Pretty in Punk 5/6 by Thea and feldman
Jun. 24th, 2005 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feldmanPretty in Punk
by Thea and feldman
Part 1/6 located here
Part 2/6 located here
Part 3/6 located here
Part 4/6 located here
Pretty in Punk
by Thea and feldman
Their platoon instructor had finally pulled D'Argo from the girl, who landed a last loving boot to his crotch even as she was being cropped by her superior. It was a glancing blow, not as bad as a crush, but between that and the blood streaming from his nose the nausea nearly brought up what little dinner he'd eaten.
Her companions were eerily silent as they were all marched to the security office and sorted into cells. The others hadn't intervened in their fight, unless D'Argo didn't feel it. Maybe he hadn't. More likely they just wanted to watch, but their platoon instructor seemed to think that was almost as bad.
By the time he's shoved down onto the bench next to the girl he'd fought with, he's back in his right mind and starting to get scared. Luckily, he can read Peacekeeper expressions well enough to know she's just as terrified as he is under her scowl.
Good.
The cell is small, one slim hard bench along the wall and a grate for a floor. They stake out their corners and D'Argo tries not to choke on the blood welling from his nose.
It's a lot of blood, but she keeps staring at him so he stays cool, daubs his face with his shirt, pinches his nose and tilts his head back.
"You won't stop it that way."
He hawks and spits onto the grated floor.
"Ignore me if you want. You're the one gagging."
D' swallows against the queasiness, the iron taste in his mouth and throat made worse by the warmth of the room.
She leans into her corner, one boot on the bench, scraped fingers playing with the laces of her boot. They're probably in here together to learn how to play nice; maybe she's hoping to commute a few friendly fire demerits by offering aid. Maybe she wants to see him puke blood. Surveillance is assumed on a carrier, and she looks smart enough to realize that.
"If you were a real Sebacean you'd be better off leaning forward."
He shifts on the bench, eyeing her warily over the hand pinching his nostrils shut. Tilting forward. The blood drips to a stop as she watches, the only damage visible on her part being the tangles pulled out of her queue.
He remembers slamming her head into the deck over and over, but it's like someone else was doing it, like he was only watching. He notices she's resting her temple against the cool wall, pressing it there. Maybe she's injured as well. He hawks the last of it out of his throat, gelid before it slips through the grate. She's pale and beginning to sweat, her glare melting.
They're being punished with heat.
***
"And I used to think my dad was a hard-ass."
When they spend time on a xeno-carrier they try hard to work within the social norms, not to antagonize or flaunt their differences, to fit in as seamlessly as possible. The allied agreements are tenuous, an experiment on the part of the Peacekeepers, and restraint and professionalism while aboard are a small price to pay to foster goodwill among the grots and encourage the reforms by High Command. But it's a strain on John and D'Argo both, and now that one has cracked the other seems eager to follow suit.
Aeryn shoots him a look, as if asking him if he'd like to join his son in detention. "He should receive the same punishment as the cadet he was fighting with."
John leans over the corner of the sergeant's desk, whispering hard as the man pretends not to listen. "We both know who started it."
"Cadet Rentai," she reads off the incident report, avoiding the frank look of entreaty in her husband's eyes. "But on the vidlog D'Argo threw the first punch."
"He was surrounded and provoked, Aeryn. And after what happened this afternoon at Helian he does *not* need to spend a night in detention to top it all off."
"That's not the point." She keys in her acceptance code and presses her handprint on the flimsy, then slides it over to him. It's an exercise in diplomacy, granting the PKs provisional permission to handle the situation their way instead of throwing their weight around, demanding special treatment. Everything's a dance when they're working aboard a carrier, old grudges on each side ignored in favor of new goals, a 'mecksikan standoff' of discretion and negotiation, and Aeryn's position as a consultant to the Council, apart from the hierarchy yet sanctioned by it as an operative setting up colony militias, is both a passport and a burden.
Playing nice can be very difficult.
John's soft lips set hard as he looks at the vidlog display paused at the end of the fight, the cadet's vitriol seeping into the room and settling into the old stains of fear and distrust. "I want real-time access to the cell surveillance."
Aeryn turns to the sergeant, who takes the flimsy and adds a block of text. He programs a datapad and hands it to John, and it shows the same graphic as the monitor panel on the sergeant's desk.
John enters his code and sets his hand on the incident report, authorizing standard cadet penalty for friendly fire; no food or water for nine arns, class two heat punishment.
Locking the door to their quarters is a physical relief, and for a long moment Aeryn simply sits on the edge of the bed, wishing they were all back on Moya where they can breathe and be normal.
"Don't look so stunned, it was just a visit to the Principal's office." John tosses his jacket on the chair and sets the datapad display upright on the desk. "Maybe you're right, maybe he should see how the other half lives."
"I don't understand." She's been too soft on him, maybe, too lenient and coddling and now she can see how ill-prepared he is for the world outside of their family. She feels queasy. What if they've failed with him? And what about the girl she'd so blithely decided to keep, what if they ruin her as well? "He knows better than this."
"He's a good kid, usually, but he's still a kid, Aeryn. And I've heard some of the riding he's taken about us, about who he is, a hybrid, a throwback, half primitive and half traitor." John sits next to her on the bed. "Kids are jacked into the ugly undercurrents in any society, they absorb them despite our best intentions, and they can be as unmerciful as adults."
"He can't believe those things."
"No, I don't think he does. That's why he tried to wipe the deck with that cadet's face."
"He knows better!"
"I don't think he was thinking, Aeryn."
How could he be so smart and not think? What was there to think about in a situation like that, when he knows he needs to be on his best behaviour every time he leaves quarters? "He should have--there's no excuse for such childish outbursts--he's nearly an adult."
"Hardly!"
She whips around to stare at him, but he holds his ground with a calm that makes her question--does he still see a child where she sees someone a few cycles away from being responsible for himself?
This isn't the first time they've run into a wall over D'Argo, derailed by an assumption that the other person doesn't share and can barely comprehend. They've deliberately chosen to raise this boy as a civilian, to give him the family life that Aeryn didn't have, that she saw reflected so well in so many of her friends. John's the one who knows how that works, the one who keeps it running day to day.
"He's a kid, Aeryn." He catches her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. "A good kid who's starting to run into adult problems, and he's going to make mistakes as he learns. He's barely a teenager, not an ensign."
"I know that."
He takes a breath. "Think back to Moya, when you had to learn to live outside the system you grew up in here. We're his system, and he's starting to butt heads with the world outside of us."
"Literally."
"On occasion, yes. You heard the things that kid said to him, what she said to your face earlier. You can shake it off and so can I, but I can't blame him for his reaction even if I wished he could have handled it better."
Aeryn stares ahead of her, crossing her arms, refusing to give in to the tears that threaten or the despair that fuels them. "I expected more of him." She's expected more from all of them, maybe more than was possible, maybe peace is simply too hard to maintain for much of a stretch. Her own son threw the first punch.
"Aeryn, look at me." John pulls her arm free again, holding it firmly this time.
She does so, eyes hard even as water spills down from one of them.
"In a way, he was defending you. Not a good way, but that's where it comes from, his loyalty to us."
It's an odd concept, to think of that viciousness in the mess as coming from the same place as her own protectiveness toward him. That he feels love just as fiercely sometimes as she does, that he feels that way toward her, toward this family they're still building.
"He knows he screwed up. He'll take his punishment and he'll learn not to do it again. He's got years to get it right, Aeryn. It takes time. He can't just slot into a system and stay there, he has to find his own way, learn how to discipline himself, channel his drives. You can be a soldier at thirteen, but it takes a few more years to figure out how to be a man."
She brushes her cheek dry, wiping the wetness into the fabric of her uniform shirt and giving the side of her belly a scratch while she's at it.
John adds with a smile, "Or a woman."
She smirks in return, sniffing her nose clear. Caught between a teenager and her own hormones and now she's sniveling like an infant. "You didn't think I was an adult, when you met me?"
"I was talking about the kidlet." He grins. "But I think it's fair to say we were both out of our elements in the beginning, big fish from small ponds finding out we were really small fish in a big pond."
She props her boot on his leg. "You spend too much time in the pool."
"Yeah, well." He pops the fasteners and yanks off her boot, glancing at the surveillance display before chucking footwear to the floor. "Somebody's gotta play good cop to your bad, babe."
She rubs her forehead, not willing to hash this out in excruciating detail all night long. "John, he's the one who turned the argument into a fight."
