Time: Right after WGFA.

Disclaimer: Much as I hate to admit it, Farscape belongs to a whole lot of very nice and clever people (this particular description does not, in any way, apply to a certain evil writer/executive producer who will remain nameless but whose initials are DAVID KEMPER...), none of whom are me. And though I have no clue who the song Come and Go With Me' belongs to, or who wrote it or sang it or anything, it is most certainly not mine.

Notes: Thank you to all the oldies CD commercials that got that frelling song stuck in my head! Cause you know that anything stuck in my head is subject to being scaperized. Note that I have never heard the entire song Come and Go With Me,' only the line or two that I heard on a commercial. It fit perfectly in that context. I'm sorry if the whole song doesn't fit at all, but I count myself innocent on account of ignorance.

Spoilers: WGFA

Feedback: is a thing almost more acceptable than chocolate. (Almost.)

Please, no archiving without my consent.

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Come and Go With Me
A coda to Won't Get Fooled Again
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The faint laughter echoed.

Who...where am I?' he thought. Why am I here?' What were those big gaps in his memory? There had to be a reason... the laughter was so familiar...

There was a fire across the long room. The billowing pyre of smoke and flames crackled and spat; it looked for a way out at the ceiling and found none. Faint tendrils of smoke began to drift downward, tickling the leaping flames, curling about them and dancing like small, dark angels. As the scent of charred, burning flesh and leather and metal reached his nose, he was tempted to wince. But he was so heavy... it felt as though gravity had magnified itself by six or ten or twelve, the more he thought about it the heavier he felt. It hurt, he was crushing himself as every cell in his body seemed separately magnetized to the floor. His hand, slick with sweat, felt like a sixteen ton weight as as it slipped from it's resting position on his leg, brushing the empty holster on the way.

Where was his weapon, anyway? Where did the flames come from? There were instrument panels in the room, an odd device hanging from the ceiling, a door off to his left. The laughter rang out, making him sick to the stomach.

There was something wrong, something was terribly wrong. Why, if he had amnesia, was he aware of it? Where did all these vivid memories popping up at random in the foremost of his mind come from? Familiar faces flashed past in them... there were Aeryn and D'Argo, Chiana... Zhaan in a suit? Pilot on drums... Rygel sitting at an office desk... what the hell was this? And Dad, DK... Dad? DK? Then he remembered something he most certainly did not want to remember.

Mom...' he thought, no, I can't... please, no...'

In the dark, dank, smoke-filled room, among charred bits of meat and flesh, on a face smeared with sweat and blood, soot and dirt and pain, a single tear crept out of a misted blue eye to mingle and be lost among all those that went before it.

Slowly, the eye closed.

Oh, God,' he thought. Why can't I just die...?'

But as much as he willed his heart to stop beating it only pounded harder and faster; every time suicide came to mind, a single image popped into his head, the embodiment of his will to live.

Aeryn.

He had been thinking all this while that he stayed alive because of, if anything besides the indefinable prompting in the back of his mind, his hope of seeing Earth again. But now, squaring off eye to eye with death, he needed no subconscious prodding or pushing to realize that his priorities had indeed changed.

He sighed and leaned back completely on the wall, letting all his tense muscles relax and his stomach untie itself.

And, for some strange reason, the song Come and Go With Me surfaced in his memory. He began singing softly, lips moving like they were made of lead, for he felt that if he should go to sleep now he would never wake up. And all he could think about was how Aeryn, confused by acceptance, had struggled to be unacceptable; how Aeryn, confused by friendship, had always been so rude and unfriendly; how Aeryn, confused by love, had shoved him away. How Aeryn, with her hair like fine black silk, her dignified, queen-like stature, her arched nose like royalty of human past, had learned to accept others and be at least relatively friendly, and had perhaps, he hoped, found love.

So he closed his eyes, and he sang.

He didn't notice it when the door creaked open.

Aeryn's immediate thought was how John always managed to find the most destructive way to escape his many captors. Spot-fires and the flaming Scarran carcass across the room were proof enough of that. But when she saw him her breath caught in her throat.

Calling up the others didn't even cross her mind. She knelt beside his dark, dirty form. He was slumped against the wall, head drooping. The only sign that he was still alive was that his mouth was moving, ever slightly. She turned his face towards hers gently and listened hard.

Come and go with me... he whispered. It carried no tune, no rhythm; it was no more a song than cats could write or a trelkez could have one head. To Aeryn it was more a shout than a whisper, a pleading cry that echoed through the room and her mind.

And his last breath escaped with those words.

Panicked and having forgotten the comms completely, she couldn't think of what to do. It would have been so unlike her a year, two years ago, to be lost in a life and death situation. But now she was, and the only insane, ironic thing that was coming to mind was CPR. He had taught it to her so long ago, it was so long and so short a time ago... she pulled him to the ground and began pumping his chest, one, two, please god above John, don't die, three, four, five, it had to work, six, seven, come on, eight, not to me, don't do this to me now, nine, ten, frell you!, eleven, twelve, thirteen, I can't go with you, fourteen, because you're not gone, fifteen, two breaths, fifteen more compressions with similar thoughts, two breaths, fifteen more compressions and she realized, suddenly, that she couldn't possibly let him die, she couldn't let him die because she loved him, she loved this man so deeply and achingly that she couldn't fathom why she hadn't realized it before, two breaths, fifteen compressions, breathe, fifteen, breathe, fifteen, breathe...

And she wasn't breathing for him anymore, but he was kissing her; the line between the two was faint already and he erased it entirely as he woke up with a start. The kiss was short but sweet; he jerked up, gasping, trying to scramble away. She pinned him down and, after a moment, he relaxed.

We need to get out of here, she said, letting go of him.

He was silent for a moment, then whispered hoarsely, I can't move.

She stood wordlessly and hefted him to his feet. With one of his arms slung over her shoulders and her own around his waist, they walked awkwardly back to Aeryn, D'Argo and Zhaan's rendezvous point.

D'Argo and Zhaan were already in the dark alley and had been for the past 20 minutes when Aeryn and John limped into view. The human had done all he could to help Aeryn along, but he was simply not strong enough to move by himself, and she was half-carrying, half-dragging him by the time she caught sight of Zhaan and D'Argo sprinting towards her.

D'Argo took over the job of carrying John while Zhaan supported Aeryn, exhausted from hauling the helpless man along for a full one and a half metras, as they made their way back to the transport pod.
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FIN