Title: Companions
Author: MissAnnThropic
E-Mail: miss_annthropic@yahoo.com
Spoilers: Natural Election

***

"What if you want to go backward? What if you start out going somewhere and decided halfway there that you want to go back to where you were?"

"You can't go back, not without making a circle and coming at it from another angle."

"Mmm."

Crichton was sitting with his legs extended out before him on the floor of the terrace, reclined backward and propping his upper body up on locked elbows and stiff arms as he looked up at the stars. He was wearing his full leathers again, from the jacket to the gloves, finding a safety in exposing as little of his bare flesh to the world as he could.

Chiana lay perpendicular to him, her head in his lap as she looked up at the same stars, only seeing them from a slightly different tilt than the human did. "But you can go back eventually." Her voice was indulgent, it was soft, and Crichton wondered when she'd become such an old soul when all he could remember up until a few weekens ago was a little girl.

"You can get back to the place you left, but not where you left it." It didn't make sense when he said it, even to him the words were garbled, but he understood what he could not explain. The language of wormholes was etched elegantly in the sulci folds of his cerebrum. It was so perfect and clean there, yet it continued to tenaciously resist translation when it moved beyond the inner recesses of his mind.

When he opened his mouth it turned into a horrid mess... it made him think his shipmates might be right. Maybe if he just shut up it wouldn't matter, wouldn't get screwed up. He frelled everything up as soon as he opened his big mouth.

Chiana made a soft noise again under her breath, nestling into John's lap further. Her sounds and her textures whispered of late-night encounters, promises of more dark unions but nothing in those portents were exciting. Exciting took too much energy, energy these days that Crichton (and a lot of the time Chiana too) didn't have to give.

They shared a bed at night. At first it had been innocently; Chiana knew as only she could that Crichton was hurting, that if there was only one thing he needed it was something to hold on to. Chiana knew a side of John Crichton that even the human himself sometimes missed seeing. They had always shared something unique, something special to the two of them outside the rest of the crew.

Crichton had been alone for a long time, and she'd come to him as a warm form to fill the empty bed space beside him. There had been no discussion or consultation over the matter, the time was passed when Crichton would turn down any friend, any show of compassion even if it was wrong and shallow.

Chiana offered only honesty and love and nothing more. No strings attached, no complicated twisting relationship, no Aeryn... it was simple and it warmed him during the night arns. He curled around her at night, sometimes she had to curl around him when he was doing badly, and just to wrap his arms around or be wrapped by something true was almost more than he could cope with after everything that had happened. He'd been chewed up, spit out, and left to rot in the sun and he'd begun to forget what compassion was... what really being important to another being without all the drama was like. He was too jaded to remember what trust was, trust with his feelings and with his heart. He tried to remember a time when that had been so easy to do, a foolish era when he'd fallen prey to its follies with great alacrity. Simple compassion, a concept he'd once owned with the whole of himself, was becoming an indecipherable language to him.

Chiana came bearing that, because it was what she could offer best. She loved Crichton, she always had, and he'd always loved her. It was a different kind of love, not the kind that made partners, but it was a love that didn't convolute and disfigure. It wasn't a love that burned him for flirting too close to its core.

He could do without passion, he just needed a love that wouldn't scorch him for trying, wouldn't punish him for needing it. Chiana let him love her like that, and she never expected more from him. She didn't have any expectations, she took what he laid out for the taking, didn't ask for the things he kept close to his chest because he couldn't swing the ante.

On the really dark nights (despite the fact that Moya was the same level of illumination every day), it was a toss-up who was really finding salvation most in the company of the other. Two wounded and battered travelers huddling together in the shelter of an overhang. Transients who found what little harbor they could salvage in another homeless soul.

And it wasn't an act, not entirely. There was love there, they'd been comrades for cycles and knew each other well enough to read needs. It was why Chiana first came slinking into his quarters that night, and why he didn't pull a classic John Crichton and send her away. She had risked to slink into his room and he'd pulled her under the covers, nary a word exchanged between them. It was better that way, it was how they both needed it to be.

And that there was honest affection there was a big reason why Chiana had offered sex when she knew she shouldn't (not with Crichton of all creatures) and why he accepted when a buried part of 'John' told him it was wrong.

Right and wrong had become to look very distorted lately, and he almost believed if he waited long enough the two would flip and wrong would be right in time.

Maybe by that same token, someday, Aeryn would flip again and he could go to her and leave behind the visceral solace he'd found in a girl he adored like a sister.

But Aeryn hadn't made the inversion yet, what once was right turned wrong had yet to shade into right again, so he sat with a Nebari youth in his lap speaking in double talk, just as aware as the girl with him that they were both speaking of two very different things.

The others on the crew knew about them, it was hard to keep secrets on Moya, but no one spoke of Crichton and Chiana's 'relationship'. Aeryn was hurt by it, one would have to be blind to miss that, but Crichton wasn't ready to deal with caring for her and Chiana had always placed Crichton before Aeryn. Aeryn seemed to understand why Crichton and Chiana had turned to each other. Doubtless she didn't like it, but Aeryn knew well the act of hiding in the physical to avoid anything deeper that was begging for attention. It was a great credit to her growth and her and John's future that she did not condemn Crichton for it.

He wondered if it was really noble or pathetic.

"Even if things are different when you get back, you could fix them back to the way they were when you left. If you turned back soon enough there wouldn't be a lot of things different."

Crichton grunted, "Sometimes you just can't put things right after you've left them in a tangle."

"You can always try."

To the silence he returned her, Chiana moved her dark eyes from the stars and sought his face. He was sinking, tunneling into dark corners to find a place to hide within himself. Crichton had never been one opposed to the art of hiding. Chiana didn't make him feel like a weak coward for resorting to it.

Chiana rolled up into a sitting position and turned to face him, length of her thigh pressed against his as they shared warmth and contact. Crichton met her eyes but didn't really see her. She knew that far-off look in his gaze, and she didn't take offense that he was somewhere else.

Chiana's lips twitched on one side of her mouth fractionally as she whispered, "I don't believe it... that you can't do anything to fix things. Unless someone's dead, there's always a chance." She consciously avoided 'hope', that was a loaded word aboard Moya as of late.

Crichton's eyes finally focused on her and after a moment halfheartedly studying her face he shrugged, "A lot happens when you're moving so fast, coming back to a point that's stationary by comparison. Kinda like... you're falling and then you're suddenly just not and you don't know what to do. Were you falling or were you standing? Which one was the right one? You're not sure anymore, and then everything's different until you realize that the stillness isn't right anymore, but you can't live falling.." he trailed off mid-thought, as he was wont to do. It was the curse of his own mind, now crammed with concepts and equations he probably had no cosmic right to possess.

He was his own distraction, which was just another reason why he didn't have the resources to handle the white elephant that was Aeryn Sun.

Chiana shifted to her knees, throwing one leg slowly over his and settling her weight on to his lap, still warm from its recent role as her pillow. Crichton pulled away from his inner demons and looked at her.

She brought up a hand, running her finger delicately down his jaw line and chin as she said, "How about when you get used to standing still again and find everyone waiting for you?"

Crichton cocked his head at her, face impassive but a glint in his eyes just for her, for the mercies she offered him lately, told her there was still John Crichton buried somewhere in there.

"Well, then maybe things will be all right again someday. If it were true.."

Chiana bent forward, nuzzling his neck, but not in sexual foreplay... more like a puppy cozzying up to its owner seeking to recapture the feeling of being one among a press of litter mates, an inequitable sense of safety tragically lost. She loved him, showed him that with the simple touches she imparted to him, and whispered in his ear, "We'll be right here whenever you're ready."

END