Title: End
Author: Still Waters
Rating: R (deals with suicide)
Disclaimer: "Farscape", its characters, and its situations don't belong to me – they are the property of The Jim Henson Company, Rockne S. O'Bannon, the Sci-Fi Channel, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia, and the wonderful actors who bring them to life. No copyright infringement is intended – they have been borrowed for the reader's enjoyment and to challenge my writing abilities only.
Author's note: This fic is meant to sound extremely disjointed, going from tense to tense, idea to idea, even switching view sometimes. It is what I feel could have been a possibility for Crichton, especially after seeing the ending of the Liars, Guns, and Money trilogy. That scene where he asks D'Argo to kill him inspired this – after all he's been through, I felt this could be it, so obviously this contains some things that never happened in the series (very minor ones). An utter despair and inability to feel – I took the idea and went with it (focusing more on feeling than specific character traits).
"This is one of the good days." Somehow I remember that toast – we were relieved, smiling, laughing. How come I remember that?
I closed my eyes, I opened my eyes, I've listened, I've plugged my ears – no matter what I see darkness, hear darkness. I feel the pressure of an unbearable existence over my body – it adds another brick to the pile on my chest. I go to draw in a breath to fight the tears forming and almost double over in pain – is this what it's like to have a heart attack? To feel unrelenting pain ripping at your lungs, your heart with jagged spears? Efficient as a bayonet, but never clean, never a simple cut – always slow, hard, heavy, messy – I could feel the blood slowly dripping from my body, if only it had been blood – blood I could see, thoughts, words, I couldn't. Thoughts, ideas, delusions, invisible words on wisps of air – they were what cut me. They gave me the pain, give me the flood of warmth inside – I still think it one of life's mysteries that the pain is so warm – not burning, but warmth in a cold existence. Mine.
Constant pain, dull, throbbing, aching, pulsing through my veins. The tears won't fall no matter how hard I try – I tense, I let go – they remain there, taunting me with release, but refusing me the gift. I wanted to fall to the floor, bury my face in my hands, feel the heated moisture on my cheeks, smell the salty confirmation that feeling existed. I want to scream, punch the ground, fight someone – I know the others wanted that too. You can do anything you set your mind to. Who said that? Some stupid Earthman who never saw life as it really is. Someone who never questioned the exact nature of their existence. Someone not me.
I can't distinguish the voices anymore – Scorpy, Harvey, my own damned realistic side – the unshakable optimism of my species dying a long time ago. They mix into a horrible margarita, leaving a vile taste in my mouth, acted as a catalyst to propel my stomach contents into the outside world. One wants this, the other wants that – they all want, they all need, and I just couldn't deal with it anymore. It's damn difficult to mediate between voices – no substance, yet as real as the flesh surrounding my being. Ignoring them is a possibility – but they'd work together then – float around, blend together, then actually work as one to scream me into acknowledging them. A wake up call from within if there ever was one.
They're only trying to help. Part of me recognizes this, the other part just didn't care anymore. They all tell me how wonderful I am – I smile, I nod, I express emotion I can't really feel. I'm a valued friend, a competent tech, a first-rate inventor of immediately needed plans, a relief to talk to, needed – oh so needed. I make a difference in their lives, lives would be impossible without me. They speak of friendship, family, and emotional ties. You need emotion for those, and for emotion you need to be able to feel – I didn't have that, can't use it, find it. Dammit, voices again - wormholes, wormholes, wormholes – knowledge no one else has – an innate intelligence – unique. Always unique.
No one actually understands the thoughts I form into words. They talk to me and I help them and they feel better after getting a piece of me (everyone has a piece of me), but I only had my head and whoever may be in it at the time. Even with many voices, many different characters, I am alone – they all need too. They need to get out into the open, to take over my consciousness so they can be heard. Alone – with the voices swirling around my skull, it is pain, fever, warmth. At the same time, it is cold, barren, because those voices aren't real, those people, creatures I see aren't real – I'm alone, I wasn't alone, I'm alone with….was alone with by-products of hallucinations?
Fix damaged circuit, be there for Chi, tell Aeryn I love her, figure a way to that planet, figure wormholes to go home, to get the others home, give knowledge to Scorpy, Harvey, hide knowledge from Scorpy, Harvey, Scarrans, and all brain-pickers of the Uncharted Territories. The rambling continued, on and on, day after day, whatever random thoughts came into what was left of my brain. I can't stop it, I've forgotten what silence is….I want to smash my head against the floor, to lose consciousness just for some blessed peace…..
