Voodoo
She can feel John everywhere.
He's in the wind as it rushes through her hair, in the cold metal under her hand that's modeled into this strange, inefficient means of transportation. Rubber wheels that are unstable (at best), liquid pumping through the veins of the vehicle that could be ignited by the very electricity that powers it. Yet here, on Earth, it all seems to be an acceptable risk.
She can feel him in the scenery: white fences on either side of the road, dividing it from fields and trees and vast openness. The vehicle, an automobile he refers to as a type of bird, moves down the empty road. John takes the turn tightly and her hand flies to the crude belt restraining her to her seat.
The motion, however, only sends John into a smile. "Yeah, baby! Woo!"
He's insane, she knows, but somehow she can't help herself. She is he and he is she, and when he feels joy, so does she. He is in the way her head pivots to blow the hair from her eyes.
Sound comes from a small mesh circle near her thigh. "The frell...?" The noise reminds her of an animal.
His words don't translate: "Schehmee Hehndricks."
"Right."
He can feel her confusion, just like she can feel him in the faint scent of flowers in the distance. "Great guitar player."
"What's a guitar?"
Of course she would not understand.
"Listen," he commands.
Sometimes, she wants to remind him that his is not the only culture with music. His fingers tap along with the low, rhythmic beat on the wheel he uses to position the vehicle, and she attempts to practice her newest word: 'gih-tahr'. A man begins to sing (at least, she assumes it is singing) from the speaker, and John hums along.
It's an odd sensation, to feel recognition in her brain where none exists, to name these sounds she has never heard. The wind has chapped her lips, so her teeth scrape against dry skin when she attempts to make the 'v' sound of the first unfamiliar and strange-sounding word. The vowels dissolve into the wind. But the second word, it stands out among the rest, because it is familiar to her and her tongue. Its pronunciation is soft and comfortable on in her mouth, the open vowel resonating warmly in her throat: 'child'.
The sound from her makes him smile again, makes them both smile. A hand leaves the wheel and finds hers, squeezing her fingers tightly. In the back of her mind, she knows the gesture is unsafe, but she ignores it.
There is only this bliss.
He is imagining their first kiss. And their second, their third, their thirty-ninth...
Her lips on his. For a few microts, it actually feels real.
i.
Her head is leaning back in an uncomfortable position, straining the muscles in her neck and exposing her major arteries. The position, it makes her feel like a sketch of human physiology in one of Crichton's Earth books. She does not know where she is. When the strain is too great, she opens her mouth to cry out, but those nerves don't seem to have materialized properly quite yet.
No sound comes. Beside her, Crichton yelps from his unconscious state.
And then she passes out again.
She knows this is his mind, because she doesn't know what a soap opera is, except that this is one. A man in a white uniform wheels a chair toward her, and she falls into it, using one hand to cradle her swollen belly while she breathes according to patterns she doesn't remember learning.
John is at a desk several feet away, arguing. She seems to remember that he argued with the man who was driving the yellow automobile that brought them here, too. "Look, my wife is going to have a baby right here in the lobby if you don't give us a room, so could we please just get her up there now and let me deal with the paperwork later?"
The woman behind the counter, in a matching white uniform, only frowns. "She needs to be admitted first, sir."
"Fine," and John pulls out his wallet, exasperated. "Sun. Aeryn Sun."
The contraction seems to be waning. Her breathing becomes more regular. She concentrates on his voice: "No, no, no! Sun, like the thing up in the sky. Yes, right, S-U-N." By now, his tone has attracted the attention of the people in the waiting room. She feels like she's being examined. "No, no, not Erin - Aeryn. It's Gaelic." He slides a small card across the desk. "That's John with a J and Crichton with a C."
The woman stares at the picture on the card and compares it with his face. Suddenly, something sparks in her head. "The John Crichton?"
He stares blankly at the woman, before turning his head to her and muttering, "I told you we shouldn't have come here."
"You're not the one having the frelling baby," she hisses.
The attending nurse is still staring at her and John. "So, she's a--"
The child within her begins to kick its way free again. There are no more questions.
ii.
She can feel every atom in her body, and pain for the both of them, so when the hot rod pokes at her arm, she feels her entire being burning and consumed by pain. Their torturers speak only in clicks and hisses, so perhaps neither of their translator microbes survived the upload.
When her head lolls to one side, she makes out three faces and one neck. She lacks the energy to be horrified.
John smiles and calls this place 'Vay-gehs', as if it is familiar and comfortable. She is not the only thing to seem out of place: every building is garish and overdone. He takes her hand and calls her his lucky charm.
It all just seems hot, incredibly so, and another word she's discovered in John's brain: 'taah-kee'.
iii.
She can no longer feel the child. She begins to panic.
Its presence had made itself known for several weeks: a tiny voice in the back of her conscious mind, the whisper in her ear when she thinks she's alone. It scared her, really, some kind of judge on her every movement. It is her instinct.
And then, suddenly, it is gone.
John is screaming in her mind, but there is only emptiness, hollow and silent, where it once was.
Something beside her begins to beep. In her jump to emotion, she has forgotten that they are still one, and that John's body is the more fragile of the two. The adrenaline is pumping furiously through veins unable to compensate, and he begins to convulse against the crude straps holding them against the wall.
Another beep, jarring against the first. Her own body begins to shake uncontrollably, because eventually, the levels had to even out between the two joined minds.
(The end, the end, the end, the end.)
Somewhere off, Stark's voice is in her head.
A child splashes her hand in the crashing waves without making a sound. Her mother's voice is nothing when she calls her daughter back to the blanket. Her father's laugh is silence when he picks up his daughter and swings her around, much to her own delight.
Here, there is no sound - only action: white clothing against a serene sandy beach; a perfect sunset framing ideal waves.
A family.
A mother - a wife - turns to her husband to speak--
iv.
She comes to with a huge gasp of air, unaccustomed to silence in her mind. Her hands are already searching, but there is a sharp pain in her back when she tries to sit up. "Atrophied muscles," Noranti murmurs, and the old woman spreads her palm out on her chest to calm her. "You must be still."
Her mouth is too dry to form his name, and she can't feel him within her any longer. She can't feel anything, only herself; she fears the worst.
It is like being a child again, teaching her muscles how to support her weight and how to stand. It takes only a day, but it feels like the longest day of her life. No one will tell her about John.
At night, she is staring at the moving stars when she senses he is behind her. He is no longer in her head, but the hairs on her neck stand at attention like they always do when he enters a room. Her legs won't allow her to run, so she stands, ready and waiting. He presses his lips against hers, yearning and pleading and--
"That was," but he can't finish his sentence. Neither can she. How do explain two people in one mind for eight arns?
And then he is pressing something small into her palm. "D'Argo found this in the boat." Without a lot of fanfare, she lets him slip the ring onto her finger again. He kisses her knuckles.
Her legs are tired, so she turns and leans against him. His hands on around her waist, hands resting on her stomach. She understands the unspoken question.
"It's all right," she answers him.
And maybe she believes it this time, too.