an important part of Aubrey and Alisa's dynamic is they both think the other one is insane for picking the career they did
most people agree with Alisa that test pilot is a stupidly dangerous thing to do, but very few understand why Aubrey is so fucking scared of Alisa getting thrown from a horse. I should make Alisa have done rodeo, just to actually even their playing field
anyway, they Both insist that actually if you're really good at what you are doing the [plane/horse] is very responsive and it'll be fine if you're not an idiot and respect what it can do
there's a joke in here that leviathans are the only form of transportation that they would both like
They're identical twins for the Stargate/Farscape crossover that's been percolating in the back of my head for years and has now been kicked into overdrive since I am finally getting around to finishing farscape sshdhfkkg. I'm only 4 episodes into season 2 so 1) no spoilers please and 2) some of this is subject to change as I learn more about Things and also Stuff. BUT, in this au Cam and John are identical twins who weren't, like, fully parent-trapped, but they were a little bit parent-trapped. Cam ended up taking his step-dad's last name after their mom remarried. This is part of the stuff that is subject to change, but also it's an au so I might keep it anyway, we'll see.
ANYWAY, Aubrey is a test-pilot for the Air Force, and a Damn Fucking Good One, so she's one of the pilots testing the 302s. Someone in the SGC has the bright idea to try and recreate John's experiment and send a probe through the wormhole that shows up and, like, hope it ends up in the same place John did? Like, it's a stretch, but it's better than nothing and they can't just Not look for him when they have more technology than the general public. Aubrey is picked to run the experiment.
She's also engaged to Cam and I think timeline wise this means he would have actually learned about the SGC early? Doesn't really matter, he knows and is stressed and they had put the wedding on hold when John went missing bc they obviously wanted him there, but about a week before Aubrey is supposed to run the test, Cam is freaking out and she's like. Let's elope so we can be married before anything potentially happens and we can have a ceremony and everything after we get John back. So they do, and it's sweet, and Cam is torn between "grateful they got married so he wouldn't lose his chance" and "now stressed about losing his Wife the same way he lost his Twin". He's doing his best.
And on the day of the test she's there with Cam and he's still freaking out and she's like "babe, I know this is scary and I'm not gonna lie to you and say it will be okay because I cannot guarantee that, but I'm good at my job and they've got other people up there monitoring, and since we gave the Asgard a heads-up that we were going to do this so they wouldn't freak out about the wormhole close to Earth (again), they're hanging out In Case. It is as safe as it can be and someone needs to do soemthing to go get John."
And he's like "I know and I love you and I trust you, come back to me."
And since she's very aware that "as safe as possible" is still not "safe", she just hugs him instead of making a promise she can't be sure she'll keep.
And, of course, the protections are good, but not enough, and as safe as it was, the pull of the wormhole is too much for her to escape and she tumbles across the universe just in time to get scooped up by a peacekeeper cruiser with a commander hell bent on killing one John Crichton and now he has his sister-in-law as bait.
And Krais interrogates her and yells at her and doesn't torture her, even though he was very clearly about to, because he found a picture of her and John (her and Cam) on her dashboard so he screams at her that her lover murdered his brother and all she says is a very sincere "I'm sorry". She knows that can't be the whole story, there's no way it's the whole story, but this man's brother is dead and john very likely did have something to do with it even if it was the accident she is pretty sure it has to have been. She thinks about what she would be like if Alisa died and doesn't bother trying to reason with him. She just expresses remorse.
The man's brother is dead, she can be kind.
And he stops yelling, because he's seen, his grief and his pain is validated, and he wasn't expecting it, not from this woman who is so obviously connected to Crichton. It's shock, more than anything. And she pulls her knees up and rests her chin on them and calmly explains that John's her brother-in-law, not her husband, her husband is his identical twin and he stays. Well. Not nice, but surprisingly cordial after that.
And when it turns out in a fucked up miracle, her birth control failed and, somehow, the shock of the injuries didn't end the little life before it could start, he's genuinely kind to her about it. He's shitty and fucked up, but not actively evil, mostly, and she doesn't really know what to do with it.
And it's several months of just sort of sitting in a cell watching her belly get bigger and bigger and being forced to accept medical help from a bunch of alien doctors who have her kidnapped and it's weird and bad and confusing, but apparently there is a line and "torturing a pregnant person" is over it and then over hears Krais bragging that he's going to make sure that Crichton's niece (she's having a girl, she didn't know that) is going to be raised a peacekeeper and something inside her cracks and breaks, but, like everything else, there isn't much she can do about it. She just sings her baby lullabies and hopes she somehow, someway remembers them when she's older.
(There's a malfunction in her cell one day and a pretty blonde tech comes in to fix it and they don't bother dragging her out of the cell, content with how compliant she has been. The tech asks in a bare whisper if there's anything she can do to help her. Aubrey huffs something too sad to be a laugh and says "dandruff shampoo would be nice". When they refresh her her toiletries later, there's a medicated shampoo in there. It's another bit of kindness she doesn't really know what to do with.)
(Later, running out of a base with John, John's cellmate, and Aeryn and the pretty tech that Aubrey now knows is named Gilina, Aubrey will say "I don't care what's going on with you and John and Aeryn, you are the only person who was nice to me while I was here. Get the fuck out of here with us." Gilina get the fuck out of there with them.)
(After that, when Talon is refusing to leave without Krais, or with Aeryn, Gilina will volunteer to go with them. They sell Talon on that, a competent tech who's familiar with peacekeeper technology will only be an asset. It makes Aeryn feel both better and worse.)
Scorpious won't put Aubrey in the chair, performatively nice in a way that sets Aubrey's teeth on edge in a way that Krais's confusing kindness never did. When Aubrey finds out why Scorpius is chasing down John, she feels a wave of fear for both herself and John. She knows things about wormholes, possibly even more than John, certainly more consciously. She realizes she can never tell anyone what, exactly, her job on Earth was. She can't tell them about the SGC, about all the planets she has been to, about the existence of the Stargates and all they mean. She can't even tell them there might be a way for John and her to get home and still be able to visit. It's horrible and awful and Aubrey wants to tell them so bad, wants to split Scorpius's focus, wants to make him want more than just John, but that's stupid, so unbelievably, incalculably stupid. She keeps her mouth shut and feels so very guilty for doing the tactically sound thing. They all chuck her moods up to pregnancy and that's annoying, but useful. She let's it stand.
Alisa, back on Earth, is a heart-broken horseback riding instructor who only knows that somehow her sister went up for a test flight and came back "missing in action." She's not stupid, she knows that's "dead, but we can't find the body." Still, Cam doesn't let them hold a funeral and Alisa can't make herself fight him about that. Maybe she survived her crash somewhere in a satellite dead-zone and they'll find her any day now. They'll get a call and meet her plane and she'll be injured and starving, but beautifully, brilliantly alive and Alisa will have her sister back. She moves in with Cam, the only person who doesn't give her shit for this daydream. (Every year the hope gets more stupid, but more comforting. She builds her life around the hole where her sister should be and she thinks to herself that if this is what the rest of her life is going to be, it could be much worse. Maybe it's better this way, if they never find the body, then she sister never died. She's just somewhere up in the sky, still flying. She'll come back down to the ground when she's ready.)
