:: a toe in the water... ::

:: Saturday, June 29, 2002 ::

While America sleeps...

...and I pine to know if Aeryn is back.

Had a wee epiphanette last night, finally watching 402/403 with the kids. (My twelve-year-old gave me the what-the-frell eyebrow when it was all over. 'Yes I know,' I said. 'Now go to bed.' Heaven help me an hour from now when she's got all her questions together.)

But...the old woman blows dust in Crichton's eyes, the third eye opens blue, and she gives him visions. Directs him to "see", but unless she was around 12,000 years ago, she can't know exactly what he's seeing. She's either asking him to be her conduit, or to see exactly what she wants him to see, the herbs making Crichton suggestible, open to her mind. And I go for the latter, for just as she directs him to see, she also directs him to jump by sending visions of herself. Likewise, the way she reacts to the tile being real, as if she'd made it up and was surprised to find her own imaginings manifest in the world.

Which means Crichton's visions in DWTBs may also have been dictated by the old woman. She has a purpose for Crichton and he needs to be in the UT to fulfill it. (What that is, is another question entirely.) Which may mean that Aeryn *isn't* pregnant and never was, that the suggestion was planted to send Crichton in a certain direction (which was somewhat frelled by Moya going down the wormhole), to place him under the old woman's control. Someone who's willing to make him jump off a cliff isn't going to get squeamish about lying for the cause, are they?

Yeah, yeah, I see those heads shaking out there, I hear that chorus of 'accept your doom, Fi.' And I haven't seen 404, so don't tell me. I just wanted to put that out there for the record. My money on 21 black, Noranti doing a mindfrell. Now, spin the wheel.

Oh, and her peaceful priests? What kind of society buys peace with animal sacrifice? They didn't look remotely peaceful, rather scary in fact. Something is wonky there, and I suspect it's going to come back to bite us in the ass.

And that's the last of my speculation for now. Talk among yourselves {g}.

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:: fialka 7:47 AM [+] ::

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Where has all the fanfic gone...?

(a lament sung to a very old tune)

Sigh. Spoiled by the years in XF, I anxiously await the slew of fic that appears within 24 hours of the premiere. Weeks later, nada, or nearly so. I place my hands on hips and glare at all the people who are busily *not* providing me with much needed distraction. {G} I'd whip you with wet spaghetti, but then my hard drive is full of dribbles and drabbles that refuse to coalesce into something coherent, so I'd have to whip myself too. And the last time I did that, I put my back out. Which I can't afford to do.

Moving truck comes Monday. It's not time to panic yet.

Right?

(looks around house)

Um...

I did see something rather cheery in my email today, though -- I'll black-font for the spoiler virgins, but I'm not sure it's really a spoiler. More like wishful thinking combined with meagre evidence. But SciFi.com has taken to sending out mailers about new eps of Stargate and Farscape. And the piccy for Farscape, though from the back, sure as hell looks like Aeryn, standing in front of something I've never seen before. Tonight might be the night, folks!

And if anyone does want to comment on that, please do it directly to me. Don't put spoilers in the comments, okay? And pretty please don't spoil me for anything else because I won't see it until later in the week.

And for those who can't get enough (who me?) there's a great new image archive. Not all the eps yet, but fantastic quality. Check it out: Farscape Image Archive

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:: fialka 10:20 AM [+] ::

---

Woke up this morning...

...and did not get myself a gun. {apologies to Sopranos fans} Though it was a thought. I want to live on a planet with one race and one banking system. Or at least consolidate my life in one country.

Oh well, that'll happen soon enough.

Anyway. Woke up this morning with some thoughts about John and Chiana. Survival mechanisms, how they differ, how they're honed by experience, by the meaning we attach to behaviour. Cultural and personal. Rather than dissect the two eps as a whole -- because I think it's all been said, and better -- I'll stick to that.

I'm thinking Chiana's experience offscreen is the mirror to John's, the comparison. Chi, sadly, is no stranger to torture and abuse, to rape in several forms. Or to prostitution. It's a matter of survival. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

It would be interesting to think that little sister here might have something to teach John. Whatever happened to her while she was away seems to have been more than just her usual brand of 'had a little fun' because Chi seems to be seriously PTSDing right now. For someone who essentially views sex as a tool to react so strongly to being raped -- for it seems to me without a doubt that's what the euphemism stands for -- means it must have been exceptionally unpleasant even by her standards. The bruise on her face seems proof enough that something terrible happened. We don't usually see the alien characters bear bruises after the fact, only John.

