A Night to Remember

By Kaylenn Mir
Copyright 1999

Author's Note:
I'm rating this one PG-13 for mild Sexual Situations. Also, anyone who's against a John Crichton/Aeryn Sun romance bail out now... I am giving fair warning. Spoilers thru : "'Til The Blood Runs Clear" All Comments welcome- Flames, Grocery Lists, Food Cubes, and PK prisoners lists accepted. :) Just please be gentle, this is one of my first fanfics. And now on to the story.

Aeryn Sun was restless. That much was immediately clear. Why was a little more complicated. But that didn't matter at the moment. She just knew that she needed to move, get this feeling out of her head. So she did the first thing that came to mind. She ran. She ran as hard and as fast as she could, not caring where she was going, just that she was getting there. She didn't have to worry about running into any one else, they were all in their quarters sleeping. As should she be. But she had found herself out in the halls instead because of the dreams.

The dreams scared her, they shook her to her core. There were several reasons why they scared her, not the least of which was that she had never dreamed before.

She was lost in her own thoughts, and didn't notice the light mist which was lining the walls of the hallways. It had no odor, so she did not realize that she was breathing in significant quantities of the stuff. She was focussing on the images running through her head, so she didn't see John step out into the hallway in front of her until she was literally on top of him. They both fell onto the floor, sprawled out as a result of the impact.

Slightly stunned, she watched him reach up and brush a piece of hair back from her face. When his skin brushed hers the dream she had been running from came unbidden to her thoughts. Images and sensations spilled over her, the reality taking her breath away. Strong arms around her; Crichton's face, with a look she had never seen before in his features; she felt him trailing kisses down her neck, and it felt right. She responded as if in a daze, matching him move for move. And then there was Crais's face, "irreversibly contaminated... contaminated... contaminated..." She heard rifle shots, and a child screaming for her mother. And then she blinked, and found herself back in the hallway, still sprawled on top of John Crichton.

He was looking up at her with concern, "Aeryn... Are you ok?" He was more than a little surprised to step out into the hallway in the middle of the night and find her sprinting for dear life down the corridor. He figured that if anything was coming down the corridor after her it would have shown up by now. He had brushed her hair gently out of her eyes, and she closed them at his touch. After a few minutes, in which several emotions flickered over her normally controlled features, her eyes snapped open and held a look of terror which he had seldom seen before.

"Aeryn, what is it? You can tell me. What's wrong??" His voice was insistent, bringing her mind back to the here and now. She was, however, still slightly dazed from the barrage of sensations. She reluctantly pushed herself up from his body, she had never really taken time to realize that it was quite a nicely built body at that. She got to her feet and offered him a hand up, which he gratefully accepted. She pulled him to his feet then began to walk toward the terrace. She looked back at him, "Well, you're up... Are you coming?"

John was still worried about her, but decided that if he asked he was likely to receive either a Pantak Jab or an end to his life. On the other hand, he had a good chance of dying out here 75% of the time anyway. What's the worst she can do, knock me out? I doubt she'd actually kill me...

"Hey."

"Hey."

"So, why are you up?"

"I could ask the same thing of you."

"But I asked first. If I tell you why I'm not asleep in my room, will you do the same?" His innocent eyes were looking at her again, that blue that was not unlike a star's glow. Perhaps they reflected his soul, full of burning passion and life. And she found that her inhibitions were lower. Maybe it was the time and the lack of sleep, maybe it was the company. She would never know.

"All right. I know this will sound stupid to you but," she took a deep breath in preparation, "I'm out here because of a dream. I don't know how it was on your world, but on my world people never dream. Peacekeepers are trained not to, it keeps us from re-experiencing pain and traumatic events." He nodded in understanding. Encouraged by this she continued. "What I dreamed scared me. It was such a jumble. It made no sense at all, and yet I am terrified that it may come true..."

"Tell me more... Sometimes you just have to talk about these things before they'll go away."

She looked up, surprised at this revelation, and at the softness in his voice. She blushed, "I'd rather not go into it... You're there, and then Crais appears. And then there's a flash and I see a girl. She looks like I did, and I can't tell if it's me or not. But she's doing something that I've never done. She's screaming for her mother... Except I never knew my mother, and I never cried. That's what scares me, this little girl. I feel like I need to help her, but I can't... And just as I try to reach for her, I wake up." She shook her head and the dazed expression left her eyes.

Not knowing what to do, or how she would react, John did what felt right. He pulled her into a hug. Aeryn started at the contact, but for some reason her usual self-preservation instincts weren't functioning and she didn't pull away. She relaxed into his embrace and allowed her head to rest on his shoulder.

John couldn't believe this was happening. For some reason it didn't set off any warnings in his heart either. Maybe this was for real. Maybe the big bad ex-peacekeeper needed a chance to relax too. As he thought about it, he had only seen her scared twice, when she was blind, and when Namtar had injected her and she had been transforming into something else. That she was allowing him to know this was a rare occasion indeed.

With things happening like they were he leaned down and kissed her. She responded almost immediately with a passion which surprised them both. Before either really knew what was happening they stripped and found themselves naked before the stars. He reached out a hand to trail a caress down her face. She leaned into it, and soon all semblance of rational thought left them.

One DRD was making its rounds when it happened upon them. It fed the image back to pilot who quickly shut down the feed and ordered it out to a service tunnel. As a second thought, he made sure that the doors to the terrace opened from the inside only. It was bad enough that a DRD saw fit to inform him this was going on, there was no reason that anyone else need stumble upon this. "Ah, well," he said to his empty chamber, "Bipeds will be bipeds, but that doesn't mean I have to watch."

A half an Arn later John and Aeryn left the Terrace fully dressed. Before they went their separate ways they shared a lingering kiss. Then each headed to their own quarters and went to bed. Aeryn quickly fell into a dreamless sleep and never realized that John had never told her his reason for being in the hallway.

The Next Morning

John and Aeryn both woke up feeling well rested and just a little bit sore... Although each remembered having had pleasant dreams, neither could remember what they were about. As he walked by her on the way to the command chambers her scent made him turn his head and brought a flicker of a memory to his mind. It was the image of her head thrown back, a look of pure ecstasy on her features. He idly wondered where the image had come from, then dismissed it as pure imagination as Pilot's voice took his attention.

And another "normal" day began for Moya and her crew. No one noticed that the strange mist which had lined the walls the previous night had vanished without a trace.