Title: I give you more lives than you can count
Author: Pene penelopody@hotmail.com
The Stars: http://www.grapefruithead.com/makiko/pene
**NB** Spoilers: all the way to the end of season 3
Archive: Please feel free, let me know. I'll post at Leviathan
Disclaimer: I'm responsible for neither the universe nor the characters. I'd still live there with delight.
Category: A/J, R
Notes: The title is Stymean Karlen's, the summary is the Whitlams'. Ernesto showed me the edges of the story.
Cofax showed me the edges of an alien. Makiko knew all, and she told me it wouldn't go away. And I'm quoting her
when I say that Punk is the best of all of us.
Summary: You might be unworthy, but you remember what I remember.
If you hold yourself still, if you capture the light and span of that gray place against your retina, it has a bleak
beauty. A fragile beauty, despite its vastness, because its delicate features are all but invisible, and if you breathe too
soon it collapses, is only space.
So she stands and watches the level horizon. And so, this time, she sees him first from a distance.
*
Every corridor is well lit. In them no one is still. The uniforms, the weaponry, doors that slide behind her as she
walks. And none of this is foreign.
"Aeryn Sun," she says again as she sits. This interviewer has four arrows tattooed on the back of his hand. The last
had two.
"You are Sebacean?"
"Yes."
The nurse prods her left arm, squeezes above the elbow, feels for a raised vein. A needle glints at the edge of her
vision. She doesn't move, holds the gaze of the interviewer. His eyes flick mildly to her empty holster.
"You are a peacekeeper." He is not asking questions. She feels the prick and pull of blood being taken as he
watches.
"An ex-peacekeeper."
"Yes. Your expertise?"
"I," she is not used to promoting herself. "Prowler flight. Ammunitions."
"Yes. We don't have Prowlers here, of course."
"Of course." She wonders if she should continue and doesn't. Black ops sounded like a fresh place until she walked
in.
"All right, Officer Sun." He has done this before but he shifts slightly and she catches something like a smile
beneath his trained lips, she expects to hear, "You will go far in this organization." Instead the nurse approaches
him, murmurs in his ear. And then, clearly, "I'm afraid there is no place in this group for someone in your
condition."
The door slides behind her. The corridor stretches before her. She turns right. "I'm-" she starts, and stops because she
cannot talk to the walls.
*
Outside is pale dust and secret vegetation. Tiny green cloaked in the same dust-gray. The light is spread thin across
the ground.
She closes the door. She grew up on other people's stories of the perfect landing, the perfect commander, the perfect
conquest. This is a house. There's a picture on the wall that doesn't hang straight and she wonders if she should be
concerned. She places weapons on convenient shelves and against the wall beside the door. When she moves she
feels out of place so she sits in the corner of the room and watches the broken silver sky through the window.
She sits, the sky darkens, liquefies. And under near motionless stars the planet stretches before her, to the curved
line of space.
She sits, still in the chair, still in the corner of the room, and nothing happens.
*
Her three neighbors are tall, faintly blue, slender enough that they appear incorporeal. When first they bring her hot
food in a dish she greets them at the door with a gun.
"No, no," one says, flailing his hands. His fingers are near transparent and she imagines she'd do better to purse her
lips and blow the three of them over than attempt to shoot them. "No, no, no. We're not... we brought you good
food." Another proffers the dish.
She is awkward and they are kind.
"This is how you are having a baby?" one asks. And she nods. Her skin pulls and aches. Her organs are shifting to
make room for the creature. She thinks of physiology classes and tries to hold the organs in position. She thinks of
studied pain, and this is different.
"And you are alone." "We will help." "We'd like to."
"No," she says, and tries to soften it. "I won't need help. I'll be fine." But they blush and glance at the floor. She
watches them leave.
The food is spicy and sweet and she eats because she's never been careless enough to choose anything less than
perfect health. Days later they bring her soup. Their blue voices and long fingers become part of a habit.
*
She is almost glad of the neighbors, allows herself to speak when they are there and almost never otherwise. She is
not crazy. She feels movement low in her abdomen and knows, unexpectedly, that she could speak to the child.
"I… you…" but she doesn't know how to start.
Sometimes the neighbors sing, several notes at once. She blinks at tears, thinks it's the most beautiful thing she's
heard. She tries not to listen. But at times their voices fuse and she finds herself frowning, trying to pull one note
from another.
