Derry Fic - Grounded

Damn! A story I haven't archived yet!

Title: "Grounded" (Derry-verse)
Author: CretKid
Rating: PG
Spoilers: none
A/N: Whitelight is just evil for putting thoughts in my head. She is to blame for this. Generally unbeta'd, ran stuff by Whitelight and FBF

Grounded

Staccato slap of bare feet on the floor. Shouts of childish glee.

Aeryn tried to sit up, only to have the hand on her chest push her back down. She growled. John laughed, pat her head. She backhanded him in the solar plexus.

It made her feel marginally better.

Shadow and light played along the floor where the grill and privacy curtain were pulled up and away. From her forced imprisonment, it was all she could see of the goings-on outside of her shrunken universe. Only twelve arns and she was already tired of staring at the ceiling, ignoring the stabbing heat of knitting bones in her right thigh.

It was only a matter of time before Chiana ran by.

"Hey! Get back here!"

Aeryn managed to get her head off the pillow before John forcibly made her to lie down again, keeping his hand on her forehead to forestall another attempt to move.

"I WILL tie you to the bed if you don't behave," John threatened. "I may do it anyway. You're incorrigible, know that? Thought you would have learned the last time you tried to break out of here and you passed out."

With a snarl, she pushed John off the mattress and wrenched herself into a seated position. From the hallway she could hear her daughter squeal and screech in playful abandon, followed by Chiana's entreaties for the child to stop running around like a crazed bantha rodent.

And then she was painfully reminded of why it was not she giving her daughter a bath.

"I did not pass out!" Aeryn barked against the pain. A small spot of red blossomed on the bandage wrapped around her upper leg.

"No, you were just resting," John replied, checking the sealant patch where bone had broken through the skin, "after your eyes rolled to the back of your head."

She winced as John replaced the bandage. The skin around the puncture was mottled red and purple. The coolness of his fingers was in sharp contrast to the radiating pain deep in the tissue.

Chiana chased the baby past their quarters again.

Aeryn's head followed the sound.

John's hand under her chin brought her attention back to him.

"You need to stay off your feet for the next few days to allow the bones to knit properly," John reminded her. He pulled the hem of her shorts down over the bandage. Fluffed the pillow that kept her leg elevated. At least her knee had reduced to its proper size.

Their daughter streaked into the bedroom, soapy suds and water streaming from her hair, wet footprints in her wake. She made a bee-line for the corner, turned, and as Chiana skidded past the door, ran for their bed.

John caught her in mid-air as she leapt for Aeryn's lap.

"Whoa whoa whoa!" He held Derry up, his hands dwarfing her small rib cage. She giggled, let her limbs fall limp. "What are you doing runnin' 'round, naked as a jaybird? Aren't you supposed to be taking a bath?"

"Bath over!" Derry crowed.

"Doesn't look like it to me."

And then Derry spotted Aeryn over her father's shoulder and the dead weight became very much alive. "Mama! Down, Da!"

"Not just yet, kiddo," John replied, turning her in his hands and holding her like a sack of vegetables against his hip.

Chiana rounded the corner, hand gripping the grill to keep purchase on the floor. "She's faster than she looks!"

"You're supposed to be bathing her, not chasing her all over the tier," Aeryn said, the fluster on Chiana's face slight recompense for her own frustration at her immobile state.

"Sorry. Sorry sorry Aeryn. She snuck out of the tub on me!" Chiana explained in a rush.

It was then that Aeryn noticed Chiana appeared to be more wet than her daughter.

"Wanna see Mama!" Derry demanded, kicking out her feet.

"Mama's got an ouchie, so I'm just going to hold on to you for right now," John told her. "And you need to finish your bath."

"Bath over!" Derry proclaimed again. "Wanna see Mama!"

"You can see Mama from where you are," John reasoned, turning so that Derry faced her.

Chiana fluttered beside John, wrapped a towel around what she could reach of the squirming body in his arms. "Aeryn, I am so sorry."

Aeryn didn't want to dwell on what had happened. "It's all right, Chiana."

"Though, you gotta admit," John said, "after the fact and all, you got some good distance. I don't think Chiana could have jumped that far if she tried."

"Fine," Aeryn groused, "next time you take a jolt of electricity and we'll see how far you fly without a ship."

"I am SO sorry," Chiana repeated. "I didn't know there was power to that conduit."

"Mama hurt?" Derry asked.

Aeryn reached for her daughter, ignoring the painful stretch of muscles along her rib cage and hip. John righted Derry and sat down next to Aeryn to keep the baby off her lap.