John's bruises this time are internal, and while I don't want to reopen the 'was it rape' question, nor to engage in a debate over degrees of violence, there must be some part of him that will look at Chiana when assessing damage done. When there is time to look, which there has not been so far.

And here is D'Argo urging John to prostitution and thinking nothing of it. Luxan sexual morality seems more fluid than ours, closer to the PK idea of sex as a purely physical act, as something separate from emotional attachment. For Chiana it's generally been a means to an end. We know that's not true for John.

Now, John is obviously not adverse to the odd one-night stand. We saw that with Jenavian. I'm thinking here it's less about sex per se and more about control, or lack thereof. A difference between the body responding where the mind is unwilling, and choosing to perform for a reason. In 403, John would still rather not be there, but he made the choice. In that sense he's retained control.

And that is what torture is really about, is it not? Helplessness, loss of control. That the torture might not be physically painful, might even be sexually pleasurable doesn't really negate the fact that it's robbing one of dignity, of control. The body forgets pain more quickly than the mind forgets how it feels to be at the mercy of another.

John has had experience with painful physical torture now, a comparison he might (I said might!) use to downplay what happened with Grayza, at least in his own mind. A survival mechanism that says: I have survived worse, let me push this over there and get on with matters at hand. I'm not entirely sure we'll see this have repercussions, certainly not in the way the Aurora Chair changed innocent Crichton into something harder. Someone able to destroy an entire base and all its personnel without thinking twice about it.

On that score I'm a bit worried about what's happened to Aeryn, the only one of the originals who hasn't been tortured, imprisoned, so far. Wondering if TPTB have seen (or will see) fit to turn the tables on her, show her the Peacekeepers from inside a cell. In my Story That Will Never Be Finished (aka The STWNBF {grin}) I had Scorpius put her in the Chair, wanting information about John's whereabouts. Then I was Kempered and thought, Grayza could do it. Now it appears I may not have been far off as it seems that one or the other is now going to go after her for leverage against John.

But I'm not going to make this about Aeryn {g}. Well, not too much, I hope.

So Chiana and Rygel have been badly roughed up, Jool is gone and D'Argo...D'Argo appears to have been fed happy juice. And D'Argo, I believe, pretty much views all sex as good, so I don't think he's going to be too sympathetic if John were to call him out for pimping him to Grayza. Laughter, jokes -- those are the survival mechanisms John held on to even when the Chair was sending him into seizures. I'm thinking we're going to see a lot of that because the more John laughs about things ("You bastard", for example), the more disturbed he really is about them. But I'm not sure they're going to explore it any further.

What seemed oddly discordant to me, after the end of DWTB, was John's sweet dreamy smile every time he thought of Aeryn, whispering her name like she had indeed become Betty Crocker, the perfect little wife standing in the doorway in a flowered apron with a tray of freshly-baked cookies in her hands. Coupled with DWTB it makes me wonder. Is that what Crichton really wants? Not just with Aeryn, but in general? I understand he wants a home and a family, always has, but...a white wedding, a barbeque, a traditional suburban wife? It doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like the same John who treats the real Aeryn like a comrade-in-arms. The John who doesn't seem to mind her being the stronger one, even seems to admire her for it. The one who keeps choosing women who are distinctly undomestic -- even Alex put her career before her relationship with John.

And even in his fantasies he can't make Aeryn "behave". DWTB has him realising she'd be miserable, CK has her flicking him off like so much bother, telling him the child is hers, not his in any sense -- and that's his own mind manufacturing those responses. His disappointment at the end of the first and last fantasy sequences seemed more apropos to his 'real' situation, to the fact that it was *Aeryn* who said goodbye, who left them in the hands of a fate that has never been kind.

Yet when John returns to the 'real' world, he returns to that goofy smile. Has he become completely delusional with reference to her? He *knows* why she left. He has no reason to think she'll be happy to see him when he finds her -- in fact, if she is pregnant she's more likely not. She might be in danger, she might be dead. She might be perfectly fine and tell him to piss the frell right off. Because the real truth -- the one he's refusing to see -- is that if Aeryn wanted to come back, she would have by now. John hadn't gone very far. It would have been easy to find him.

I see none of this going through his waking mind. No fear, no worry, no anger -- at least not at her. And oddly, no urgency either. John sits calmly in his module as if it's only a matter of time, as if he's on his way to a pre-arranged tryst, as if she's been waiting for him all this time. It ain't necessarily so. (Well, knowing DK it's definitely not so.) And since TPTB don't do much without evil purpose, I'm guessing they're trying to set poor Humpty up for a very great fall. And I'm cool with that. Really. I'm cool with whatever happens, except that it goes well and they fall happily into each other's arms. Though somehow I don't expect there's much danger of that.