She also finds herself painting the house. It's her neighbors' paint, a burnt red far from the dust of the planet. She
paints finite strokes into each corner, neatly down and up and down. Still she sees baby faces in each slight color
variation.
"You've done a beautiful job." "It feels welcoming in here," say the neighbors. The third nods enthusiastically and
hands her warm flat bread.
She says thank you, but can't return a smile. Her walls seem to edge ever closer.
*
She was trained, successfully, to deal with pain. She was not trained to deal with this kind of revulsion and when the
child is born she shuts her eyes to the blood and tissue on the floor. Nearly two days later she wipes up the mess
with one of her shirts.
When the child is not wailing she eyes Aeryn sedately with dark blue baby eyes. Aeryn tries not to see the child as a
foreigner, tries not to see her as an alien Seer, tries not to see her as an extension of John. She calls her Imeryn Sun.
She collects fruit and pulls at the flesh with her teeth. She gives the soft parts to the child. She squints and feels
something like love, a deep dark weight, a stranger in her chest, in her breasts.
She stands at the window, holds the child and together they watch planets move.
*
Imeryn Sun lies on her round back and wriggles her toes in the daylight. There is little food left.
"I'll be back soon."
Imeryn gurgles.
When she returns with supplies, the tall blue neighbors have broken down her door.
"You left your baby alone." "She was screaming." "Where were you?"
Aeryn reaches for the broken door, has nothing to say. She fingers the wood fragments.
"You are a peacekeeper."
"An ex-peacekeeper."
"You can't just leave a child." "It's not safe." "She needs her mother."
"I'm-" She wants to explain. "I never thought-" And perhaps she had thought but once she left it seemed as though
none of this existed.
As they leave one blue voice says, "We could help."
"No. No." And she says thank you though their gentle eyes make her sick and she'd rather never see them near her
house.
*
When she closes her eyes John says, "Aeryn." He breathes through her hair. He sucks on her breasts, pulls at them,
hard.
He shifts, stands and shouts, hands clenched at his sides. He pushes her against the wall and Talyn's skin is hot.
"What were you thinking? How could you leave my baby?" Over and over, "How could I have left you with my
baby?" And she tries to scream back at him but Talyn is gone, Moya is gone, they are in open space and she has no
breath for it.
*
The light rises slowly, and her shadow stretches across the ground. She holds the child. She watches the level
horizon.
And so when Crichton arrives she sees him from a distance.
The atmosphere can't be traversed by ship and his buggy generates columns of dust. Despite them she recognizes
him long before he can see her. When he steps out of the car he is gray with dust. He wipes at his eyes.
She is still for a time then lowers her gun, moves to let him through the door.
Later, "What do you call her?" and, shortly, "How are you?" He is mobile and careful. His eyes flicker constantly to
Imeryn who is on Aeryn's lap and gazing at the wall in apparent concentration.
"How did you find us?" Aeryn asks.
"I looked." And he eyes the weapons near the door. Imeryn squawks, sobs a little, and Crichton reaches for her,
glances at Aeryn. Aeryn passes the child over and Crichton tucks the child against his chest.
"Hush. Hush," low-voiced. He is still now, and strange to her.
Imeryn hushes and Crichton smiles. Aeryn folds her hands into her lap and doesn't hit him.
*
He never asks if he can stay and she doesn't know what she'd answer if he did. Three days later he's still there so she
imagines she would have said it was fine.
Talyn was never large, but here she finds Crichton constantly in her space. If she doesn't lock her elbows close to
her body they knock against him. "Unh," he grunts and his eyes snap at her briefly. She starts knocking at him on
purpose and thinks about the tiny bruises under the sleeves of his shirt.
The house has one room. He sleeps and she hears another man breathe.
*
As soon as she deposits Imeryn on the floor Crichton swoops, lifts Imeryn, sings to her or talks on and on. Aeryn
tunes out the songs, can't quite tune out stories that begin, "When we were on Moya." Crichton is not a good
storyteller but when she hears him say, "so, they ate Chiana, they ate D'Argo, they..." her skin crawls and freezes.
She doesn't look at him.
"Doesn't cry much," he says, tilting his head at Imeryn.
"She's a Peacekeeper." She doesn't bother to correct herself. Though when she looks at Imeryn sometimes she can
only see John in there.
Crichton begins to build something, is always hammering at pieces of wood. He frowns at it and mutters, tilts his
head as though this is a strange new science. She watches but doesn't ask about it and in a day Imeryn is sleeping in
a small fenced bed.
