Prowler on the smallest berth in the spaceport would not lift again, if she could not earn the cash to fuel it.
This was the third time she had had to do this since she found herself here, in this cramped backwater where none of the ships used the fuel she needed and the guns all fired metal pellets.
She glanced to her left, at the other end of the porch, where two men and a woman were standing. The men leaned against the porch railings, their arms crossed as they watched a young man in a patched green coat stumble off the porch, his shoulders slumping. The woman didn't lean: she stood upright with her back to the outside wall of the hostel, eyes scanning the little crowd of applicants waiting for their interviews, the dusty street, the low hedge across the way. Her hand was never far from the gun on her hip.
"Next!" called one of the men, and Aeryn straightened, strode the length of the porch before any of the others waiting got up. The bearded man--no soldier either, she suspected--nodded at the chair. She didn't sit. The other man--also dark-haired, but with a more angular face, and sharper eyes--raised an eyebrow.
"My name is Aeryn Sun," she said, not waiting for any questions. Nor worried about giving her name; these people had no idea what a Peacekeeper was. "I can shoot, fly, and fight hand-to-hand." The word she'd heard was that they needed a soldier. Bodyguard, she thought. Or maybe a job: these people weren't wealthy enough to hire protection. The bearded man had a hole in the knee of his pants.
"Huh," said the clean-shaven man, and cocked his head at the dark-skinned woman enquiringly.
"Easy enough to find out," she said.
"Aw, c'mon, Mal!" protested the bearded man. "Gotta be kidding!"
"Why?" asked the woman, with an edge in her voice. "Because a woman can't do the job?"
"Gorram it, Zoe, I know that," he grumbled. "I saw River. But ain't we got enough women on board already? It's like we're running a whorehouse without none of the ad-van-tages."
"Jayne." The other man's voice held a snap of command, and Jayne subsided. "I ain't got a problem with women on my boat," he continued, addressing Aeryn directly. "Long's you obey orders and don't cause no trouble. But we can't take you just on your say-so; mind giving us a demonstration?"
Simple competence wasn't enough here: Aeryn needed this job. She met his eyes and nodded once. "Just show me what you want me to shoot."
From the corner of her eye, she saw the woman Zoe smile.
*
Greet Your Neighbor
In which Aeryn meets her crewmates and Jayne is embarrassed.
"Veggies!" The young mechanic's face brightened as the doctor--"Simon," Captain Reynolds had called him--served from the large bowl in the center of the table. "You treat us so well, Cap'n."
Reynolds shrugged and lifted a mouthful of stir-fried greens, his hands confident on the chopsticks. "We got a good profit on the job, enough to lay in some stores. Be good to eat something other than vat protein for a bit."
Aeryn picked up her own chopsticks, trying to show a level of comfort she didn't yet possess. She was so far from the Uncharted Territories that none of these people could ever have heard of Peacekeepers, Scarrans, or the wreckage of the great war. But the unusual is a target, always, and this place had its own political currents, as dangerous as the tides that had caught up Moya so disastrously. Unique is always valuable. She had to blend in, as much as she could.
The greens were good, salty and sharp with flavor; the bland manufactured protein had been mixed in with crunchy orange roots and served over a soft white grain.
This was a tight crew: they moved around one another smoothly, interpreting half-finished sentences and indistinct hand-motions as the food and condiments were passed around the table. Aeryn could tell they were not entirely comfortable with her, however; there were gaps in the conversation, ellipses where topics were dropped, individuals not named. She didn't pay much attention to the subjects of the conversation, mostly gossip about people she didn't know and places she had never been--Ariel, Badger, Miranda--but as she ate slowly, savoring it, she watched and listened carefully.
She'd learned a bit about Serenity when she went back to the port to gather her gear and arrange storage for the Prowler. Reynolds had a reputation as a good man in a spot, but you didn't want to cross him. "And that mate of his, best to stay out of range," had added the cud-chewing station-master, leaning across the high counter.
"Jayne?" Aeryn had assigned him mentally to the category of "stupid but competent"; she was surprised to hear he had much of a reputation.
"Hell, no," replied the station-master, with a jovial guffaw, and then his expression soured. "It's that Zoe Washburn--she'll cut yer throat soon as look at ya."
Aeryn had nodded thoughtfully and gone away to make the storage arrangements for the Prowler, arriving at Serenity just in time for liftoff. Zoe had given her a quick tour of her quarters and then led her to dinner, where introductions were haphazard and quick.
"So what's your job gonna be?"
Aeryn blinked in mild surprise, swallowing a mouthful of greens. The mechanic--Kaylee, she remembered--looked at her brightly, eyes full of curiosity--and just a little suspicion. Aeryn glanced at Reynolds; he gave her no guidance but met her eyes blandly. "Whatever the Captain tells me it is," Aeryn answered with some caution. She wasn't sure herself what the job entailed, nor how much the civilians on the crew knew.
"Cause everyone always does what Mal says," said Jayne, and barked a laugh that sprayed masticated orange debris across the table.
"That's right," said Reynolds genially, while Simon wiped his face with a faded cloth napkin. "And I say, don't talk with your mouth full, Jayne."
"Better yet," added Zoe from the other end of the table, "don't talk at all."
"Sun will be on the bridge soon's I'm satisfied she knows what she's doing," continued Reynolds. "And she'll be backup when we need it."
"Backup? Like Jayne?" asked Simon, his voice level but his eyebrows saying, A little thing like her? There were women soldiers here, Aeryn had seen them, but they were less common than in the Uncharted Territories, and most of them were Zoe's size, or taller. These humans couldn't see how different she really was, how much stronger and faster; it was something Crichton had taken a long time to adjust to.
Zoe smiled, her eyes glittering. "Much, much better than Jayne."
Jayne muttered something foul under his breath and rubbed his arm, glowering.
"Really," said Simon, his face brightening. "Then I think we may get along just fine--" He hesitated, fumbling for a name.
"Radiant," interjected the dark-haired girl at the end of the table, who until now had hidden behind her hair, eating quietly and quickly. "Radiant Aeryn Sun. Contaminated, contaminating. But you're clean now, you broke out of the box."
Aeryn blinked and looked around cautiously. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to River's ramblings, although Zoe and Simon exchanged a careful glance, and Reynolds nodded once, as if to himself. "Aeryn Sun is my name," Aeryn confirmed. "Aeryn will do."
Kaylee smiled; she at least had no hesitation. "Aeryn, it's a pretty name. Welcome to Serenity!"