Hide encroaching (or was it already there?) insanity under mask of quiet contemplation and deep intelligence – feel for others, touch their souls, and show feelings that may or may not even exist. Always look for a way to give – keep yourself busy – don't quiet down, don't sleep, don't eat, don't think – but do it – must stay, needed, unique.
Find myself in a room I don't even vaguely remember heading to – eat while not knowing why or how – live without ever resting. Popping sedatives to rest, but still unable to live. I tried desperately to quell that damned sense of self-preservation my species is born with. It told me to eat, to sleep, to fight. Reality tells me fighting leads to more pain, pain leads to more warmth – my body rejects the warmth for going against its cold and desolate view. That coldness whips around and reaches for the warmth of the pain – for a short burst to keep the flesh going. A stranger in a strange land – lost, confused, hurting but unable to feel.
Distant stares, sudden shudders, someone sitting on my chest, quickened thoughts, ready to burst, settling down and living almost normally – unbidden tears, violent urges, paranoid jerking – feeling something so passionately, then not understanding how it had happened. Falling asleep in Aeryn's arms, waking in Scorpy's chair, D'Argo calming me into rest, waking and cutting myself, losing consciousness, waking again to find I was never asleep.
Surrounded by caring people, compliments, achievements, failures, life – yet alone, wanting to be alone, and not wanting that. Struggling to breathe, remain calm, do the right thing – find a place, a purpose. Trying to feel, trying to remember. Trying to listen to thousands of voices that were only really a few. I tried to pick my rock's voice through it all, but that was an emotional attachment, the absence of feeling left that tie swinging in the winds that the voices and false images kicked up in my mind. I once saw her come to me, take the pain away, stop the warmth, stop the cold, make things just right….like that stupid tale of three bears I somehow remember from another life. I had breathed her name before she ended my anguish, made me whole again….but someone pulled me away. Harvey made me look around, made me see I was still in the darkness – nothing had happened, I was hallucinating. Again. My hallucination was telling me I was hallucinating.
Pain, injury, incredibly deep feelings I can't identify and never really felt. Stories about a past I can't recall, a life somewhere back there I can't see through the darkness, the dark cloud. I am somebody, I was somebody – wasn't I? Was my whole life a delusion? Is it now?
Pain in my chest, hard to breathe – remembering that hurt, that torture, that false (?) memory – yet content to see something, anything from a past – I was somebody, I am something!
What the hell was that? The good times again – a quick flash ending in shattered fragments of a brain, my mind. The characteristic humor has been darkened, the dead optimism still trying to resuscitate itself – Harvey trying to make me laugh? My own mind chuckling at its current situation? Reminding me that for every good thing, a bad one always happened that destroyed it. Reminded me I never caught a break – the only breaks I saw were in my sanity. If I ever had any.
The deaths and plans of death – clear as a bell. Kill shot in the flax, Harvey with the Scarran, playing chess with my pulse pistol. The inquiries into deadly Sebacean poisons, the manic risks in the plans, the nonchalant attitude, the cuts and burns a good long-sleeved coat can hide. The ones I did in the dark of night – the chill of my life reveling in the warmth that friction of a blade on skin caused. The sting, the warmth of blood and pus welling in a new groove. But the warmth was pushed away – no, my existence was meant to be barren, cold, empty – empty yet filled with nonentities. Those damn tears again – sparkling behind my eyelashes – sparkled like scissors from home, like a knife here – that damned pain in my chest, in my lungs, heart, my head begins with renewed screaming – they all wanted the final hurrah.
The tears are building again, moving to a climax they never seem to reach in a mind, a body, that can't feel them. Sparkling, fluid. Knife, lungs with fluid. Pain, didn't want to breathe – the voices rise as one – they unite – NO! I defy them, I counter with YES!
I know I should feel guilt, sadness, should wonder how they will all deal without me – I can't, I don't, I stopped trying. The knife enters my lung – I gasp – the knife moves over to a beating finally as erratic as what my mind has become. No more fluctuations, no more voices. I feel the warmth of blood, the coursing of pain. No more hallucinations. Treacherous keeper of life and sparkling releaser of torment meet – I felt the cold descending again as darkness settles.
Darkness prevails. There was no balance. I still feel pain's warmth, cruelty's cold. There is no quiet, for I heard a reawakening in the back of my mind. Harvey. I'm in hell. I wasn't alone. I stopped. I felt that questioning of my exact existence return – slamming into me. I'm. Wasn't. Oh shit – did I die? Or am I still alive?