Originally posted 1/1/05I should probably have let this percolate a little longer, but Aeryn said she was done, so, here it is.... A New Year's Eve gift!
This came mostly from my realization that several days had probably passed before John woke up with Little D beside him, and that Aeryn was going to have had to learn to take care of the baby without him, at least at first....
Rating: G
Setting: PKW filler
Spoilers: Through PKW
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my universe, no money being made, no disrespect intended!
Thanks to Loco, Shipsister, MadScientist, Auna, and CrystalMoon for comments and suggestions. Not my fault if Aeryn refused to do some of the things suggested....
Getting to Know You
Aeryn was aware of her own voice, screaming for help. Dimly, she felt Stark's hands on her shoulders. Some primitive level of her mind kept her fierce grip on the small bundle in her arms.
But nothing mattered except the inert form that lay crumpled before her. "John!" she screamed again, tugging at his body. He had to answer. He had to answer. She couldn't bear to lose him again....
It wasn't until Chiana slipped in from somewhere to actually check Crichton's vitals and announced sharply, "He's still breathing, Aeryn. He's alive," that she began to get a grip. The anger in Chiana’s voice reminded Aeryn that Ka D’Argo was dead. If John was still alive, then there were things she could do to help him, and those things did not include emotional collapse. She reached out her free hand and touched Chi gently on the cheek, and then took a deep cleansing breath and willed herself to act
and not react.
She pulled away from Stark and sat back on her knees absent-mindedly jiggling the baby. Aside from Chiana, no one else on Command had said a word since John’s collapse, and into the silence Aeryn said, “I need help to get him to our quarters.”
Chiana sniffed and hitched herself up and waved a pulse pistol towards the corridor in a way that Aeryn found truly disturbing. "I'll get Scorpius," she said.
"No," Aeryn declared, even though she knew that the Scarran half-breed's physical strength could have been useful. One look at Chiana's defiant face led her to check John's condition again. But his pulse was strong, speed obviously wasn't critical. "Chiana," she said, "will you get the gurney from the med bay? It would be better to move him more gently."
Chiana surveyed her with those odd new eyes of hers and then nodded once and took off at a run, Stark on her heels.
Aeryn sank down on her haunches and watched John carefully for any sign that he was waking up. Rygel floated over beside her and looked mournfully from her to John and back up to their infant son. He didn't presume to tell her that everything would be all right, and for that she was grateful.
"I'll go make sure they bring the diagnostic tools," he said, and she nodded numbly in agreement.
For what seemed like an eternity, she waited alongside her husband's unresponsive form, one hand holding their son, the other stroking John's short hair.
When Chiana and Stark reappeared with the gurney, Rygel right behind them, Aeryn stood up carefully, body aching.
The bundle in her arms squirmed abruptly and let out a cry. Aeryn looked to see what was wrong with him, and somehow, that galvanized the rest of Moya's crew into action. Before she knew it, she, and John, and their tiny son were in the quarters she and John shared, his still-unresponsive form resting on the bed under lights hastily set up to provide both illumination and warmth..... That had been an arn ago. The others had vanished quickly then, and left her to handle John on her own. She didn't really blame them. It was clear from the first scans that there was nothing they could do that she couldn't do on her own, and there was so much else that needed to be done, others who needed care. Chiana needed privacy to mourn her dead. Moya was badly damaged.... Aeryn supposed that some of them might even be trying to help Muoma broker a true peace settlement between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans.
And still, the only thing that mattered to her was John Crichton.
John Crichton, whose heart still beat strongly. Whose lungs continued to breathe air.
But who remained stubbornly unresponsive, eyes staring into nothingness.
She ran the medical scanner over him one more time, and said grimly, "I know you're in there, John. This frelling machine says your brain is functioning. So wake the frell up!"
He didn't answer, gave no sign that he had heard her, and her eyes filled with tears of frustration.
She was only guessing that the readings she saw meant what she thought they did, that his mind was undamaged, and that it was reasonable to believe he could emerge from this state whole again.
She wiped dirt and sweat and dried blood off his face, careful of the superficial injuries, and brooded, considering whether to try to remove his clothes or not. Someone -- she didn't remember who -- had taken his boots and his vest off in the process of getting him onto the bed, but he was otherwise still fully clothed. Surely he'd be more comfortable without the leather pants, but with all the damage Moya had sustained, temperature regulation was still spotty, and it was cold in here....