*
Turn Alone
In which two women come to an understanding.
"That isn't your weapon." The voice was no surprise; Aeryn knew the steps of every one of her shipmates, and knew that Zoe had been watching her for the past three minutes. From the sound, she could tell Zoe was standing in the doorway at the top of the strangely-angled steps into the dining area. What she said was unexpected, though.
"I've had this weapon for months," Aeryn replied, frowning as she pushed the brush down the bore of the pistol. Her pulse pistol never needed this much maintenance, although pulse rifles were legendarily tricky and needed regular care.
Zoe's steps were even as she walked into the kitchen and took down a mug from one of the cabinets. "You know what I mean," she replied, pulling a tin of tea out of the bin and dropping a packet into her mug. "You know weapons--someone trained you good somewhere--but not these. Recoil makes you jumpy."
Aeryn grimaced in acknowledgement of the point. "Using projectile weapons on a spaceship is stupid," she muttered, and Zoe barked a singular, shocked laugh.
"Where you from?" Zoe finally asked, holding the tea mug between her hands. Aeryn read it as a signal: my hands are full; I will not draw a weapon on you. Of all of them, Zoe was the fastest; she might even reach her gun before Aeryn touched her.
The grease from the cleaning kit was all over Aeryn's hands; she frowned and wiped them on a rag, a piece of multi-colored cloth Aeryn had found stuffed in a box in the guest quarters. She was not fond of maintenance work; she'd been trained to think of it as tech work, and while she'd let go of that arrogance, she still found it boring. She would rather be using the primitive workout room in the cargo hold. But she was here now, and these were the weapons she must use; she had to treat them properly or they would fail her in the test.
"Far from here," she finally said with a small shrug. "Very far."
A faint line formed between Zoe's eyebrows. "You don't sound right to be from the Core, and I know you're not from Whitefall..." Or any of the other outer planets, was the implied addendum.
Aeryn shook her head. She was tired of hiding; she had never been good at it. The gun was still disassembled, but she had no desire to discover what would happen if she fired it inside Serenity anyway; they were three days out from Maribel even at top speed.
"There ain't nothing but the Core and the outer planets," Zoe continued.
Shrugging again, Aeryn merely met Zoe's eyes for a long moment. As Zoe's eyes widened, Aeryn looked away, back at her greasy hands. "River knows," she admitted. "More than she has said, anyway."
"River's touched." Zoe's response was automatic; Aeryn could hear Reynolds' voice in that flat tone.
"But not always wrong."
There was a soft clink as Zoe put the mug down on the counter. "No," she finally replied. "Not always wrong."
*
Balance
In which we skip forward in time and begin to discover why Zoe and Aeryn were in a cell in the first section.
Aeryn came off duty as the sun was rising, which here meant little more than a brightening in the dull green sky, which was kept alight by the glow from the cities that blanketed the planet. She barely noticed the constant overcast now, after five weeks on Hector Plateau and another three weeks before that huddled in dark rooms at the bottom of the city, or pacing out the perimeter of the hiring sector, side by side with Zoe. It had been lightless there, and on Serenity for the weeks before then; she had lost count of the days since she saw the sun.
Not a sun, here in this cul-de-sac system with so many planets forced into the same mold, spinning like children's toys about the one nameless star. The sun, if not the one under whose light these people had grown their great civilizations.
She wondered what Crichton would think, if he were here, and then shook off the thought irritably. Memories begat memories, and dwelling on them led to long arns stupefied with drink, counting over her losses. It was easier to bury them.
The quarters she shared with Zoe were tucked into the outside wall of the complex, side-by-side with the rest of the security staff. "Security," she thought, and nearly sneered. They were guards, chosen for their compliance and their ignorance; the fact that neither Aeryn nor Zoe existed in their Cortex was an advantage to their employers. No one knew them, no one knew to track them here: they were blank puzzle pieces, easily swapped out and replaced.
Except Aeryn and Zoe didn't mean to be here long enough to be replaced. Reynolds' plan had called for Aeryn and Zoe to gain positions inside the complex, and learn enough to find out where the "doodad," as Reynolds called it, was kept. Some technological marvel, they were told, which would unsettle the balance of power and whose loss would set back Alliance plans for the outer planets for a generation. Aeryn had been skeptical, but the prospect of embarrassment for the Alliance, and a sizeable amount of cash, was enough to convince Reynolds. Once they'd found the object, Aeryn and Zoe would sneak Reynolds and Jayne into the complex, cover their exit, and leave themselves two weeks later at the end of their rotation. It was, Aeryn thought, not an entirely stupid plan; but it was hardly perfect.
Zoe was sitting in the chair by the door, cleaning her weapon, when Aeryn strode across the open courtyard, boots tapping on the cold tile pavement. Zoe was in civilian clothes: dark trousers, leather vest, the necklace she never took off. Aeryn had seen her touch it, once, when they were on the bridge of Serenity--mad River's flying fingers never disturbing the brightly-colored toys affixed to the console--and then force her hand to her side, wrapping her fingers about her gunbelt. Aeryn never asked her about it, and Zoe never said.
"You send it?" Aeryn asked, as she paused in the doorway. By the original schedule, tomorrow was the day.
Zoe nodded. "Guess we'll see," she said after a moment, looking curious rather than worried.
"Guess we will," agreed Aeryn, and went inside.
*
California Twirl
In which we realize that Mal Reynolds' plans are occasionally flawed.
The plan had gone wrong. Oh, Zoe and Aeryn had gotten Reynolds and Jayne into the facility easily enough, escorting them through the holes in the security net and setting them loose in the lab complex before reporting for their own scheduled shift in the administration floors.
But this was Reynolds and Jayne, after all. So Aeryn was unsurprised when the whole thing fell apart. When the transmitter tucked behind Aeryn's ear crackled and Reynolds' voice hissed, "Gorram it, they made us," Aeryn was six steps from her post and running down the hallway within seconds.
"Which way?" she snapped, as Zoe came up behind her, lips compressed under the opaque visor of her helmet.
"Left," said Zoe after a moment. "They should be in the labs by now."
"Perfect," said Aeryn. The labs were a warren; they'd both gotten lost in there at least once in the first week of their posting.
"Well, that's the Captain," said Zoe. "And Jayne," she added after a thoughtful moment.
Aeryn cast an anxious glance behind them. Guard stations were monitored at all hours, and it would not be long before their absence was noticed. It was pure luck that they were on the same rotation today, and the doorway they should have been guarding, closest to the central servers, was conspicuous without them.
