feldman

Woohoo! Now it needs beta, but it's finished! Before the polls close!

I left a message on Mom's voicemail, so she's probably in a spot where she can't turn the phone on. I only have to be here for half an hour more.

Aeryn comes to him, but she doesn't let him go. Instead, she feeds him where he lies, dipping her hand into a bowl of food and carefully dropping mouthfuls onto his tongue. It's some kind of pudding, salty sweet like butterscotch. He eats from her hand until the hunger abates. "Aeryn."

She sets the bowl down behind her, not meeting his eyes. She sucks the pudding from her fingers before she answers. "You attacked me. Do you remember?"

He shakes his head. The more he thinks on it, the more he realizes that something is very wrong, and that it's been going wrong for days. "What's happening to me?"

"We don't know yet. Jool's working on it." She finally meets his eyes. "How do you feel?"

John notices the bandage on her head and the bruise on her cheek. He can feel the distance between them in the way she holds her body. He went after her, and this time he doesn't have the chip to blame it on. "Like I might belong here."

"How's your head?"

"Fine."

She gives him a strange look, then scratches her shoulder.

John can feel his stomach tightening around a growl, and he seizes the opportunity to change the subject. "Is there any more of that pudding left? I'm still pretty hungry."

She feeds him with careful scoops and dollops, and even though she keeps her fingers out of his reach, her tenderness feels like a tentative forgiveness. The food is strange, but soothing, and she seems to like the taste of it as well, occasionally licking her fingers in between his own bites. There's a fleck of pudding on his chin that he can't reach with his tongue, and he's wondering how he can broach the subject with Aeryn when his twin strolls in.

Silent Bob eyes the bowl in Aeryn's hands. "How's he doing?"

"Much better. What does Jool say?"

Silent Bob clenches his jaw and avoids looking down. John wants to grab him by the throat and pull him down to his level. Aeryn's apparently just as sick of the melodrama, setting the empty bowl down and prodding him. "Well?"

"He's dead, Aeryn."

She swallows so loudly it seems to echo in the room. She grabs the edge of the gurney near his arm. "What do you mean dead?"

"I mean three days dead. Give or take. Something's animating him, but he's not really alive. Cellular activity is barely detectable, and it seems to originate from some kind of foreign body inside the cell. Jool says it isn't an intellant virus, more like a kind of stimulating fungus."

John shudders underneath the restraints, shaking off the idea. "I can hear you, jackass."

"For now." Silent Bob finally meets his eyes. "But what happens when we run out of zombie snacks?"

"What the hell is your deal, man? Zombie snacks? What do you take me for?"

"That goo is the closest thing to brains we could make, and it's hitting you like fresh batteries, man. You couldn't talk before we started feeding you the vegan equivalent of brains."

John feels everything press in on him all at once. He attacked Aeryn and doesn't remember. He's felt odd ever since coming back from the decaying leviathan. He has a faint recollection of sucking sounds and screaming, leaching into his consciousness as his stomach grumbles around his meal. He looks up at Aeryn. "But you were eating it too, was that just to make me feel better?"

Silent Bob stares at her.

She shrugs. "I was hungry."

Silent Bob's voice is quiet and stale. "Let me see where he bit you."

She sighs but humors him, pulling the edge of her bandage up to let him peek at her temple.

John flinches, realizing that she didn't just scrape her head on a table edge.

Silent Bob is slightly mollified. "That the only spot?"

Aeryn blushes, and John can smell the warm smoky scent of her blood right through the skin. He's horrified at himself, but he can't look away. He has to know what he's done. She unzips her shirt partway and exposes her shoulder.

John remembers doing that, but it was a small thing, he didn't think he'd come close to breaking skin. But he must have.

Silent Bob makes a low wheedling noise in his throat. "It's infected."

~*~

Aeryn stands in front of the cooker in the galley, and rotates the metal bar she's placed against the heating element.

"Listen, it's not really necrophilia, is it? I mean, he's technically dead and all, but he's walking and talking, it's not like you really were with a dead guy, you know?"

"Shut up, Chiana."

Chiana persists, coming around the other side of Aeryn. "I'm just saying, it’s not like you violated a corpse or something, you just didn't know he wasn't really alive. You can't blame yourself for that, I mean--"

"Shut up."

"Especially if it was kind of rough, you know? No way to tell he was dead, so it's not really necrophilia, just--"

Aeryn pulls the metal bar from the cooker and lets the red tip hang in the air between them.

"...just really icky."

Aeryn hands Chiana the bar, the far end wrapped in thermal cloth for a grip. "When I tell you, lay it on the wound for two microts."

"This is crazy."

"No." Aeryn unzips her shirt and tosses it on the counter. "Jool said this is the only thing that will kill the infection once it's set in."

She pulls her ponytail over her other shoulder and grips the counter hard, trying not to think of what's happening in the medical bay, trying not to cry.

~*~

D'Argo stands next to John in the doorway of the med bay, far enough away that they can speak above the bellowing. "John?"

"Yeah?"

D'Argo watches the dead man struggle against his restraints, the coherency that his meal brought him for the last few arns fading fast. "I'm going to remind you of something wise you said to me very recently."

John's expression is bleak, his grip on the Qualta blade stiff and tight. "What's that?"

"He's dead. What does he care?"

"I care, man." He shifts. "When he could speak, I think he cared, too."

"If we feed him again, he'll speak again for a few arns." D'Argo shakes his head. "But he will continue to rot."

"It's better like this. Quick." John rolls his shoulders. "You'll be here to help me burn the pieces?"

"I can see to everything, if you don't want--"

"No, man." John paces toward the gurney, hefting the blade in his hands. "I owe him this."

~*~

Silent Bob stands over John for a long time, one hand resting on the restraint plate over his chest. He waits until John becomes as quiet as he is. In the hush, John can hear the beating of Silent Bob's heart. He can feel the warmth conducting through the metal into the cold of his own chest. He tries to speak, but his jaw is loose and his tongue thick. Instead, he nods, and Silent Bob nods back.