But I'm still at a loss to understand how he got from that last desperate argument, from "Goodbye, John Crichton," to this dreamy-yet-not-desperate John. How he got so disconnected from the truth. Wasn't that what DWTB was about? Facing the truth that he could never go home, certainly not with Aeryn in tow, that it was time he made peace with living the rest of his life in the UT. But now the credits are telling me that all John wants is to get to Earth to warn them (like they'll listen any better than they did in AHR?). Which I guess is foreshadowing where the next two seasons are going, and I'd be a bit sorry if they went that route. I mean, what is Earth going to do with John's knowledge even if they accept it? You want *us* to have wormhole technology? What, the nuclear arsenal isn't scary enough? If John really wants to protect Earth, isn't it better to keep waving his cute little leather-clad butt at Grayza, keep her following him *away* from his home planet?

Having said that though, I'm still strapped in for the ride, ready to go wherever. I just wouldn't mind Aeryn showing up fairly soon because as much sense as it's made to have her not there, I miss CB. I miss CB and BB together, even not talking to each other.

And can someone tell me why the SciFi channel thinks no one would watch on July *5th*? Because they're off for the long weekend? Isn't that what VCRs are for?

Sigh. Nuff 'crastinating. Next box.

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:: fialka 4:52 PM [+] ::

---

The inside of my brain looks like the inside of my house...

Either that or it's in that box on the bottom left, the one I didn't pack full enough so it's starting to sink under the accumulated weight. If anyone's written me feedback or email (Max!) or well, anything, in the last few weeks -- apologies. I am not uncaring, I am just in disarray.

I wanted to write comments on 402/403 but those are probably in that basket on my desk, the one full of odds and ends I can't figure out what to do with. And may I add that sorting through slips of paper with scribbled addresses of friends you will never find again, because the one thing you do know is they've long ago moved from there, is somewhat depressing. Of course anyone looking for me from say, high school, would have their work seriously cut out for them.

I spent fifteen years headed east until Prague. Since then it's been a slow crawl back west. Does this mean I'll retire to LA when I'm done, since that's where I began?

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:: fialka 5:38 PM [+] ::

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Thoughts from the bus (better late than...?)

First, I now know why the coach to Leeds takes twice as long as the train - because it takes two hours just to get out of bloody London.

However, that's neither here nor there. Premiere. That's what I want to talk about. A week behind, but what the hell. Faster than waiting for the UK broadcast, right? And apparently less controversial than Friday's ep, which I haven't seen yet so please, no one spoil me in comments, okay?



Having read the Farscape magazine, I was expecting this ep to be titled Now or Never. Would have worked as well, oddly enough, because the more I think about it, the more I think that's exactly what this is about. Crichton is teetering on the edge of madness, if he doesn't begin to retrieve the scattered pieces of himself *now* it will be too late. For John, a man not made to be too long by himself, those scattered pieces are all residing in his friends, the way we leave bits of ourselves with those with whom we share any intense experience.

John has pieces of his friends, as they have pieces of him, but alone on a dying leviathan he cannot make them fit into anything coherent. John needs a family, and for better or worse (or better and worse), this is his. Without that family to mirror back his experience, he is beginning to reshape events in his own mind, and that is the way madness lies. John knows why Aeryn left, and he knows he cannot go back to Earth, but Crichton Kicks has him ignoring these things, as if all he learned from the old woman's herbs is that Aeryn is pregnant (if indeed she is).

And yet, there's a method to his madness, a kind of inner sanity retained via the letting go of exterior control. Wandering around in his Obi-Wan beard and shirt, John might be acting like a madman, but his compassion, his ingenuity, his humour - in short, the essential things that make him Crichton - are very much intact. Still, his surface reactions are those of someone no longer willing to connect, to feel. His blase acceptance of Chiana and Rygel's sudden return, his lack of interest in the newcomer - these are offset by his care for the old Pilot, but that is perhaps based on his intrinsic need to talk to *someone* who is not inside his head, and on the assumption that they are going to die together. An assumption Crichton seems to have accepted with surprising equanimity for an essentially pacifistic man who has spent the last three years so intent on survival that he has learned to kill by the thousands.

