Originally posted 12/22/07RL has been taking a lot of my time and a lot of my energy, and the muses have been kind of hibernating for a bit, so you can imagine my delight when I finally woke up the other morning with John and Aeryn talking to me!
There may be another Christmas fic or two over the next few days, but I'm happy that the muses gave me this one!
Thanks to imloco2 and MadScientist for a look-see (and Loco, sorry about the parentheses!).
Rating: G
Setting: About 2 monens after PKW
Spoilers: Through PKW
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my universe, no money being made -- I'm just playing with them for a while!
Merry Christmas, Baby
Well, there were certainly worse places to be stranded overnight with a busted, uninhabitable transport pod, John thought. Hell, they'd been in many of them over the past few cycles! But just now no one was shooting at them, and Moya was due back in the neighborhood the next solar day, so all he and Aeryn needed to do was sit tight till the sun came up and Pilot commed. It could definitely have been worse....
The planet had a breathable atmosphere, and it was neither raining nor snowing. The ambient temperature was cold – their breath came in white puffs as they walked – but they had their leather coats (which weren't at warm as you might think, but they were way better than nothing), and the emergency kit from the pod, and they'd just found some kind of roofed lean-to shelter with piles of what John would have called hay back home. He ran the beam of his torch over the contents of the lean-to. It didn't
smell like earth-grown hay – it was more...minty – but it
looked like the same kind of dried plant material. He was getting damned tired of the wind, and they'd been walking for over an arn without spotting anything more promising. He glanced over at Aeryn, standing beside him with their infant son in her arms.
His wife was more tired than she wanted to let on, he could tell. At a sixth of a cycle in age, Little D was still getting them up – okay, okay, getting
mom up – a couple of times a night for food and clean diapers and a cuddle. Despite her superior (Hah!) Sebacean genetics and undeniable Peacekeeper toughness, the breastfeeding and the lack of sleep were taking their toll. She swayed slightly as John watched, then tried to pretend she was just shifting the position of the baby in his sling.
John pointed imperiously to a pile of hay and commanded, "Sit!"
Aeryn glared at him, but followed instructions with as much dignity as she could muster. D whimpered briefly as she settled him in her lap.
"He hungry?"
"No," Aeryn replied, voice crisp with certainty. She might have been a new mom, but she was amazingly in tune to the little guy's needs. "He just wants to see where we are."
John wasn't quite sure a 2-monen-old baby was all that interested in his surroundings as long as he was comfy, and besides, they only had the gentle light of the torch to see by, but he wasn't going to argue with his wife on the subject. He smiled as Aeryn sat D'Argo upright in her lap so the boy could "see" what was going on in front of him. Her coat was unbuttoned, and she pulled the edges forward to enfold the baby in its warmth, incidentally covering her own knees. Aeryn hunched her shoulders just a little, enough to give John the impression that she was cold, not that she'd ever admit it unless there was a clear and present danger of hypothermia.
He crossed the couple of motras that separated them and dropped their emergency supplies next to her on the hay. While Aeryn breathlessly described their surroundings to D'Argo, John rummaged in the bag and pulled out one of the blankets. "Here," he said, as she ran out of things to describe. Aeryn looked up at him just as he wrapped the golden covering around her from behind, making a "hood" over her head as well. "Better?" he asked.
"Yes. You?"
As if her question had evoked the response, John shivered. Aeryn gave him a rueful smile, and he quickly pulled out a second blanket and wrapped it around himself. As he had done with Aeryn, he made sure the top of his head was covered by the thin metallic sheet. It reminded him of one of those Mylar "blankets" that were so popular in survival kits on earth.
"Better?" she asked with a glint of mischief in her eyes.
"Yeah," he admitted. He felt much warmer now that the heat that had been streaming off the top of his head was being held close to his body by the covering. "These things really work."
"Of course they do. They're Peacekeeper standard issue."
"Wouldn't want the troops to freeze."
She shrugged. "You can't shoot if your fingers are stiff with cold."
"I thought Peacekeepers were bred to fight under any conditions," he countered, knowing it was the expected response.
Aeryn pointedly looked away, but not before he caught the light of laughter in her eyes.
Feeling a bit warmer and more comfortable now, but still hoping there was a farm or some other real, heated structure nearby where they could get the baby out of the elements, John edged around to stand in Aeryn's line of sight. "You going to be okay here if I take a quick look around?"
Aeryn patted her right leg, indicating that her ever-present pulse pistol was within easy reach. That hadn't been exactly what he meant, because he didn't think there was any real danger in this place, but John took it as an affirmative that she was okay with him taking a little walk without her. "Won't be gone long," he promised. He bent down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips, and strode out into the night.
It took a few microts for his eyes to adjust to the lack of artificial light, but once they did, the sliver of a moon in the sky gave enough light for him to see where he was putting his feet. He looked behind, the way they'd come. The new perspective didn't show anything he hadn't seen before – just an unbroken expanse of meadow, or maybe it should be called a field, considering the lean-to they were sheltering in. He crouched down and squinted at the ground, trying to see some sign that the "hay" was cultivated, or at least cut from here. After a few microts, he told himself sharply to cut out the scientific curiosity, because it was completely irrelevant to what he was looking for – and with a pang of regret, he turned his attention to more practical recon.
