All Hallows Eve
- UT Style -
by cathy1967

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Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just playing. I'll put'em back when I'm done.

Rating: PG

Synopsis: This is Halloween - UT Style, not your average homey story.

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It was the little things that reminded him of home. The spiral-back notepad - one among many he had brought back with him - the pen he was using to write down his thoughts, the television set Aeryn had given him and the tapes she had brought too. But there were other things as well, things he found replacements for when he couldn't get the real thing. Like pumpkins. There were no big orange pumpkins in the Uncharted Territories, but there were similar things.

His calendar - the electronic one his sister had given him - helped him keep track of the days and months back home and upon realizing that it was Halloween back home, the urge to do something about it had overwhelmed him. And the trip to the commerce planet the day before had granted him this odd occurrence, which could replace a pumpkin if he used his imagination. Granted, it wasn't orange, but it was about the same size as a pumpkin and the guy selling these ... fruits ... had insisted it was edible and harmless. The toxic green color made him think of watercolors and finger paints and impossibly green grass on a childish painting, and the fruit was round, smooth and cut-able.

He had gutted it, scraped out all the flesh and the amazing amount of seeds, which looked like oversized sunflower seeds, and had set about carving a face on the damned thing. It didn't smell like a pumpkin, of course. There was a touch of the putrid about it, but it wasn't nearly enough to make him stop what he was doing. And once it was cleaned out, he could douse it with some of Zhaan's concoctions and thereby remove the rest of the smell.

With a halfhearted grin, he cut out one eye and sat back to admire his handiwork. "Better than when I was a kid, at least," he muttered and set about carving out the second eye. It wasn't as even as it could be, but the eyes seemed appropriately ominous and would be complemented by the leering, fang-infested mouth he still had to carve. All in all, none of his friends knew what a Halloween pumpkin was supposed to look like, so he could basically get away with anything.

"What's that?"

Aeryn's voice interrupted his somewhat sad reverie, but he didn't glance back at her. He didn't trust himself not to have a total emotional meltdown right now and the last thing he wanted was to start bawling his eyes out over nothing in front of her. "Halloween pumpkin," he countered and wiped the back of his hand under his nose. "It's not orange, but it'll do."

She sat down next to him on the long bench running along the long table in the center chamber and eyed his creation thoughtfully. "What the frell is a hallo een pum-kin?"

Despite his present depressive state of mind and surging homesickness, he couldn't help grinning. Aeryn was trying very hard to speak English properly and she was doing great in general. But there were words that she never really picked up. "Halloween pumpkin," he repeated, stressing the pronunciation of the words to make them clearer for her. "It's a ... tradition. It's Halloween today ... back home."

She continued to eye the makeshift excuse for a pumpkin with a slight frown. "And what is Halloween?"

There was no denying that she learned a hell of a lot faster than anyone he'd ever known. He smiled feebly for a moment, but felt it falter and stopped trying to pretend to be happy. "It's a really silly superstition, actually," he said with a light sigh. "Old tradition. Halloween was originally All Hallows Eve, the one night per year where the dead could come back to haunt the living," he explained, uncertain of what she would make of it. "To keep dead relatives at bay, people dressed up as someone or something else and put pumpkins in front of their houses. Something like that, anyway. Nowadays it's more a kid's thing. You take your kids trick or treating, going from door to door, demanding candy. If there's no candy, you can play tricks on your neighbors. Like tp their house and stuff like that."

Aeryn blinked, her gaze locked on the would-be pumpkin. "Tp?" she asked.

"Toilet-paper. It's a stupid tradition, really, but the kids have fun," he countered.

"So, you take your children out to demand something edible from your neighbors or you'll annoy the dren out of them?" she asked, a frown furrowing her brow. "That sounds like a really frelled way to celebrate."

"I didn't say it was intelligent," he said with a smile. "It's all superstition and smoke screens. But it's fun. You get to dress up, go to parties and get drunk if you don't have kids, or just help the kids have a fabulous time if you do."

She shrugged in return, accepting his explanation without further question. "What do you do with this, then?"

"You carve a scary face on it, put a candle in it and leave it on the doorstep to keep ghosts away. Problem is, we don't have a doorstep on Moya and I don't believe in ghosts." He shrugged in return. "I just need to do stuff like this sometimes. It's kinda important."

Aeryn nodded. "I understand," she claimed, then focused on the bowl that now contained the insides of the green pumpkin. "What do you do with that?" she asked, nodding at it.

"With pumpkins you can make pie, but this stuff doesn't smell so good, so I think I'll just dump it in the trash when I'm done," he countered and started carving the mouth.

For a moment, Aeryn remained silent. Then she reached out and prodded the contents of the bowl with one finger. "You actually touched this dren?" she asked and glanced at his hands.