However, perhaps the lack of affect has another cause. Chi and Rygel signal the return of his old life of run and fight and hide, and it makes sense that John, after several months (?) of quiet - his first since Acquara -- would not be thrilled with that. It signals the return of desire as well - and desire is not always a welcome visitor, for what is the good in wanting what you know you can't have? John will still look for his friends, because that is Crichton, but I found it encouraging that he let go of the fantasy baby before saying goodbye to fantasy Aeryn as well. Because desire is so much more than sex - it's about reaching for life, his life, whatever that is. And John's life cannot be based on Aeryn. Certainly not on an impossible fantasy of some Earth woman who merely looks like her.

And this Aeryn, along with DWTB, makes me wonder if John has ever really *seen* her, in all her swiss cheese glory, for his fantasy Aeryn is comprised of all the things that do not exist in the real one.

When I first saw this I remarked that Fantasy!Aeryn's responses seemed odd and disjointed, as if they'd had CB loop the lines without knowing what Crichton was saying to her. Now, obviously that's not what they did, but Aeryn's emotional affect (or lack thereof) is way out of sync with Crichton's through most of the sequences. Listening to it on the headset on the bus, I also heard something I didn't hear through the tinny speakers - all of Aeryn's dialogue is heavily back-echoed in a way Harvey's is not, giving her voice a hollow, otherworldly aspect, as if even Crichton's fantasy of her has become half-hearted.

Now, as anyone who knows me might have guessed, I did groan and cover my eyes when we first saw Aeryn pregnant. But I found the middle sequence oddly moving despite myself. It's such an innocent dream, a man and a woman lying together, feeling this new person they've made beginning to make its prescence known. A reasonable expectation, a moment of simple, ordinary happiness that this man is never going to get. It's the impossibility coupled with the ordinariness of that scene that makes it so bittersweet. A giant ball of honking wrong, but bittersweet.

And there's the positioning,. Aeryn playing with John's hair just as she did on Talyn, learning the gestures of tenderness, unaware that their world was about to end. A crossover echo as startling as Fantasy!Aeryn speaking Talyn John's last words with her dying breath. As if the universe is seeking to right the imbalance created when Crichton was twinned, to return to the survivor some measure of the other John's experience. Just as Talyn John, once dead, seemed to have regained his memory of the life they had on the Favoured Planet. There's much to speculate about how Aeryn could have conjured that John if the people in our fantasies are but reflections of ourselves, but not now {grins south to Cambridge}.

But if Fantasy!Aeryn is an aspect of John, then Ghost!John becomes an interesting aspect of Aeryn. Someone who does not know how to conceive of an afterlife imagines a man at peace, going nowhere and doing nothing. While John dreams of Aeryn - both here and in DWTB - as an ordinary Earth woman, human in ways she can never possibly be, Aeryn conceives of a much truer version of the man, the part of him that was always there for her, infinitely patient. The part of him, perhaps, that was most alien to her, and which she loved most.

I'm not sure if Crichton Kicks was designed to be the companion piece to The Choice, but it certainly looks like the other side of the coin, so to speak {g}. Crichton rattling around a dim, decaying environment, a little bit drunk and just this side of madness. Abandoned, bereft, talking to a ghost. And in the end John, like Aeryn, rejects the fantasy version of the other.

I found the slight difference here telling -- Aeryn banishes John while John banishes himself from her "world", but in both cases, they assume *he* will come to her. Which is how it always was. So the ending of Crichton Kicks looks to be a good harbinger that it's time for a change, that - emotionally, if not physically -- Aeryn has to be the one going after John, the one patiently waiting for him to be ready for her. Considering her history, with both Johns and with the PKs, that's going to be a very difficult thing for her to do. (Which is going to be very much fun to watch.) Patience isn't one of Aeryn's virtues, nor is knowing how to make first moves, but she does listen well, and she has learned a few things about expressing love from three cycles with John. If Aeryn can ever muster up the courage to try again, if she can give back to John some of what he has given her, then she will indeed have grown past her PK upbringing and into someone new.

But we aren't going to see that in the next few eps, nor would I want to. So far, Aeryn's emotional progression has been a microcosm of the process of growing up. In the first season Aeryn acts out her needs the way children do, without much understanding of her own self because like a small child, she lacks an adequate vocabulary to express her feelings. By the second season the bond between her and Crichton definitely contains a strong sexual element and Aeryn reacts with like a teenager - newly awakened, blind to her effect on John, pulled apart by an irresistible urge to both jump on him and run as far as she can, embarrassed by her inexperience and her lack of control. It's not John's hormones frightening her in LATP, it's her own.