Too conspicuous, it turned out; they were taken before they got anywhere near the labs.
*
Do-Si-Do
In which there is an escape and a revelation.
Escaping the storage closet was easy once they'd gotten up into the ceilings, and they knew their way around well enough to avoid being spotted as they worked their way towards the labs. After some thought, they decided to work their way down three levels to the maintenance floors, where they might be able to intercept Reynolds and Jayne being taken to the landing pad for transport to Hector City. Aeryn and Zoe had themselves proven this complex had no adequate facilities to hold criminals of any type.
This plan, at least, worked. It was easy enough to get the drop on the guards, who clearly hadn't been informed that Amara and Nita, their two female recruits, were dangerous criminals. Within very little time the guards--even Carbourne, who'd tendered soft feelings for Zoe--were bound, gagged, and bundled themselves into a rather more crowded closet than the one Zoe and Aeryn had just escaped from. Jayne slammed the door closed on them with a vindictive growl: the little finger of his left hand stuck out at a painful angle.
"Well," said Reynolds, looking ruffled with a bruise already swelling on his cheekbone, "bout time you two showed up. Stop for tea, maybe?" Aeryn bit her lip to keep from snapping back, and instead just exchanged a look with Zoe. She liked Reynolds well enough: he was a thief and sometimes a liar, but he could shoot straight and he stood by his people. His sense of humor, however, was another matter.
"Mal!" interrupted Jayne, which was probably just as well, Aeryn decided. "We left it--"
Reynolds' eyes widened. "Kwong-juh duh. Go, go!"
"The hell?" asked Zoe as Jayne disappeared around the corner, still fumbling his pistol back into its holster. "Cap'n?"
"When we figured we were bagged, Jayne stashed it," said Reynolds, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. Aeryn nodded, relieved that Reynolds and Jayne had actually obtained the object of all their machinations. It would have been embarrassing to go to all this trouble and then lose the item in the escape.
The alarms were still going and in fact were getting louder. Aeryn looked around: they were close to the landing pads, where the transports were stored. The closest guard post was two corridors away and up a ramp, and they'd been relatively quiet--that still didn't mean it was smart to stand around the hallway. And soon someone in security would realize that none of Reynolds' guards had reported in recently. "Where's the shuttle?" she asked Reynolds.
There was a muffled thump from the storage closet; Zoe frowned.
"Under the recycling plant," Reynolds said with a grin. Aeryn raised a disbelieving eyebrow; it was the most disgusting place on the plateau, as the secret facility had no connections to Hector's urban network, and the Alliance scientists were too interested in their experiments to maintain their utilities efficiently. As a result, the waste matter from the hundred or so residents of the plateau was roughly sorted and the worst of it merely dumped.
"At least no one's going to find it accidentally." Zoe found the one bright spot.
Jayne came tearing back around the corner, clutching a bundle under his arm. "Shit, Mal! Can't believe we almost forgot it!"
"I didn't almost forget it, you almost forgot it. Completely different. C'mon, let's go before they figure out it's gone. And can y'all be quiet? We're fugitives here!"
Which was so entirely unfair Aeryn could only grind her teeth, so she dropped back to the rear, hand uneasy on her pistol. Whatever uproar Reynolds and Jayne had created in the lab complex was apparently ongoing, and the four of them managed to slip out one of the basement-level doors onto the bare and rocky hillside without being spotted.
They moved across the slope at a trot, scrambling over great boulders and slipping on loose shale. So it wasn't until the shuttle was in sight that Aeryn realized the bundle under Jayne's arm was twitching. "Jayne," she said, grabbing his arm.
"Hey! Leggo!" He swung around to face her, but stumbled, and the bundle slipped; Aeryn caught it just before it hit the ground. It was heavier than she expected, and warmer. And moving. She stood up, stepping away from Jayne, and cautiously opened the folds of green lab coat.
"Frell!" She nearly dropped it. It was a child.
Reynolds and Zoe had paused and turned back, and now the four of them stood on the hillside, staring blankly at the wriggling form in Aeryn's hands. It was still an infant, waving its hands and screwing up its face in fierce concentration. Yellow eyes glared up at Aeryn, tracking the hand she moved across its vision. The hair on its head was an upright brush of bright copper, soft under her palm.
Zoe turned on Jayne, her face furious. "You stole a baby?"
"Hell, it's not like we went out of our way! It was right there!" retorted Jayne.
"It was in a box," said Reynolds, his voice tight with rage. "In the lab. Like a gorram lizard in a, a terrarium."
"They had it hooked up to needles and wires and go-se," added Jayne. "Dogs deserve better'n that."
The child burbled something and flailed a small hand in the air. Almost reluctantly, Zoe stroked her finger along the back of the baby's forearm. In response, it grabbed her finger in its tiny fist and grinned. Aeryn didn't look at Zoe's face, as Zoe swung the baby's hand back and forth, humming softly. The baby smelled like babies usually did, but with an added hint of vinegar. It seemed healthy, despite living in a box. Aeryn wondered what Simon would say after he'd had a chance to examine it.
"In a box," said Zoe flatly, watching the baby chew on its fist, drooling all over her fingers.
"A little one," confirmed Jayne. "It was nekkid, and dirty, too. We cleaned it up some."
Aeryn grinned at the image, and caught a smile crossing Zoe's face as well. She let the smile fall away as she looked down at the baby and traced a careful finger along the mottled skin at its hairline. If it had indeed been in a box, there was no way they'd be returning it to its ... keepers. Even if they could do so safely.
The shuttle was in the air, the ventilation system working overtime to clear the air of the stench of the recycling ponds, and Aeryn had the baby tucked securely in her arms against the shuttle's acceleration, before she spoke.
"You do realize this baby is not human."
*
Promenade
In which decisions are made and we say farewell.
"But we could take care of it! Simon's a doctor and we all could--"
Reynolds cut Kaylee off, his voice sharp but kind. "Wouldn't be fair. Or safe. And what if someone comes looking for her?"
Simon nodded from where he crouched next to the hastily-assembled cradle--Jayne had surprising talents. "And if she gets sick I wouldn't know how to treat her, Kaylee. She needs to be with her own people."
"And these Kalich, you know how to find them?" Zoe leaned against the wall next to the door, her eyes sharp but not skeptical.
Aeryn nodded. "Kalish, yes." What she told, and who she told, well, that was still under consideration. They were accepting the baby's nature better than she'd thought. She hadn't yet said anything about herself; but then she'd only seen Serenity as a stopping-place, if a welcoming one. They didn't need to know all her history.