She had just about decided to remove the pants anyway and make sure he was well-covered with blankets, when a gurgle from near her feet finally drew her attention away from her husband.
Her son, John's son, a tiny infant just arns old, lay in a make-shift bed on the floor. John had fashioned it from a drawer during the trip back from Arnessk, and she'd been grateful to have somewhere safe to place the child so she could tend to his father.
And, she realized with a guilty start, she'd completely forgotten her baby even existed the moment she'd put him down....
She looked at him now and saw that the baby had kicked open the crude cloth covering he'd been wrapped in, exposing his skin to the cold air. Stricken, she knelt down immediately and wrapped him up again, apologizing to him as she did so.
As if realizing that he had her attention at last, he screwed his face up and his vocalizations changed from gurgles to gentle sobs.
Concerned, Aeryn picked the baby up and wrapped him in her arms, rocking him back and forth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she repeated. "I didn't mean to forget you! Here, are you warmer now? Does that feel better?"
The baby continued to fuss and squirm, and she made an unwelcome discovery about motherhood: the sound of an unhappy infant had never been more than an annoyance before, but now that it was
her unhappy infant, the squalls tore at her heart, as if she, herself were the one in pain or discomfort. No matter how much John's frightening state demanded her attention, she was going to have to deal with her child's needs
now.
Still.... She had no clue how long it was going to take to settle the baby down, and she wanted to know that John was as comfortable as she could make him while her attention was on their child. "Just give me a few microts with your father," she said, bending down to kiss her son on the forehead. "I'll be right back, I promise," she told him, and set him down again in his bed, where he proceeded to yell his displeasure.
Steeling herself against the tug of his cries, she rapidly unfastened John's pants and tugged them off, leaving his socks and underwear. Unconscious -- or catatonic, or whatever he was -- he was a dead weight, and it took her longer than she'd hoped, but she was responsible for her husband
and her child, and she was determined to take care of them both, to make up for her near-breakdown on command.
By the time she'd tucked several blankets around John, the baby was crying solidly, upset, or maybe even angry at being ignored. She kissed John on the forehead, and then scooped the baby up again.
"Poor little one," she cooed without even thinking. "You look miserable! Shhh," she soothed, bouncing him in her arms, caressing him as she had earlier, before John had fallen and her attention had been divided.
But this time, the baby continued to cry. "You can't be cold anymore," she told him, looking at his scrunched-up face with concern. "You're all wrapped up, and you're getting my body heat."
Her brain stubbornly refused to dredge up
anything she'd ever known about babies, whether from a brief punishment duty in a crèche on the command carrier where she'd grown up, or entertainment programs on earth, or even the occasional conversation with D'Argo or John that had included the topic of children....
She tried moving him around to several different positions, thinking perhaps he didn't like the way she was holding him. Who
knew what babies thought! Did they think at all? Her arm brushed his soft cheek, and he stopped crying for a moment and turned his head sharply in that direction. She held her breath, thinking maybe she'd done it, but after bobbing against her skin a few times, the baby screwed up his face and wailed in obvious anger.
Frustrated, and more than a little dismayed at having this tiny creature she'd brought into the world be so upset with her, she glared at John's still form.
Wake up you bastard, she thought, knowing she was being unfair.
You promised we’d do this together! But it wasn't going to be that easy. John was still off somewhere else, eyes staring at nothing, responding to nothing, not even the screams of outrage now coming from his son.
Near tears herself, Aeryn jostled the baby a little more, thinking seriously about calling Pilot and asking if there was anyone on board who could help her with the baby. Shuffling him around again, she settled him back in the position he'd been in when she carried him in a sling right after his birth. With a gasp and a hiccough, the baby turned his head towards her chest and started nuzzling firmly against her breast, only slightly deterred by the fabric of her shirt.
She gasped herself as understanding dawned.... Frell! Breasts! Food! Her baby was
hungry! Hezmana, he must be starving! She blinked back tears of frustration. He must be starving, and she was both an idiot and a complete failure as a mother!
"Just a microt," she said as soothingly as she could, caressing the baby while trying to remember everything she had ever known about breast feeding. It wasn't much. When she'd pressed him, the surgeon on the command carrier had told her disdainfully that if she was determined to bear this half-breed baby, she should be able to produce milk. Under ideal circumstances, he'd sniffed, a Peacekeeper would give birth and the infant would be taken to the crèche immediately.
