A/N: Hi all, this is my first Farscape and Stargate: SG-1 fanfic. I'd been binging both series, and I thought of the what-ifs and this happened. That being said, I'm really sorry if there's continuity errors between the story and the shows, I'm still new and may not have remembered every detail. A preemptive thank you to those who reviewed/alerted/favorited and of course read. I hope you enjoyed.

Two Birds, Two Stones

Chapter 1

Swing Your Partners

He sneaks through the door, being chased by the first scream of the day, they start off as gurgles, then grow to whistles, then amplifies like a megaphone, loud enough to cause feedback. The sound chases his thumping boots through the hallway, as he stealthy escapes the jail cell which is his family's room which was originally a jail cell. It wasn't his turn. It was his turn, but he'll be damned if he's going to admit it. It's always his freaking turn and he does the doting husband/father thing, reaching over the edge of the bed he and Aeryn can barely fit on—been meaning to move another bed in because married couples haven't slept in separate rooms since Leave it to Beaver—and rocks the space bassinet. It's almost like a normal bassinet, but since they're in space it's a space bassinet, which just sounds cooler, because bassinets are not cool or manly or intimidating in any way, but a space bassinet sounds like it might be armed.

His space boots—same understanding—slide over Moya's clean, but vengefully echoing hallways and he feels the rubber treads on the soles pull and flick with the friction because he's trying so damn hard not to make a sound. Behind him the baby cries grow louder.

It wasn't his turn—it definitely was his turn.

Three tiers later and he swears he can still hear the baby crying, the sound wafting through Moya's internals and haunting him. He's probably being tracked. Aeryn—with Deke in her arms, balling his little fists and screaming, just screaming because other than poop, that's all he does. If he just keeps quiet he might have a chance—she's going to find him, probably pretty soon—but the quieter he is, the longer he has alone.

A large thunk echoes down the hallway from command, which should be empty during early morning sleeping time unless he's hiding in there trying to escape their banshee of a son. When there were more people living on Moya, it was a busier place. Bad thoughts and bad feelings. The emptiness by the command controls, and no one to ask for advice when their son hasn't gone to sleep for more than an hour.

Peeks around the corner to find Chiana stationary, feet unmoving but her body swerving like she's hula hooping, back hyperextending, and she purrs with pride. In them middle of the table there's a bulky object. It wasn't there three hours ago when he went to bed—when he went to hang off the side of his bed with his eyes wide open.

"You scanning that thing for bugs?" He doesn't know how her new eyes work, despite her telling him more than once. He's either been too tired from lack of sleep or too preoccupied from lack of sleep. He just wants a little sleep. He just wants to sleep alone for one night.

Half expects her to start at his voice, old Chiana would've, would've growled something about privacy and how it's only cool when she sneaks around. Would've Cheshire grinned at him and danced around him, only a little too close. She doesn't even turn back to him, doesn't even tense her shoulders. "Do you like it?"

"Well that depends." He slips in behind her, lowering his head and viewing the thing from just over her shoulder. "What the hell is it?"

Perches her hands on her hip, knocking his chin away form her shoulder, and half grins while studying it with approval. "Do you think Rygel will know the difference?"

"Again, that would depend on what the hell it is." He turns back to the doorway—can't linger in one place too long or Aeryn will smell blood on the wind—but in the dim light, his boot soccer kicks the table. It shudders and he stumbles before catching himself, less stealth now and more rodeo clown.

"Be careful." Chiana steadies the table and wipes a finger down the outside of the jar—is it a jar? it kind of looks like a vase. It's round, like a big jug or a planter for an indoor palm tree and it's plugged with a stopper made of faint blueish crystals.

"I'm sorry, did I upset that giant eyesore?" Huffs and touches the side of it, expecting cool clay underneath his fingers but instead finds a dull warmth like a water bottle, like his side of his family's makeshift, too small bed after he fear bolts from any sound close to crying. Crichtons don't cry. Responsibilities are vast, galaxy vast, wormhole possibility vast and the tributaries that squiggle away from his central life line, the two major life events immediate and simultaneous as a war raged—he kept running at the time but now he's got asthma and one hell of a charley horse.

"It's not an eyesore you greebol, it's a new hookah."

He drags a finger over avocado sized indents until his fingers stop over two zen stones plugged in. They're smooth and when he scratches at them, trying to pry them out with his nails he has no luck, it looks like a camp arts and craft project that no one finished.

"Awful generous of you to buy Rygel a new hookah, Pip."

"I broke the old one."