"It will take some time, but I can find them." With her take from the job--Reynolds and Jayne had surprisingly managed to keep not only the child, but the technological trinket the client had hired them to find--she would have enough cash to fuel the Prowler, sitting all these months in that yard on Whitefall. She could only hope it was enough to get her back. Not home; home was not to be found, although it was possible she could find Moya. Her life was sometimes unexpected that way.
River hung over the cradle, crooning. As Aeryn watched, River raised her head with a brilliant smile. "She's going to win a war! Well, part of one, anyway..." Her eyebrows dropped in confusion for a moment, and then the knowledge, whatever it was, seemed to be gone. Aeryn tucked that away for future consideration. Zhaan would have known what it meant, perhaps.
"Right." Reynolds slapped a hand on the table and stood. "That's settled, then. Occurs to me we'll need to get a course plotted before we get off this mudball. Aer-- huh. River." Her bright face turned away from the baby, still smiling. "You want to navigate, now's your chance, while Sun's still here to fix your mistakes."
River straightened with that memorable grace. "Oh, there won't be any mistakes. I can read the stars."
The others filed out in Reynolds' wake, Kaylee carrying the child, who gurgled happily as she was bounced up the stairs. Aeryn stirred restlessly; if she were leaving, there were tasks that had to be done, her quarters to pack up. Supplies to lay in, since she would be caring for a child for weeks on end. It had been a long time, but she suspected babies had not changed much. It was a good-natured child, at least so far: Aeryn hoped the baby would continue to be so cheerful strapped into the rear seat of an aging Prowler.
She went into the kitchen and took down a mug.
"One for me too?" Zoe hadn't left after all.
Aeryn nodded and opened the canister with the smoky dark tea that Zoe preferred. The two mugs she placed on the counter had hand-painted designs on them, and skillful calligraphy she could not decipher, but beautiful for all that. She would miss this, she realized; she had found more peaceful moments on Serenity than she ever had on Moya. Her life on Moya had been terrifying and wonderful, full of love and rage, and in the end desperation; but it had never been serene.
She leaned back against the counter as she waited for the water to boil. She was not sure what she felt about this sudden change in her fortunes--everything was upended again, game pieces scattered across the floor. But the child needed her, and there was no one else. "Will you tell them?" she asked. "About me?"
A smile curled Zoe's lips: not one of the grim ones she'd sported since Aeryn had met her. "You think they don't know? They're not stupid."
"Not even Jayne?" But that was reflex.
"Ignorant ain't the same as dumb."
When the water boiled, Aeryn poured the tea and carried it over to the table, where Zoe shoved a chair with her foot to make room. "Thanks."
"There's a war on, there," Aeryn said after a moment, while she waited for the tea to cool. "Her people--" she pointed her chin towards the empty cradle, "--are in the middle of it."
A dark eyebrow lifted over the pale blue of the china mug. "And you think it's a good idea to take her back?"
The Peacekeeper-Scarran-Nebari war was well into its fourth decade, with no one evidently the winner. But while so many populations had died outright or been forced into exile, the Kalish held on, clinging to the autonomy they'd won under Stahleek. It was the one refuge Aeryn could think of, and the one place she could take the child. "There's no other option."
Whatever the Alliance had done, whoever it had been dealing with, to get its hands on a Kalish child so far from their territory; and what it had meant to do with that child--well, those weren't questions Aeryn had any answers for. Serenity's crew would be better off if she took the child away as soon as possible. But they also deserved a warning: if what she feared was true, trouble could be coming their way sooner than any of them suspected.
Aeryn traced the floral design winding its way around the lip of her teacup, and raised her eyes to meet Zoe's. "You'll have to go get the Captain. I've got a long story you all need to hear."
END
Notes: Written for the Thelma and Louise Gal-Pal Ficathon of July 2006. Many thanks to Hossgal and Thea for organizing this ficathon, to Katie and Vee for allowing me to bend their ears about this story, and Minnow for doing a speedy and helpful beta. Y'all rock.
Author: cofax
Rating: PG, gen
Summary: Serenity has to hire on new crew. Aeryn Sun is looking for a job. Universes collide.
Notes: For Thea, whose request was for Aeryn/Vala/Sam, Farscape/Firefly, or West Wing. Beta by the most speedy and considerate Minnow.
****
Allemande
In which Aeryn and Zoe find themselves in uncomfortable circumstances.
Aeryn allowed herself to scowl as the door closed, and slapped her thigh where her pistol should have been. Had been, until ten minutes ago, when the plan collapsed into shouting and an ambush where there should have been a clean run to the landing pad.
Their captors--erstwhile comrades, if not friends--had taken their helmets, so Zoe's sardonic expression was clear in the bright overhead lighting of what looked like an empty storage locker. "That went well."
Aeryn shook her head, putting her ear to the door for a moment, and then flashed two fingers at Zoe. She waited until she'd moved away to the far corner of the room before replying. "Could have been worse."
"We could be dead?"
"There's worse than dead."
The other woman nodded, her expression dark. Aeryn suspected she'd seen more than Zoe had, but not worse. But that wasn't a conversation Aeryn ever intended to have.
"What went wrong?" she asked instead, staring up at the point where the wall met the ceiling. If she was right, those were ceiling tiles, and maybe above them were ventilation shafts.
Zoe tapped her on the shoulder, offering her laced fingers. Aeryn nodded in comprehension. Zoe was taller; it made sense for her to do the lifting. A step and a heave, and Aeryn was prodding at the top of the wall with the small blade from her boot. She'd learned a lot since the days she'd been caught sneaking a dinner knife up her sleeve.
"Don't know," said Zoe, her voice strained as she braced her back against the wall. "Something blew up over by the labs. Figure it was Jayne."
"Think they got away?" Aeryn grunted as she dug the tip of the knife in and then levered it sideways. Captain Reynolds' mysterious and eccentric client had never named the object of the job, merely provided its code name and enough cash to get them outfitted in Hector City. But getting into the secret facility, locating the object, and getting away again--that had all been Reynolds' plan. Aeryn suspected that her agreement to the arrangements was clear proof she'd spent far too much time with humans. They were all crazy, and they were making her crazy too.
Zoe eased them one step to the left, giving Aeryn a better angle. "Hear that?" Zoe cocked her head; the sound of footsteps pounding down the hallway came faintly through the door. "Wouldn't still be running around, otherwise."