Taken care of optimally, he'd said. However, if a genetically altered Peacekeeper like herself were to give birth in some emergency situation, her breasts
would produce milk if the infant were allowed to suckle.
All right, the baby needs to suck. That much was obvious anyway from the way he was still nuzzling insistently at her breast. She had no idea of the mechanics of the operation, but it made sense to do it sitting down, and she needed to get his mouth near a nipple.
She could have sat anywhere in the room, but she sat down on the edge of the bed next to John for comfort, and pulled up the thin fabric of the black camisole she was wearing, exposing her breast to the chill air. The baby squawked at the change in position, but he seemed to understand that she was trying to get him what he wanted, and he didn't work himself up to actual crying. She lifted him awkwardly so his mouth once again touched her breast. He rooted around till he found the nipple and latched on with a huge contented sigh, apparently knowing instinctively that he was in the right place.
With a sigh of relief of her own, Aeryn tried to settle him in a more natural position, but she decided not to risk pulling him away from the breast. He was sucking hard, she was amazed at the power his tiny mouth had, but she couldn’t tell if he was actually getting milk. The surgeon hadn't been very specific about how long it would take. Afraid the baby was going to get frustrated and give up, she started talking to him. "I'm sorry if you're not getting anything to eat yet. You have to keep at it for a little bit to make the milk come. I know you can do it, you're a strong boy. Your father and I never give up, and you won't either, will you?" She ran her fingers over his arm, and promised him that if he just kept at it, soon there would be food. After a little while he sighed and started sucking harder.
She didn't feel anything different, but her son seemed quite content, so she thought he must be getting milk at last. Thank the goddess!
While the baby suckled, she felt her other breast begin to fill with milk. It was an odd sensation, not entirely pleasant, and sent her thoughts wandering to how much she didn't know about this whole procedure. She had two breasts, and one baby….did he eat from one breast for a meal and the other the next time, or both each time? She would have shrugged if she hadn't thought it would disturb him. It seemed logical to offer one breast, and see if he was still hungry when it was empty.
Decision made, she watched the baby suckle greedily. “Welcome to the world, little one.” She shook her head. “You haven’t been alive one solar day, and already your father has almost killed you, and your mother forgot that you need to eat.” She brushed the back of her fingers gently over the baby’s soft, almost invisible, wisps of hair. “We’re not very impressive as parents go, are we?”
But the baby's totally contented posture, one little fist curled up against her breast, and eyes closed as he fed, suggested that all was forgiven. Overwhelmed at his unconditional trust in her, Aeryn bit her lip to keep from crying, and continued to watch her son eat, ignoring the ache that was developing in her back. Next time she fed him, she would make sure she had a chair with a back!
Her sense of accomplishment was short-lived, however. Abruptly, the baby let go of her breast and started fussing again.
"Now what?" she asked in mild exasperation, though truthfully, that nipple was getting quite sore, and she was just as glad he'd stopped sucking.
The baby's only response was to sob and kick randomly.
Aeryn stared at him, trying to decipher the clues he was giving her. "You should have come with a field manual," she said at last. Thinking he might have emptied the breast he was working on and still be hungry, she awkwardly turned him around so his head was on the other side. Before she could pull up her shirt on that side, however, he opened his mouth and a stream of thin whitish liquid she could only assume was breast milk came out.
She watched in slow motion as the regurgitated meal spread over the two of them.
Ugh. She wrinkled her nose.
It wasn't really that much, and it didn't smell bad enough to be called vomit, but....ugh.
"You're worse than Rygel," she told the child, when he turned puzzled eyes on her. "Never mind. We should get cleaned up, though," she decided, abandoning feeding for now. However much he'd managed to eat -- and not spit back all over
her -- would hold off the hunger pangs for a while.