"Yeah, there it is," chuckles because he's kind of been raising kids for the last four and a half years. Don't break each other's crap, stop stealing ingots from the universal supply, crackers don't matter.

"It—it was an accident." Chiana swings around the table, popping out from behind the hookah that obviously isn't a hookah—no lines for smoke to come out, only rocks and crystals—picking her footsteps like someone pulled her over for a DUI. "I just—I've been having dreams about—well—I just needed something to take the edge off."

"Chiana." Her totter stops before him, and her head tilts to the side but her cat eyes cast to the floor. He's still not used to the eyes, still not used to a lot of things. The room only offers a few white highlights from distant stars outside and they play across her skin. Hasn't stopped to think about how she's handling it, been too busy mishandling everything to notice. He covers the leather-like material on her shoulder with his hand, and his pinkie taps at her ice-cold skin. He speaks close to her, profile to profile, as they always do, and it might be because somehow she reminds him a little of Liv. "That's what the old lady is for," he whispers and as she opens her mouth to question him, he leans away and shouts, "Hey Grandma."

A whimper and thump answer him from the doorway, not Noranti, not who he was expecting, but who he so quickly forgot about while starlight galaxy dancing around a not hookah.

"What the frell are you doing."

His lovely wife, dressed in one of his gray t-shirts and Calvin's underwear, stands with widened hips and angled legs to impede his stampede by her. Their son, their little man with his head resting on her shoulder revs his engine and screams right in her ear, skipping a breath every now and again when he runs out. It's so loud Moya may as well be tinged blue.

"Honey, I was just—"

"It's your turn to heed to his undying wails."

He flings his arms up, landing somewhere between Shakespearean and childish, and runs a hand over his night sweat clammy face because it's getting to the point that between recovering from creating a galaxy destroying wormhole and dealing with their son's conniptions every two arns, he's past full-blown insomniac. "It's always my turn."

"Because you always declare 'double or nothing'."

"Crichton," Chiana growls, her walk a dizzying arc, her hands cotton balling her ears to the various noises his family bleat. "Deal with your narl."

"Hey," shouts after her as she slinks by his wife and down a hallway, naturally disappearing into Moya's shadows. "Don't leave your trash on the table."

Aeryn advances from the doorway, lips pressing together in a perfect line of disappointment. She speaks in a low and steady, "You will take this child and you will not return to the room until he has settled."

"Honey—"

"If this was a full blooded Sebacean child, he would be sleeping through the night."

"Probably because the occurrence of shaken baby syndrome with peacekeeper night nurses is really high." Her reaction isn't what he hoped for, which is anything but the heavy-lidded glower she entered the room with. Since it became a necessity to be completely silent in the few precious moments while their son is asleep, they've been having more nonverbal fights, and he always loses those too. The grade school staring contest it reverts to throws him a loss because her composure is too good, her composure is scary as all hell and he think he'll always lose because he loves her a little bit more

Without a word, without straying from her eyes—hardened by hanging off the other side of the too small bed—he uncrosses his arms and waves for their wailing son. "I thought Peacekeepers only needed three hours of sleep a night."

"Your son—" her arms are cold as they brush against the tops of his, she shifts, black hair falling forward like a protective curtain and the tension in her muscles leaves when he cradles their son. "—makes me need more."

"Our son." He holds Deke the same way she does, head to shoulder. The little guy is always so warm, and it scares him. Babies and fevers. A half human baby in the depths of uncharted space with a space cold. The human and Sebacean parts of him fighting for dominance and cooling rods drilled into the soft spot on his little head.

He leans against the top of the table, careful not to drop the baby or the hookah and waits for Aeryn to leave so he and Deke can continue the dialogue they've been having since he was born. How Crichtons don't cry that much or for very long and Deke's newborn old man face turns red as he cries to spite him. Instead she balances beside him, her hand clasping the edge of the table, thumb touches his pinkie until he slides it away.

Aeryn sighs, because this is a battle they've been having for the last almost month. Responsibility. Does he have to change diapers? Does he have to do midnight feedings? The fact that Aeryn can't breastfeed and has never even heard of breastfeeding doesn't quiet help. Finding Sebacean baby chow in uncharted space is becoming more difficult—to find and explain—can't exactly go around and parade their ex-peacekeeper and human wormhole weapons product of love. It's a weird thing, love, he loves them both, but he's fed up with them both so quickly now, spent the first week of their son's life comatose and hasn't really picked up slack since then, and he wonders why and doesn't want to know the answer.