In the third season, accepting love, Aeryn blossoms and - for a few brief moments - matures into a grown woman with a fully-formed vocabulary in both speech and touch. What she will be when we see her again is hard to predict. The loss of Xhalax, of Crais and Talyn, and her part in the destruction of her childhood home broke something in her way beyond the loss of John, something that may never be repairable. She cannot even claim to have held onto the better things she was taught, to be a Peacekeeper in the old sense, for she is now a traitor to everything she knew and loved, a deserter of all including Moya and her crew. John, on the other hand, summing up his relationship with Aeryn in a formula that equals nothing, seems oddly to have been set free of it all. Whether that's true or not, only the next episodes will tell.

And the planet they speak of at the end? Anyone who's read the blog knows where my money lies .

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:: fialka 4:41 PM [+] ::

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In a word...WHOOT!

We're off to see the wizard, er wonderful, Maayan who is bringing 401 joyness to East London, where the Mighty Marasmus awaits.

Nah ja, and if that sounds frazzled, don't worry, I am. Bone tired, but there is this to look forward to before flat-hunting (ack!) and returning to Germany to finish packing, load the truck, and pack myself and the kids onto a 23-hour bus. If they arrive alive, I'm applying for sainthood, all Jewishness aside.

Hey, it worked for the other guy.

Speaking of which, the dead-again, resurrected-again laptop is momentarily back among the living. I think I'm going to have to call it Jebuslug, or Lazarus, or something besides Ka'ahlen (yeah, I name my computers after fictional goddesses. The last one was Avarra, which is a testament to how long it lasted since I grew out of my Darkover phase about ten years ago. Or whenever Heirs of Hammerfell came out. Jebuslug, was that *bad*.

Anyway, I'll be travelling for about two weeks, and probably not updating here, so let me leave you with some snippets that I was planning to post the day the laptop died (sung to the tune of American Pie). They're from what will probably remain The Great Unfinished Darkfic Where Everyone (Probably) Dies. Which way Kemper went, I don't know, but I'm sure this is now redundant. So, bits...

Um, yeah, and as you'll see from this, I really needed a holiday. Poor Marasmus. Poor Maayan. {g}

---

*So, Aeryn has gone to the Royal Planet and traded information on Human/Sebacean gestation for protection and medical care. The Empress has other plans for her, and it's all going to go horribly pear-shaped, but that bit hasn't been written. Yet. {eg} What follows are just bits from the beginning, me wondering (despite desperately NOT wanting to see it on the show) what if would be like for Aeryn if she really were pregnant.*

---


Blue. Green.

Planet.

Clouds swirl in her glass, hot against her cold hands. She drinks the raslak in one gulp, burning all the way down.

Not good, she knows, but nothing she does is good anymore and if she doesn't sleep here, sleep soon, she's going to go into narcoleptic shock and then where will they be? Movement is all, but a pilot cannot move when she's unconscious. All she needs is a little sleep.

Lesser of two evils. His words. Aeryn slides one hand beneath her cloak. John hated raslak and so does his child, kicking at the hand that seeks to soothe.

One more, she begs it silently. Just let me have one more. And then let me sleep a while.

The child grows still and Aeryn signals the bartender for another drink.

---

She's woken by the fist that slams into her stomach. Head over the side of her cot, giving the raslak back to the carpet. The chronometer on the wall is less than two arns later than it was the last time she looked at it.

Aeryn wipes her mouth, reaches for the cloak she's been using as a blanket. It feels like someone's been kneading her brains, the way Chiana used to knead the batter for grolack, soft matter squeezing out between her fingers.

The raslak gone, she's suddenly ravenous despite the bitter taste in her mouth. It's the child's hunger, not hers. This thing inside her, always wanting more. More food, more sleep. Food is so hard to swallow right now, and things in her head won't let her sleep. She needs a meditech, someone who will know what's wrong.

The market is mostly empty when Aeryn arrives, her cloak wrapped tight around her head and shoulders, concealing her face from the crowd. This is a small, sparsely populated world, and offworlders attract a great deal of unwanted notice, scream 'prey' to every fast hand or gun or mouth. She already bears the evidence of one such encounter, a deep slash across her forearm left by a not particularly accomplished assailant. It's not the wanted beacons she fears these days, it's herself. She's alone now, and she's so tired her body no longer obeys her commands.

