DISCLAIMER: I own zip. Nada. Nothing. I'm on my way to owning my car and even that will take four more years.
*****
"Aeryn!"
He was barely conscious when he started screaming for her. All he knew upon awakening was that he couldn't feel Aeryn around him, and that scared him. John opened his eyes, quickly sitting up amidst the piles of junk laying around him, and immediately regretting it. Lights exploded in front of his eyes, and he nearly fell back down. Fighting off the pain, he stood shakily, surveying the scene to find Aeryn.
How did things become such a mess? They'd hit the asteroid, yes, but he never would have thought it would cause that much damage. It looked like the entire transport pod had been upended, shaken and kicked around like some child's toy. He tapped his comm, found that it didn't work. Son of a bitch.
"Aeryn!" he called. "Aeryn, where the hell did you go?"
"John."
He barely heard her call for him,and at first thought he'd imagined it. "Aeryn? Where are you?"
"I'm.. under something."
"Keep talking to me, let me find you," he told her. "Are you okay?"
"I don't think so," Aeryn said.
Oh, no. Vision swimming as he followed her voice, he saw her hand poking out from under a pile of mechanical rubble. He pushed the junk off of her, horrified at what he saw. A pole, some kind of bar- he didn't know from where- was embedded in her stomach, impaling her. All the blood had seemingly drained from her face, now flowing freely from the wound.
"Shit," he breathed. "Oh, God. Aeryn..."
His first instinct was to try to pull the object out, but Aeryn's startled protest stopped him. "Don't touch it," she warned. "This thing comes out and I'll bleed to death in microts."
John's hands moved away quickly, becoming annoyingly idle at his sides. "Oh, God. We have to get in touch with someone on Moya... We have to get you some help. My comm's broken, does yours work?"
"John," Aeryn said, voice strained with pain and fatigue. "Face facts. We're at least an arn from Moya. Even if I'm not dead by then, there's no one there who can help me."
No. She wasn't saying this. She couldn't be saying this, because this couldn't be happening. He knelt by her, stroking her hair away from her face. "Baby, you're not gonna die like this," he whispered.
"I don't have a choice," she said with a sardonic smile. "John..."
He wasn't letting her die. No. They'd gone through too much for it to end like this. He would call Moya, they'd come get them, and they would get help for Aeryn. They'd save her. "Does your comm work? We need to call Moya."
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, and tapped her comm with the hand that wasn't still under the wreckage. John pushed the parts off of her, leaning over to speak into her comm. "Can anyone hear me? Pilot?" he called, but was met with nothing but static. "Dammit!"
"John."
"Yeah." He was dying. He had to be dying. She was the one lying there with a pole in her and he was the one about ready to keel over.
"Stay with me," Aeryn pleaded. "I don't want to die alone." She reached her hand up, running his fingers through his short hair, eyes locking with his.
He would have done anything she asked. "Okay," he conceded. He wanted to make her comfortable. Comfortable was probably not an option for her right now, but she was in enough pain. She didn't need a stiff neck, too. Taking off his vest, he folded it and carefully placed it under her head as a pillow.
"Are you hurt?" Aeryn asked.
"What?"
"Were you injured in the crash?"
He stared at her with disbelieving eyes. "You're lying here like this and you're worried about me? God, Aeryn... You're incredible." He was saying goodbye. No, he couldn't be. He wouldn't let himself say goodbye because he was not going to let her die. But the rational part of his brain knew that Aeryn was right, they didn't have a choice. As a lump formed in his throat, he took her hand, felt her squeeze it weakly. "I never told you that, did I?"
Aeryn didn't answer. She repeated, "Are you hurt?"
"Nah. Bumped my head. I have no right to complain."
Her eyes traveled to the pole, though she couldn't move to study the damage to her own body. "How bad does it look?" she asked. She seemed scared to know the answer.
"Honestly?"
"I expect nothing less."
John nodded, biting his lip. "It's bad."
"So it does look as bad as it feels." She exhaled softly. "I never thought I would die like this. In battle, or... Drowning in a frozen lake." She punctuated the words with a painful wince that John could almost feel.