"Does this get easier, John?" Her voice now soft but identifiable over the weakening whimpers of their son, they all share the same weary face, the same skin brushed with gray sleeplessness and sudden rousing. She tucks her hands between her thighs and the Calvin's run up a bit on her pale legs. He's married to her, which is beautiful and all he's ever wanted while terrifying to no end. Where to go now, the edge of the universe, stare into the nothingness and welcome the madness. "If you tell me it gets easier, than it will be worth it."

Everything he's ever wanted is in his arms as he sits beside everything else he's ever wanted. The thing is it happened to fast. They were gone and then back and eight days later—double the gestation period for any regular Peacekeeper as Aeryn keeps pointing out—they had a baby in the middle of Custard's last freaking stand. He made a wormhole weapon and it was more exciting that anything happening right now. He was terrified but at least he was awake. "I don't know, Aeryn."

Her eyebrows crease and he figures she'll slide closer, place a hand on his knee and give him those red hot tinglies that ended up giving them a son. But she doesn't. Her hands clamp together and sit in her lap playing possum. Their eyes meet in the white highlights and hers shimmer with a layer of tears, her eyebrows slant to cut through the vulnerability. "John, if you don't—"

The not hookah on the table glows like her hands clapped it on, and Deke falls silent for the first time since yesterday. Tiny balled fists relaxing into openhand high fives. Steadies their son's heavy body on the table, propping him up with his hand and in the bask of the hookah's luminescence, he falls asleep.

"Well now, all he needed was a nightlight," he whispers, lips pulling into a grin, forgetting what he was just thinking, what Aeryn was about to ask him, chock one up to insomnia, boys. Despite the victory, a rueful grin still graces her face, half assed and barely meeting the corner of her mouth, she hasn't forgotten. "Aeryn, look, I—"

There's a rough metal clank as the two zen stones from earlier—buddah bribes or koi pond decos—tumble from where the last of the glue has finally space dissolved. The clack of stone to the metal tabletop and the immediate dispersal of the warm blue glow causes tiny baby eyes to blink back open. They're not his eyes but probably see better than twenty-twenty. Tiny hands roll into dictatorish fists that begin their mechanized rotations through the air. A red, toothless, gum filfed mouth opens wide and the wailing returns.

"What did you do?" Aeryn is on her feet collecting the zen stones flipping them around in her hand. "What did you do?"

"You were looking right at me? What did I do?" he shouts and grabs a stone from her hand, flipping it around until it looks like he thinks it did while stuck in the hookah. "Just put them back."

"How?"

"Do we have any glue?"

"What's glue?"

"How do you not know what glue is. You've been to Earth." He shifts his weight and get an earful of screaming right down his canal that gives him and instant headache and may actually tinge everything in blue. But it is better than getting thrown up on, he's always getting thrown up on now.

"Look," she halts him with a hand to his chest, his lips tucked into each other, his body bouncing Deke. She leans forward to place the stone in the same location. "Maybe they're magnetized."

"Yeah, sure, magnetic stones." He rolls his eyes and does the same and suddenly the white highlights devour them both.

He watches from the control deck as the Stargate bursts to life and collapses back in on itself. Two soldiers exit the blue gap. Walk side-by-side, each with an arm slung under a device, a familiar looking device and he wants to groan. Long-range communication device. Wishes Jackson came up with a better name. Something shorter. He hates this thing.

"Uh-uh, take it back."

Vala appears on the transport deck despite this being an after-hours mission with a very high security clearance. She crosses her arms at the mouth of the hallway and keeps her distance from the soldiers. Or probably the device. "We are not dealing with this thing again."

Fully groans now. Loud and unprofessional. Snatches his clipboard from the console and bounds down the stairs to intercept her false claim to any hierarchical power. She's part of the team. Sure. But she doesn't have a rank. She's almost the plucky sidekick.

"Vala, get out of their way." He startles her, and she jumps to the side, back flat against the high walls giving just enough room for the soldiers to continue their trek.

Intercepts just as she reaches to call them back. Her hailing hand smacks against his chest and when she sidesteps him, he follows. She shoves at his shoulder, but the force barely sways him. "Are you really allowing them to just bring this thing back.?"

"It's not the same one—"

"It doesn't matter, they're all dangerous."

"It's not nearly as dangerous as—"

"Yes, of course, I forgot it wasn't you who was burned alive." Her body twists away and she paces in a wide circle, stopping before him to raise two fingers. "Twice."

"No, I'm just one of the lucky people who get to hear the very specific details of the story when you retell it every other day." He immediately regrets his words. Can't imagine the emotions she went through, the immense pain, all the underlying trauma that's still probably present. Hell, he still has nightmares about a certain plane crash. "Look, the device is missing the stones, so there is no way we can interact with people galaxies away. It's spending the night at the base and heading to area 51 tomorrow morning."