It made sense. "You don't think," said Aeryn, forcing the knife close to the point where its tensile strength would give, if it were Peacekeeper manufacture, "we should wait--"
"Hell no." Aeryn swayed as Zoe stiffened in outrage. " 'sides, Captain's rescues can be a mite chancy. And Jayne, well."
Aeryn grinned through the sweat pouring down her face: the Alliance didn't waste air conditioning on storage units, not even secret Alliance labs conducting nefarious--one assumed--research. Jayne had needed rescuing himself on the last job but one, and he was still on kitchen cleanup duty to make up for the damage the mule had taken as a result. The chore would otherwise have been cooking, but Reynolds had long since learned the folly of letting Jayne near the food in any capacity other than that of a consumer.
Kaylee's prize story about that debacle, which had paid for drinks on three planets, involved Jayne, a slab of protein, and a sack of walnuts, and took nearly an hour to tell. To be fair, the mercenary was useful in a fight, but his strategic planning was usually limited to screaming and leaping. Aeryn far preferred working with Zoe, who at the very least could be trusted to watch her back--and not for the view of Aeryn's eema in her worn Peacekeeper leathers.
As the ceiling panel finally gave, there was a rattle of gunfire in the distance. Aeryn grunted in satisfaction and dropped lightly to the floor, steadying herself with one hand on Zoe's shoulder. "You think--?"
"That'll be the Captain," said Zoe with certainty. "But I don't think--"
"--we should wait, no," finished Aeryn.
*
Gypsy Turn
In which we learn how Aeryn Sun found a new employer.
For the first time ever, it wasn't a shabby dark room behind a bar, or a booth in a greasy eatery. These people took their meetings in the sunlight, on the porch of a hostel at the edge of the spaceport. Aeryn shifted her weight, leaning against the bronze pillar, eyes flickering across the faces surrounding her.
Most of the men sat on the edges of the worn wooden benches at this end of the porch, hands plucking at raveling edges of their coats. Aeryn knew what those brown coats meant, here at the edge of the sector where the vegetation was thin and the buildings lopsided. The man next to her fondled a long knife, the hilt wrapped with leather that might once have been green but was now stained with more than sweat. When she glanced at his face, his eyes met hers, white-circled and wild.
This is not a soldier, she thought, as she looked away, keeping her face calm, non-responsive. These men fought and died in their war, but they had none of the cool professionalism she was trained in. She felt too much anger around her, too much despair; it made her pity them--although she was in no way better off than they were. The Prowler on the smallest berth in the spaceport would not lift again, if she could not earn the cash to fuel it.
This was the third time she had had to do this since she found herself here, in this cramped backwater where none of the ships used the fuel she needed and the guns all fired metal pellets.
She glanced to her left, at the other end of the porch, where two men and a woman were standing. The men leaned against the porch railings, their arms crossed as they watched a young man in a patched green coat stumble off the porch, his shoulders slumping. The woman didn't lean: she stood upright with her back to the outside wall of the hostel, eyes scanning the little crowd of applicants waiting for their interviews, the dusty street, the low hedge across the way. Her hand was never far from the gun on her hip.
"Next!" called one of the men, and Aeryn straightened, strode the length of the porch before any of the others waiting got up. The bearded man--no soldier either, she suspected--nodded at the chair. She didn't sit. The other man--also dark-haired, but with a more angular face, and sharper eyes--raised an eyebrow.
"My name is Aeryn Sun," she said, not waiting for any questions. Nor worried about giving her name; these people had no idea what a Peacekeeper was. "I can shoot, fly, and fight hand-to-hand." The word she'd heard was that they needed a soldier. Bodyguard, she thought. Or maybe a job: these people weren't wealthy enough to hire protection. The bearded man had a hole in the knee of his pants.
"Huh," said the clean-shaven man, and cocked his head at the dark-skinned woman enquiringly.
"Easy enough to find out," she said.
"Aw, c'mon, Mal!" protested the bearded man. "Gotta be kidding!"
"Why?" asked the woman, with an edge in her voice. "Because a woman can't do the job?"
"Gorram it, Zoe, I know that," he grumbled. "I saw River. But ain't we got enough women on board already? It's like we're running a whorehouse without none of the ad-van-tages."
"Jayne." The other man's voice held a snap of command, and Jayne subsided. "I ain't got a problem with women on my boat," he continued, addressing Aeryn directly. "Long's you obey orders and don't cause no trouble. But we can't take you just on your say-so; mind giving us a demonstration?"
Simple competence wasn't enough here: Aeryn needed this job. She met his eyes and nodded once. "Just show me what you want me to shoot."
From the corner of her eye, she saw the woman Zoe smile.
*
Greet Your Neighbor
In which Aeryn meets her crewmates and Jayne is embarrassed.
"Veggies!" The young mechanic's face brightened as the doctor--"Simon," Captain Reynolds had called him--served from the large bowl in the center of the table. "You treat us so well, Cap'n."
Reynolds shrugged and lifted a mouthful of stir-fried greens, his hands confident on the chopsticks. "We got a good profit on the job, enough to lay in some stores. Be good to eat something other than vat protein for a bit."
Aeryn picked up her own chopsticks, trying to show a level of comfort she didn't yet possess. She was so far from the Uncharted Territories that none of these people could ever have heard of Peacekeepers, Scarrans, or the wreckage of the great war. But the unusual is a target, always, and this place had its own political currents, as dangerous as the tides that had caught up Moya so disastrously. Unique is always valuable. She had to blend in, as much as she could.
The greens were good, salty and sharp with flavor; the bland manufactured protein had been mixed in with crunchy orange roots and served over a soft white grain.
This was a tight crew: they moved around one another smoothly, interpreting half-finished sentences and indistinct hand-motions as the food and condiments were passed around the table. Aeryn could tell they were not entirely comfortable with her, however; there were gaps in the conversation, ellipses where topics were dropped, individuals not named. She didn't pay much attention to the subjects of the conversation, mostly gossip about people she didn't know and places she had never been--Ariel, Badger, Miranda--but as she ate slowly, savoring it, she watched and listened carefully.
She'd learned a bit about Serenity when she went back to the port to gather her gear and arrange storage for the Prowler. Reynolds had a reputation as a good man in a spot, but you didn't want to cross him. "And that mate of his, best to stay out of range," had added the cud-chewing station-master, leaning across the high counter.
"Jayne?" Aeryn had assigned him mentally to the category of "stupid but competent"; she was surprised to hear he had much of a reputation.
