Jeremiah Crichton Addendum

O.K. don't laugh... this is my least favorite episode too. in fact. If it weren't for the fact that it had shirtless Ben (what can I say... I'm a hetrosexual girl...I LIVE for shirtless Ben) it would have no redeeming qualities at all.

But for some reason my buddies and I were talking about it (I can't even remember why.. how sad is that?) and it hit me that I was always disapointed that they never showed what happened when he got back to Moya. Did he thank Zhaan and Aeryn?

Did Aeryn and Zhaan tell him off for getting lost in the first place? What?

So here's my idea of what happened when John got back shipside. It probably didn't happen this way... but since Kemp never saw fit to show us I say it's up for interpertation *g*

Title: Jeremiah Crichton Epilogue
Rating: G
Time Frame: Just after Jeremiah Crichton

_________________________________

John Crichton walked into his quarters and flung his bag on the bed. Although he hated to admit it, it was nice to be...; He paused for a moment while his brain skittered around the word "home," rejected it, and settled on something less permanent. Back. It was nice to be back here on Moya. Where things made less sense than they did on Acquarra but the beds were softer and at least he had the option of hot water.

He laughed a bit at the thought that having gone for 92 days without giving hygiene much consideration, the first thing on his mind was drowning himself in the shower. But after catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror he'd had to admit that D'Argo must be right. He looked and smelled like dren. Not that he had any idea what dren was, but if it resembled anything close to the current state of his person, he had pretty good idea of how it could be translated.

D'Argo. He had to admit he'd been more surprised than anything else when the big Luxan had appeared out of nowhere and made quick work of Rokon and his friends. Surprised and a touch relieved, before the anger had taken over again. Anger that had proved to be unfounded, much to his embarrassment. So much for self- righteous pride.

He sighed and pulled off his boots and shirt and winced a little at the cool air and floor. Acquarra had been just a tad short of tropic in climate and even on its coolest days had been warmer than Moya's average temperature. He wondered idly if it was a concession to Aeryn's unique physiology, a result of Moya's pregnancy or if a Leviathan's natural temperature was in the low 60's. It was something he'd have to look into when he got a chance.

He rummaged in the bin of old PK casual wear he'd found on tier 12 a few weeks after he'd been dropped into Oz -- A plethora of the same gray T-shirts and black pants in varying sizes. Acquarra had been beautiful but primitive, and having to play at Robinson Crusoe had bulked him up a bit, so he grabbed a pair a size larger than the ones he'd been wearing before he got lost, picked up some cleanser and a couple of towels, and headed off to the bathing chamber.

He'd tried to thank D'Argo on the trip back and apologize for believing they'd have ever left him on purpose, but the big Luxan had just put him off with a vague wave of his hand and looked nonplussed that he'd even bother.

"You are a comrade Crichton. As such it would have been dishonorable not to try and retrieve you. And anyway it's Aeryn you should be thanking. She's the one who wouldn't give up when the rest of us had almost lost hope."

He'd winced at that, remembering how he'd yelled at her the last time he'd seen her. Yelled and told her she made him sick. She hadn't come to meet the transport pod when it landed. Zhaan had, hugging him despite his rancid smell and telling him that she was glad the Goddess had decided that their paths remained in union after all. He'd tried to apologize to her as well, but she'd just bundled him off to his quarters stating that there would be plenty of time for explanation and commiseration after he'd had some food and some rest. Then she'd grabbed Rygel by the ear and pulled him down the hall after her, berating the small Dominar for getting them in trouble once again.

No, Aeryn hadn't been there. And oddly enough that had hurt a bit. He'd expected her to be there in full military mode and tell him off for getting lost in the first place and making them waste the past quarter cycle searching for his sorry ass. He must have offended her pretty badly for her to give up on a chance to rag on him like that. He'd have to go and find her after he got cleaned up. If one had to grovel it usually helped if you looked your best.

_______________________________________

"Is he all right, D'Argo?"

The Peackeeper's voice startled him enough to make his hand twitch on his Qualta Blade's hilt. Half a cycle's relative freedom hadn't replaced 8 of living in chains and sudden moves still made him jumpy.

He looked up enough to see Aeryn hovering in his doorway, a mixture of apprehension and curiosity on her face. Her concern for the human amused him a bit. Considering he had supposedly ruined her life, she was becoming quite adept at being his champion.