She buys herself some grolak, and an unidentified fruit that looks like it might taste fresh and clean going down. Finds a place to sit beside the huge stone urn that dominates the center of the market square and begins to eat, breaking the grolak into tiny pieces, watching the passersby from beneath her lowered hood. The natives here are tailed bipeds, with dark brown skins and huge silver eyes. Aeryn longs for something more familiar. For a Sebacean face, even one that would spit at the mention of her name.

The fruit is not as tasty as she'd hoped. Aeryn finishes it anyway, washes her hands in the urn as she's seen the natives do, and heads towards the landing port. Some instinct tells her it's time to fly away.

---

She’s outgrown her few clothes and can’t be bothered to buy new ones, so she wears whatever she can find. Today it’s a long shift the colour of dried blood, the sides cut to her knees, bound beneath her swollen breasts. Hardly the style, but it’s easier to walk in this than the sort of thing the women around here normally wear, thin silk sewn closed to the ground. She has to twist to the side to see her feet, to slide into her boots and snap the bindings shut, but these, at least, are still her own.

This morning she sits at the table and lets the server brush and curl and pin up her hair, the energy to argue about such things long since gone. She keeps her eyes on her knees, never looking in the mirror. She doesn’t like to see the stranger she’s become.

The server leaves, and the day, for Aeryn, is over before it starts. She’d do whatever anyone asked, perform any task, however menial and small, but nothing is asked of her any more.

Some days she wakes in her boots, in these odd clothes, and thinks she’s never left Valldon. That she never went back to Moya, never tried and failed and had to run because she couldn’t learn to breathe when he was around.

If she had stayed on Valldon, she thinks, one way or another she would be with him now. Not a refugee living on the charity of debt, on a world made for pleasure and little else. She’d have either found the courage to take that last step off the ledge, or she’d be lost inside herself, happily snuggling with her dead lover’s ghost.

The room she’s been given is too large for comfort, the bed too soft. Aeryn lies on her side, arms and legs wrapped around her stomach. That’s all she is now. Arms and legs and child.

---

She thinks perhaps this child is wiser than either of its parents. How much easier to stay curled in the dark, warm and safe. Never needing to think for oneself, never needing to decide. Oblivious to the pressures that are gathering, even now, bearing down on the entire universe.

Aeryn hunkers down as the midwife instructs, lets the pain wash over and through her, bringing the child with it at last.

Once it seemed to her that a curtain had opened, showing her something in the far distance. A blue-green planet, biding its time. So brief, that opening, a matter of arns.

She closed the curtain when she closed his eyes.

"You have a daughter," the midwife says, and Aeryn nods, exhausted, all too happy to lie down on the polished floor. Her labour has lasted longer than their last stand on Dam-ba-da, longer than it took his life to disintegrate, cell by cell. She's fulfilled her last mission. She's ready to join him now.

"Come," Nessa says, coaxing her back to her feet, back to the bed. Aeryn allows herself to be half-carried, to be laid on a soft cushion of pillows and have blankets tucked around her. This, Nessa tells her, she will do herself tomorrow night, and every night thereafter, tucking in her child.

I'm a soldier, Aeryn thinks, staring at the wriggling bundle the midwife is holding out. I have no training for this.

"Aeryn." Nessa nudges her shoulder and Aeryn holds her hands out, palms up. The child weighs not much more than a pulse rifle, less than a beryllium harpoon. She opens a toothless mouth and the hounds of hezmana come screeching out.

"Look at that," Nessa croons, ticking the baby's puckered, beet-red cheek. "She's already hungry. Going to be strapper, that one."

Aeryn stares blankly at the screaming creature. "What does she eat?"

"Peacekeepers!" Nessa snorts, tugging the ribbon at Aeryn's throat. It comes loose easily, the neckline of the birthing shift suddenly giving way. "Breast. Milk. For the love of Cholak, do they teach you nothing up there?"

"They teach us what we need, when we need it," Aeryn snaps, trying to maneuver an aching nipple into the baby's mouth. "I was not rostered to be bred."

The baby figures it out at last, clamps down so sharply Aeryn gasps. And then it's tugging on her, hard, as if trying to suck out the few fragments of herself she still has left.

Memory floods her limbs. His mouth on her breast, his fingers sliding slow and gentle between her legs.

She pulls the child away, thrusts the writhing, squalling bundle into Nessa's arms. "I can't do this."

"Don't be ridiculous," Nessa snaps. The child is screaming so loud it makes Aeryn wants to scream too, but she managed to give birth with barely a sound and she's not going to give in to weakness now.