"It's a crib," he says, proud. "See how safe she is? And that fence, -- I had an idea about putting in a gate, and I'll bet
I can rig some sort of child lock. I need paper, I'll draw it so you can see."
When the power fails a day later she opens the top of the generator and looks in, shifts some sort of animal's nest
that blocks her view.
"Okay, turn it on," she says.
"Is the combustion tank sealed?" he asks.
"Looks like it's fine. Switch it off." She reaches in to feel the rim of the combustion tank, pushes at the coiled
turbines. "Hand me the oil."
"Sure. It's the turbines?"
"No, they're just tight. I think it's the fuel line."
"Right. You'll just need to-"
"I know how to repair a turbine generator." She looks down at him.
"Yeah," he says and passes the clamps before she needs them.
He climbs onto the roof and fixes leaks. He talks about an electrified fence and seems to see the house as home. And
he makes things easier.
"We need to talk, you need to," he says and she waits for the "frell, Aeryn." He doesn't finish his thoughts. She is
silent so he turns away from her, nodding. "Okay. Okay. I'm gonna feed Im."
He is careful, his eyes travel with her and he makes things easier. Mostly she hates him for it.
*
She's been watching the horizon constantly, but she is surprised to see a bounty squad driving in. She squints as
sunlight glances off the metal roof. Crichton tucks Imeryn into a corner.
"How many?"
"One vehicle. Big enough for six, maybe eight."
Then it's the whip thin screech of bullets, the roar of a blaster. A scream and another and a Haisson close in her face
with a great forked knife. It's blood and it's John beside her.
"Watch your right."
"Got it"
Then, "Back one's in charge," she says.
"Not anymore, he ain't."
Soon five Haisson and a Rone-worlder are dead outside. And Imeryn is wailing in the corner. Aeryn reaches her
before Crichton can. "You're bleeding," she says. He looks down, moves his arm tentatively.
"I'm okay. You?"
"Yeah. Fine." There is no one else to make sure of.
He stands at the window. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with blue people." He turns back to Aeryn.
"Big of them to help us out."
"They don't believe in violence."
"Well good for them." After a pause, "Of course, we need to move."
She knows how it cost him to suggest it and still she ignores him.
"Aeryn." And it might be the first time he's said her name.
"They were bounty hunters. They won't have told anyone where they were coming."
Imeryn is still sobbing. Crichton moves across the room to take her. Aeryn lets him, watches from the side of her
vision as he feeds Imeryn. Soon Aeryn closes her eyes.
*
It is dark. They light the room with a single filament which only seems to send the corners into deeper shadows.
Crichton hunches over a sleeping Imeryn. "We need to protect her," he says, as though he never stopped speaking.
Aeryn is shaking a little. "I have been protecting her."
"You know we need to move."
"There is no we." And she finds herself hissing.
He straightens. "What did you say?"
"This is not your baby. You can't just," she's raised her voice and Imeryn stirs, lets out a mewl. "There is no happy
little family in North Carolina for you to come to here."
"You left, Aeryn."
"You let me leave."
"What?" and his voice is laced and dangerous.
"Don't. I'm not going to-"
"No. No Aeryn, You're not -" She turns away. He follows too close across the room. "No way." He draws the words
out. "You're not putting this on me. You. Left."
"You don't even know. You've only ever thought about being somewhere else. So you stayed. And I left." She takes
a breath. "At least I left." Her hand is on the doorknob.
"At least? This is some sort of, what, some kindness?"
And she's outside. The stars are burning holes in her skin. The air is cool and she can taste interstellar distance. And
there's nothing deep or dark or strange and warm.
He's still talking. "You haven't given... and I've been, you know I've been treading lightly. You won't give me a
chance. You barely look at your daughter."
She sucks air into her lungs and it tastes like flight.
"This isn't about-" though it is. And then she looks at him. She grasps for a way to end this. She holds up a hand. "I
don't know if I can do this. I just- I had one day. We'd won. And before, I'd never known how it was to choose. It
was- there was a sense in which it felt like everything."
His face is scrunched and he looks like Imeryn. "I'm not a... she's not a trap."
He lifts a hand to her shoulder and it feels like possession. She wheels a little, pushes away from him, pushes him.
And she follows him as he stumbles, she pushes him to the ground, she falls into him. When she kisses him he tastes
like John and then she's sobbing into his mouth.