Turns on his heel, leaving the newly waxed floor scuffless, and rounds the corner in not quite a march but a fast gait. Paperwork for the device needs to be finished by 0600, along with the transit slip and all the customs reports. If he starts now he should have enough time to go for a quick jog before—

"This is an omen, you know."

He groans again. Louder. A clipboard and a textbook worth of paper hiding his face from her skipping along beside him. The serious bristled faces of recruits and seasoned veterans watch her pigtails bounce with each jaunty step. Sometimes their nostrils flare or a sneer washes over their lips, sometimes he does it too. "Vala, I promise you nothing is an omen."

"A device missing the stones seems like an obvious set up."

Has a strong gait now, not the jog he wants, but she starts to straggle and maybe he can lose her in the late-night snack rush and lock her out of the lab. It'll never happen. She'll end up sitting in there with him, all because of Jackson.

She squeezes between two recruits both taller and wider than him and utters, "oop, excuse me gentlemen."

"Are you suggesting the immobile device with no energy reading is going to radiate and explode."

"No, I'm suggesting that someone might have intentionally removed the stones in order to cause us harm." She is valuable in that no one else on SG-1 has her skillset. Every few months she'll have a really good idea. A life saving idea. A revelation usually counteracted by an immediate bad idea erasing the good. A Supergate sacrifice for an Ori immaculate conception. He's been trying to hear her out more and more, but her naivety and playful attitude can wear thin in times of panic, in times of open fire and duck and dodge.

So, he fakes her out around the next corner, turns down a hallway and then doubles back. It reminds him of playing tag in the cornfields growing up. Dusty earth and a hot sun ringing over him until his mom called him for lemonade. It makes him smile. She scrambles in front of him, walking backwards and still speaking. He leaves his smile on too long, she notices and copies it with a genuine grin of her own.

He blinks his way back to Cheyenne Mountain, the twisting narrow pathways, and the retreating woman in front of him paying no attention to her footfalls. Jackson's method of dodging and ignoring isn't working anymore. "Who wants to hurt us?"

"Who doesn't want to hurt us?" Her foot catches in a raise in the tiles and her expression falls blank as she slips backwards. Automatically, his arms shoot out, hands clamping down onto her shoulders, reeling her backwards and releasing her away from the stairs. Her pigtails bounce the entire time and she grins, not paying any attention to the near tumble down a flight of twenty metal stairs.

"Vala, look." She grins wider at him and he purses his lips and taps his clipboard. "I have to transfer the device first thing in the morning. It's not going to do anything when it's here. It's inactive, they found it in a garbage dump on some abandoned planet."

"Then why doesn't Daniel have a look at it?"

"You know Jackson has that conference." Jackson spent the better part of a week writing up speeches and slideshow presentations on the dangers of the Ori and how monitoring stargate traffic can essentially cut down on planetary threats. He would have winged it the night before. Glued some pictures on poster board and be in bed after a nice jog. But education isn't the call for the conference, funding is. "If he can convince them to give us a little more funding, the Stargate will be better monitored, and these long-range communication devices will stop popping up."

"So. we aren't even—"

"We aren't doing anything, it's a simple tag and transfer." His stern walk takes him through the outer lab where he nods at the officer guarding the experimentation room. He inputs the code at the door and feels her shadowing him still.

The door whooshes open and a sterile smell curls it's way into his lungs, not like antiseptic or any distinguishable smell, just the lack of one. No smells at all. The white room gleams under the strength of several lights and he blinks to rid himself of the snow blindness.

Her combat boots echo behind him. Clicking to his clunks, creating a shared melody between them. "Well that's good, because I'm not going."

"Great." He stops at the device, the blue crystal atop of it hazy and dull, brown lines of dirt and debris working their way through the crags on the outside. The metal body is tarnished with age and the once awkward scent of nothing is replaced with the lingering odour of a secondary planet's dump. He glances over his shoulder and she's dark green and black popping in an all white room. "Wait, going where?"

"To search for the stones."

"No one is going to search for the stones."

"Well not now."

This is one of those times where he's going to ignore her. He has a mission, get object A from location A to location B by 0600. She doesn't have a mission. She has loneliness. He locks the device in place rendering it unworkable. There's a high-pitched squeak and then the low hum of an emp field encircling and blocking all transmissions. "There, you can sleep safe."

"I don't want to sleep."

"There's a surprise." Checks his watch. Almost 0030. A jog is out of the question, but he can still get a decent amount of sleep if he uses his base bunk, but that's on the other side of the complex. Maybe he can just sleep in his office. He brushes by her and feels his movement pull her with him.