"Let Mama sleep," the midwife says, dulcet tones that remind Aeryn way too much of Zhaan. Something else not to think about.

It was so easy, once; to keep facing forward, eyes on nothing, mind a blank. No decisions to be made, no questions to ask. Nothing behind the curtain but a sleek prowler cutting through the dark.

"She must choose a name." Nessa's voice flickers between tenderness for the newborn and contempt for its mother. Raised as a distant relation of the court, she's got the nuance of subtle insult down to an art. If she were half so good with a real blade, Aeryn might worry about the safety of her own throat.

Then again, maybe she wouldn't.

Aeryn stares at a spot on the far wall, the better to ignore the burning ache between her legs. This is worse than Valldon, worse even than her first night back on Moya. There was still something inside her then.

"Aeryn. Can you think of one you want?"

Yes, there is one she wants, but it's too late now.

*more in entry below*

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:: fialka 12:24 PM [+] ::

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Next...


Aeryn stands on the ledge of her window overlooking the palace gardens. There's some kind of festival going on, and below her, people stroll aimlessly through the carefully marked lanes, a warm breeze catching their light silk clothing, making the jackets wave like flags.

No one notices the woman at the window, a deadly creature dressed in black.

She's a poison to this planet, she and the infant who sleeps unaware, nestled in red silk inside her basket. Aeryn keeps the baby by her side, her pistol in her hand.

Last night, there were intruders in the palace.

"Aeryn, come down from there."

Yes, it makes Nessa nervous to see her guest standing on a ledge. Never mind the window isn't high enough for jumping to be of any use. She might have done it on Valdon, but John always appeared at the crucial moment, distracted her from taking that one last step.

She might still be there, drunk on fellip nectar or something stronger, toeing the edge of the world. Dead or lost to her ghost, if not for Xhalax and her twisted revenge.

She looks down at the child. Sees Crichton's face as she closes the canopy of the prowler and leaves Moya's warmth behind.

*I killed your father so that you could live.*

Some days she thinks she sees him. At a distance, at an odd angle passing beneath her window. A man with his rolling strut, with light brown hair. The fashion of this city is too much like John's.

Each time, there's that moment of joy, of expectation. He's here. He's found her. At last.

And then the man moves or turns or looks up and she is left only with a bitter taste in her mouth. It is not him, and since when does Aeryn Sun wait for anyone to do for her what she can do for herself?

Since this, she thinks, one hand on the baby's round stomach. Asleep, the child is frightening in its looseness. Limbs splayed, head back. The heart beats beneath her fingertips and she thinks how easy it would be to end this life. One quick snap of her wrist.

Jothee was born on the run, of parents who were hunted, and look what happened to him.

Her hand tightens around the fragile neck. It would be more merciful to do it now, fast, before anyone finds out this child exists.

Beneath her hand the child yawns, stretches. Oblivious. She slides her hand beneath its head, lifts the creature to her shoulder. The weight is warm above her heart, and suddenly her stomach pitches, her knees begin to shake. She sits in the window, breathing hard. It's as if she's been running all these arns and metras and monens that have taken her from him and she looks out over the square and he's there, walking towards her, hands outstretched.

A woman moves from the crowd, white silk flowing into the man's open arms.

She twists a hand in her hair and pulls, hard. She has to stop this, now. John is dead and John is gone and she feels like the egg in one of his silly rhymes. She should find herself a planet where there are no Sebaceans, because each time this happens it's like falling off a wall, leaving shards of herself strewn across the pavement. Pretty soon there won't be enough pieces left to put Aeryn Sun back together again.

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:: fialka 12:20 PM [+] ::

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*And this bit, from John's POV, which takes place about a cycle after DWTB*


He's dreaming of Aeryn and it's the same old dream. Waking or sleeping, these days it's all he has.

They're in the cabin, on the false earth. Her skin smells like inside of her pressure suit, but her hair smells like rain and her mouth, when she finally opens it, tastes burnt-sugar sweet beneath the beer.

He would have stopped there, a kiss, two. An hour of kissing, leading nowhere, just to have someone there, to fall asleep in each other's arms.

In his dream she's the one who pushes him down, in truth, he can't remember who started tearing at whose clothes first. In his dreams, in his memory, there's no foreplay, it's all down to business. Aeryn on top, and he can't remember how he got inside her but he is and she's riding him hard, eyes closed and her hands clenched around his biceps.

Peacekeeper sex.