*
Later she is on her back, dragging at handfuls of dust. Her knees are bent, her toes curled and cramped, pressed into
the dirt. There are stones tattooed into her spine, her shoulderblades sting with tiny cuts. But Crichton dips his
tongue inside her, laps at her with its tip, pushes into her. And she lifts her body into him.
"Come on, baby," he breathes and she wants to scrape at his smugness with a knife. He moves to kiss her mouth.
She rolls hard and presses him to the ground.
She watches his face beneath her and he is her John. She watches his face as he buries himself inside her. Watches
with satisfaction as his eyes turn back, as his jaw loosens and his face opens.
She closes her eyes and this is a stranger.
She hates that this human can make her beg, with breath, with fingers, with teeth, make her shudder and plead, again
and again. She hates the weight of his arm across her chest. But she cries out with him and her shoulders sting in the
air. And it feels like everything.
When she stands her muscles twist around themselves. She refuses to cry. She refuses to cry as she gathers her
clothes in her arms. She leaves Crichton on his back under the sky.
*
He walks into the room some time later and she hands him a glass of water because if nothing else she knows this.
She has loved this man before.
She wishes she could be generous, wishes she'd tell him that it's all in her head, that things are going to be okay.
Instead, "You were right," she says, "we have to leave."
*
When they go, Crichton carries Imeryn. The blue people smile faintly at them. She carries the last of their things and
closes the door. This is a house. She doesn't say goodbye.
She watches Crichton climb into the buggy, bend his head to her daughter's. And when he looks at Aeryn his eyes
are soft. She smiles a little, climbs into the driver's seat. He nods to the wires under the dash.
"You stole it?" she asks.
"No time for paperwork."
Later as a bright city rises on the horizon and expands into the sky he talks carefully of a next step. He doesn't take
his eyes off the lights before them. And he says that none of this can tie her to the ground. He says he never will. But
then he holds her hand and she wants to shake him off.
"That sounds fine," she says instead.
He never asks if this is how it was with the dead John.
He is John Crichton. He makes things easier. And she thinks it might be worth pretending that this is the man she
loves. Her daughter reaches for him and she thinks it might be worth pretending that this is a kind of freedom, that
this is the freedom she chose.
*
end
Author: Pene penelopody@hotmail.com
The Stars: http://www.grapefruithead.com/makiko/pene
**NB** Spoilers: all the way to the end of season 3
Archive: Please feel free, let me know. I'll post at Leviathan
Disclaimer: I'm responsible for neither the universe nor the characters. I'd still live there with delight.
Category: A/J, R
Notes: The title is Stymean Karlen's, the summary is the Whitlams'. Ernesto showed me the edges of the story.
Cofax showed me the edges of an alien. Makiko knew all, and she told me it wouldn't go away. And I'm quoting her
when I say that Punk is the best of all of us.
Summary: You might be unworthy, but you remember what I remember.
If you hold yourself still, if you capture the light and span of that gray place against your retina, it has a bleak
beauty. A fragile beauty, despite its vastness, because its delicate features are all but invisible, and if you breathe too
soon it collapses, is only space.
So she stands and watches the level horizon. And so, this time, she sees him first from a distance.
*
Every corridor is well lit. In them no one is still. The uniforms, the weaponry, doors that slide behind her as she
walks. And none of this is foreign.
"Aeryn Sun," she says again as she sits. This interviewer has four arrows tattooed on the back of his hand. The last
had two.
"You are Sebacean?"
"Yes."
The nurse prods her left arm, squeezes above the elbow, feels for a raised vein. A needle glints at the edge of her
vision. She doesn't move, holds the gaze of the interviewer. His eyes flick mildly to her empty holster.
"You are a peacekeeper." He is not asking questions. She feels the prick and pull of blood being taken as he
watches.
"An ex-peacekeeper."
"Yes. Your expertise?"
"I," she is not used to promoting herself. "Prowler flight. Ammunitions."
"Yes. We don't have Prowlers here, of course."
"Of course." She wonders if she should continue and doesn't. Black ops sounded like a fresh place until she walked
in.
"All right, Officer Sun." He has done this before but he shifts slightly and she catches something like a smile
beneath his trained lips, she expects to hear, "You will go far in this organization." Instead the nurse approaches
him, murmurs in his ear. And then, clearly, "I'm afraid there is no place in this group for someone in your
condition."