***
The girl's face is pale, and her hands tremble as she sheds parts of her uniform, working with fierce determination to fold them and set them next to her in an orderly pile. She can barely hold her focus long enough to stick to the task, but he's hardly going to help her.
Sweat slicks his back and face, mingling with the blood and the snot. It's sort of cheerfully disgusting. He shucked his own outer layers as soon as he started to sweat and they lay in a pile, kicked casually to the side. His stomach growls and he wishes briefly that he'd eaten more of his dinner, but then he'd have probably puked it back up anyway, so maybe it was a wash.
He can feel the low thrum of anger at his parents for leaving him in here, at the unfairness of being punished for something that wasn't his fault, but he knows the rules and knows he broke them, and that there could have been worse punishments. His mom had said, succinctly, eyes glittering bright with anger that the Peacekeepers would have been well within their rights to ask the whole family to leave. It wasn't blame exactly, frustration and disappointment maybe, but it doesn't sting any less. He coughs again, spits out more blood and looks back at the girl.
"Why aren't you...?" she can't finish the sentence but the outrage is clear in her thready voice.
He shrugs, wipes sweat off his forehead.
"I'm not pure Sebacean. Heat delirium isn't a risk." He says it with a touch more glee than necessary but if they put his ass in here, they can't possibly expect him to be nice about it.
She grimaces and he presses his advantage.
"I'm gonna be hot and sweaty, but I'm not gonna be laying on the floor puking or shaking."
She hics, presses her body further to the wall.
"Guess being an abomination isn't all bad," he pushes, voice thick with the anger rising back up inside.
She barely manages a glare in return and he feels a thump in his gut, a rush of shame for taunting her. There's nothing he can do to help, they're just going to be waiting out the punishment. He swings his legs up on the bench, shoves his t-shirt under his head and tries to sleep.
***
It's a given that neither of them are going to sleep much tonight, but John's been flying most of the day, and she's the one who gave the final call for the punishment, so she takes the first shift with the surveillance display.
He's angry with her, upset that she's treating D'Argo like a soldier and not like a child, that she's turned her own son over to the PKs, even for a handful of arns, and perhaps that's part of her own wariness, her need to watch and make sure that her son is okay, that he takes his punishment with better grace than the ribbing that put him into the cell.
She's still irritated and anxious, and she knows some of it's from the pregnancy and the lack of sleep lately, but it doesn't make it go away, doesn't make her any less angry with the situations on Keratos and on the carrier.
She's still a bit angry with John, in return. So many small failures leading up to that mislaid mail chip, including the fact he hasn't been keeping up on the laundry. How long did that pair of leathers lay not a motra away from where she sits now, chip in the pocket? She sighs and lets it go, shifting her foot to lay against his warm calf as she listens to him breath with one ear, a speaker bud nestled in her other ear providing a sound feed for the display propped on her knees.
If something happens to her, she needs to know that her son will be able to care for himself, that he'll have the strength of will to press forward, to survive and thrive, to care for his father. The universe rarely follows the rules of fair play, and while she hates to see him in that cell, angry and bitter, locked up with a cadet full of rage and disgust born of the fear of change, Aeryn knows that she's made the right decision.
There are consequences for all actions, even those fueled by the best of motives. And she doesn't count the fight as the best of motives.
D'Argo's angry with her as well, his feelings hurt by what she's certain he sees as taking their side against him. Father and son both deal better with certainties, and it's a strange irony that having the two of them in her life has taught her how much of life exists in the grey, outside of the sharp contrast of black and white, right and wrong.
John sprawls on his stomach, sleeping heavily despite his protests that he'd stay up with her, that she needs the rest more than she does. The girl swims and flips, tiny amphibious feet kicking at the wall of Aeryn's belly and she keeps one hand on the lower curve of her stomach, the other against the datapad propped between her plumped breasts and stomach. John mumbles to himself, an old habit, face burrowing into the pillow and she looks over, touches his shoulder blade, drawing her fingers along the bone to rest on his spine. He's warm, skin smooth against her palm and she's very glad that he's there beside her, angry or not.
She sighs, sliding her foot up and down John's calf, remembering him saying that he still missed his own mother. It had startled her that her son could be so protective of *her*, so vicious against a mere verbal insult, but John knew, had understood immediately, as if it were a given for a boy to react that way. Perhaps it was, in a family. She knows what it would feel like to lose him, a piece of her heart ripped away, a spill of fear in her gut at the thought--that he'd feel the same way about her seems obvious now that John pointed it out. Underneath his embarrassment, underneath the shrug of her being 'slightly cooler' than other parents, she's a part of his heart as well. Even when she's away for weekens, even when he's petulant and pissed, no matter how old he gets.
She watches the surveillance, watches the cadet grow shakier, as afraid of the prospect of delirium as she is of the actuality of its effects. It's hard to take her eyes off the girl, especially when her son has flopped down on the bench, pretending to sleep like he's dead to the world. He's "playing possum", but it's a valiant effort at both staying out of trouble and saying frell you to the girl without antagonizing her openly.
It's near impossible to sleep in the first stages of heat punishment, bodily reactions so foreign and so frightening, chills and shakes and thoughts flitting, fleeting things and despite herself, Aeryn feels a twinge of sympathy for the girl. She remembers similar punishments, food and water withheld, back slick with stripes from the cording, eyes blackened and arm throbbing from being the victor in a fight with a competing squad.
She understands, supports the need for this particular punishment, even if she hates to see it carried out. However, she also understands the need for other forms of discipline. As carefully as she can, she slips off the bed and pads over the comms array, keys in the request to speak with the sergeant.
"They're unharmed, Sun," he says, gruff and annoyed at being bothered.
"I've agreed to my son's punishment," she says, "but I want something in return. We were invited here as guests, with the understanding that we would not be harassed as long as we stuck to protocol."
His reply is a grunt and a reluctant nod. He's a career sergeant, good at his job and likely stuck with it for the duration. She wonders how he came to be posted on a xeno-class carrier, and if he sees it as a demotion or an opportunity.
"I want restitution on our end as well," she says crisply. "D'Argo is enduring your form of punishment, Cadet Rentai will also be subject to our request."
"I hardly think that's--"
"The girl will not be harmed, sub-officer. We have more control over the children in the telacademy than you seem to have over your cadets. High Command is insistent that the Peacekeepers learn to work with the allies." She doesn't add that she has the authority to go over his head if she choose. He already knows this, and she's not looking to get his back up but to secure his cooperation.
He blinks ostentatiously, letting her finish in the time-honored tradition of a sergeant allowing a ranking officer to make an ass of him or herself with all due respect from his or her subordinate.
She shrugs a shoulder, seeks a tone as if they're comrades on guard duty. "Think of it as an opportunity to earn a few easy merits."
The sergeant blinks a few times more before he shakes his head ruefully, letting her know that he doesn't care about dren like that but is still willing to negotiate with her for the hell of it. Maybe he sees his posting as both a demotion *and* an opportunity. "What do you want, Officer Sun?"
She tells him, and he nods with a grim understanding.
***
The thirst is what gets to him as the arns go by. At least he hopes it's been arns.
The girl sprawls on the grate in her skivvies, grey tank top and undershorts revealing a collection of bruises in many colors. She's been in hard training for a while now, it seems, either punishment detail or an accelerated track. She's in a more coherent phase, neither whimpering nor talking to herself. The vomiting seems to have helped her some.
D'Argo doesn't say anything about the lingering smell. They've both had to piss into the waste funnel in the corner by this point, urgency overcoming embarrassment, so at least he's retained more control over himself than she has. He's also worried about her, though he'd never admit it to anyone.
This is what would happen to his mom, if she were in this room with him. There have been planets where he's had to go down with his dad, just the guys, Luxan trading colonies and such, and he knew that high temperatures were bad for full Sebaceans. But he's never seen the effects, never been forced to witness someone breaking down under heat that to him only feels cloying and balmy.
She shifts her position, limbs restless and marked from lying on the metal grate floor, and D'Argo knows by now it's the first sign of the shakes. "What's your name?"
He weighs his answer, pushing down the sympathy he's been indulging in. "Why do you care?"
"I don't. What's your name?"
"D'Argo Suncrichton."
She pulls her arms tight to her body, fighting the tremble in her muscles. "Cadet Padia Rentai--" a shiver breaks before she can list her regiment, and when it passes she opens her mouth and then closes it, train of thought lost.
"You can call me D'Argo."
"You can call me Cadet."
"Great." He wads his jacket back under his head, bracing for another round of yammering and retching from her side of the cell.
"Padia." It's forced out through shivers, as if she found something deep in a pocket and yanked it out. "I mean Padia."