"No," he said. "You're not meant to die like this. Or like that."
"So how was it supposed to happen?"
"When you're old and gray, in your bed... With me there," he murmured.
Aeryn's eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head away from him so he wouldn't see her cry. With his other hand, John tenderly turned her face toward him. "Don't hide from me anymore," he said. "Not now. Please."
"I'm sorry," she told him, holding his hand harder, as if summoning strength from him.
"Why? You have nothing to be sorry about." He pushed the rubble aside to give him room to lay on the floor next to her. His head was pounding. Something was jabbing into his hip. He didn't care.
"No, I do. I... I stopped us," Aeryn said. "I pushed you away, and I kept pushing you away, and now-"
"Aeryn-"
"John, I'm the one with a stick in me, let me finish," she snapped.
John smiled in spite of it all. This was why he loved this woman. "Okay."
"I could have blamed you for getting me stranded on Moya, and I did. But I should have been thanking you. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. You were the best thing... And even when I was terrible to you, you rushed off every time to save my life. If it wasn't for you trying to save me, you would never have run into Scorpius."
"Honey, no. I would have done it again in a second," he said.
"I don't even know what to tell you now to make up for all that," she said. She wasn't looking him in the eye.
"You don't have to," John told her, kissing the hand he still held. "I wouldn't trade any of it."
They lay in silence for a moment, and John found himself desperately fighting off sleep. He knew he couldn't, in case of a concussion, and he didn't want to miss a single moment with Aeryn. He wanted to be with her, to assuage her fears and tell her it was all going to be okay, even though they both knew that pulling the object out and letting her bleed to death quickly would be an easier way out. He'd taken too many moments for granted, and now he wanted to remember everything.
"Does it hurt?" John asked her. "Honestly. No brave warrior front."
She nodded, almost imperceptively. "It does. It hurts more than I could have imagined. It'll probably leave a horrible scar."
He chortled a short laugh, which resulted in a sudden sting of hot tears in his eyes. He wanted to see that scar. He wanted her to live long enough for there to be a scar. God, this couldn't be happening. It couldn't. Neither of them could have ever done anything so wrong that they deserved this.
Aeryn saw his reaction, immediately changing the subject. "Hey. Do you remember that time on the commerce planet, when Chiana first came on board?"
"When she and Rygel got us all arrested?" he continued.
"And you kept singing that one song over and over until they were so annoyed with us that they let us go?"
"When I kept singing the first line to the Love Boat theme because I couldn't remember all the words?" John found himself smiling at the memory. "I think you were angrier with me than Rygel and Chiana. You didn't stop glaring at me for days."
"That was because I couldn't get that tune out of my head," she laughed. It was an action that obviously hurt her. She coughed, tiny specks of blood flecking out of her mouth, which John wiped away. It wouldn't be long now.
"Aeryn..." he began. "Is there anything you want me to tell the others? Any message you want me to pass along?"
She thought about it, suppressing another cough. "Just... You know how Zhaan was always telling us how much she loved us?"
John nodded.
"Just tell them I love them." She was starting to cry again. This time she didn't turn away.
"Even Rygel?"
She smiled broadly, and for a moment John thought if he could wash the tear streaks on her face from his memory, he could remember her as if nothing was wrong. She looked like Aeryn again for a moment. "Even Rygel. I wish I had the equipment and time to talk to them all personally." She took a deep breath, even though it hurt her to do so. "You still believe in life after death? Seeing friends and family?"
"Yeah," he answered.
"Well then. I should be busy with reunions for a while," Aeryn said.
"If you see Zhaan, tell her I said hey," John told her. His heart ached. Every heartbeat felt like it would be his last. He couldn't stand to say goodbye to her, he couldn't take seeing her in so much pain. But he wouldn't turn away, and he wouldn't put her out of her misery. She would ask him to do so if she wanted that.
"I will," she promised.
"We've seen too many people die," he mused. "You weren't supposed to be next, baby."
"If it helps, I don't want to die." Her fingers slipped from his grasp, trailing lightly over the skin of his face. "You really thought we would grow old together?"