"The natives didn't harm him. He seems in good health. Even said he was happy there at first. He did get mixed up in bit of a love triangle that could have been sticky until they got a look at Rygel. Then they were too busy worshiping him to pay the rest of us any notice." He paused and reached over for more Lutra oil to polish the length of his blade with. "At least until our dear Dominar frelled things up and they wanted to kill us all again. It's actually quite good you figured out how to send us that message. Probably saved our lives."

Aeryn's expression changed from curious to, if he was not mistaken, mildly disapproving. "Love triangle?" she said.

D'Argo shrugged. "The daughter of one of their ruling families found Crichton attractive and responded favorably when he performed some sort of mating ritual with her."

"Mating... ritual?"

"Yes. It had something to do with food. In any case the girl's intended, a warrior named Rokon, didn't take to kindly to Crichton trying to lay claim to her. He and his friends were just engaging Crichton in an honor challenge when I happened to find him."

Aeryn raised an eyebrow and looked at him as though she suspected him of lying. "Crichton challenged someone?"

The disbelief in her voice was enough to make him bark out a laugh. "I know. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But evidently the female was quite smitten with him. He was living out of his module away from the main village. I guess it stands to reason he got lonely after a while. Not that I blame him. She was quite pretty."

Something flashed across Aeryn's face too fast for him to catch, and when she spoke again her voice was decidedly icy. "Well, if this girl was so pretty and he was so happy there, why did he bother to come back at all?"

D'Argo frowned. Something in her tone made him distinctly uncomfortable. He decided to cut off further conversation regarding the subject. If she was angry with Crichton for being frivolous while he had been stranded, let her take it up with him.

"It is my understanding that he wished to continue his search for his home world. As for any other motivations....; you'd have to ask him."

Aeryn didn't say anything in reply. She simply stared at him for a microt and then walked away.
_____________________________________

John wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at his face. Or rather, he stared at the hair on his face. He wasn't really sure if he wanted to cut it off or not. It had taken several weekens to grow in properly and he was rather proud of how it had turned out.

"Are you going to stand there all day admiring yourself or are you actually going to do something about that?"

He whirled around to see Aeryn lounging against the door, and the look she had on her face made him wonder if he still smelled bad.

"Don't you ever knock? I'm still dressing here." He pulled his shorts up a little higher on his hips by way of demonstration.

Aeryn cast an eye over him head to toe, lingering, he thought, a little too long on his chest before coming back to stare him in the face. He almost smiled. If he didn't know better, he'd swear little miss frontal assault was checking him out.

But when she spoke her voice was dry and her face had the expression of one stuck dealing with a particularly slow child. "In Peacekeepers we lived in close quarters constantly. We ate together, slept together, dressed together. I guarantee you there is nothing you possess that I have not already seen."

He found himself wincing. So much for the checking out theory.

Aeryn inched around him as though afraid if she touched him she might get burned and then shoved the rest of his clothes onto the floor and took a seat on the lone chair the bathing room held. "What were you doing in here so long anyway?"

He sighed. "Showering, Aeryn. 92 days without one tends to leave a body a bit rank. And deciding whether to keep the beard or not. What do you think?"

She sniffed. "I think it looks like a Pokarian Pameela crawled onto your face and died."

He stared at her for a microt but then decided that after what he'd put them all through, he could live with her gibing him for a bit. Not that he had any other choice, but oddly the thought drifted through that he actually might have missed it a bit.

"I'll take that as a no. Hand me those cutters over there."

A few microts later the utensil was duly plunked into his hand and he turned around and began to snip.

"D'Argo tells me you liked it down there."

He nodded. "I did."

"Was it like your Earth?"

"Sort of. Rather like it was about two hundred years... cycles ago. Many races of my people lived much the way the Acquarrians did. And they were nice, most of them. Friendly and they treated me well. Helped me out with supplies, told me about the area. Kept me company so I didn't get too lonely."

"Lonely. Yes. D'Argo told me about the love triangle dren."

Love triangle? That was enough to make him pause. "What love triangle? There was no love triangle."

He turned around to see Aeryn sitting with one leg pulled up on the seat and her chin resting on her knee. "D'Argo told me that you attempted to get one of the women there to mate with you by offering her food but that the man she was promised to found out, and he and his friends were just about to kill you when he came along and rescued you."