He turns his head, watches her clutch at the grate. "Just remember where the waste funnel's at, okay?"
***
It occurs to him as the night wears on that what he's watching isn't really punishment. He's been punished--been given odious chores or had privileges taken away--but this goes far beyond punishment.
Well, for him, it's punishment. For her, it's akin to torture.
He enjoyed watching her suffer for a while, it soothed his sense of fairness to see her shiver and gag, to see her laid low because of what she'd said. Just 'cause she didn't know what a mother was, didn't mean she could say those things about his. She deserved to see him sail right through the heat with aplomb.
It got old. Now it's started to get scary.
Her cheeks are flushed from the dark smudges under her eyes down to her jaw line, creeping cherry down her arms and chest. She's due to throw up again but he can still smell the bile from last time, so he thinks she's probably out of ammo. She's collapsed on the grate, head pillowed on her boot, eyes glazed and open. Every once in a while, between shallow panting breaths, a ragged whine curls out of her, probably from her stomach. She hasn't spoken a word since she fell there after her dry heaves.
He's lost track of what time it might be, the thirst beating in his mouth with his heartbeat. He wonders if they aren't being watched after all. They can't be able to see how bad off she is; they'd have come, wouldn't they?
"Hey, Padia."
Nothing but the quick slight movement of her ribs.
"Hey, Cadet."
There's a twitch of her fingers.
D'Argo licks his lips, chapped and threatening to split in the middle. The room reeks sharp and sour, even worse as he crouches beside her. "Cadet, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Thr--" there's a catch as her throat sticks around the word. "Three."
"Do you remember my name?"
Twitch. "Wurgen Gaz."
He shakes her shoulder, skin tacky under his hand. "I'm the one from the mess, you remember my name?"
Her eyes squeeze shut as she pushes away.
"I'm your favorite obscenity, remember?"
The shivering starts up again, jerky and noticeably slow. Maybe he shouldn't have made her move.
"Not gonna leave you alone until you tell me my name."
"Frell off."
"Make me."
She pushes herself away from the floor, swaying as she sits, then falls against the wall, her back hitting the warm metal with a gong sound. A fresh break of sweat soaks through her shirt, underlining the small dollops of her breasts and darkening her pits. Her eyes look raw.
***
"You don't remember my name, do you?"
Her lips are as chapped as his, her sneer fearful. "You're Sun's hybrid."
"That I am." He sits cross-legged on the grate, somewhat mollified, but still wanting that last bit of reassurance. "I told you my name earlier, Padia, so what is it?"
Her jaw clenches. After a long moment she shakes her head.
Right. D'Argo doesn't know what they'll do, but he's less scared of that unknown than watching this get worse. At least with the Simpa pilot it happened in an instant and all he saw was shrapnel. "Fuck this shit."
***
His fists are swollen and numb but he keeps banging on the door, measured whacks punctuated by hollers that reverberate in the dead humidity of the cell.
The door finally slides open and he's the first to be hit by the wave of cold air. He has a microt to realize that his pants are soaked through with sweat before the water hits him high in the chest.
He sputters and gulps a few mouthfuls as the sergeant plays the hose over him before turning it on the girl.
The sergeant cuts off the water long enough to say, "Dismissed." Then he starts to wash down the cell as if they were already gone.
The girl looks like a drowned drannit, and D'Argo finds himself offering her a hand up. He's even more surprised when she takes it, when he has to brace to help haul her weight to her feet. They gather their clothes and boots, and leave a trail of sopping footprints toward the outer office.
By the chronometer, they've been let out half an arn early.
It's his turn to shiver as they tug their wet clothes on, but he notices she doesn't tie the laces of her boots, merely tucking the loose ends inside. She catches him looking, and her lip twitches.
He shrugs. Whatever. He just wants to get back to quarters.
"You're D'Argo Suncrichton."
He pauses, dripping by the door, jacket in hand. "And?"
He can't tell whether she's having a hard time talking or if she just doesn't know what to say. For a few microts it looks like she's going to be a treznot again but then she looks sleepy instead. "You're very loud."
"You're welcome."
His mother is sitting in one of the chairs outside of the door and when he comes through, trailing the cadet, her eyes widen slightly. He bites his lip, anger a bright sodium flare now that he's free. He'd expected to see his dad, see that hard set of his mouth at the PK attitudes, the punishment, be able to bitch a little about it, get some perspective.
Right now his mom looks like a Peacekeeper, hair bound tightly, face controlled, body in uniform even if her swollen belly hardly looks regulation. Padia lists to the left and he nearly knocks into her and they both stumble fumble and sway upright together, it's a weird and sort of creepy dance, wet clothes and sweat and bile and fear all racheting off of each other.
The girl lands her gaze on Aeryn and her fists clench, a low ugly noise in her throat. His mom stands up, tall and pregnant and imperious and all the fight goes out of the girl. Aeryn moves forward and catches the girl's arm, holding her up. She shakes her a little and Padia looks up. Aeryn eyes are hard, her gaze resting on the girl for so long that even D'Argo starts to get nervous. But the time allows Padia to gain back a little strength and when Aeryn lets go, she's steadier on her feet.
Aeryn's voice is soft and cutting when she speaks to the girl. "You're all so afraid of change, so afraid of the unknown. I understand that. But you will not take that fear out on my son. I am far less merciful than your superiors."
She shoots a sharp look at D'Argo. "And you will not violate the terms under which we stay here." Her mouth softens. "They're just words, D'Argo. Anger and hatred and fear, but we've raised you to look beyond what you see at first glance."
Aeryn goes back to her chair and awkwardly bends to retrieve her water jug. She hands it to D'Argo and nudges him out the door ahead of her. The sergeant comes through the other door and growls at the sight of the cadet still in the office. "You have a duty station, cadet!"
She salutes weakly, stumbles out of the room, pushing past D'Argo without rancor. They proceed slowly back to quarters, and he stops before Aeryn can open the door.
"You could have said something, kept us from being punished." He's surprised by the bitterness in his voice.
His mom pauses, hand near the door pad. "Yes."
"But you didn't. You let me stay in there with her, you let them torture her!"
Aeryn looks at him, eyes shrewd and sad. "She's living by these rules, and she knows the consequences of her actions, D'Argo. This is her world, her life. She knew what she was risking when she approached you."
"I didn't," he growls back. "She said… she...and it was still awful. She was sick on the floor, she could have died!"
Aeryn nods once. "She could have, though it was unlikely. There is no leeway in the Peacekeeper system, no room for shades of grey or interpretation."
He snarls and pushes past her, punching in the key code, dropping his stuff on the floor as he strips down, grabbing some sleep pants and slamming into the shower without saying anything to his dad who's sitting up in the bed, blurry eyed and ragged from sleep.
He showers, the water cool and clean on his body and he scrubs away the sweat, the stink of piss and vomit, the filth of being in the cell, of what the Peacekeepers do to their own.
When he emerges, shivering a little, roughing his hair with his towel, his dad's sitting on the edge of the bed in his shorts and his mom is nowhere to be seen.
"Save any water for the rest of us?"
D'Argo shrugs.
John opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, shaking his head. "PKs have their own system. You don't have to like it--hell, you don't even have to respect it--but being here means following certain rules and you know that."
D'Argo doesn't move, doesn't twitch, angry still.
"You were nice to that kid," his dad's tone changes, "you did the right thing when she was suffering."
He's a little shocked they saw that, disturbed that they'd been watching the surveillance as well. He clears his throat. "They die from heat--"
"No. " John shakes his head, sharp and aggressive. "They go into a living death, unconscious, unable to function, waiting for someone to have the mercy to kill them." He swallows hard, reaches down beside the bed and pulls the water jug up, holding it out for D'Argo. "Drink this, then get some sleep. We've got practice tonight after class. And no, you don't have to go to class today. No point in sending you there to sleep through it."
He mumbles a half-hearted thanks and takes the jug, stumbling to his bunk in a bleary haze of exhaustion and confusion.
***
His kid's still sullen and his wife is still putting out fires and he's been shut up in a classroom with a bunch of rowdy teenagers for the past five arns. He'd sell a body part for an evening spent watching football, drinking beer on a couch with some buddies or his dad. Or a little time on a boat, fishing and lounging, although that whole boat thing hadn't worked out so well last time, now that he thinks about it.
Point of fact, there are about eight gazillion places he'd rather be at this moment than in a reformed-kosher PK carrier with a bunch of hyperactive alien adolescents and a family doing the normal family dance of love and resentment. He's actively looking forward to pool time, to doing a few laps to vent some aggression, feeling the water on his body and against his muscles, coming home later and seeing if maybe Aeryn will let him work the kinks out of her back in exchange for the same.