"Yeah," John said, inching himself closer to her so that he could feel her pressed against his body, desperate to be as close to her as he possibly could. "I kind of imagined we'd eventually settle down somewhere, get hitched, have a couple kids together. Like Desmond and Molly without the singing."
"Even when you found Earth?" she wondered.
"I could never have gone without you." He didn't feel his own pain anymore.
Aeryn squeezed her eyes shut, tears escaping from behind closed lids. "You don't have to worry about me anymore. I won't be a burden."
He leaned over, kissing the tears from her face. "You have never been a burden to anyone, especially not to me. Don't doubt that, Aeryn."
She opened her eyes, and it was clear she was in a lot of pain. She was trying valiantly to hide it, to shield him from it, but it wasn't working anymore. "You," she said, "are the most beautiful person I have ever known. And I want the life you envisioned. I do, I really do. I never thought I would, but... Can you promise me something?"
"Anything." John didn't bother to wipe the tears from his eyes. It didn't matter anymore.
"Cycles from now, when you've lived your life here, when you're home on Earth, don't forget me. Please don't forget me."
That was the moment his heart broke in two. "I could never forget you. You are the one who got me through all this," he said, voice breaking. "You've been the one person I've been able to count on no matter what happened. I don't know how to live without you. I don't think I could ever go a day without thinking of you. Without loving you."
She looked startled by his words. "John, promise me you'll be all right. Stay strong, and don't be in a rush to get wherever I'm headed?"
He couldn't answer her. His throat was too tight to talk. He simply nodded in agreement. She knew him so well.
"I love you," Aeryn murmured. "I love you. I never said that nearly enough."
"I knew," John said, kissing her lips gently, hopefully not for the last time. "I always knew. I love you, too."
He wrapped his arms around her as well as he could without hurting her more. "You okay?" he asked. "Am I hurting you?"
"You could never hurt me," Aeryn told him, turning her face toward his. He could feel her breath on his face, that painfully slow breath. "I'm okay. I'm going to be okay," she said, and smiled at him. Her hand found the back of his head, pressing it lightly against hers.
John inhaled, smelling her hair next to his face. She'd scented her hair. Closing his eyes, he began to count her breaths as they became slower and slower...
He awoke a short time later, his face buried in Aeryn's hair. He opened his eyes to look into her face, belatedly realizing that she wasn't moving.
John snapped his head up, earning himself some more physical pain that did nothing to rival the other anguish he was feeling. He stared down at Aeryn's lifeless form, touching her cheek with his palm. She was still warm. If it wasn't for the deathly pallor of her skin, he would have thought she was simply sleeping.
He was suddenly taken by an overwhelming panic that he didn't know what to do with. He didn't know what to do with himself. He wanted to throw things around the room, he wanted to pound something, but somehow all he found the energy to do was stare down at her and wonder how she was. He followed that by wondering what he would possibly do without her. She'd died, in his arms, and he had slept through it. For a moment John was tempted to take his pulse pistol and go the way of Romeo, but he couldn't. He'd promised Aeryn that he wouldn't. He had promised to go on and live his life, and he was going to do just that. As much as it would hurt, he wasn't going to trivialize anything that happened here today. If Aeryn was going to be looking down on him, she wouldn't appreciate that.
Distress buoy. They- he- could send out a distress buoy, hope Moya got it. Standing slowly, John worked at sending out a message pleading for help, hoping to God it went where it was supposed to go. And that was that. There. He'd made the first step in continuing.
There wasn't anything else he could do now. This would have been a great time to talk to Aeryn, spend some time with her... only he couldn't. He wondered dimly why he couldn't be one of these people who went emotionally numb when tragedy struck.
He gazed down at Aeryn lying there, knowing that it was too late for him to do anything for her. He realized that if she felt any pain in the last moments that he missed, it wasn't evident in her face. She looked peaceful, almost happy. That comforted him.
John sat back on the floor next to her, carefully lifting her head into his lap. "It's never easy," he whispered.