Days ago, it seemed, while he'd been working on the make-shift bed, John had said something about a baby bath, but he hadn't had time to find anything appropriate, or at least, he hadn't told her about it if he had. "What shall we wash you in?" she asked rhetorically, wiping at her shirt with the cloth the baby was wrapped in. The little one, apparently unbothered by the mess he'd made, turned his eyes towards her face when she spoke. She shook her head at him. "You don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Trying to sort out this new problem, she put the baby back down in his bed and pulled her shirt off, intending to just wipe her chest off and throw on a new shirt before attending to her son. But the smell of sweat, and milk, and dust, and chakkan oil, and yes, death, assaulted her, and she realized she needed a shower and complete change of clothing. She glanced down at her son once more before deciding that she would simply take him into the shower with her. "Two birds with one stone," she murmured, hoping in some corner of her mind that she wasn't going to have to be the one to teach her son these incomprehensible sayings....
She took off her boots, and the leather pants John had appropriated for her down on the planet. It hadn't bothered her at the time that they'd belonged to a dead Peacekeeper, after all, she'd needed something to wear and they were available, but now, she wanted them
off her body. She piled everything in a corner to deal with later. She quickly pinned her hair up, and, naked, went to fetch the baby, who had been waiting patiently for her where she left him, in his bed.
His soiled covering went in the pile with her clothes, and she headed resolutely for the shower, baby in her arms.
Part of her was screaming that this was a frelling stupid idea, and she was going to drop her child on his head and kill him, but an equally determined part of her insisted she could do this. She was his mother, and she wouldn't allow anything to happen to him. She'd kept the Scarrans from getting him on more than one occasion, and she'd given birth in the middle of a gun battle, and she could certainly manage to hold onto him in the shower! As a precaution, though, she decided she would not use cleanser, and would just get them both thoroughly rinsed off.
One last glance at John, and she turned the shower on, adjusting the temperature so that it suited her, and hoped it would be all right for the baby, too. She made sure she had him firmly in her arms, and wrapped her thumb and forefinger around his sturdy little leg for extra security. "All right," she told him, "we're going to take a shower. That's water coming down, and it will help us get clean."
The child gurgled at her cheerfully, and she stepped in, carefully shielding his face from the spray.
The water felt wonderful as it rolled over her body -- but apparently her son didn't feel the same way, because he let out a squawk.
"It's not that bad," she told him firmly, but nevertheless, she made extra sure that she kept the spray off of his face as she poured handfuls of water over the rest of his tiny body. She wiped his cheeks with her own wet hand, and declared him clean.
"See, isn't that nice?" she asked with a soft smile in her voice.
He continued to squint as the occasional splash of water hit him while she finished rinsing herself off, but otherwise seemed content in her arms.
Victorious, Aeryn turned off the water and emerged from the shower. She wrapped her son in a soft towel and set him down in the safety of his bed while she got herself dried and dressed. The fresh clothes felt glorious on a clean, if sore, body, and for just a few microts she leaned against the wall in satisfaction. She'd done it! She'd managed to wash both herself and this tiny little creature whose ways she was just beginning to discern. He didn't much like the shower, and there were probably better ways to clean him, but still, she'd done it!
If he just didn't vomit again any time soon.... She wrinkled up her brow, and resolved to find out why he'd done that in the first place. For now, she needed to get him dressed.
The only clothing they had for the baby was a pile of improvised diapers, cloth she'd cut into squares while John had used other pieces as padding for the bed. John had joked about how difficult it was going to be to get them on properly, and D'Argo had looked in on them once and shook his head when he saw what she was doing. But, remembering the sight of her child completely uncovered in the chill room, Aeryn resolutely approached the little bed to try diapering.
She saw that the baby was drowsy, for which she thanked the fates. Most of John's and D'Argo's warnings had involved squirming and kicking, so hopefully if he was sleepy, he wouldn't fight the procedure. Removing the towel, she set the now-dry infant down on the cloth and pulled the lower portion up between his legs as John had described. Pulling the edges snugly around his waist and clipping them with some fasteners from John's workbench turned out to be more awkward than she'd hoped. But after only two tries, she felt the cloth was on securely enough to count him clothed for the first time in his young life.
"There," she said softly, and wrapped him up in a fresh blanket. She picked him up and rocked him gently, reveling in the feel of his small body in her arms. This was her son. She was his mother. They might have had a shaky start, but she'd fed him, bathed him, and clothed him -- and he was sleeping in her arms.
She looked over at John, wishing she could share the moment, but he was still staring blankly at the ceiling.
She bent down and kissed the baby on his forehead. "I love you, little one," she said softly. Disregarding the knot in her stomach, she added resolutely, "When your father wakes up, he's going to be so proud of us!"
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