"It's just that—" She trails after him through the corridor. The click of her boots more frequently tempoed like the metronome on the old piano his grandma made him practice on. "Well all of you get to go home, to a different home, outside here, and I'm—" She breathes in deeply. Faltering then regaining, then falling back again. Never once does she ask him to slow down and talk to her face-to-face. He would never pull this with Sam, or Teal'c. He might try to dodge Jackson for fun, but after his evasiveness became apparent, he would slow, and they would have the conversation. Half of his conversations with Vala he never sees her face, her reaction, or is even facing her. It bothers him because he doesn't know what this means. Disrespect, or him picking up on her playfulness, or does she just assume this is how half of their conversations will go now, with her chasing him, because he's done it for so long it seems ordinary.

"So, you understand then?"

He hasn't been listening because he's two feet in front of her and her voice has sunken between army boots and drive-by dialogues. It's disrespectful and he feels a little guilty because she does get those valiant life-saving ideas and for a brief amount of time she is a hero. He turns and she's almost slams into him.

"Sure?"

"Oh excellent." She claps and beams and for a moment it's endearing before he remembers how dangerous her excitement can be. "So where shall we look first?"

"For what?"

"For the stones."

"Vala, we are not going searching for the stones."

"But it's been a week since I've left this building and I'm starting to go mad. Since Daniel and Samantha are preoccupied it would be a great way to pass the time."

"Look, I'm sorry that down time bores you, and that you're confined to command when you don't have the proper supervision." His hands swing a bit as he spins around her and continues towards his office. His empty hands. "We don't need the stones, the paperwork for the transfer—" is on the desk beside the device, miles away from his office where he can catch a quick sleep.

"Dammit." Pivots again on his heel and switches directions back towards the lab. Maybe she doesn't question their tag conversations because he's always backtracking. "Look, the stones won't—" but she's not tracking him anymore. He lost her or she gave up and went back to her dorm or the kitchen as part of the late-night snack crowd.

Guilty but not guilty. Maybe he should talk to Jackson about this. Anything caged long enough is bound to go a little stir crazy, like the fireflies he'd collect in jars and his grandma would benevolently release. Giving Vala duties or training when they're grounded for more than a few days could be beneficial. She could take advanced combat courses, learn to fight in different ways instead of depending on luck and surpr—

"Would you rather someone else get a hold of the stones and use them to transfer right into our bodies?"

"Jesus, Vala." She pops out before the lab door, and follows as he walks the same route by objects of interest and chemistry sets he wouldn't know how to use even after hours of training. Maybe they should all be cross trained a bit. She sighs loud enough behind him to draw his attention. "Our bodies are fine, Vala."

"That's easy for you to say, you've never had to experience it."

"So what?" Types in the password on the touch pad again and it sparks up as red until the buttons reset. "You want to go out and find all fifteen stones?"

"No, only the two that work in our device."

"And how do you plan on doing that?" Enters the code again and it flashes as red. The guard next to the door gives him the eye and he twitches his lips into an awkward smile.

"Well that planet's dump would be a good place to start."

Presses enter and the pad lights up green. The door whooshes open and the familiar unfamiliar stench of nothing greets him again. Everything in the room still shines. The clipboard stands almost black stroke outlined on the metallic table. "Well, that's not going to work because this isn't our device."

"Not our." She flicks her hand between them, then widens and twists to gesture to the whole complex. "Our."

"It's neither. It belongs to Area 51 where it will go and stay and be deactivated." He completes the final signature on the triplicate form. Beside him the air smells almost burnt, it's unusual but the mission log did state the device was found under at least ten years of trash. Maybe the stench of a dump fire lingered.

"Well then when we get thrust into other people's bodies it will be entirely your fault."

In his peripherals he watches her raise an eyebrow and set her jaw in challenge, which doesn't mean anything because she's the sidekick. The one who takes people down by tripping them or names an ancient dragon Daryl.

"Vala." She's closer to him now and he inadvertently tries to take a step back but knocks the table and his clipboard. The hum of the emp field increases behind him. In the extreme light of the room her blue eyes vibrate. She is hopeful, but also scheming. Half of him, the half that won't meet her eyes when they talk, still doesn't trust her. "I will never be leaving the comfort of my own body, okay?"

The emp field increases in rate again and the hairs on his arms begin to stand on end, her pigtails frizz up and there's a small crackle of static. The sullen crystal in the middle of the device bursts to life.

"Aw shi—"

And a white light encompasses the room.