Kissing her one last time, John curled up with her, waiting for Moya to finally find him.
*****
"Aeryn!"
He was barely conscious when he started screaming for her. All he knew upon awakening was that he couldn't feel Aeryn around him, and that scared him. John opened his eyes, quickly sitting up amidst the piles of junk laying around him, and immediately regretting it. Lights exploded in front of his eyes, and he nearly fell back down. Fighting off the pain, he stood shakily, surveying the scene to find Aeryn.
How did things become such a mess? They'd hit the asteroid, yes, but he never would have thought it would cause that much damage. It looked like the entire transport pod had been upended, shaken and kicked around like some child's toy. He tapped his comm, found that it didn't work. Son of a bitch.
"Aeryn!" he called. "Aeryn, where the hell did you go?"
"John."
He barely heard her call for him,and at first thought he'd imagined it. "Aeryn? Where are you?"
"I'm.. under something."
"Keep talking to me, let me find you," he told her. "Are you okay?"
"I don't think so," Aeryn said.
Oh, no. Vision swimming as he followed her voice, he saw her hand poking out from under a pile of mechanical rubble. He pushed the junk off of her, horrified at what he saw. A pole, some kind of bar- he didn't know from where- was embedded in her stomach, impaling her. All the blood had seemingly drained from her face, now flowing freely from the wound.
"Shit," he breathed. "Oh, God. Aeryn..."
His first instinct was to try to pull the object out, but Aeryn's startled protest stopped him. "Don't touch it," she warned. "This thing comes out and I'll bleed to death in microts."
John's hands moved away quickly, becoming annoyingly idle at his sides. "Oh, God. We have to get in touch with someone on Moya... We have to get you some help. My comm's broken, does yours work?"
"John," Aeryn said, voice strained with pain and fatigue. "Face facts. We're at least an arn from Moya. Even if I'm not dead by then, there's no one there who can help me."
No. She wasn't saying this. She couldn't be saying this, because this couldn't be happening. He knelt by her, stroking her hair away from her face. "Baby, you're not gonna die like this," he whispered.
"I don't have a choice," she said with a sardonic smile. "John..."
He wasn't letting her die. No. They'd gone through too much for it to end like this. He would call Moya, they'd come get them, and they would get help for Aeryn. They'd save her. "Does your comm work? We need to call Moya."
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, and tapped her comm with the hand that wasn't still under the wreckage. John pushed the parts off of her, leaning over to speak into her comm. "Can anyone hear me? Pilot?" he called, but was met with nothing but static. "Dammit!"
"John."
"Yeah." He was dying. He had to be dying. She was the one lying there with a pole in her and he was the one about ready to keel over.
"Stay with me," Aeryn pleaded. "I don't want to die alone." She reached her hand up, running his fingers through his short hair, eyes locking with his.
He would have done anything she asked. "Okay," he conceded. He wanted to make her comfortable. Comfortable was probably not an option for her right now, but she was in enough pain. She didn't need a stiff neck, too. Taking off his vest, he folded it and carefully placed it under her head as a pillow.
"Are you hurt?" Aeryn asked.
"What?"
"Were you injured in the crash?"
He stared at her with disbelieving eyes. "You're lying here like this and you're worried about me? God, Aeryn... You're incredible." He was saying goodbye. No, he couldn't be. He wouldn't let himself say goodbye because he was not going to let her die. But the rational part of his brain knew that Aeryn was right, they didn't have a choice. As a lump formed in his throat, he took her hand, felt her squeeze it weakly. "I never told you that, did I?"
Aeryn didn't answer. She repeated, "Are you hurt?"
"Nah. Bumped my head. I have no right to complain."
Her eyes traveled to the pole, though she couldn't move to study the damage to her own body. "How bad does it look?" she asked. She seemed scared to know the answer.
"Honestly?"
"I expect nothing less."
John nodded, biting his lip. "It's bad."
"So it does look as bad as it feels." She exhaled softly. "I never thought I would die like this. In battle, or... Drowning in a frozen lake." She punctuated the words with a painful wince that John could almost feel.
