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JGOB- Thursday evening

If you thought sucker-equipped eels falling from the sky would keep Aeryn from getting her workout in, you were sorely mistaken.

If you thought she might try to wait out the rain of sealife at JGOB afterwards, well, good guess. It wasn't that she was afraid to go out, and she'd dealt with far more disgusting things in the past (Rygel), it was that it was stupid, and her quota for dealing with stupidity had been used up on the walk to the gym in the first place.

So here she was, sitting at a table with a muffin she'd ordered by pointing at the closest thing in the case, and sitting by the window, watching as the lampreys hit the ground. Yep. Rygel was somehow still more disgusting.

[Screw it, lampreys for all! Open if anyone's still around!]

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Stark had at some point invested in an umbrella for these situations. He'd even remembered to use it today. As a result he was not covered in slimey sea creatures. The soles of his shoes were another matter entirely but he was trying not to think too hard about that and he'd certainly stepped in worse.

Why Stark had felt a need to go out for baked goods in this sort of weather was a mystery. Not too much of one though, since Stark was, well, Stark.

He shook off his umbrella before entering the shop but stopped short in the doorway when he saw Aeryn. He'd heard there was one of her here on the radio at some point but Stark had yet to search her out for any number of reasons that he couldn't really justify if he thought too hard about it. Still, if she was here he ought to say hello at least.

"You should try the cupcakes Aeryn," he said, walking past her table on his way to the counter. "Especially the chocolate."

Sure, he could have said hello first. He also could have stopped. He needed to fortify himself with baked goods first. It had been a long time since there had been anyone from the UTs here. A very long time.

Aeryn looked towards him and automatically said, "Maybe next time," and then back at the window.

And then did a double take, because Stark.

Forgive her, she was still new to things like this.

It had been a long time since Stark had been on the receiving end of a double take from Aeryn. There was something comforting in the familiarity. There was also something comforting in the chocolate cupcake on a plate he brought back to the table with him.

"Hello." See, he'd needed to be fortified with baked goods. He got his courage from refined sugars. "You really should try the cupcakes. Cupcakes are one of the reasons I stayed. Well, came back. And then stayed. I had to leave, first."

That sounded like Stark, at least. She was still confused, but the leaving and coming back sounded about right.

"What are you doing here? How did you get here?" And was there a way for her to get back?

"I live here," Stark said as if that should explain everything. He paused for a moment, decided it didn't really explain everything, and then continued.

"I was at the school, first. I work at the clinic now. There were wormholes." Now that, he was sure, did explain everything. Although he still wasn't entirely certain how he'd managed to get here the first time. "Now there are portals. Much easier."

"Always wormholes." Oh, just wait till you're really sick of hearing about them, Aeryn. "You were able to get back by portal?"

Not that she was a little preoccupied with getting back there or anything, sorry.

"Always," Stark agreed. Poor Aeryn, you have no idea what's coming.

"I did get back. It didn't end well. It got better. Then worse. Then mostly better." Talk about your understatements.

"When...when were you, when you left?" He knew that question wasn't likely to make sense but he had to ask it anyway.

Hopefully there was also something comforting in Aeryn's wtf looks, because Stark was getting one now. "What do you mean, when was I?"

Aeryn's WTF looks used to be a constant in Stark's life. Of course they were comforting.

"There was another you here once," he said by way of explanation. "But you were younger. But it was years, cycles, ago so I was younger too but you were much younger than the you I knew, before I left. And so was Crichton. And Chiana was here once, and D'Argo." He'd leave out Scorpius and Braca. It was better that way.

"And Zhaan. They're all gone, now. But everyone...everyone was from different times. Now is more relative than I thought."

Edited 2014-08-15 03:36 (UTC)

"So everyone has been here before," Aeryn said slowly. She knew about the other her, but not the others. "But now they're not. You do realize this makes no sense."

Mainly because if there was some sort of weird thing transporting all of them to a strange Earth island where it rained eels, they probably would have dealt with the problem by now.

"It's easier once you accept most things here don't make sense," Stark said, almost cheerfully. "Or they only make their own kind of sense. Sometimes it makes sense, after a while." He shrugged.

"May I sit?" This had the potential to be a long conversation.

"It wasn't everyone here," he added. "Or maybe it was. I've been here a long time, even if you don't count the time I was gone."