"Hell, no," replied the station-master, with a jovial guffaw, and then his expression soured. "It's that Zoe Washburn--she'll cut yer throat soon as look at ya."
Aeryn had nodded thoughtfully and gone away to make the storage arrangements for the Prowler, arriving at Serenity just in time for liftoff. Zoe had given her a quick tour of her quarters and then led her to dinner, where introductions were haphazard and quick.
"So what's your job gonna be?"
Aeryn blinked in mild surprise, swallowing a mouthful of greens. The mechanic--Kaylee, she remembered--looked at her brightly, eyes full of curiosity--and just a little suspicion. Aeryn glanced at Reynolds; he gave her no guidance but met her eyes blandly. "Whatever the Captain tells me it is," Aeryn answered with some caution. She wasn't sure herself what the job entailed, nor how much the civilians on the crew knew.
"Cause everyone always does what Mal says," said Jayne, and barked a laugh that sprayed masticated orange debris across the table.
"That's right," said Reynolds genially, while Simon wiped his face with a faded cloth napkin. "And I say, don't talk with your mouth full, Jayne."
"Better yet," added Zoe from the other end of the table, "don't talk at all."
"Sun will be on the bridge soon's I'm satisfied she knows what she's doing," continued Reynolds. "And she'll be backup when we need it."
"Backup? Like Jayne?" asked Simon, his voice level but his eyebrows saying, A little thing like her? There were women soldiers here, Aeryn had seen them, but they were less common than in the Uncharted Territories, and most of them were Zoe's size, or taller. These humans couldn't see how different she really was, how much stronger and faster; it was something Crichton had taken a long time to adjust to.
Zoe smiled, her eyes glittering. "Much, much better than Jayne."
Jayne muttered something foul under his breath and rubbed his arm, glowering.
"Really," said Simon, his face brightening. "Then I think we may get along just fine--" He hesitated, fumbling for a name.
"Radiant," interjected the dark-haired girl at the end of the table, who until now had hidden behind her hair, eating quietly and quickly. "Radiant Aeryn Sun. Contaminated, contaminating. But you're clean now, you broke out of the box."
Aeryn blinked and looked around cautiously. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to River's ramblings, although Zoe and Simon exchanged a careful glance, and Reynolds nodded once, as if to himself. "Aeryn Sun is my name," Aeryn confirmed. "Aeryn will do."
Kaylee smiled; she at least had no hesitation. "Aeryn, it's a pretty name. Welcome to Serenity!"
*
Turn Alone
In which two women come to an understanding.
"That isn't your weapon." The voice was no surprise; Aeryn knew the steps of every one of her shipmates, and knew that Zoe had been watching her for the past three minutes. From the sound, she could tell Zoe was standing in the doorway at the top of the strangely-angled steps into the dining area. What she said was unexpected, though.
"I've had this weapon for months," Aeryn replied, frowning as she pushed the brush down the bore of the pistol. Her pulse pistol never needed this much maintenance, although pulse rifles were legendarily tricky and needed regular care.
Zoe's steps were even as she walked into the kitchen and took down a mug from one of the cabinets. "You know what I mean," she replied, pulling a tin of tea out of the bin and dropping a packet into her mug. "You know weapons--someone trained you good somewhere--but not these. Recoil makes you jumpy."
Aeryn grimaced in acknowledgement of the point. "Using projectile weapons on a spaceship is stupid," she muttered, and Zoe barked a singular, shocked laugh.
"Where you from?" Zoe finally asked, holding the tea mug between her hands. Aeryn read it as a signal: my hands are full; I will not draw a weapon on you. Of all of them, Zoe was the fastest; she might even reach her gun before Aeryn touched her.
The grease from the cleaning kit was all over Aeryn's hands; she frowned and wiped them on a rag, a piece of multi-colored cloth Aeryn had found stuffed in a box in the guest quarters. She was not fond of maintenance work; she'd been trained to think of it as tech work, and while she'd let go of that arrogance, she still found it boring. She would rather be using the primitive workout room in the cargo hold. But she was here now, and these were the weapons she must use; she had to treat them properly or they would fail her in the test.
"Far from here," she finally said with a small shrug. "Very far."
A faint line formed between Zoe's eyebrows. "You don't sound right to be from the Core, and I know you're not from Whitefall..." Or any of the other outer planets, was the implied addendum.
Aeryn shook her head. She was tired of hiding; she had never been good at it. The gun was still disassembled, but she had no desire to discover what would happen if she fired it inside Serenity anyway; they were three days out from Maribel even at top speed.
"There ain't nothing but the Core and the outer planets," Zoe continued.
Shrugging again, Aeryn merely met Zoe's eyes for a long moment. As Zoe's eyes widened, Aeryn looked away, back at her greasy hands. "River knows," she admitted. "More than she has said, anyway."
"River's touched." Zoe's response was automatic; Aeryn could hear Reynolds' voice in that flat tone.
"But not always wrong."
There was a soft clink as Zoe put the mug down on the counter. "No," she finally replied. "Not always wrong."
*
Balance
In which we skip forward in time and begin to discover why Zoe and Aeryn were in a cell in the first section.
Aeryn came off duty as the sun was rising, which here meant little more than a brightening in the dull green sky, which was kept alight by the glow from the cities that blanketed the planet. She barely noticed the constant overcast now, after five weeks on Hector Plateau and another three weeks before that huddled in dark rooms at the bottom of the city, or pacing out the perimeter of the hiring sector, side by side with Zoe. It had been lightless there, and on Serenity for the weeks before then; she had lost count of the days since she saw the sun.
Not a sun, here in this cul-de-sac system with so many planets forced into the same mold, spinning like children's toys about the one nameless star. The sun, if not the one under whose light these people had grown their great civilizations.
She wondered what Crichton would think, if he were here, and then shook off the thought irritably. Memories begat memories, and dwelling on them led to long arns stupefied with drink, counting over her losses. It was easier to bury them.
The quarters she shared with Zoe were tucked into the outside wall of the complex, side-by-side with the rest of the security staff. "Security," she thought, and nearly sneered. They were guards, chosen for their compliance and their ignorance; the fact that neither Aeryn nor Zoe existed in their Cortex was an advantage to their employers. No one knew them, no one knew to track them here: they were blank puzzle pieces, easily swapped out and replaced.