The door slides behind her. The corridor stretches before her. She turns right. "I'm-" she starts, and stops because she
cannot talk to the walls.
*
Outside is pale dust and secret vegetation. Tiny green cloaked in the same dust-gray. The light is spread thin across
the ground.
She closes the door. She grew up on other people's stories of the perfect landing, the perfect commander, the perfect
conquest. This is a house. There's a picture on the wall that doesn't hang straight and she wonders if she should be
concerned. She places weapons on convenient shelves and against the wall beside the door. When she moves she
feels out of place so she sits in the corner of the room and watches the broken silver sky through the window.
She sits, the sky darkens, liquefies. And under near motionless stars the planet stretches before her, to the curved
line of space.
She sits, still in the chair, still in the corner of the room, and nothing happens.
*
Her three neighbors are tall, faintly blue, slender enough that they appear incorporeal. When first they bring her hot
food in a dish she greets them at the door with a gun.
"No, no," one says, flailing his hands. His fingers are near transparent and she imagines she'd do better to purse her
lips and blow the three of them over than attempt to shoot them. "No, no, no. We're not... we brought you good
food." Another proffers the dish.
She is awkward and they are kind.
"This is how you are having a baby?" one asks. And she nods. Her skin pulls and aches. Her organs are shifting to
make room for the creature. She thinks of physiology classes and tries to hold the organs in position. She thinks of
studied pain, and this is different.
"And you are alone." "We will help." "We'd like to."
"No," she says, and tries to soften it. "I won't need help. I'll be fine." But they blush and glance at the floor. She
watches them leave.
The food is spicy and sweet and she eats because she's never been careless enough to choose anything less than
perfect health. Days later they bring her soup. Their blue voices and long fingers become part of a habit.
*
She is almost glad of the neighbors, allows herself to speak when they are there and almost never otherwise. She is
not crazy. She feels movement low in her abdomen and knows, unexpectedly, that she could speak to the child.
"I… you…" but she doesn't know how to start.
Sometimes the neighbors sing, several notes at once. She blinks at tears, thinks it's the most beautiful thing she's
heard. She tries not to listen. But at times their voices fuse and she finds herself frowning, trying to pull one note
from another.
She also finds herself painting the house. It's her neighbors' paint, a burnt red far from the dust of the planet. She
paints finite strokes into each corner, neatly down and up and down. Still she sees baby faces in each slight color
variation.
"You've done a beautiful job." "It feels welcoming in here," say the neighbors. The third nods enthusiastically and
hands her warm flat bread.
She says thank you, but can't return a smile. Her walls seem to edge ever closer.
*
She was trained, successfully, to deal with pain. She was not trained to deal with this kind of revulsion and when the
child is born she shuts her eyes to the blood and tissue on the floor. Nearly two days later she wipes up the mess
with one of her shirts.
When the child is not wailing she eyes Aeryn sedately with dark blue baby eyes. Aeryn tries not to see the child as a
foreigner, tries not to see her as an alien Seer, tries not to see her as an extension of John. She calls her Imeryn Sun.
She collects fruit and pulls at the flesh with her teeth. She gives the soft parts to the child. She squints and feels
something like love, a deep dark weight, a stranger in her chest, in her breasts.
She stands at the window, holds the child and together they watch planets move.
*
Imeryn Sun lies on her round back and wriggles her toes in the daylight. There is little food left.
"I'll be back soon."
Imeryn gurgles.
When she returns with supplies, the tall blue neighbors have broken down her door.
"You left your baby alone." "She was screaming." "Where were you?"
Aeryn reaches for the broken door, has nothing to say. She fingers the wood fragments.
"You are a peacekeeper."
"An ex-peacekeeper."
"You can't just leave a child." "It's not safe." "She needs her mother."
"I'm-" She wants to explain. "I never thought-" And perhaps she had thought but once she left it seemed as though
none of this existed.
As they leave one blue voice says, "We could help."
"No. No." And she says thank you though their gentle eyes make her sick and she'd rather never see them near her
house.
*
When she closes her eyes John says, "Aeryn." He breathes through her hair. He sucks on her breasts, pulls at them,
hard.
He shifts, stands and shouts, hands clenched at his sides. He pushes her against the wall and Talyn's skin is hot.
"What were you thinking? How could you leave my baby?" Over and over, "How could I have left you with my
baby?" And she tries to scream back at him but Talyn is gone, Moya is gone, they are in open space and she has no
breath for it.