John grinned and showed her his slightly green-tinged hands. "Yup, that's part of the fun. It's icky and squishy. That's part of the Halloween tradition," he agreed and put the finishing touches on the wannabe-pumpkin. "There! What do you think? Does it look scary?"

She eyed it for a moment, then glanced at him, her expression speaking more than words. "Yes, sort of," she finally said and he could have kissed her for that little white lie. It was obvious she didn't think it was the least bit scary, but she said yes anyway to accommodate his feelings. She had come a long way since he'd seen her that very first time.

"Yeah, it'll spook the hell out of Rygel," he countered with a smirk and put the short, stout candle that he had bought along with the green pumpkin inside it.

***

Silence had once again settled on Moya after the beginning of the night cycle and John found himself sitting alone in the center chamber while he was contemplating whether or not to paint the ghastly-green pumpkin orange. It worked fine in green, actually, but it was still a bit of an eyesore rather than the reminder of home he had hoped for.

The bowl with the innards of this particular fruit was still sitting on the table and he had to acknowledge that it didn't smell better with time. Making a face, he finally decided to give up on his endeavor of bringing Halloween to the Uncharted Territories and rose to get rid of the smelly batch of fruit-flesh.

But when he reached for it, he suddenly realized something was moving inside. With a slight frown, he leaned closer, squinting at the dark-green, vile-smelling mush. Something the size of one of the seeds had started wiggling around. "Yuck," he muttered. It would appear that this stuff rotted a lot faster than anything else he'd come across out here.

He grabbed the bowl, intent on getting rid of this slush before it could turn into a maggot-infested bowl of slime, but he no more than managed to turn in the direction of the waste disposal unit when the wiggling thing inside got company. Within seconds, the whole bowl was alive with wiggling and squirming ... things.

He made a hasty move toward the waste disposal unit, but didn't manage to take more than two steps before dozens of little critters buzzed out of the bowl and surrounded him in a slow-moving funnel for a moment. Then they took off in all directions and disappeared into the corridor, the air-ducts and any other opening that was big enough to let them through.

John just stood there and stared at the doorway, uncertain of what had just happened. "Uh ... Pilot?" he finally managed.

"Yes, Commander," Pilot replied instantly as his image appeared on the clamshell.

John glanced at it, then back at the door, then back at Pilot's image. "I think we have a problem," he said.

"And what problem might that be?" Pilot asked. He didn't sound alarmed. At least not yet.

"Something just ... uh ... flew out of this bowl," John said, holding it up for Pilot to see. "Lots of little somethings," he added and sent another glance toward the doorway. "What is that thing I bought?"

"What thing?" Pilot asked.

John stepped aside to allow Pilot to see the green pumpkin. "That thing," he said, nodding toward it.

Pilot's image studied the round fruit for a moment. "I do not know. I have never seen anything like it before," he confessed. "These ... somethings you say flew out of that bowl ... where did they go?"

"Down the hatch, out into the corridor, through every crack and cranny they could fit through," John said and glanced into the bowl. "I think they were the seeds in this thing," he added thoughtfully.

So far, Pilot still did not sound worried and that made John hope that there was nothing to worry about. "It is quite likely that the trill-bats will pick them off. I would not worry about it," Pilot finally said and John breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good to hear, Pilot. I just thought I'd mention it. Just in case," he countered, then dumped the rest of the bowl's contents into the waste disposal unit. "Sorry to wake you."

"I was awake," Pilot replied.

"Well, sorry to keep you up then," John said, dropped the bowl on the kitchen counter and headed out the door. He was tired and moody, both things caused by the fact that nobody around him cared that it was Halloween back home. Apart from Christmas, it had always been his favorite holiday and even though he hadn't celebrated it in years, he had spent Halloween with his nephew and in the lap of the family and it was at times like these that he sorely missed life back on Earth.

***

When he entered the quarters he shared with Aeryn, he stopped short despite it being dark. He couldn't see most of the room and what he could see were shadows within shadows. But there was still something that set off his internal alarm bells.

"Babe?" he asked quietly, wanting nothing more than to calm the anxiety that had suddenly befallen him.

"What?" Aeryn's reply was instant, but her voice sounded a little sluggish as if she'd just woken up.

"If you're up, why's it dark?" he countered and turned in the direction her voice came from, which was nowhere near the bed.

"I'm not up," she countered.

Something hit the floor with a thud and John frowned, then reached for the light controls.

Aeryn was across the room from the bed and she had just dropped a small black canister on the floor. She squinted in the sudden light, then bent down to pick it up. As she did, John noticed a bleeding cut on her arm.

"You're bleeding," he stated needlessly.

"Of course I am. That's what happens when you dabble around in the dark," she countered, grabbed the canister and straightened up again.

"Good one on the sarcasm, Aer," he said with a smirk. "What happened?"

She opened the canister, which turned out to contain some sort of first aide kit, and pulled out a bottle of something liquid. "Don't know. I woke up because something cut me. I don't know what, though. I didn't want to turn on the light because of little D."