He wants her to look at him. Wants it to *be* him, not some anonymous dick. He works a hand between them, thumb searching for just the right place. For a moment he thinks it isn't there, then he finds what he's looking for, absolute proof she's made just like earth girls, at least in this way.

Her eyes fly open, her mouth forms a word. There's no sound and that's when he realises she hasn't made a sound since they started, all the noise is him.

He makes tiny circles with his thumb and her eyes grow wide as her body's rhythm changes. Hips rolling out of control as she arches back, tight as a fist, and she comes with a cry that's like something breaking inside her.

In his dream she lies on his chest and he holds her while tears pour down the side of his neck. In his dream she cries as he's heard her only once before, as if she doesn't know how, as if she's as startled to find herself crying in his arms as he is.

Of course, that part never happened.

John blinks and finds himself rolled in his coat, curled at the back of the Luxan ship. Rygel snores loudly in another corner and D'Argo and Chi are murmuring softly at the controls. John rolls over and closes his eyes, lets himself remember. Human sex, his mouth between her legs, skin soft as worn cotton, like the thighs of his oldest, favourite pair of jeans.

He doesn't have to wonder how the other guy made love to her, because he knows how he wanted to do it himself. Knows it inside and out, a scene born of small knowledge and too many nights alone with no company but his own hands. What he doesn't know, what he'll never know now, is what Aeryn would have been like, finally making love to him.

It shouldn't matter, he thinks, and Chiana says, "What?" He's doing it again, speaking his thoughts out loud.

"What shouldn't matter?" she repeats, leaving the console to crouch by his head. Little grey girl no more, lines under her eyes and tight brackets around her mouth. She strokes his hair with one half-gloved hand and he has the strangest desire to put her fingers in his mouth, see if she tastes as ashen as she looks.

Of course she would. It's all ashes to him now.

D'Argo is growling, which may or may not be words, but the microbes don't translate so John decides not to care. He steers as clear of the Luxan as it's possible to steer, which isn't much, cramped as they are in a vessel never meant to be lived in. Certainly not by four.

Chi goes back to the console, whispering below D'Argo's rising voice. John puts his arms over his head, trying to drown the sound in his coat.

"…could be A…" says Chi, and "Frell Aeryn!" D'Argo shouts right over her. John wishes he could be so lucky, then regrets the thought. The truth is he would give up Moya and home and anything just to have Aeryn back for five minutes, just to know she's all right. With him, without him, just all right.

But he gave up Moya, hasn't he? They all have. Over a cycle since they picked him up half-dead in his pod. The pod is lost to space, Machdon Tal was never found. Chiana isn't wanted in the resistance. Hyneria is too far, Moya is too lost, and Aeryn is still crying in John's dreams, even if that is a lie. When he finally does find her, she'll probably tell him to go to hell.

Hezmana.

Whatever.

"Frell them all!" D'Argo is still shouting. "Every child of a hezmat Peacekeeper in the universe. I hope the Scarrens roast every last one of them, including Aeryn Sun!"

There's a silence as Chi slides her eyes John's way. Even Rygel keeps his wide mouth shut, though the argument has woken him up.

"All right," Chi gives in. "Maybe not."

"Maybe not what?" John hauls himself to his feet, straightens his coat as well as he can, considering he can't stand up straight in this part of the ship.

Chi looks to D'Argo, who waves a hand as if ridding himself of all of them.

John sighs. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad plan. Find someplace to settle down, let them come to him. Sooner or later, whether it's Scorpius or Grayza or someone infinitely more superior and dangerous, someone will.

"Comms traffic in this sector," Chi says, tilting her head the way she does when she's expecting him to start shouting and waving his pistol around. "It's heavily Sebacean."

He waits for his heart to lift, is grateful when it doesn't. Just that much further to fall, he's found. "What does that mean?"

"It means there's Sebaceans," D'Argo growls.

He looks from one to the other. "Sebacean what? Peacekeepers?"

Another look, Chi and D'Argo signing a temporary ceasefire before D'Argo finally turns to John. It hurts, how human the Luxan's eyes look sometimes. It never means anything good.

"We'll be caught in the satellite net in less than half an arn," D'Argo says. "I suggest we turn around and blow this molecule stand right now."

John stares. "Popsicle stand," he mutters, autocorrect still active. The rest of his is mind is spinning like a top, centering around one single thought.

Of course. Of course. Where else in the UT would you find Blue Cross for a Sebacean woman carrying a half human child?


*And that's all folks. Happy premiere, I'll check in with the online world on Monday night!*

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:: fialka 11:23 AM [+] ::

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