He dismisses the Chem class early, having given up hope of getting them to titrate instead of making things explode, having confiscated a vial of a purple compound that he suspects is highly reactive, and another sludgy substance that he knows for a fact is a rough jelifan.
He heads for the pool and takes advantage of the quiet before practice, stroking along in a steady even pace and emptying his mind of the detritus, planning drills, planning what to say to his son and to Aeryn in an attempt at peace, love and understanding.
He's toweling off when the jumble of kids arrive, joking and shoving and pushing the boundaries of proper pool safety and etiquette. They dive in, shove each other, make it into the water one way or another, and while he's whistling through his fingers, distilling the chaos, he hears a sharp, angry throat clearing to his left.
He turns to see the cadet that had been in the cell with D'. Her chin is sharp, eyes dark and ferocious, young body clad in a regulation water-tactics training suit, like an Olympics one-piece cut low on the thigh. Black, of course.
He raises an eyebrow and she turns her mouth down, the words spitting out like acid, painful to her and to hear. "Cadet Padia Rentai, reporting for duty. I've been assigned here for the next two weekens."
He barks out a laugh, unable to stop himself. The absurdity smacks of one person, and he rescinds his mental offer to massage out the kinks in her back. Turnabout is fair play but he's not sure if it's the cadet or himself who's being turned about, maybe both, the cadet suffering a non-standard punishment while making John's job harder.
Sometimes there's an elegance to Aeryn's pettiness that he begrudgingly respects, even as it bugs the crap out of him.
He looks at the kids in the pool, many of whom have stilled their horseplay, looking for a sign of how they should behave. It's time to take control.
"Lane three," he says. "Follow the drills, pass on the left if you're faster than you're lane mates. You're responsible for timing yourself for rests and sprints. And you're welcome to stick around after practice is over for the games."
Padia sneers, but makes her way to lane three in silence and begins swimming with dogged determination.
***
When the cadet pushes Kai-sen out of the way to get ahead in the lane, D'Argo knows it's time to take some action. He's pausing in his thirty seconds, pacing his rest before the next set of drills and he sees Kai lose the balance, flounder and sputter for a microt in the cadet's wake.
He rolls his eyes and slaps the water, catching Kai's attention. D' points back with his thumb, jerking his head. Kai nods and they switch lanes. The bromine aches in D'Argo's raw sinuses and stings his bruises, but overall it's a relief to be back in the water even if he's still dealing with that drenhead girl. He's going to be behind, now, still finishing the drill when every one else is done, but he figures it's better than having the PK drown Kai and then get ambushed by the rest of the team outside the pool.
Telacademy kids may not be soldiers, may not even be all that fond of each other all of the time, but they protect their own.
Right now it's time for practice, his dad is pushing them hard today, and there's no time to speculate on why the girl is here corrupting herself with them. But later, there'll be plenty of time and plenty of speculation that he doesn't particularly want to answer. His parents aren't exactly novelties in the allied section or the telecademy, but they're offered a healthy respect, and many of the families keep their distance during social gatherings. His mom's Peacekeeper roots are well known, true, and she works closely with the PKs these days. He gets that people are sort of nervous around Aeryn.
But his dad, well, he doesn't get that, doesn't understand the wary looks, the way that it seems to take so long for people to get around to sitting down to talk with his dad, why there are only a few people in the universe who seem to not be weirded-out by John Crichton. That part's often easier on the xeno-carrier, the regulations imposed by the PKs binding all the adults together, and the other teachers and parents seem to like John well enough when they get to work with him face to face. They've even been eating with some the other families sometimes these days.
And now he's about to alienate himself and maybe his family by being nice to this pain in the ass cadet who barely deserves his mercy or his goodwill. He waits until she strokes in to flip and then grabs at her ankle. She kicks out and he misses her foot, lets her go and she surfaces, spluttering and ready to fight.
When she sees that it's him, she purses her mouth. "What do you want?"
Think she'd have a little more grace, but no, she has to be a fekkik even now.
"Look, you want to go around, you go around. You don't have to push anyone out of the way. It's not a competition, or a race. Not yet at least." He grins at her. It takes sheer force of will, but he holds it and finally she nods once.
"Besides, I'm faster than Kai-sen," he says. "Let's see if you can beat me."
***
John finally finds his wife in the shuttle pod, sitting on the deck amid opened crates. She's dumped the baby clothes out of their bags and is folding them neatly into a crate. The music is on soft, and she sits by a speaker with Johnny Cash rumbling toward the swell of her belly as she works. The 'dudes with guitars' mix, the same one he was listening to with D' on the way back from Helian.
She looks up at him, a stray lock of hair escaping from her braid tucked behind her ear. "I see you bought another milk pump. We already have one on Moya."
"Uhm, not exactly." He sits on the bench beside where she sits on the floor, leaning his shin against her shoulder. "I cannibalized that one for parts two years ago. Didn't think we'd need it."
She chuckles. "Considering our luck, I think I know who to blame now for falling pregnant."
"Fate's always there to take the cheap shot."
"I'd expect nothing less from her."
He smiles and palms her neck, massaging the muscles as she sorts through the baby things. They've gone through so much to get here, it still surprises him sometimes that they've come as far as they have. This is what they do now, piece things together, bolting ragged bits into something that can fly, swapping out parts as they go along. "How's the program?"
"Keratos is stable enough for now. But we'll likely be there for a few monens at least, after we leave here." She sets a stack of tiny shirts into the crate. "How was practice?"
"Speaking of cheap shots." He waits until she turns to look at his face, then sighs. "Are we even now?"
"Perhaps." A grin peeks before she wrestles it down. "Depends on how much trouble she gives you."
"I'd worry more about D'Argo if I were you. I think if they were both a few years older the sparks wouldn't just be violence. As it is, he'll be lucky to get off this ship without any more injuries."
"He needs to learn how to deal with those attitudes." Aeryn presses a hand to her belly, a wince flickering. "So does the cadet, for that matter."
"Been to the doc?"
"Dock?" Her hand rubs in a circle.
"Med station."
"Things are just stretching. These last weekens are the fastest growth." She waves a dismissing hand then braces on his knee, leveraging herself to her feet awkwardly. "She's already viable, if small."
He pulls her to stand between his knees. She slips her fingertips through the hair over his temple as he slides his hands under her uniform tunic and Lennon and Ono strum and clap through the speakers. Aboard a command carrier, listening to anti-war music as he feels movement beneath his palms.
Aeryn explains, "I just ate."
He catches her amused gaze, a rhythmic shudder under her skin as if the kidlet were dancing. "Are those hiccups?"
"Yes, she gets them about half an arn after I eat."
The kidlet is viable, just a few weekens away from golden brown and delicious. It doesn't feel quite real, still feels like leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on Fate's porch, still keeps him up a lot at night while she sleeps like the dead beside him and D' snores softly on his cadet cot.
But she's giving it this chance, and it's come this far. He relaxes enough to let himself hope that she might pull it off.
They'll be four.
***
John and his son lean against the headboard of the big platform bed, Aeryn sleeping between them with one boot still on. John wasn't sure if she was dressing or undressing when the nap hit, but he lets her sleep while he catches up on grading and D' works through a set of navigation problems.
Aeryn grunts and shifts, hand splaying on the taut surface of her belly. D'Argo lifts his elbow cautiously, then sets it back down on his mother's hip. "She looks like--what was that vegetable the Human guy cut up to look like Papa Ryg?"
"Who?"
"On that transmission from Earth."
"The guy at the end of the show?"
"Yeah."
"That was a pumpkin. People carved faces into them for a holiday."
"Punkin. Looks like she swallowed a punkin."
That she does.
"Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her." He'd begun on a riff of memory but the words catch him. He clears his throat and finishes the rhyme as a something close to a prayer. They're so close, only the birth standing between them and the finish line, and all he can do now is cheerlead and fret. "Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there her kept her very well."
His son eyes him with incredulous distaste, and the familiarity of the gesture is reassuring. The boy doesn't play with his Sprek game so much these days, his horizons broadened more than he'd bargained for lately. It's good to see he's still embarrassed by the old man, still just a kid with kid concerns.
"Finish your homework, son. Then we'll wake up your mom and take her out for Coneys."
continued here
by Thea and feldman
Part 1/6 located here
Part 2/6 located here
Part 3/6 located here
Part 4/6 located here
Pretty in Punk
by Thea and feldman
Their platoon instructor had finally pulled D'Argo from the girl, who landed a last loving boot to his crotch even as she was being cropped by her superior. It was a glancing blow, not as bad as a crush, but between that and the blood streaming from his nose the nausea nearly brought up what little dinner he'd eaten.