John felt his mouth flapping like a fish out of water. He wanted to stop it, but his brain had just gotten stuck and until the shock wore off he was forced to let it flap away.

"He told you WHAT? No, no, no, no, no. There is NO WAY he told you that!"

Aeryn's face however let him know that D'Argo had done just that. It registered pure disgust. "I am not in the habit of lying, Crichton. And it has been my experience that neither is D'Argo."

Anger quickly replaced the shock. "First of all, D'Argo's entire existence is a lie. Remember the General Tattoos? And secondly I did not try to mate with Lishala and I would have done just fine against Rokon if tentacle man hadn't jumped in."

Aeryn buffed her fingernails against her shirt and stared at them in a way that was oddly reminiscent of a move one of his old girlfriends used when she was particularly put out with him and wanted him to know it.

"You deny giving her food?"

"Food?"

"Yes. Rygel told me that on Acquarra they let others know of their intent to take a mate by offering food."

He was embarrassed to feel himself blush, and even more angry that he was embarrassed. He had no reason to feel guilty about Lishala and Rygel should have kept his diminutive mouth shut. He was going to choke the little slug on a fistful of that Shakloom jerky he loved so much as soon as he saw him.

"Well...yes. I did offer her some food, but I wasn't trying to take her for a mate. I just thought she might be hungry after walking all the way to see me and I didn't know about the custom. As for Rokon, that was a misunderstanding, which we later cleared up. Nothing happened between Lishala and me." He paused to put down the cutters and pick up the knife that he had sharpened into a sort of straight razor.

"Not that it should matter if it did," he mumbled.

"What?"

He took a peek at her in the reflection of the mirror. She was still looking at him as though he smelled bad. Well frell her, it wasn't his fault she was upset. He hadn't done anything wrong.

"I said, not that it should matter if it did."

Aeryn's body stiffened and her face went blank. "Who said it mattered? I didn't say it mattered. What do I care if you and Latasha..."

"Lishala..."

"...Whatever. If you and that girl had anything to do with each other. I'm just a bit disappointed to find that instead of trying to find a way off of that planet or to contact Moya, you spent your timing fishing and trying to feed women. We were out here searching for you, you know."

He reeled a bit, her words hitting him as solidly as a physical smack. No wonder she was upset with him. D'Argo had told him how she'd stayed up late at night pouring over star charts and coordinates, trying to find the proper sized blue green planet with an oxygen-based atmosphere. She'd been up here trying to save his life and to her it must look like he didn't even care.

He turned around. "Look Aeryn, I'm sorry."

She frowned. "What for?"

"For everything. For acting like a jerk that day, for flying off in a huff like I did, for being human and slow to catch on and a burden most of the time. D'Argo told me what you did. How you looked for me. How you refused to give up when the others were beginning to consider it. And that means a lot. You can't know how much."

She stared at him and after a moment her face went a bit pink. She looked away from him and shrugged. "It wasn't your fault you got lost. Moya had to emergency Starburst. We would have never just left you like that."

He nodded. "I know that now. I'm sorry I didn't know it then. But for what it's worth, it's part of the reason I came back."

She still didn't look at him and when she spoke again her voice shook a bit. "I thought it was because you still want to find your Earth."

He looked at her. For all her hard exterior and don't care attitude she was still just a displaced misfit like all the rest of them. Only it was worse for her, because everyone else had places to go to, including him. This was her world, and because of him, she was no longer welcome in it.

He wiped off his face and went and knelt by the chair. "I do still want to find Earth, Aeryn. It's my home, of course I want to find it. But until then, I figure I'd better stick with my own people. And that means you and D'Argo and Rygel and Zhaan. And who knows, maybe by the time we find my little blue green planet I'll have convinced you, you can belong there."

She stared at him, an unreadable expression on her face. "You still wish me to go with you."

He gently thumped one fist on her knee. "Yes."

Aeryn shook her head and placed her hand against the side of his face, her thumb curving around gently to wipe a fleck of shaving foam from his bottom lip. And it occurred to him that for a woman who spent most of her life in the harshness of war, she had incredibly soft hands. Almost as soft as her mouth had been under his that day in the Flax.

"I'm glad you're back, John," she said, then released him and left.

He watched her leave and then turned back to his now smooth reflection in the mirror. He grinned to himself for a moment and then picked up a shirt, shrugged it on, and headed off to Pilot's Chamber.

Yup. It was good to be back.