"No," he said. "You're not meant to die like this. Or like that."
"So how was it supposed to happen?"
"When you're old and gray, in your bed... With me there," he murmured.
Aeryn's eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head away from him so he wouldn't see her cry. With his other hand, John tenderly turned her face toward him. "Don't hide from me anymore," he said. "Not now. Please."
"I'm sorry," she told him, holding his hand harder, as if summoning strength from him.
"Why? You have nothing to be sorry about." He pushed the rubble aside to give him room to lay on the floor next to her. His head was pounding. Something was jabbing into his hip. He didn't care.
"No, I do. I... I stopped us," Aeryn said. "I pushed you away, and I kept pushing you away, and now-"
"Aeryn-"
"John, I'm the one with a stick in me, let me finish," she snapped.
John smiled in spite of it all. This was why he loved this woman. "Okay."
"I could have blamed you for getting me stranded on Moya, and I did. But I should have been thanking you. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. You were the best thing... And even when I was terrible to you, you rushed off every time to save my life. If it wasn't for you trying to save me, you would never have run into Scorpius."
"Honey, no. I would have done it again in a second," he said.
"I don't even know what to tell you now to make up for all that," she said. She wasn't looking him in the eye.
"You don't have to," John told her, kissing the hand he still held. "I wouldn't trade any of it."
They lay in silence for a moment, and John found himself desperately fighting off sleep. He knew he couldn't, in case of a concussion, and he didn't want to miss a single moment with Aeryn. He wanted to be with her, to assuage her fears and tell her it was all going to be okay, even though they both knew that pulling the object out and letting her bleed to death quickly would be an easier way out. He'd taken too many moments for granted, and now he wanted to remember everything.
"Does it hurt?" John asked her. "Honestly. No brave warrior front."
She nodded, almost imperceptively. "It does. It hurts more than I could have imagined. It'll probably leave a horrible scar."
He chortled a short laugh, which resulted in a sudden sting of hot tears in his eyes. He wanted to see that scar. He wanted her to live long enough for there to be a scar. God, this couldn't be happening. It couldn't. Neither of them could have ever done anything so wrong that they deserved this.
Aeryn saw his reaction, immediately changing the subject. "Hey. Do you remember that time on the commerce planet, when Chiana first came on board?"
"When she and Rygel got us all arrested?" he continued.
"And you kept singing that one song over and over until they were so annoyed with us that they let us go?"
"When I kept singing the first line to the Love Boat theme because I couldn't remember all the words?" John found himself smiling at the memory. "I think you were angrier with me than Rygel and Chiana. You didn't stop glaring at me for days."
"That was because I couldn't get that tune out of my head," she laughed. It was an action that obviously hurt her. She coughed, tiny specks of blood flecking out of her mouth, which John wiped away. It wouldn't be long now.
"Aeryn..." he began. "Is there anything you want me to tell the others? Any message you want me to pass along?"
She thought about it, suppressing another cough. "Just... You know how Zhaan was always telling us how much she loved us?"
John nodded.
"Just tell them I love them." She was starting to cry again. This time she didn't turn away.
"Even Rygel?"
She smiled broadly, and for a moment John thought if he could wash the tear streaks on her face from his memory, he could remember her as if nothing was wrong. She looked like Aeryn again for a moment. "Even Rygel. I wish I had the equipment and time to talk to them all personally." She took a deep breath, even though it hurt her to do so. "You still believe in life after death? Seeing friends and family?"
"Yeah," he answered.
"Well then. I should be busy with reunions for a while," Aeryn said.
"If you see Zhaan, tell her I said hey," John told her. His heart ached. Every heartbeat felt like it would be his last. He couldn't stand to say goodbye to her, he couldn't take seeing her in so much pain. But he wouldn't turn away, and he wouldn't put her out of her misery. She would ask him to do so if she wanted that.
"I will," she promised.
"We've seen too many people die," he mused. "You weren't supposed to be next, baby."
"If it helps, I don't want to die." Her fingers slipped from his grasp, trailing lightly over the skin of his face. "You really thought we would grow old together?"