Her companions were eerily silent as they were all marched to the security office and sorted into cells. The others hadn't intervened in their fight, unless D'Argo didn't feel it. Maybe he hadn't. More likely they just wanted to watch, but their platoon instructor seemed to think that was almost as bad.
By the time he's shoved down onto the bench next to the girl he'd fought with, he's back in his right mind and starting to get scared. Luckily, he can read Peacekeeper expressions well enough to know she's just as terrified as he is under her scowl.
Good.
The cell is small, one slim hard bench along the wall and a grate for a floor. They stake out their corners and D'Argo tries not to choke on the blood welling from his nose.
It's a lot of blood, but she keeps staring at him so he stays cool, daubs his face with his shirt, pinches his nose and tilts his head back.
"You won't stop it that way."
He hawks and spits onto the grated floor.
"Ignore me if you want. You're the one gagging."
D' swallows against the queasiness, the iron taste in his mouth and throat made worse by the warmth of the room.
She leans into her corner, one boot on the bench, scraped fingers playing with the laces of her boot. They're probably in here together to learn how to play nice; maybe she's hoping to commute a few friendly fire demerits by offering aid. Maybe she wants to see him puke blood. Surveillance is assumed on a carrier, and she looks smart enough to realize that.
"If you were a real Sebacean you'd be better off leaning forward."
He shifts on the bench, eyeing her warily over the hand pinching his nostrils shut. Tilting forward. The blood drips to a stop as she watches, the only damage visible on her part being the tangles pulled out of her queue.
He remembers slamming her head into the deck over and over, but it's like someone else was doing it, like he was only watching. He notices she's resting her temple against the cool wall, pressing it there. Maybe she's injured as well. He hawks the last of it out of his throat, gelid before it slips through the grate. She's pale and beginning to sweat, her glare melting.
They're being punished with heat.
***
"And I used to think my dad was a hard-ass."
When they spend time on a xeno-carrier they try hard to work within the social norms, not to antagonize or flaunt their differences, to fit in as seamlessly as possible. The allied agreements are tenuous, an experiment on the part of the Peacekeepers, and restraint and professionalism while aboard are a small price to pay to foster goodwill among the grots and encourage the reforms by High Command. But it's a strain on John and D'Argo both, and now that one has cracked the other seems eager to follow suit.
Aeryn shoots him a look, as if asking him if he'd like to join his son in detention. "He should receive the same punishment as the cadet he was fighting with."
John leans over the corner of the sergeant's desk, whispering hard as the man pretends not to listen. "We both know who started it."
"Cadet Rentai," she reads off the incident report, avoiding the frank look of entreaty in her husband's eyes. "But on the vidlog D'Argo threw the first punch."
"He was surrounded and provoked, Aeryn. And after what happened this afternoon at Helian he does *not* need to spend a night in detention to top it all off."
"That's not the point." She keys in her acceptance code and presses her handprint on the flimsy, then slides it over to him. It's an exercise in diplomacy, granting the PKs provisional permission to handle the situation their way instead of throwing their weight around, demanding special treatment. Everything's a dance when they're working aboard a carrier, old grudges on each side ignored in favor of new goals, a 'mecksikan standoff' of discretion and negotiation, and Aeryn's position as a consultant to the Council, apart from the hierarchy yet sanctioned by it as an operative setting up colony militias, is both a passport and a burden.
Playing nice can be very difficult.
John's soft lips set hard as he looks at the vidlog display paused at the end of the fight, the cadet's vitriol seeping into the room and settling into the old stains of fear and distrust. "I want real-time access to the cell surveillance."
Aeryn turns to the sergeant, who takes the flimsy and adds a block of text. He programs a datapad and hands it to John, and it shows the same graphic as the monitor panel on the sergeant's desk.
John enters his code and sets his hand on the incident report, authorizing standard cadet penalty for friendly fire; no food or water for nine arns, class two heat punishment.
Locking the door to their quarters is a physical relief, and for a long moment Aeryn simply sits on the edge of the bed, wishing they were all back on Moya where they can breathe and be normal.
"Don't look so stunned, it was just a visit to the Principal's office." John tosses his jacket on the chair and sets the datapad display upright on the desk. "Maybe you're right, maybe he should see how the other half lives."
"I don't understand." She's been too soft on him, maybe, too lenient and coddling and now she can see how ill-prepared he is for the world outside of their family. She feels queasy. What if they've failed with him? And what about the girl she'd so blithely decided to keep, what if they ruin her as well? "He knows better than this."
"He's a good kid, usually, but he's still a kid, Aeryn. And I've heard some of the riding he's taken about us, about who he is, a hybrid, a throwback, half primitive and half traitor." John sits next to her on the bed. "Kids are jacked into the ugly undercurrents in any society, they absorb them despite our best intentions, and they can be as unmerciful as adults."
"He can't believe those things."
"No, I don't think he does. That's why he tried to wipe the deck with that cadet's face."
"He knows better!"
"I don't think he was thinking, Aeryn."
How could he be so smart and not think? What was there to think about in a situation like that, when he knows he needs to be on his best behaviour every time he leaves quarters? "He should have--there's no excuse for such childish outbursts--he's nearly an adult."
"Hardly!"
She whips around to stare at him, but he holds his ground with a calm that makes her question--does he still see a child where she sees someone a few cycles away from being responsible for himself?
This isn't the first time they've run into a wall over D'Argo, derailed by an assumption that the other person doesn't share and can barely comprehend. They've deliberately chosen to raise this boy as a civilian, to give him the family life that Aeryn didn't have, that she saw reflected so well in so many of her friends. John's the one who knows how that works, the one who keeps it running day to day.
"He's a kid, Aeryn." He catches her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. "A good kid who's starting to run into adult problems, and he's going to make mistakes as he learns. He's barely a teenager, not an ensign."
"I know that."
He takes a breath. "Think back to Moya, when you had to learn to live outside the system you grew up in here. We're his system, and he's starting to butt heads with the world outside of us."
"Literally."
"On occasion, yes. You heard the things that kid said to him, what she said to your face earlier. You can shake it off and so can I, but I can't blame him for his reaction even if I wished he could have handled it better."
Aeryn stares ahead of her, crossing her arms, refusing to give in to the tears that threaten or the despair that fuels them. "I expected more of him." She's expected more from all of them, maybe more than was possible, maybe peace is simply too hard to maintain for much of a stretch. Her own son threw the first punch.
"Aeryn, look at me." John pulls her arm free again, holding it firmly this time.
She does so, eyes hard even as water spills down from one of them.
"In a way, he was defending you. Not a good way, but that's where it comes from, his loyalty to us."
It's an odd concept, to think of that viciousness in the mess as coming from the same place as her own protectiveness toward him. That he feels love just as fiercely sometimes as she does, that he feels that way toward her, toward this family they're still building.
"He knows he screwed up. He'll take his punishment and he'll learn not to do it again. He's got years to get it right, Aeryn. It takes time. He can't just slot into a system and stay there, he has to find his own way, learn how to discipline himself, channel his drives. You can be a soldier at thirteen, but it takes a few more years to figure out how to be a man."
She brushes her cheek dry, wiping the wetness into the fabric of her uniform shirt and giving the side of her belly a scratch while she's at it.
John adds with a smile, "Or a woman."
She smirks in return, sniffing her nose clear. Caught between a teenager and her own hormones and now she's sniveling like an infant. "You didn't think I was an adult, when you met me?"
"I was talking about the kidlet." He grins. "But I think it's fair to say we were both out of our elements in the beginning, big fish from small ponds finding out we were really small fish in a big pond."
She props her boot on his leg. "You spend too much time in the pool."
"Yeah, well." He pops the fasteners and yanks off her boot, glancing at the surveillance display before chucking footwear to the floor. "Somebody's gotta play good cop to your bad, babe."
She rubs her forehead, not willing to hash this out in excruciating detail all night long. "John, he's the one who turned the argument into a fight."
***
The girl's face is pale, and her hands tremble as she sheds parts of her uniform, working with fierce determination to fold them and set them next to her in an orderly pile. She can barely hold her focus long enough to stick to the task, but he's hardly going to help her.
Sweat slicks his back and face, mingling with the blood and the snot. It's sort of cheerfully disgusting. He shucked his own outer layers as soon as he started to sweat and they lay in a pile, kicked casually to the side. His stomach growls and he wishes briefly that he'd eaten more of his dinner, but then he'd have probably puked it back up anyway, so maybe it was a wash.
