Originally posted 10/18/03This is actually the first John Locket fic I wrote. It takes place shortly before John and Aeryn leave the Favored Planet for the last time, and it's in Scrubschick's May-December Universe. It also borrows liberally from the set up in The Aeryn Years.
I'm not really sure what got the muses going, but I don't think Aeryn's granddaughter was at all happy about Aeryn leaving with Crichton, almost certainly to her death (and if not, well, even so, Ennixx would never see her again).
This is a confrontation between Crichton and Ennixx. I loved working with Old John, and with Ennixx.
Rating: G
Setting: The Locket
Spoilers: Through The Locket
Disclaimer: Not mine. Dang!
Tug of War
It was nearly time for the harvest, and it had been a very long day in the fields. With her husband at the Council planning meeting, Ennixx was looking forward to a pot of hot manet leaf tea and a long soak in the tub. The water for the tea was nearly boiling when there was a brisk knock on the kitchen door behind her.
She turned around, intending to answer the door. Before she got two steps, the door opened and John Crichton stuck his grey head in calling, "Ennixx? Kyfen? Anybody home? Oh," he added sheepishly when he saw her standing there. He wiped his shoes on the mat and walked stiffly into the kitchen, closing the door behind him.
When he turned around again, his expression was so solemn, her breath caught and her mind ran down a well-worn path. "Is it Nana?" she asked in alarm.
"No, no, she's fine, she's fine," her grandmother's companion was quick to assure her. Then he shook his head. "As fine as she gets. She's napping."
Crichton looked so uncomfortable, Ennixx wondered what was on his mind. But before she could ask, the kettle started boiling, and she hurried to stop its screaming.
He watched as she swirled the water in the pot, then added the crumbled leaves and covered them with boiling water. When she was done, he cleared his throat and said, "It is Aeryn I wanted to talk to you about, though. You alone?"
She set her jaw to keep from saying something she would regret. He knew perfectly well Rhonin was at the meeting, where else would he be? This was about Nana leaving, on one of those ancient transport pods, with
him. But her grandmother loved this man, even if she'd never admit it to the rest of them, and Ennixx felt she had to hear him out. She handed him two mugs and picked up the teapot, nodding towards the kitchen table.
"Quit trying to stop her from leaving with me, going back to Moya," he said bluntly, setting the mugs down with a clunk.
Ennixx shook her head and poured the tea. "I can't stop Grandmother from doing anything she wants to do."
"Mebbe not," he said, shaking his head. "But you can make it a lot harder on her than it needs to be. And we both know she doesn't have a lot of strength to spare these days."
"And that's exactly my point! She doesn't have much time left, and leaving this place, going into space like that, it will kill her!"
Crichton looked at her for a long time, then sat down wearily at the table, shifting to get comfortable in the chair. "You've got her spunk, Ennixx, but you don't understand her. Not her heart."
He might as well have slapped her, and if she'd been closer, she might have hit him. Instead, she made herself sit down at the table opposite him, and wrapped her hands around a mug of tea, even though it was really too hot to hold. The pain helped her concentrate. "I suppose
you do," she snapped, just to say something.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, girl," Crichton said. "I know how much you love her, and I love you for it."
Ennixx examined him silently, taking in his wrinkled face, the grey hair and stooped shoulders -- so much more like Nana now than the friend and age-mate he'd been when he arrived here. She tried to remember exactly when the handsome young man had become the grandfather she'd never known.... Before she could get her thoughts together, he spoke again.
"Ennixx, you and me, we've had this tug of war going since I got here. And I admit, I am a selfish bastard. I want her with me, for however long we have left. And I can't stay here, not when there's a chance to get my life back." He picked up his tea for the first time and took a huge gulp. "But this ain't about me."
"John," she said, deliberately using his given name, hoping to get him to listen to her. "Stay here. She's too weak to go, you know that. You're no spring chicken yourself," she added, dredging up one of his peculiar sayings.
Crichton laughed then, a rueful, regretful chuckle that ended in a cough. He waved off her expression of concern and took another gulp of his tea.
Ennixx bit her lip, watching him, this man who loved her grandmother so much and yet seemed determined to shorten the already short time she had left. "You know she'll go with you if you leave," she confessed. "Don't do this to her. Let her die in peace, with her family."
He stared at her for a moment, perhaps pained that she thought he had so little regard for the woman he'd spent fifty cycles with. And then he shook it off and started again, slowly and deliberately. "It'll grieve her to leave you, Ennixx. She loves you. You're her flesh and blood."
There was an emotion she didn't quite understand in his words, and he paused to drain the last of his tea. It seemed to give him strength, because when he plunked the empty mug on the table and continued, his voice was brisk and determined. "I tell you true, girl. She may have lived on this hunk of rock for more'n two hundred cycles, but Aeryn Sun was born and bred in space. She needs to die in space. Needs to. She needs it in her bones."
She tried to be angry with him, but in the face of his certainty, it was hard. She rolled her head back and closed her eyes, thinking. Could he be right? She had a sudden flash of a conversation, cycles ago, when she'd asked her grandmother why Crichton and other outsiders were always so sad when she, Nana, didn't seem to be so. "Perhaps I hide it better," Nana had said. At the time, Ennixx had assumed it was a joke....
Crichton interrupted her reverie. "All I'm askin', Ennixx, is that you let her do what she wants, without making it harder on her."
She looked him straight in the eye and asked, "What about you?"
He looked bewildered. "What are you talkin' about?"
"If she chose to stay here," she said, willing herself to be patient, "would you leave her behind? Could you let her make that choice?"
"She won't."
"But if she did?" she persisted.
Crichton was silent for so long, she wondered if she'd won the argument after all. When he finally spoke, the words came out in a heartbreaking whisper. "I, I couldn't leave here without her."
And that, in itself, guaranteed that Nana would go....
Ennixx felt tears sting her eyes, for him, and for Nana, and for herself. She knew he'd hate them, so she busied herself freshening her tea. When she felt up to it, she offered some to Crichton.
He'd pulled himself together, too. He set his hand across the top of his mug and said, "No, thank you. I should be getting back to Aeryn. Besides, your husband will be back soon. Don't want to make him jealous."
She shook her head and gave him the smile he was trying for. The old man was impossible. As impossible as Nana....
He stood up then and said, "Thanks for the tea."
Before he could get away, she promised, "Whatever she chooses, Crichton."
He took a deep breath and nodded. Determined to have the last word, he grinned and said, "Space, girl. She'll choose space."
No, Crichton, Ennixx thought, not space. My grandmother will choose
you....
She shooed him out the door, then sat back down at the table and cried.
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