Except Aeryn and Zoe didn't mean to be here long enough to be replaced. Reynolds' plan had called for Aeryn and Zoe to gain positions inside the complex, and learn enough to find out where the "doodad," as Reynolds called it, was kept. Some technological marvel, they were told, which would unsettle the balance of power and whose loss would set back Alliance plans for the outer planets for a generation. Aeryn had been skeptical, but the prospect of embarrassment for the Alliance, and a sizeable amount of cash, was enough to convince Reynolds. Once they'd found the object, Aeryn and Zoe would sneak Reynolds and Jayne into the complex, cover their exit, and leave themselves two weeks later at the end of their rotation. It was, Aeryn thought, not an entirely stupid plan; but it was hardly perfect.
Zoe was sitting in the chair by the door, cleaning her weapon, when Aeryn strode across the open courtyard, boots tapping on the cold tile pavement. Zoe was in civilian clothes: dark trousers, leather vest, the necklace she never took off. Aeryn had seen her touch it, once, when they were on the bridge of Serenity--mad River's flying fingers never disturbing the brightly-colored toys affixed to the console--and then force her hand to her side, wrapping her fingers about her gunbelt. Aeryn never asked her about it, and Zoe never said.
"You send it?" Aeryn asked, as she paused in the doorway. By the original schedule, tomorrow was the day.
Zoe nodded. "Guess we'll see," she said after a moment, looking curious rather than worried.
"Guess we will," agreed Aeryn, and went inside.
*
California Twirl
In which we realize that Mal Reynolds' plans are occasionally flawed.
The plan had gone wrong. Oh, Zoe and Aeryn had gotten Reynolds and Jayne into the facility easily enough, escorting them through the holes in the security net and setting them loose in the lab complex before reporting for their own scheduled shift in the administration floors.
But this was Reynolds and Jayne, after all. So Aeryn was unsurprised when the whole thing fell apart. When the transmitter tucked behind Aeryn's ear crackled and Reynolds' voice hissed, "Gorram it, they made us," Aeryn was six steps from her post and running down the hallway within seconds.
"Which way?" she snapped, as Zoe came up behind her, lips compressed under the opaque visor of her helmet.
"Left," said Zoe after a moment. "They should be in the labs by now."
"Perfect," said Aeryn. The labs were a warren; they'd both gotten lost in there at least once in the first week of their posting.
"Well, that's the Captain," said Zoe. "And Jayne," she added after a thoughtful moment.
Aeryn cast an anxious glance behind them. Guard stations were monitored at all hours, and it would not be long before their absence was noticed. It was pure luck that they were on the same rotation today, and the doorway they should have been guarding, closest to the central servers, was conspicuous without them.
Too conspicuous, it turned out; they were taken before they got anywhere near the labs.
*
Do-Si-Do
In which there is an escape and a revelation.
Escaping the storage closet was easy once they'd gotten up into the ceilings, and they knew their way around well enough to avoid being spotted as they worked their way towards the labs. After some thought, they decided to work their way down three levels to the maintenance floors, where they might be able to intercept Reynolds and Jayne being taken to the landing pad for transport to Hector City. Aeryn and Zoe had themselves proven this complex had no adequate facilities to hold criminals of any type.
This plan, at least, worked. It was easy enough to get the drop on the guards, who clearly hadn't been informed that Amara and Nita, their two female recruits, were dangerous criminals. Within very little time the guards--even Carbourne, who'd tendered soft feelings for Zoe--were bound, gagged, and bundled themselves into a rather more crowded closet than the one Zoe and Aeryn had just escaped from. Jayne slammed the door closed on them with a vindictive growl: the little finger of his left hand stuck out at a painful angle.
"Well," said Reynolds, looking ruffled with a bruise already swelling on his cheekbone, "bout time you two showed up. Stop for tea, maybe?" Aeryn bit her lip to keep from snapping back, and instead just exchanged a look with Zoe. She liked Reynolds well enough: he was a thief and sometimes a liar, but he could shoot straight and he stood by his people. His sense of humor, however, was another matter.
"Mal!" interrupted Jayne, which was probably just as well, Aeryn decided. "We left it--"
Reynolds' eyes widened. "Kwong-juh duh. Go, go!"
"The hell?" asked Zoe as Jayne disappeared around the corner, still fumbling his pistol back into its holster. "Cap'n?"
"When we figured we were bagged, Jayne stashed it," said Reynolds, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. Aeryn nodded, relieved that Reynolds and Jayne had actually obtained the object of all their machinations. It would have been embarrassing to go to all this trouble and then lose the item in the escape.
The alarms were still going and in fact were getting louder. Aeryn looked around: they were close to the landing pads, where the transports were stored. The closest guard post was two corridors away and up a ramp, and they'd been relatively quiet--that still didn't mean it was smart to stand around the hallway. And soon someone in security would realize that none of Reynolds' guards had reported in recently. "Where's the shuttle?" she asked Reynolds.
There was a muffled thump from the storage closet; Zoe frowned.
"Under the recycling plant," Reynolds said with a grin. Aeryn raised a disbelieving eyebrow; it was the most disgusting place on the plateau, as the secret facility had no connections to Hector's urban network, and the Alliance scientists were too interested in their experiments to maintain their utilities efficiently. As a result, the waste matter from the hundred or so residents of the plateau was roughly sorted and the worst of it merely dumped.
"At least no one's going to find it accidentally." Zoe found the one bright spot.
Jayne came tearing back around the corner, clutching a bundle under his arm. "Shit, Mal! Can't believe we almost forgot it!"
"I didn't almost forget it, you almost forgot it. Completely different. C'mon, let's go before they figure out it's gone. And can y'all be quiet? We're fugitives here!"
Which was so entirely unfair Aeryn could only grind her teeth, so she dropped back to the rear, hand uneasy on her pistol. Whatever uproar Reynolds and Jayne had created in the lab complex was apparently ongoing, and the four of them managed to slip out one of the basement-level doors onto the bare and rocky hillside without being spotted.
They moved across the slope at a trot, scrambling over great boulders and slipping on loose shale. So it wasn't until the shuttle was in sight that Aeryn realized the bundle under Jayne's arm was twitching. "Jayne," she said, grabbing his arm.
"Hey! Leggo!" He swung around to face her, but stumbled, and the bundle slipped; Aeryn caught it just before it hit the ground. It was heavier than she expected, and warmer. And moving. She stood up, stepping away from Jayne, and cautiously opened the folds of green lab coat.
"Frell!" She nearly dropped it. It was a child.