He can feel the low thrum of anger at his parents for leaving him in here, at the unfairness of being punished for something that wasn't his fault, but he knows the rules and knows he broke them, and that there could have been worse punishments. His mom had said, succinctly, eyes glittering bright with anger that the Peacekeepers would have been well within their rights to ask the whole family to leave. It wasn't blame exactly, frustration and disappointment maybe, but it doesn't sting any less. He coughs again, spits out more blood and looks back at the girl.
"Why aren't you...?" she can't finish the sentence but the outrage is clear in her thready voice.
He shrugs, wipes sweat off his forehead.
"I'm not pure Sebacean. Heat delirium isn't a risk." He says it with a touch more glee than necessary but if they put his ass in here, they can't possibly expect him to be nice about it.
She grimaces and he presses his advantage.
"I'm gonna be hot and sweaty, but I'm not gonna be laying on the floor puking or shaking."
She hics, presses her body further to the wall.
"Guess being an abomination isn't all bad," he pushes, voice thick with the anger rising back up inside.
She barely manages a glare in return and he feels a thump in his gut, a rush of shame for taunting her. There's nothing he can do to help, they're just going to be waiting out the punishment. He swings his legs up on the bench, shoves his t-shirt under his head and tries to sleep.
***
It's a given that neither of them are going to sleep much tonight, but John's been flying most of the day, and she's the one who gave the final call for the punishment, so she takes the first shift with the surveillance display.
He's angry with her, upset that she's treating D'Argo like a soldier and not like a child, that she's turned her own son over to the PKs, even for a handful of arns, and perhaps that's part of her own wariness, her need to watch and make sure that her son is okay, that he takes his punishment with better grace than the ribbing that put him into the cell.
She's still irritated and anxious, and she knows some of it's from the pregnancy and the lack of sleep lately, but it doesn't make it go away, doesn't make her any less angry with the situations on Keratos and on the carrier.
She's still a bit angry with John, in return. So many small failures leading up to that mislaid mail chip, including the fact he hasn't been keeping up on the laundry. How long did that pair of leathers lay not a motra away from where she sits now, chip in the pocket? She sighs and lets it go, shifting her foot to lay against his warm calf as she listens to him breath with one ear, a speaker bud nestled in her other ear providing a sound feed for the display propped on her knees.
If something happens to her, she needs to know that her son will be able to care for himself, that he'll have the strength of will to press forward, to survive and thrive, to care for his father. The universe rarely follows the rules of fair play, and while she hates to see him in that cell, angry and bitter, locked up with a cadet full of rage and disgust born of the fear of change, Aeryn knows that she's made the right decision.
There are consequences for all actions, even those fueled by the best of motives. And she doesn't count the fight as the best of motives.
D'Argo's angry with her as well, his feelings hurt by what she's certain he sees as taking their side against him. Father and son both deal better with certainties, and it's a strange irony that having the two of them in her life has taught her how much of life exists in the grey, outside of the sharp contrast of black and white, right and wrong.
John sprawls on his stomach, sleeping heavily despite his protests that he'd stay up with her, that she needs the rest more than she does. The girl swims and flips, tiny amphibious feet kicking at the wall of Aeryn's belly and she keeps one hand on the lower curve of her stomach, the other against the datapad propped between her plumped breasts and stomach. John mumbles to himself, an old habit, face burrowing into the pillow and she looks over, touches his shoulder blade, drawing her fingers along the bone to rest on his spine. He's warm, skin smooth against her palm and she's very glad that he's there beside her, angry or not.
She sighs, sliding her foot up and down John's calf, remembering him saying that he still missed his own mother. It had startled her that her son could be so protective of *her*, so vicious against a mere verbal insult, but John knew, had understood immediately, as if it were a given for a boy to react that way. Perhaps it was, in a family. She knows what it would feel like to lose him, a piece of her heart ripped away, a spill of fear in her gut at the thought--that he'd feel the same way about her seems obvious now that John pointed it out. Underneath his embarrassment, underneath the shrug of her being 'slightly cooler' than other parents, she's a part of his heart as well. Even when she's away for weekens, even when he's petulant and pissed, no matter how old he gets.
She watches the surveillance, watches the cadet grow shakier, as afraid of the prospect of delirium as she is of the actuality of its effects. It's hard to take her eyes off the girl, especially when her son has flopped down on the bench, pretending to sleep like he's dead to the world. He's "playing possum", but it's a valiant effort at both staying out of trouble and saying frell you to the girl without antagonizing her openly.
It's near impossible to sleep in the first stages of heat punishment, bodily reactions so foreign and so frightening, chills and shakes and thoughts flitting, fleeting things and despite herself, Aeryn feels a twinge of sympathy for the girl. She remembers similar punishments, food and water withheld, back slick with stripes from the cording, eyes blackened and arm throbbing from being the victor in a fight with a competing squad.
She understands, supports the need for this particular punishment, even if she hates to see it carried out. However, she also understands the need for other forms of discipline. As carefully as she can, she slips off the bed and pads over the comms array, keys in the request to speak with the sergeant.
"They're unharmed, Sun," he says, gruff and annoyed at being bothered.
"I've agreed to my son's punishment," she says, "but I want something in return. We were invited here as guests, with the understanding that we would not be harassed as long as we stuck to protocol."
His reply is a grunt and a reluctant nod. He's a career sergeant, good at his job and likely stuck with it for the duration. She wonders how he came to be posted on a xeno-class carrier, and if he sees it as a demotion or an opportunity.
"I want restitution on our end as well," she says crisply. "D'Argo is enduring your form of punishment, Cadet Rentai will also be subject to our request."
"I hardly think that's--"
"The girl will not be harmed, sub-officer. We have more control over the children in the telacademy than you seem to have over your cadets. High Command is insistent that the Peacekeepers learn to work with the allies." She doesn't add that she has the authority to go over his head if she choose. He already knows this, and she's not looking to get his back up but to secure his cooperation.
He blinks ostentatiously, letting her finish in the time-honored tradition of a sergeant allowing a ranking officer to make an ass of him or herself with all due respect from his or her subordinate.
She shrugs a shoulder, seeks a tone as if they're comrades on guard duty. "Think of it as an opportunity to earn a few easy merits."
The sergeant blinks a few times more before he shakes his head ruefully, letting her know that he doesn't care about dren like that but is still willing to negotiate with her for the hell of it. Maybe he sees his posting as both a demotion *and* an opportunity. "What do you want, Officer Sun?"
She tells him, and he nods with a grim understanding.
***
The thirst is what gets to him as the arns go by. At least he hopes it's been arns.
The girl sprawls on the grate in her skivvies, grey tank top and undershorts revealing a collection of bruises in many colors. She's been in hard training for a while now, it seems, either punishment detail or an accelerated track. She's in a more coherent phase, neither whimpering nor talking to herself. The vomiting seems to have helped her some.
D'Argo doesn't say anything about the lingering smell. They've both had to piss into the waste funnel in the corner by this point, urgency overcoming embarrassment, so at least he's retained more control over himself than she has. He's also worried about her, though he'd never admit it to anyone.
This is what would happen to his mom, if she were in this room with him. There have been planets where he's had to go down with his dad, just the guys, Luxan trading colonies and such, and he knew that high temperatures were bad for full Sebaceans. But he's never seen the effects, never been forced to witness someone breaking down under heat that to him only feels cloying and balmy.
She shifts her position, limbs restless and marked from lying on the metal grate floor, and D'Argo knows by now it's the first sign of the shakes. "What's your name?"
He weighs his answer, pushing down the sympathy he's been indulging in. "Why do you care?"
"I don't. What's your name?"
"D'Argo Suncrichton."
She pulls her arms tight to her body, fighting the tremble in her muscles. "Cadet Padia Rentai--" a shiver breaks before she can list her regiment, and when it passes she opens her mouth and then closes it, train of thought lost.
"You can call me D'Argo."
"You can call me Cadet."
"Great." He wads his jacket back under his head, bracing for another round of yammering and retching from her side of the cell.
"Padia." It's forced out through shivers, as if she found something deep in a pocket and yanked it out. "I mean Padia."
He turns his head, watches her clutch at the grate. "Just remember where the waste funnel's at, okay?"
***
It occurs to him as the night wears on that what he's watching isn't really punishment. He's been punished--been given odious chores or had privileges taken away--but this goes far beyond punishment.
Well, for him, it's punishment. For her, it's akin to torture.