He walked an arc about a metra long, sweeping across the field in the general direction they had been walking, looking into the distance as much as possible to see if he could find a farmhouse, or a road, or some sign of "civilization." Nothing appeared, not that he'd really expected it would, and he headed back to his family, rubbing his hands together and breathing on them for warmth.
When he got back to the shelter, John paused before going back in under the roof for one last bit of curious gawking. He stamped his feet for warmth and kicked at the ground once or twice, then looked up at the stars twinkling in the night sky. There wasn't a familiar one among them, but they were beautiful all the same. Just looking at them took his breath away, and tugged at his heart at the same time. It made him think of nights on earth, like the one when he'd been not all that much bigger than Little D and he and his dad had looked at the moon and talked about the astronauts who were walking there.
Damn, he missed his dad!
But, that didn't bear dwelling on, because it wasn't possible to get back to earth (
Not just yet, something whispered in his mind), and he firmly turned his thoughts away from that summer evening. Actually, it wasn't that hard to shift gears in his reminiscing, because the chill in the air, coupled with the crispness that chill brought to the view, said "winter" to him anyway.
And winter said Christmas, and somehow, despite – or maybe because of – the debacle of his most recent Christmas on earth, holiday memories made him feel warm and fuzzy, not deprived. No matter what else happened during the year, no matter how much he and his dad had clashed at times, somehow they always managed to come together for a family Christmas.
Movement inside the shelter distracted him from his musing on holidays past. As he watched, Aeryn pulled the blanket tighter around her head, though locks of long, dark hair escaped and framed her face. D was still sitting in her lap, and she had such a serious expression on her face, an air of fierce protectiveness towards her child. Looking at her sitting there, with the hay, and the wood shelter, he flashed on the "Madonna and Child" that was such a fixture of his childhood Christmases. The resemblance was so strong in his mind, he drew back slightly and stared.
When his stare turned to a goofy grin, Aeryn asked, "What are you thinking?"
"Something blasphemous," he quipped, walking into the shelter to stand next to her. After a moment he added, "But I guess it's only really blasphemous if I start imagining shepherds and wise men and choirs of angels."
Aeryn frowned.
He grinned. "This just reminds me of Christmas."
She looked around them, taking in the complete lack of holiday trappings, not to mention basic amenities, then turned her steely you-are-insane-human expression on him.
He shook his head, knowing what she was thinking. "There's the Christmas with the shopping, and the Santa Claus, and the trees, and the lights. And there's the Christmas that's about celebrating the birth of a religious leader."
"This leader believed in shopping?"
He snorted. "No. He believed in peace." There was way more to it than that, of course, but John wasn't really very religious, and he wasn't in the mood to explain Christianity 101. And besides, the very word "peace" made his stomach abruptly clench.
It probably showed on his face, because Aeryn's expression softened. "That's something we all can believe in," she said gently.
Looking into her eyes, John knew she was thinking, as he was, about what he'd done at Qujaga in the name of peace. They hadn't talked about it much, and it still gave him nightmares, ambushed his thoughts from out of nowhere sometimes. It probably always would, and that was as it should be. However much he'd felt himself backed into a corner by other people's actions, in the end, he, and he alone, had made the decision to unleash the wormhole weapon. You make the big decisions, you take the responsibility for them....
Aeryn looked down at the baby, and back up at John, and then reached out and grasped his arm. She took a deep breath before speaking, and when at last she did, her voice was firm and no-nonsense. "You saved our lives. And billions more. Imagine what it would be like if the war was still going on."
He searched her eyes, looking for any sign that she was rationalizing, just trying to comfort him.
She obviously understood his questioning gaze. She gripped his arm harder, and said, "I'm a soldier, John, born and bred to hard choices. You do the best you can, and move on. Our son has a chance to live in peace because of you."
He muttered under his breath, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
"That is what I said, isn't it?" she snapped. "A
chance. A chance that he didn't have before."
The tension in their voices reached D'Argo at last, and the baby let out a squawk. John looked at his beautiful son, and back at his wife, and sighed. He wasn't a soldier, and he couldn't let the guilt go the way Aeryn wanted him to, but just like those long-ago family Christmases when he and his dad were at loggerheads most of the year, he could put the guilt back in its box for now instead of brooding on it.
Aeryn saw the decision in his eyes, and let go of his arm.
Grateful for her acceptance, grateful beyond belief to the universe for giving her to him, John smiled at the madonna and child in front of him. "Merry Christmas, baby."
She shook her head, no doubt wondering how they'd gotten back to the holiday, but smiled back. "Merry Christmas."
He sat down next to her and put his arm around her, pulling her close. Aeryn leaned her head against his shoulder, and they settled down to wait for Moya.
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