Reynolds and Zoe had paused and turned back, and now the four of them stood on the hillside, staring blankly at the wriggling form in Aeryn's hands. It was still an infant, waving its hands and screwing up its face in fierce concentration. Yellow eyes glared up at Aeryn, tracking the hand she moved across its vision. The hair on its head was an upright brush of bright copper, soft under her palm.
Zoe turned on Jayne, her face furious. "You stole a baby?"
"Hell, it's not like we went out of our way! It was right there!" retorted Jayne.
"It was in a box," said Reynolds, his voice tight with rage. "In the lab. Like a gorram lizard in a, a terrarium."
"They had it hooked up to needles and wires and go-se," added Jayne. "Dogs deserve better'n that."
The child burbled something and flailed a small hand in the air. Almost reluctantly, Zoe stroked her finger along the back of the baby's forearm. In response, it grabbed her finger in its tiny fist and grinned. Aeryn didn't look at Zoe's face, as Zoe swung the baby's hand back and forth, humming softly. The baby smelled like babies usually did, but with an added hint of vinegar. It seemed healthy, despite living in a box. Aeryn wondered what Simon would say after he'd had a chance to examine it.
"In a box," said Zoe flatly, watching the baby chew on its fist, drooling all over her fingers.
"A little one," confirmed Jayne. "It was nekkid, and dirty, too. We cleaned it up some."
Aeryn grinned at the image, and caught a smile crossing Zoe's face as well. She let the smile fall away as she looked down at the baby and traced a careful finger along the mottled skin at its hairline. If it had indeed been in a box, there was no way they'd be returning it to its ... keepers. Even if they could do so safely.
The shuttle was in the air, the ventilation system working overtime to clear the air of the stench of the recycling ponds, and Aeryn had the baby tucked securely in her arms against the shuttle's acceleration, before she spoke.
"You do realize this baby is not human."
*
Promenade
In which decisions are made and we say farewell.
"But we could take care of it! Simon's a doctor and we all could--"
Reynolds cut Kaylee off, his voice sharp but kind. "Wouldn't be fair. Or safe. And what if someone comes looking for her?"
Simon nodded from where he crouched next to the hastily-assembled cradle--Jayne had surprising talents. "And if she gets sick I wouldn't know how to treat her, Kaylee. She needs to be with her own people."
"And these Kalich, you know how to find them?" Zoe leaned against the wall next to the door, her eyes sharp but not skeptical.
Aeryn nodded. "Kalish, yes." What she told, and who she told, well, that was still under consideration. They were accepting the baby's nature better than she'd thought. She hadn't yet said anything about herself; but then she'd only seen Serenity as a stopping-place, if a welcoming one. They didn't need to know all her history.
"It will take some time, but I can find them." With her take from the job--Reynolds and Jayne had surprisingly managed to keep not only the child, but the technological trinket the client had hired them to find--she would have enough cash to fuel the Prowler, sitting all these months in that yard on Whitefall. She could only hope it was enough to get her back. Not home; home was not to be found, although it was possible she could find Moya. Her life was sometimes unexpected that way.
River hung over the cradle, crooning. As Aeryn watched, River raised her head with a brilliant smile. "She's going to win a war! Well, part of one, anyway..." Her eyebrows dropped in confusion for a moment, and then the knowledge, whatever it was, seemed to be gone. Aeryn tucked that away for future consideration. Zhaan would have known what it meant, perhaps.
"Right." Reynolds slapped a hand on the table and stood. "That's settled, then. Occurs to me we'll need to get a course plotted before we get off this mudball. Aer-- huh. River." Her bright face turned away from the baby, still smiling. "You want to navigate, now's your chance, while Sun's still here to fix your mistakes."
River straightened with that memorable grace. "Oh, there won't be any mistakes. I can read the stars."
The others filed out in Reynolds' wake, Kaylee carrying the child, who gurgled happily as she was bounced up the stairs. Aeryn stirred restlessly; if she were leaving, there were tasks that had to be done, her quarters to pack up. Supplies to lay in, since she would be caring for a child for weeks on end. It had been a long time, but she suspected babies had not changed much. It was a good-natured child, at least so far: Aeryn hoped the baby would continue to be so cheerful strapped into the rear seat of an aging Prowler.
She went into the kitchen and took down a mug.
"One for me too?" Zoe hadn't left after all.
Aeryn nodded and opened the canister with the smoky dark tea that Zoe preferred. The two mugs she placed on the counter had hand-painted designs on them, and skillful calligraphy she could not decipher, but beautiful for all that. She would miss this, she realized; she had found more peaceful moments on Serenity than she ever had on Moya. Her life on Moya had been terrifying and wonderful, full of love and rage, and in the end desperation; but it had never been serene.
She leaned back against the counter as she waited for the water to boil. She was not sure what she felt about this sudden change in her fortunes--everything was upended again, game pieces scattered across the floor. But the child needed her, and there was no one else. "Will you tell them?" she asked. "About me?"
A smile curled Zoe's lips: not one of the grim ones she'd sported since Aeryn had met her. "You think they don't know? They're not stupid."
"Not even Jayne?" But that was reflex.
"Ignorant ain't the same as dumb."
When the water boiled, Aeryn poured the tea and carried it over to the table, where Zoe shoved a chair with her foot to make room. "Thanks."
"There's a war on, there," Aeryn said after a moment, while she waited for the tea to cool. "Her people--" she pointed her chin towards the empty cradle, "--are in the middle of it."
A dark eyebrow lifted over the pale blue of the china mug. "And you think it's a good idea to take her back?"
The Peacekeeper-Scarran-Nebari war was well into its fourth decade, with no one evidently the winner. But while so many populations had died outright or been forced into exile, the Kalish held on, clinging to the autonomy they'd won under Stahleek. It was the one refuge Aeryn could think of, and the one place she could take the child. "There's no other option."
Whatever the Alliance had done, whoever it had been dealing with, to get its hands on a Kalish child so far from their territory; and what it had meant to do with that child--well, those weren't questions Aeryn had any answers for. Serenity's crew would be better off if she took the child away as soon as possible. But they also deserved a warning: if what she feared was true, trouble could be coming their way sooner than any of them suspected.
Aeryn traced the floral design winding its way around the lip of her teacup, and raised her eyes to meet Zoe's. "You'll have to go get the Captain. I've got a long story you all need to hear."
END
Notes: Written for the Thelma and Louise Gal-Pal Ficathon of July 2006. Many thanks to Hossgal and Thea for organizing this ficathon, to Katie and Vee for allowing me to bend their ears about this story, and Minnow for doing a speedy and helpful beta. Y'all rock.