He enjoyed watching her suffer for a while, it soothed his sense of fairness to see her shiver and gag, to see her laid low because of what she'd said. Just 'cause she didn't know what a mother was, didn't mean she could say those things about his. She deserved to see him sail right through the heat with aplomb.
It got old. Now it's started to get scary.
Her cheeks are flushed from the dark smudges under her eyes down to her jaw line, creeping cherry down her arms and chest. She's due to throw up again but he can still smell the bile from last time, so he thinks she's probably out of ammo. She's collapsed on the grate, head pillowed on her boot, eyes glazed and open. Every once in a while, between shallow panting breaths, a ragged whine curls out of her, probably from her stomach. She hasn't spoken a word since she fell there after her dry heaves.
He's lost track of what time it might be, the thirst beating in his mouth with his heartbeat. He wonders if they aren't being watched after all. They can't be able to see how bad off she is; they'd have come, wouldn't they?
"Hey, Padia."
Nothing but the quick slight movement of her ribs.
"Hey, Cadet."
There's a twitch of her fingers.
D'Argo licks his lips, chapped and threatening to split in the middle. The room reeks sharp and sour, even worse as he crouches beside her. "Cadet, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Thr--" there's a catch as her throat sticks around the word. "Three."
"Do you remember my name?"
Twitch. "Wurgen Gaz."
He shakes her shoulder, skin tacky under his hand. "I'm the one from the mess, you remember my name?"
Her eyes squeeze shut as she pushes away.
"I'm your favorite obscenity, remember?"
The shivering starts up again, jerky and noticeably slow. Maybe he shouldn't have made her move.
"Not gonna leave you alone until you tell me my name."
"Frell off."
"Make me."
She pushes herself away from the floor, swaying as she sits, then falls against the wall, her back hitting the warm metal with a gong sound. A fresh break of sweat soaks through her shirt, underlining the small dollops of her breasts and darkening her pits. Her eyes look raw.
***
"You don't remember my name, do you?"
Her lips are as chapped as his, her sneer fearful. "You're Sun's hybrid."
"That I am." He sits cross-legged on the grate, somewhat mollified, but still wanting that last bit of reassurance. "I told you my name earlier, Padia, so what is it?"
Her jaw clenches. After a long moment she shakes her head.
Right. D'Argo doesn't know what they'll do, but he's less scared of that unknown than watching this get worse. At least with the Simpa pilot it happened in an instant and all he saw was shrapnel. "Fuck this shit."
***
His fists are swollen and numb but he keeps banging on the door, measured whacks punctuated by hollers that reverberate in the dead humidity of the cell.
The door finally slides open and he's the first to be hit by the wave of cold air. He has a microt to realize that his pants are soaked through with sweat before the water hits him high in the chest.
He sputters and gulps a few mouthfuls as the sergeant plays the hose over him before turning it on the girl.
The sergeant cuts off the water long enough to say, "Dismissed." Then he starts to wash down the cell as if they were already gone.
The girl looks like a drowned drannit, and D'Argo finds himself offering her a hand up. He's even more surprised when she takes it, when he has to brace to help haul her weight to her feet. They gather their clothes and boots, and leave a trail of sopping footprints toward the outer office.
By the chronometer, they've been let out half an arn early.
It's his turn to shiver as they tug their wet clothes on, but he notices she doesn't tie the laces of her boots, merely tucking the loose ends inside. She catches him looking, and her lip twitches.
He shrugs. Whatever. He just wants to get back to quarters.
"You're D'Argo Suncrichton."
He pauses, dripping by the door, jacket in hand. "And?"
He can't tell whether she's having a hard time talking or if she just doesn't know what to say. For a few microts it looks like she's going to be a treznot again but then she looks sleepy instead. "You're very loud."
"You're welcome."
His mother is sitting in one of the chairs outside of the door and when he comes through, trailing the cadet, her eyes widen slightly. He bites his lip, anger a bright sodium flare now that he's free. He'd expected to see his dad, see that hard set of his mouth at the PK attitudes, the punishment, be able to bitch a little about it, get some perspective.
Right now his mom looks like a Peacekeeper, hair bound tightly, face controlled, body in uniform even if her swollen belly hardly looks regulation. Padia lists to the left and he nearly knocks into her and they both stumble fumble and sway upright together, it's a weird and sort of creepy dance, wet clothes and sweat and bile and fear all racheting off of each other.
The girl lands her gaze on Aeryn and her fists clench, a low ugly noise in her throat. His mom stands up, tall and pregnant and imperious and all the fight goes out of the girl. Aeryn moves forward and catches the girl's arm, holding her up. She shakes her a little and Padia looks up. Aeryn eyes are hard, her gaze resting on the girl for so long that even D'Argo starts to get nervous. But the time allows Padia to gain back a little strength and when Aeryn lets go, she's steadier on her feet.
Aeryn's voice is soft and cutting when she speaks to the girl. "You're all so afraid of change, so afraid of the unknown. I understand that. But you will not take that fear out on my son. I am far less merciful than your superiors."
She shoots a sharp look at D'Argo. "And you will not violate the terms under which we stay here." Her mouth softens. "They're just words, D'Argo. Anger and hatred and fear, but we've raised you to look beyond what you see at first glance."
Aeryn goes back to her chair and awkwardly bends to retrieve her water jug. She hands it to D'Argo and nudges him out the door ahead of her. The sergeant comes through the other door and growls at the sight of the cadet still in the office. "You have a duty station, cadet!"
She salutes weakly, stumbles out of the room, pushing past D'Argo without rancor. They proceed slowly back to quarters, and he stops before Aeryn can open the door.
"You could have said something, kept us from being punished." He's surprised by the bitterness in his voice.
His mom pauses, hand near the door pad. "Yes."
"But you didn't. You let me stay in there with her, you let them torture her!"
Aeryn looks at him, eyes shrewd and sad. "She's living by these rules, and she knows the consequences of her actions, D'Argo. This is her world, her life. She knew what she was risking when she approached you."
"I didn't," he growls back. "She said… she...and it was still awful. She was sick on the floor, she could have died!"
Aeryn nods once. "She could have, though it was unlikely. There is no leeway in the Peacekeeper system, no room for shades of grey or interpretation."
He snarls and pushes past her, punching in the key code, dropping his stuff on the floor as he strips down, grabbing some sleep pants and slamming into the shower without saying anything to his dad who's sitting up in the bed, blurry eyed and ragged from sleep.
He showers, the water cool and clean on his body and he scrubs away the sweat, the stink of piss and vomit, the filth of being in the cell, of what the Peacekeepers do to their own.
When he emerges, shivering a little, roughing his hair with his towel, his dad's sitting on the edge of the bed in his shorts and his mom is nowhere to be seen.
"Save any water for the rest of us?"
D'Argo shrugs.
John opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, shaking his head. "PKs have their own system. You don't have to like it--hell, you don't even have to respect it--but being here means following certain rules and you know that."
D'Argo doesn't move, doesn't twitch, angry still.
"You were nice to that kid," his dad's tone changes, "you did the right thing when she was suffering."
He's a little shocked they saw that, disturbed that they'd been watching the surveillance as well. He clears his throat. "They die from heat--"
"No. " John shakes his head, sharp and aggressive. "They go into a living death, unconscious, unable to function, waiting for someone to have the mercy to kill them." He swallows hard, reaches down beside the bed and pulls the water jug up, holding it out for D'Argo. "Drink this, then get some sleep. We've got practice tonight after class. And no, you don't have to go to class today. No point in sending you there to sleep through it."
He mumbles a half-hearted thanks and takes the jug, stumbling to his bunk in a bleary haze of exhaustion and confusion.
***
His kid's still sullen and his wife is still putting out fires and he's been shut up in a classroom with a bunch of rowdy teenagers for the past five arns. He'd sell a body part for an evening spent watching football, drinking beer on a couch with some buddies or his dad. Or a little time on a boat, fishing and lounging, although that whole boat thing hadn't worked out so well last time, now that he thinks about it.
Point of fact, there are about eight gazillion places he'd rather be at this moment than in a reformed-kosher PK carrier with a bunch of hyperactive alien adolescents and a family doing the normal family dance of love and resentment. He's actively looking forward to pool time, to doing a few laps to vent some aggression, feeling the water on his body and against his muscles, coming home later and seeing if maybe Aeryn will let him work the kinks out of her back in exchange for the same.
He dismisses the Chem class early, having given up hope of getting them to titrate instead of making things explode, having confiscated a vial of a purple compound that he suspects is highly reactive, and another sludgy substance that he knows for a fact is a rough jelifan.