John glanced toward the crib at the foot of their bed and found his son sleeping peacefully. "He doesn't seem to mind the light," he said and returned his attention to his lovely bride. She was in the process of dripping some of the liquid onto the wound. It sizzled when it hit the blood, but she didn't even grimace.

"That's because he sleeps like the dead just like his father," Aeryn countered, dried off the excess blood and stuck a bandage onto the cut. Then she looked up.

"Well, he has to have inherited something from me. He's got your good looks and your strength too," he said with a grin. "Let's get some shuteye. He'll be awake soon enough."

"That he will," Aeryn agree with a slight sigh and headed back toward the bed.

"Oh, by the way, just so you know, there's a truckload of bugs buzzing around on Moya right now. You're bound to run into a few of them," John said and followed her over to the bed.

"Bugs?" she asked with a frown. "Where did they come from?"

"The seeds of that pumpkin I carved out tonight. Seems like they weren't seeds at all, but bugs. Pilot is keeping an eye on things. He seems to think the trill-bats will have a field day picking them off," he explained and settled down on the edge of the bed.

Aeryn pursed her lips, then glanced down at her cut arm for a second. Then she shrugged. "Well, as long as it's under control," she said and slipped into bed next to him.

Moments later her breathing had evened out and she was fast asleep once again. John lay awake for a bit until he too drifted off.

***

Aeryn woke with a start because little D started screaming his head off. She sat bolt upright and took a moment to regain her bearings before she turned on the lights, slipped down the length of the bed and leaned in over her screaming son. "What's wrong?" she asked and picked him up.

He squirmed and fussed, but stopped screaming. After a microt he had his thumb in his mouth and was half asleep again. And during all that time, John hadn't stirred.

Aeryn glanced back at him and sighed. "How the frell can he sleep through all the racket you make?" she muttered to her son and caressed his cheek. "Why are you waking me up like this? What's the matter?"

Naturally, her son provided no answer until she realized that her hand on his back was slightly moist. Expecting it to be an accident on her son's side, she sent a quick glance into the crib. What she saw there made her freeze. Then she leaned the baby forward and peeled her hand off his back. It came away bloody. "Frell," she muttered and pulled his little t-shirt up to find a cut on his back that was bleeding; not heavily, but enough for it to worry her.

"John," she snapped and kicked him when he didn't respond at once.

He pushed himself up on his elbows and blinked sluggishly at her. "What?"

"He's bleeding," Aeryn said and that got her mate going. He sat up and turned around to face them, worry already etched into his face.

"What? What happened?" he demanded.

"I don't know. He woke me up, screaming his head off, but he stopped as soon as I picked him up. He's got a cut on his back," she countered, then frowned. "Much like the one I have on my arm," she added and glanced at John. "Are you hurt? Do you have any cuts?"

He took a microt to check himself out and then shook his head. "No, nothing," he said and returned his attention to his son. "Let me see."

Aeryn handed the half-asleep baby over to his father and got up to find the medi-kit to deal with his injury.

"It's not deep," John commented. "Bleeds a lot, though." He then leaned in over the crip, obviously searching for whatever had caused this cut. "No sharp edges, nothing in there that's not supposed to be there. How the hell did he get cut if there's nothing to get cut on?"

"I don't know," Aeryn replied and settled down next to John. "Hold him still. He may not like this," she said and dabbed some of the cleaning solution onto little D's back with a wad of fabric. The toddler squirmed, but remained silent and that made Aeryn smile. "That's my boy," she muttered and put a bandage on the small cut.

Little D sucked furiously on his thumb and tried hard to ignore his parents fussing over him and that made Aeryn believe that whatever had caused that cut might not be dangerous.

"Well, he seems settled," she said and sighed. She felt a little out of sorts, which was probably caused by interrupted sleep and not enough of it in general. Although John argued that their son was one of the easiest babies he had ever heard of, that didn't mean little D agreed with him and let his mother sleep. "Let's get some more sleep," she suggested after changing the bedding in the crib and Little D's shirt, then put the toddler back in his crip and stretched out on the bed.

"You must be wasted," John commented, tugged his son in and joined her.

"I am. Despite all your reassurances, John, he is keeping me up at night. And since you sleep like the dead, you're not much help to me. I don't want to have to kick you out of bed every frelling time he cries," she countered and draped an arm over her face.

"Sorry," he whispered and kissed her elbow before turning off the lights and pulling the covers back over them. "I don't know how to change that, though."

"Don't worry about it," she mumbled into the crook of her arm. "Just let me sleep in tomorrow," she added.

He kissed the side of her head and moments later, his breathing had evened out and he was once again fast asleep.

Aeryn lay there for a moment while she listened to her mate and her child breathing, then allowed herself to drift back to sleep.

***

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