"Yeah," John said, inching himself closer to her so that he could feel her pressed against his body, desperate to be as close to her as he possibly could. "I kind of imagined we'd eventually settle down somewhere, get hitched, have a couple kids together. Like Desmond and Molly without the singing."
"Even when you found Earth?" she wondered.
"I could never have gone without you." He didn't feel his own pain anymore.
Aeryn squeezed her eyes shut, tears escaping from behind closed lids. "You don't have to worry about me anymore. I won't be a burden."
He leaned over, kissing the tears from her face. "You have never been a burden to anyone, especially not to me. Don't doubt that, Aeryn."
She opened her eyes, and it was clear she was in a lot of pain. She was trying valiantly to hide it, to shield him from it, but it wasn't working anymore. "You," she said, "are the most beautiful person I have ever known. And I want the life you envisioned. I do, I really do. I never thought I would, but... Can you promise me something?"
"Anything." John didn't bother to wipe the tears from his eyes. It didn't matter anymore.
"Cycles from now, when you've lived your life here, when you're home on Earth, don't forget me. Please don't forget me."
That was the moment his heart broke in two. "I could never forget you. You are the one who got me through all this," he said, voice breaking. "You've been the one person I've been able to count on no matter what happened. I don't know how to live without you. I don't think I could ever go a day without thinking of you. Without loving you."
She looked startled by his words. "John, promise me you'll be all right. Stay strong, and don't be in a rush to get wherever I'm headed?"
He couldn't answer her. His throat was too tight to talk. He simply nodded in agreement. She knew him so well.
"I love you," Aeryn murmured. "I love you. I never said that nearly enough."
"I knew," John said, kissing her lips gently, hopefully not for the last time. "I always knew. I love you, too."
He wrapped his arms around her as well as he could without hurting her more. "You okay?" he asked. "Am I hurting you?"
"You could never hurt me," Aeryn told him, turning her face toward his. He could feel her breath on his face, that painfully slow breath. "I'm okay. I'm going to be okay," she said, and smiled at him. Her hand found the back of his head, pressing it lightly against hers.
John inhaled, smelling her hair next to his face. She'd scented her hair. Closing his eyes, he began to count her breaths as they became slower and slower...
He awoke a short time later, his face buried in Aeryn's hair. He opened his eyes to look into her face, belatedly realizing that she wasn't moving.
John snapped his head up, earning himself some more physical pain that did nothing to rival the other anguish he was feeling. He stared down at Aeryn's lifeless form, touching her cheek with his palm. She was still warm. If it wasn't for the deathly pallor of her skin, he would have thought she was simply sleeping.
He was suddenly taken by an overwhelming panic that he didn't know what to do with. He didn't know what to do with himself. He wanted to throw things around the room, he wanted to pound something, but somehow all he found the energy to do was stare down at her and wonder how she was. He followed that by wondering what he would possibly do without her. She'd died, in his arms, and he had slept through it. For a moment John was tempted to take his pulse pistol and go the way of Romeo, but he couldn't. He'd promised Aeryn that he wouldn't. He had promised to go on and live his life, and he was going to do just that. As much as it would hurt, he wasn't going to trivialize anything that happened here today. If Aeryn was going to be looking down on him, she wouldn't appreciate that.
Distress buoy. They- he- could send out a distress buoy, hope Moya got it. Standing slowly, John worked at sending out a message pleading for help, hoping to God it went where it was supposed to go. And that was that. There. He'd made the first step in continuing.
There wasn't anything else he could do now. This would have been a great time to talk to Aeryn, spend some time with her... only he couldn't. He wondered dimly why he couldn't be one of these people who went emotionally numb when tragedy struck.
He gazed down at Aeryn lying there, knowing that it was too late for him to do anything for her. He realized that if she felt any pain in the last moments that he missed, it wasn't evident in her face. She looked peaceful, almost happy. That comforted him.
John sat back on the floor next to her, carefully lifting her head into his lap. "It's never easy," he whispered.
Kissing her one last time, John curled up with her, waiting for Moya to finally find him.