He heads for the pool and takes advantage of the quiet before practice, stroking along in a steady even pace and emptying his mind of the detritus, planning drills, planning what to say to his son and to Aeryn in an attempt at peace, love and understanding.
He's toweling off when the jumble of kids arrive, joking and shoving and pushing the boundaries of proper pool safety and etiquette. They dive in, shove each other, make it into the water one way or another, and while he's whistling through his fingers, distilling the chaos, he hears a sharp, angry throat clearing to his left.
He turns to see the cadet that had been in the cell with D'. Her chin is sharp, eyes dark and ferocious, young body clad in a regulation water-tactics training suit, like an Olympics one-piece cut low on the thigh. Black, of course.
He raises an eyebrow and she turns her mouth down, the words spitting out like acid, painful to her and to hear. "Cadet Padia Rentai, reporting for duty. I've been assigned here for the next two weekens."
He barks out a laugh, unable to stop himself. The absurdity smacks of one person, and he rescinds his mental offer to massage out the kinks in her back. Turnabout is fair play but he's not sure if it's the cadet or himself who's being turned about, maybe both, the cadet suffering a non-standard punishment while making John's job harder.
Sometimes there's an elegance to Aeryn's pettiness that he begrudgingly respects, even as it bugs the crap out of him.
He looks at the kids in the pool, many of whom have stilled their horseplay, looking for a sign of how they should behave. It's time to take control.
"Lane three," he says. "Follow the drills, pass on the left if you're faster than you're lane mates. You're responsible for timing yourself for rests and sprints. And you're welcome to stick around after practice is over for the games."
Padia sneers, but makes her way to lane three in silence and begins swimming with dogged determination.
***
When the cadet pushes Kai-sen out of the way to get ahead in the lane, D'Argo knows it's time to take some action. He's pausing in his thirty seconds, pacing his rest before the next set of drills and he sees Kai lose the balance, flounder and sputter for a microt in the cadet's wake.
He rolls his eyes and slaps the water, catching Kai's attention. D' points back with his thumb, jerking his head. Kai nods and they switch lanes. The bromine aches in D'Argo's raw sinuses and stings his bruises, but overall it's a relief to be back in the water even if he's still dealing with that drenhead girl. He's going to be behind, now, still finishing the drill when every one else is done, but he figures it's better than having the PK drown Kai and then get ambushed by the rest of the team outside the pool.
Telacademy kids may not be soldiers, may not even be all that fond of each other all of the time, but they protect their own.
Right now it's time for practice, his dad is pushing them hard today, and there's no time to speculate on why the girl is here corrupting herself with them. But later, there'll be plenty of time and plenty of speculation that he doesn't particularly want to answer. His parents aren't exactly novelties in the allied section or the telecademy, but they're offered a healthy respect, and many of the families keep their distance during social gatherings. His mom's Peacekeeper roots are well known, true, and she works closely with the PKs these days. He gets that people are sort of nervous around Aeryn.
But his dad, well, he doesn't get that, doesn't understand the wary looks, the way that it seems to take so long for people to get around to sitting down to talk with his dad, why there are only a few people in the universe who seem to not be weirded-out by John Crichton. That part's often easier on the xeno-carrier, the regulations imposed by the PKs binding all the adults together, and the other teachers and parents seem to like John well enough when they get to work with him face to face. They've even been eating with some the other families sometimes these days.
And now he's about to alienate himself and maybe his family by being nice to this pain in the ass cadet who barely deserves his mercy or his goodwill. He waits until she strokes in to flip and then grabs at her ankle. She kicks out and he misses her foot, lets her go and she surfaces, spluttering and ready to fight.
When she sees that it's him, she purses her mouth. "What do you want?"
Think she'd have a little more grace, but no, she has to be a fekkik even now.
"Look, you want to go around, you go around. You don't have to push anyone out of the way. It's not a competition, or a race. Not yet at least." He grins at her. It takes sheer force of will, but he holds it and finally she nods once.
"Besides, I'm faster than Kai-sen," he says. "Let's see if you can beat me."
***
John finally finds his wife in the shuttle pod, sitting on the deck amid opened crates. She's dumped the baby clothes out of their bags and is folding them neatly into a crate. The music is on soft, and she sits by a speaker with Johnny Cash rumbling toward the swell of her belly as she works. The 'dudes with guitars' mix, the same one he was listening to with D' on the way back from Helian.
She looks up at him, a stray lock of hair escaping from her braid tucked behind her ear. "I see you bought another milk pump. We already have one on Moya."
"Uhm, not exactly." He sits on the bench beside where she sits on the floor, leaning his shin against her shoulder. "I cannibalized that one for parts two years ago. Didn't think we'd need it."
She chuckles. "Considering our luck, I think I know who to blame now for falling pregnant."
"Fate's always there to take the cheap shot."
"I'd expect nothing less from her."
He smiles and palms her neck, massaging the muscles as she sorts through the baby things. They've gone through so much to get here, it still surprises him sometimes that they've come as far as they have. This is what they do now, piece things together, bolting ragged bits into something that can fly, swapping out parts as they go along. "How's the program?"
"Keratos is stable enough for now. But we'll likely be there for a few monens at least, after we leave here." She sets a stack of tiny shirts into the crate. "How was practice?"
"Speaking of cheap shots." He waits until she turns to look at his face, then sighs. "Are we even now?"
"Perhaps." A grin peeks before she wrestles it down. "Depends on how much trouble she gives you."
"I'd worry more about D'Argo if I were you. I think if they were both a few years older the sparks wouldn't just be violence. As it is, he'll be lucky to get off this ship without any more injuries."
"He needs to learn how to deal with those attitudes." Aeryn presses a hand to her belly, a wince flickering. "So does the cadet, for that matter."
"Been to the doc?"
"Dock?" Her hand rubs in a circle.
"Med station."
"Things are just stretching. These last weekens are the fastest growth." She waves a dismissing hand then braces on his knee, leveraging herself to her feet awkwardly. "She's already viable, if small."
He pulls her to stand between his knees. She slips her fingertips through the hair over his temple as he slides his hands under her uniform tunic and Lennon and Ono strum and clap through the speakers. Aboard a command carrier, listening to anti-war music as he feels movement beneath his palms.
Aeryn explains, "I just ate."
He catches her amused gaze, a rhythmic shudder under her skin as if the kidlet were dancing. "Are those hiccups?"
"Yes, she gets them about half an arn after I eat."
The kidlet is viable, just a few weekens away from golden brown and delicious. It doesn't feel quite real, still feels like leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on Fate's porch, still keeps him up a lot at night while she sleeps like the dead beside him and D' snores softly on his cadet cot.
But she's giving it this chance, and it's come this far. He relaxes enough to let himself hope that she might pull it off.
They'll be four.
***
John and his son lean against the headboard of the big platform bed, Aeryn sleeping between them with one boot still on. John wasn't sure if she was dressing or undressing when the nap hit, but he lets her sleep while he catches up on grading and D' works through a set of navigation problems.
Aeryn grunts and shifts, hand splaying on the taut surface of her belly. D'Argo lifts his elbow cautiously, then sets it back down on his mother's hip. "She looks like--what was that vegetable the Human guy cut up to look like Papa Ryg?"
"Who?"
"On that transmission from Earth."
"The guy at the end of the show?"
"Yeah."
"That was a pumpkin. People carved faces into them for a holiday."
"Punkin. Looks like she swallowed a punkin."
That she does.
"Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her." He'd begun on a riff of memory but the words catch him. He clears his throat and finishes the rhyme as a something close to a prayer. They're so close, only the birth standing between them and the finish line, and all he can do now is cheerlead and fret. "Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there her kept her very well."
His son eyes him with incredulous distaste, and the familiarity of the gesture is reassuring. The boy doesn't play with his Sprek game so much these days, his horizons broadened more than he'd bargained for lately. It's good to see he's still embarrassed by the old man, still just a kid with kid concerns.
"Finish your homework, son. Then we'll wake up your mom and take her out for Coneys."
continued here
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 10:52 pm (UTC)and oh yes to this: "Or a little time on a boat, fishing and lounging, although that whole boat thing hadn't worked out so well last time, now that he thinks about it."
this is so evocative and fits perfectly: "Aboard a command carrier, listening to anti-war music as he feels movement beneath his palms."
what a lovely edge and ominous tone this has: ""Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her.""
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 11:25 pm (UTC)[shamefaced confession] i swear, i'm shipping d'argo/padia *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-06-26 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-25 03:48 am (UTC)I love you guys. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 06:44 pm (UTC)