~~~She had been incredibly patient, considering. She had run her hands through the scattered crystals, along with the rest of them, but as soon as adequate breathing room was allotted, as soon as there were assurances that the rest would be gathered and the broken-faced strangers' grave mistake rectified, she began to speak of setting out to seek a cure of her own. Quietly, at first, as if she thought she could slip away unremarked if none of them heard. ~~~
It is a long way to anywhere from the water planet, and the nights wax [long(-winded)], the dark silence of the Transport Pod mirroring the silent dark of the star-scattered nothing outside its portholes. Not that any difference in the dark matters to the girl, Stark reflects, glancing at her huddled-up form. She's been tacit and moody by whirls since their exodus. Hopping from commerce planet to settlement in the Tormented Space has thus far gifted them with only scanty rumor of one who might heal her burned-out eyes. With each awkward night that passes without renewed hope, she seems to creep lower.
~~~D'Argo heard, though, and imprudently—though not unkindly—laughed. Hackles raised at his lack of confidence, she'd dug her teeth in and declared she would go, and frell them all; if she sat around waiting to see John and Aeryn whole again, she never would see them. Practical D'Argo stuck his fingers in her sore spots, yanked her down with the hard reminder that she could hardly go tripping across the galaxy all on her own when she could hardly go tripping across the room, blind as a pleebig cave-rat.~~~
She'd kept up a brassy façade for so long, it is no [surprise,] really, when it breaks. He has half been expecting it. Thirteen solar days out, after following a false trail to its dead end, she is not in the best of spirits to begin with; the added knowledge that they will sleep hungry because he had unwittingly made the pair of them supremely unwelcome on the little stopover where they had meant to purchase supplies only sours her further against him. No matter that she herself has done the same upon occasion—and with greater ramifications—he receives an ear-full of some of her more colorful language as they make a hasty retracing of their trajectory out into uncluttered space. He suffers the harangue in silence, making allowances. She is upset, and has every reason to be. Lack of sight terrifies her; a carnal creature, she is utterly dependent on the senses of the flesh to guide her, trapped within the confines of her own skull. Losing one of those all-important mechanisms is devastating. She is furious with him, and has every right to be. Her lacking now is only to make up for his before.
~~~The old witch concurred, and that looked to be the end of it, though not the end of the Nebari girl's shrieking, not by a long ways. Then he, in a voice that faltered, thrusting out a volunteering hand that did not echo that hesitation in the slightest, had offered to take her. It was, after all, the least he could do.~~~
Restless, she seems unable to keep a seat, to lie flat for any length of time in one of the depressions lining the far wall that serve as berth in the confined space. The Pod grows smaller with each cramped breath. She begins kicking out, streaming imprecations that scramble passed translator microbes untouched. Stark stands silent and watches; what does it matter to him if she tears the Pod asunder from beam to bow? All her fear and frustrated rage spews out in the blunted toes of her boots connecting with the walls, the chests; shines out in a corona around her snarled white head; mists out on her breath with vile words that vent the feelings but can't bleed them dry. Misjudging a step—failing to account for the new configuration of the wrecked cabin—she knocks heels and shins against the lid of the upended stow-chest and tumbles backwards against the wall, crashing and landing there, like nothing so much as a black and grey and white arachnoid, limbs flailing. She lets blow one raw-throated bestial howl of pain and fury, and begins to cry.
~~~As they made ready to depart, D'Argo pulled him aside. "You take care of her," he had importuned, cornering him in a dark nook, boxing him in with his big gloved hands resting heavily on his shoulders. Inarticulate warnings lurked ostentatiously in his winking eyes, and Stark nodded gravely, moistening lips. Chiana was not Aeryn. Though she flaunted herself and made free with many big, strong words—loudly—he could see clearer than most that this was, at least in part, a smokescreen to shelter the deepest, darkest, forgotten faction of herself, that vulnerable little bud which had never been given the chance to grow up. For all her bravado, Chiana was a child, in need of protection, of guidance. Zhaan knew this: Chiana was special to her. And so she would be to him. Chiana was not Aeryn; and Aeryn was not Zhaan. Though at times that was a distinction where the lines blurred and shifted maddeningly, it was not one he could mistake with the girl. And so he nodded for D'Argo and swore he would take care of her.~~~
The weeping is bitter, soft; she does not try to suppress it, but half turns into the embracing wall as if trying to hide her weakness from him. Stark creeps to her side, cautious, stepping large over scattered effects, stepping light though she is beyond hearing. He crouches before her—too close, of course, but he knows no other way. Awkwardly, he puts his hands on her, and they are the shuddering spiders she had seemed a moment before; he is gentle, undemanding, and she does not pull away. Through the long-stretching nights of solitude in the dual dark of the humming Pod, with much cajoling and patience, he had got her to tell him of the time when the young Rider had squatted in her head and left her altered. The left-over bits clinging to her synapses had lit new pathways, but there were unexpected side-effects, and now her world is doused in darkness. He understood it very little, and she even less, but he could understand her terror. There is much to be feared in what one does not understand.
He reaches and softly brushes her damp cheek with a bare fingertip. "Don't be scared."
Watch over them, Zhaan had said. He had been fair useless at that so far. Since the war memorial to the haunted planet with its false fathers and tears of blood and sibilant whispers, he had been one great lump of useless, neurotic mess. Until the whispers touched his mind, he had not been able to name any direction, not for the blowing of the wind or turning of the stars. Most, hearing the whispers of the dead, would know themselves for mad. But he, raving all ready, had nothing more to lose. He, knowing death deeper than most, heard the call for the truth within. The communion was not to be shared—he could not recall the whole of it, only bits and pieces. But as needed, fragments returned to light ways she had illumined for him, in love. There was much that could be gleaned from the moment of passing, as the Stykera well knew: indefinitely more valuable was what came from beyond, if the one passed could manage to convey it. Beyond the shroud, sight was clearer. Chiana had used up the last of her eyes, doing what he could not; saving them all while he cowered, ineffectual.~~~
She laughs at him then with a tragic irony. "In case you hadn't noticed, greebol, I'm blind." It is a curse in her mouth. "I'm banging off walls, tripping over my own feet...!" her railing bleeds off as a new wash of tears chokes her.
He does not dignify the obvious with an unneeded corroboration; instead he keeps pressing upon her what is so important that she know. "Chiana, don't be scared. Zhaan said, don't be scared."
She turns that white-glazed stare on him, mouth slack in disbelief at this new level of his insanity. "Zhaan's dead, you fekik." she tells him with all the gentle patience she can muster.
"I know." he allows, head dipping like a fishing bird in acquiescence. "But she told me: tell Chiana, don't be scared."
Her tangled head bangs backwards against the Pod's side, the impacts accentuating each flat syllable. "Zhaan. Is. Dead."
Stark nods sagely, not contesting this fact, and touches her face. "Even still. Don't be scared, Chaina. It will turn out right. Zhaan says so."
There is a long pause; he watches her comprehending, or just giving up against his lunatic's incontrovertible obstinacy. Then it shatters, and she is laughing, sobbing, both, into her knees. "You know, you're waaay more than I've given you credit for." she tells him at last, words distorted by coming out on the backs of laughing tears. Just exactly what he is more of, she neglects to say.