*
The light rises slowly, and her shadow stretches across the ground. She holds the child. She watches the level
horizon.
And so when Crichton arrives she sees him from a distance.
The atmosphere can't be traversed by ship and his buggy generates columns of dust. Despite them she recognizes
him long before he can see her. When he steps out of the car he is gray with dust. He wipes at his eyes.
She is still for a time then lowers her gun, moves to let him through the door.
Later, "What do you call her?" and, shortly, "How are you?" He is mobile and careful. His eyes flicker constantly to
Imeryn who is on Aeryn's lap and gazing at the wall in apparent concentration.
"How did you find us?" Aeryn asks.
"I looked." And he eyes the weapons near the door. Imeryn squawks, sobs a little, and Crichton reaches for her,
glances at Aeryn. Aeryn passes the child over and Crichton tucks the child against his chest.
"Hush. Hush," low-voiced. He is still now, and strange to her.
Imeryn hushes and Crichton smiles. Aeryn folds her hands into her lap and doesn't hit him.
*
He never asks if he can stay and she doesn't know what she'd answer if he did. Three days later he's still there so she
imagines she would have said it was fine.
Talyn was never large, but here she finds Crichton constantly in her space. If she doesn't lock her elbows close to
her body they knock against him. "Unh," he grunts and his eyes snap at her briefly. She starts knocking at him on
purpose and thinks about the tiny bruises under the sleeves of his shirt.
The house has one room. He sleeps and she hears another man breathe.
*
As soon as she deposits Imeryn on the floor Crichton swoops, lifts Imeryn, sings to her or talks on and on. Aeryn
tunes out the songs, can't quite tune out stories that begin, "When we were on Moya." Crichton is not a good
storyteller but when she hears him say, "so, they ate Chiana, they ate D'Argo, they..." her skin crawls and freezes.
She doesn't look at him.
"Doesn't cry much," he says, tilting his head at Imeryn.
"She's a Peacekeeper." She doesn't bother to correct herself. Though when she looks at Imeryn sometimes she can
only see John in there.
Crichton begins to build something, is always hammering at pieces of wood. He frowns at it and mutters, tilts his
head as though this is a strange new science. She watches but doesn't ask about it and in a day Imeryn is sleeping in
a small fenced bed.
"It's a crib," he says, proud. "See how safe she is? And that fence, -- I had an idea about putting in a gate, and I'll bet
I can rig some sort of child lock. I need paper, I'll draw it so you can see."
When the power fails a day later she opens the top of the generator and looks in, shifts some sort of animal's nest
that blocks her view.
"Okay, turn it on," she says.
"Is the combustion tank sealed?" he asks.
"Looks like it's fine. Switch it off." She reaches in to feel the rim of the combustion tank, pushes at the coiled
turbines. "Hand me the oil."
"Sure. It's the turbines?"
"No, they're just tight. I think it's the fuel line."
"Right. You'll just need to-"
"I know how to repair a turbine generator." She looks down at him.
"Yeah," he says and passes the clamps before she needs them.
He climbs onto the roof and fixes leaks. He talks about an electrified fence and seems to see the house as home. And
he makes things easier.
"We need to talk, you need to," he says and she waits for the "frell, Aeryn." He doesn't finish his thoughts. She is
silent so he turns away from her, nodding. "Okay. Okay. I'm gonna feed Im."
He is careful, his eyes travel with her and he makes things easier. Mostly she hates him for it.
*
She's been watching the horizon constantly, but she is surprised to see a bounty squad driving in. She squints as
sunlight glances off the metal roof. Crichton tucks Imeryn into a corner.
"How many?"
"One vehicle. Big enough for six, maybe eight."
Then it's the whip thin screech of bullets, the roar of a blaster. A scream and another and a Haisson close in her face
with a great forked knife. It's blood and it's John beside her.
"Watch your right."
"Got it"
Then, "Back one's in charge," she says.
"Not anymore, he ain't."
Soon five Haisson and a Rone-worlder are dead outside. And Imeryn is wailing in the corner. Aeryn reaches her
before Crichton can. "You're bleeding," she says. He looks down, moves his arm tentatively.
"I'm okay. You?"
"Yeah. Fine." There is no one else to make sure of.
He stands at the window. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with blue people." He turns back to Aeryn.
"Big of them to help us out."
"They don't believe in violence."
"Well good for them." After a pause, "Of course, we need to move."
