Family Matters

"Oh would you shut the frell up!"

Aeryn Sun knew that Corporal Partido would regret that. Unfortunately, such regret extended to the rest of the commandos as the alien they were transporting let out a roar and started pulling his chains around the Peacekeeper's neck. Regret that one of their own was making incarceration so difficult for them. Regret that these aliens were such brutes that even transporting a luxan seemed like child's play in comparison. And regret, in her case as she and the rest of the squad tried to pull the creature off, that it swung its fists into her helmet, cracking it.

"Dren!"

Aeryn tumbled to the ground. Partido fell to the ground limply. The alien fell to the ground as well, if "fell" was the correct term for the commandos beating it with the butts of their rifles until it collapsed onto the leviathan's floor.

"Come on, move them," Captain Sogahata said. The commandos obliged, dragging the alien into a cell, while another pair got Partido to his feet. Or rather toes – he was hardly in any condition to actually walk, hence being dragged.

"You too Sun."

"Hmm?" she asked, having taken off her helmet.

"Broken helmet, shards of glass, decked by an alien, have it checked out, the commando said, ever the one for short, to-the-point speeches. "Go to the med-bay."

"But sir-"

"Now!"

Ustar Regiment had taken higher than average casualties on the planet below, Sogahata's commando squad included. It was only upon reflection of that fact that prevented Aeryn from knocking down the frellwit where he was standing and throwing him into the cell the alien had just landed in. So, tossing the helmet to her CO in place of a salute, she instead started to walk the other way.

"Sun!"

And ignore him.

Aeryn kept walking. Past her fellow Peacekeepers. Past the aliens that were being dragged to the leviathan's cells, all of them in worse state than the one that had decked Partido. All but one, she noticed. One of them in his (or her, she couldn't be sure) own cell. One who was not only conscious, but didn't seem to be too bad physically either. And while Sogahata had ordered her to report to the med-bay, he hadn't given her a timetable to achieve that objective. So she walked up to the cell. The alien, if it noticed her, kept its head down.

"Hello," she said.

The alien looked up at her.

"Huh. Did you get translator microbes?"

The alien still remained silent. Maybe it had received them, but was playing the strong, silent type. Maybe it hadn't, and had only looked up by hearing the sound of her voice.

Maybe this is a waste of time.

Yet she kept looking at it. After fighting the maliks for the last few hours, she'd never had the time to just sit down and look at them.

And what a sight you are.

Aeryn reflected that her luxan analogy earlier had been wrong. Luxans were brutes and thugs, but at least conformed to a sebacenoid appearance. If anything, the creature seemed more akin to a scarran – same basic two leg, two arm, two eye appearance of most species, but with a body structure that was far removed from the sebacean gene pool. And, like scarran, just as willing to kill Peacekeepers in battle.

Least they die a bit easier.

"Look, I don't know why I'm here," Aeryn said. "You'll be interrogated anyway, be given translator microbes if you need them, and if they need to make you talk, they will. So if you do understand me, try to take my advice."

"I won't talk."

"Ah, so you can speak."

Aeryn kept looking at the creature. The creature refused to meet her gaze. Then again, its eyes weren't what she was really interested. Rather it was its mouth – teeth and mandibles that came from the side, rather than from above and below the inner mouth like most species.

"The relics will be ours," it said. "You-"

"Took out any long-range communication you had," Aeryn interrupted, hoping that was the case. Believing that was the case. Still wishing she'd been assigned to Prowler duty for the mission instead of ground-pounding. "These trinkets are-"

"Are the treasures of the gods! Signposts to the Great Journey! The-"

The alien started to growl and make other such noises. Translation problems, fits of rage, Aeryn didn't care. If this species believed in something as ridiculous as gods, then it was no wonder the Peacekeepers had defeated them on the planet below.

"A curse upon you!" the alien continued, making Aeryn finger her pulse rifle in the faint wish of using it to cut the creature up. "A curse upon your children! A curse upon your parents! A-"

"Never knew my parents actually," Aeryn interrupted. "So you'll need a better insult."

The alien stopped ranting. Aeryn stopped fingering the rifle.

"Something I said?" she asked.

"Not knowing your parents," the alien mused. "How sensible."

"What?"

The alien stood up. It walked to the cell door. Aeryn remained in place, but had to consciously fight the instinct to step back. The alien was tall. Very tall. Taller than even the tallest scarran she'd seen. It was only now, alone, not in combat or escorting them, that she could really appreciate that.

"My kind do not know their parents either," the alien continued. "We are born. We are raised separate from them."

"How lovely."

"Communal living, succeeding through ability, not connection." The alien leant forward. "No-one will miss me, nishum. No-one will mourn. No-one will sell ransom. So you may as well kill me now."

"Trust me, I want to. But the thing is, I actually do have a family. And they wouldn't be very happy about cutting down defenceless aliens. Even if they are thugs."

"Then you are weak."

Aeryn remained in place. She wondered what a nishum was. She wondered why she was telling the alien this. She wondered if it was even true. If the night her mother had visited her, had told her of her father was a dream or was real.

"Come back here coward! Face me! Let me die in battle!"

Oh shut the frell up.

Aeryn kept walking. Maybe the alien was right. If her mother had visited her all those years ago, if her mother really was a person named Xhalax Sun, lover of Talyn, then she was in a different from other Peacekeepers bred to fill the ranks. A position of weakness. Knowing that her parents were out there. Maybe it made her weak.

But she'd survived the planet below. Where many of her comrades hadn't.

Maybe, Aeryn Sun thought, as she sometimes did, knowing who her mother was made her strong instead.

A/N

So, still making my way through Farscape (up to season 3), still jotting down ideas, only in this case, managed to put fingers to keyboard. Last time that happened was with season 1 material... 0_0

Anyway, with Peacekeepers and sangheili practicing communal living, with children not knowing their parents, came up with this.