Aeryn gave a vague nod to the other chair, okaying him to sit if he wanted. "How long have you been here?"

Setting his plate down gently first, Stark sat.

"A long time," Stark repeated. "8 years? Cycles? 9?" He'd lost track. "This is the longest I've been anywhere I wanted to be." There hadn't been many places he wanted to be, but then he'd never really had a choice in it before Moya.

"It's a good place. Even with the weather and the monsters."

"Nine cycles," Aeryn repeated staring. "Nine cycles in a place where you have to hug your enemy to defeat them? It's raining creatures with teeth outside."

"The hugging was new. Sometimes it rains other things." Stark, that doesn't exactly help.

"Things back there were worse." Crichton had almost destroyed the whole universe with a wormhole the last time he was there. Lampreys were a piece of cake. Cupcake, even.

"Not so much dying, here. And Zhaan...Zhaan was here, once." She'd been gone a very long time but there was always a part of him that hoped she would come back. Or at least a Zhaan would.

"You mentioned her," Aeryn said, still frowning. "There wasn't that much dying on Moya. At least, not permanently. Kind of amazing to think about, considering how often someone did something stupid."

Ahahahaha she came from The Locket.

Stark was trying his best not to give Aeryn a very strange look or say anything he might regret right now. Oh, a cupcake to bite. How convenient. Much easier to not blurt out anything that might be troublesome with a mouthful of chocolate cake.

"There...could have been more," he allowed after taking an excessively long time with the bite of cupcake. "There was a lot of stupidity." That was a safe topic, at least. "How much dying was there? Before you left?"

"Not much." Said the Peacekeeper. "Okay, look, the last big thing that happened... You weren't there, but we went to that royal planet. Crichton got turned into a statue?"

Also he got married but guess what Aeryn wasn't talking about right now.

"I heard about that, later," Stark said. "When I came back. But then I was coming back from being out there still not here. When I came here, the first time, it was after..."

After you and Crichton and Zhaan died! Don't worry, you got better and Crichton had a spare. Stark was decidedly not mentioning these details right now while he took another bite of cupcake.

"After more than that. After Valdon." ~~Which might be spelled Valdun but the internet is disagreeing on that point.~~

Aeryn shook her head. "I have no idea about that."

Which was probably for the best, really.

"Probably better that way." Stark often wished he didn't know about these things as well.

"Not a good place, Valdon." Now there was an understatement. "Most of them aren't. Most places I've been. We've been."

He frowned, fixing his eyes on the plate in front of him.

"I don't know how much I should tell you. Or you want to know. Or both. There was a lot. Is a lot. Too much, sometimes."

"It's already a lot," Aeryn admitted. "There's someone here who introduced himself as the best friend of another version of me, then this... Moya almost seems normal now."

Almost.

"Sometimes this seems normal. Sometimes Moya did. Does." It is very possible that Stark has a skewed definition of normal.

"I never met another of me, at least." Well, there had been the Bioloid but that didn't count. "And I am the only me that's been here. As far as I know. There was only one other you that was here. Some people there have been many."

"How many?" she asked warily.

Stark thought about this for a moment. "No more than five." He was fairly certain about that. Possibly.

"No more than five, I believe. But only one other you here." The other Aeryn he knew from before didn't count in this particular tally.

"It's as if one of everyone wasn't already frelling enough," Aeryn said, shaking her head.

Oh, Aeryn, you're going to have a rude awakening next season aren't you?

"I prefer one of everyone," Stark said after a pause. "One is almost always enough. Sometimes two is... Useful."

He wouldn't mind another Zhaan running around, certainly.

At least she ended up on a ship that only had one Crichton. And then, um.

"How would two be useful? We had three Crichtons once and that was just... stupid," she said.

"Sometimes you need more people," Stark said vaguely. You know, in case one died of radiation poisoning for a totally hypothetical example.

"Three Crichtons would be a lot." Two had been a lot. "But better than three of me." Even Stark knew that was too much Stark.

"I think you overestimate the fun in dealing with three Crichtons."

She had to hang out with the John Travolta-looking one with the exposed brain. I mean.

"I think," Stark countered, "that this you would have a different opinion than the one I knew. Ones. You-you haven't spent as much time with me. I am sure you would prefer an infinite number of Crichtons to multiples of me."

He was good at self-deprecating.

"But there is still only the one of me here and that is best for everyone."

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JGOB- Thursday evening

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