She knows how it cost him to suggest it and still she ignores him.
"Aeryn." And it might be the first time he's said her name.
"They were bounty hunters. They won't have told anyone where they were coming."
Imeryn is still sobbing. Crichton moves across the room to take her. Aeryn lets him, watches from the side of her
vision as he feeds Imeryn. Soon Aeryn closes her eyes.
*
It is dark. They light the room with a single filament which only seems to send the corners into deeper shadows.
Crichton hunches over a sleeping Imeryn. "We need to protect her," he says, as though he never stopped speaking.
Aeryn is shaking a little. "I have been protecting her."
"You know we need to move."
"There is no we." And she finds herself hissing.
He straightens. "What did you say?"
"This is not your baby. You can't just," she's raised her voice and Imeryn stirs, lets out a mewl. "There is no happy
little family in North Carolina for you to come to here."
"You left, Aeryn."
"You let me leave."
"What?" and his voice is laced and dangerous.
"Don't. I'm not going to-"
"No. No Aeryn, You're not -" She turns away. He follows too close across the room. "No way." He draws the words
out. "You're not putting this on me. You. Left."
"You don't even know. You've only ever thought about being somewhere else. So you stayed. And I left." She takes
a breath. "At least I left." Her hand is on the doorknob.
"At least? This is some sort of, what, some kindness?"
And she's outside. The stars are burning holes in her skin. The air is cool and she can taste interstellar distance. And
there's nothing deep or dark or strange and warm.
He's still talking. "You haven't given... and I've been, you know I've been treading lightly. You won't give me a
chance. You barely look at your daughter."
She sucks air into her lungs and it tastes like flight.
"This isn't about-" though it is. And then she looks at him. She grasps for a way to end this. She holds up a hand. "I
don't know if I can do this. I just- I had one day. We'd won. And before, I'd never known how it was to choose. It
was- there was a sense in which it felt like everything."
His face is scrunched and he looks like Imeryn. "I'm not a... she's not a trap."
He lifts a hand to her shoulder and it feels like possession. She wheels a little, pushes away from him, pushes him.
And she follows him as he stumbles, she pushes him to the ground, she falls into him. When she kisses him he tastes
like John and then she's sobbing into his mouth.
*
Later she is on her back, dragging at handfuls of dust. Her knees are bent, her toes curled and cramped, pressed into
the dirt. There are stones tattooed into her spine, her shoulderblades sting with tiny cuts. But Crichton dips his
tongue inside her, laps at her with its tip, pushes into her. And she lifts her body into him.
"Come on, baby," he breathes and she wants to scrape at his smugness with a knife. He moves to kiss her mouth.
She rolls hard and presses him to the ground.
She watches his face beneath her and he is her John. She watches his face as he buries himself inside her. Watches
with satisfaction as his eyes turn back, as his jaw loosens and his face opens.
She closes her eyes and this is a stranger.
She hates that this human can make her beg, with breath, with fingers, with teeth, make her shudder and plead, again
and again. She hates the weight of his arm across her chest. But she cries out with him and her shoulders sting in the
air. And it feels like everything.
When she stands her muscles twist around themselves. She refuses to cry. She refuses to cry as she gathers her
clothes in her arms. She leaves Crichton on his back under the sky.
*
He walks into the room some time later and she hands him a glass of water because if nothing else she knows this.
She has loved this man before.
She wishes she could be generous, wishes she'd tell him that it's all in her head, that things are going to be okay.
Instead, "You were right," she says, "we have to leave."
*
When they go, Crichton carries Imeryn. The blue people smile faintly at them. She carries the last of their things and
closes the door. This is a house. She doesn't say goodbye.
She watches Crichton climb into the buggy, bend his head to her daughter's. And when he looks at Aeryn his eyes
are soft. She smiles a little, climbs into the driver's seat. He nods to the wires under the dash.
"You stole it?" she asks.
"No time for paperwork."
Later as a bright city rises on the horizon and expands into the sky he talks carefully of a next step. He doesn't take
his eyes off the lights before them. And he says that none of this can tie her to the ground. He says he never will. But
then he holds her hand and she wants to shake him off.
"That sounds fine," she says instead.
He never asks if this is how it was with the dead John.
He is John Crichton. He makes things easier. And she thinks it might be worth pretending that this is the man she
loves. Her daughter reaches for him and she thinks it might be worth pretending that this is a kind of freedom, that
this is the freedom she chose.
*
end