Drabble for Kerne

kernezelda stumped me yesterday with a line from one of my own drabbles. She requested a drabble that answered this question: what if John had been picked up by Aeryn instead of Elack?


Thaw

He's cold to the touch and that makes her angry.

It's the second time she's hauled him out of freefall in space, a speck among debris, but this time there is no burning moon to offer even the semblance of heat, only a newly dead Leviathan that still retains some warmth.

She had ignored the flash at the edge of her sensor range for arns before turning back. If he'd gone back home, that would be the end. It would be clean. It would be irretrievable. In the end she had to know.

It's the second time she's wrestled his dead weight out of his module, but this time his smell is sweet and cold, not iron sharp with bile and blood. His spark flutters and dies as she pulls supplies from her Prowler, cold blood returning to his heart and shocking it still.

She had decided not to board Moya, choosing to pause just inside transmission range only long enough to ask. All she picked up was a small reflective shadow bouncing back an echo of her signal.

It's the second time she's laced her fingers into a ram and battered at his heart, tipped back his head to breathe into his mouth in a parody of a kiss, but this time her heart stops when his begins to pulse.

She and her ship are the best sources of heat to keep him alive, the only things that aren't cooling down to absolute zero. She pulls him into the cockpit and wraps a thermal tarp around them both, forcing herself to hold onto the bitter flesh of his body until he's warm enough to shiver.