Brushing away the damp tendrils from her daughter's face, Aeryn had to smile. For the thousandth time that day, she was thankful that Derry was up in Command with D'Argo instead of in the maintenance bay with her and John. She secured the toweling around the small body to ward off the chill. "Mama's fine. You need to finish your bath."

Derry held her arms up to Chiana. "Chi! Up!"

"NOW you're ready to take a bath," Chiana grumbled. "Let's go, kid."

"Thanks, Pip. I appreciate the help."

Derry was clinging to Chiana's neck with a vise-like hold. "Go Chi! Go Chi!"

Chiana repositioned the girl on her hip to alleviate child-induced constriction of the windpipe. "It's the least I could do, seeing that I broke Aeryn's leg."

"I think it was the toss from the top of the transport pod and the impact with the ground that broke her leg," John chimed.

Aeryn braced her weight on her forearms and pushed herself into a more comfortable position. "Don't you two have things you could be doing right now?"

Chiana moved to the door. "Right. Finish bath. Got it."

When John did not follow, Aeryn thwapped him in the kidneys. "That 'two' includes you."

John ignored her. "Hey Chi, can you sit with Aeryn when I put the baby down for bed?"

"That won't be necessary!" Aeryn called after Chiana.

"Yeah," John chuckled as he turned away from the door, "keep telling yourself that. Remind me again, why is it I found you on the floor a couple of arns ago? Was it because you had to be all Rambo-ette and get your own glass of water? I think that was it."

Aeryn leaned into Moya's wall, found a pillow to prop behind her back. John could be aggravating when overprotective and worried. Tunnel vision took control when he was concerned about her or their daughter. But as his anxiety faded with her initial recovery, she found his manic behavior irritating.

He knelt down next to the bed, made a production of looking under it, under the pillows, around the floor.

"What are you doing?" she asked

"Making sure you don't have a pulse pistol stashed under here." He propped his chin on the bed frame, a dren-eating grin on his face.

She pushed him off the edge of the bed. "Frell you."

"Not tonight, dear. You have a headache."

John propped his forearm on the side of the bed, rested his chin on his elbow. "Tell you what. You be a good little ex-Peacekeeper soldier for the rest of the day, stay in bed the entire time, and I will consider letting you walk around tomorrow."

Aeryn was entirely certain that he would stay up all night to ensure she did not leave the bed. She closed her eyes in resignation.

"See, there, you have the right idea," John chattered away. "Sleep away the rest of your jail time."

Without opening her eyes, she pawed the bed for a pillow and flung it where she knew his head would be. The muffled 'whumph' told her she'd hit her intended target.

"You are not earning brownie points with me," John reprimanded her. "Lie down. Go to sleep. And maybe today will seem like a huge bad dream."

Easier said than done. She hated sleeping on her back. And her leg was throbbing in tune with the headache building behind her eyes. She didn't have a headache until John mentioned it.

"Go to sleep, Aeryn"

She yawned. Couldn't help it. John laughed. She wondered if Noranti slipped her something that made her susceptible to suggestion. Her eyes were at half mast as John piled more pillows around her. Maybe she could pretend she was in the prowler�

* * *

It was dark in their quarters when something woke her. John's weight shifted on the bed in that way he used so that he would not wake her and inevitably did anyway. The leg bolstered on pillows kept her immobile. Her left arm was a nest of pins and needles.

Her voice sounded scratchy in her own ears, her eyes not quite following all of the shadows as they should. "What are you doing?"

John was hovering over her, nodding towards the middle of the bed. "Stowaway."

A mop of reddish brown hair and the child attached to it was curled into the pit of her arm, one hand fisted in her shirt.

"I was just going to take her back to bed."

Aeryn was confused. "How did she get out of her crib? I thought you fixed that."

"So did I, but Houdini here managed to escape again."

He moved to pick up their daughter; she stopped him with a hand on his forearm. "No, leave her be."

"You sure?"

Aeryn nodded and grimaced as she tried to find a more comfortable position. She didn't remember lying down, was sure she was seated when she fell asleep. "How long has she been here?"

John shrugged. "Maybe an arn."

With all the adjusting, Derry had not roused. "She needs a real bed," Aeryn said, turning on her side. Derry rolled with her.

John settled on his back. "She's 2. She needs a cage."

"Be serious, please. I don't want her to hurt herself."

"Not interested in the matching mother-daughter scar set?" John turned to his side.

She glared at him, and John acquiesced. "We can talk to Pilot tomorrow."

END