Disclaimer: I own nothing. Farscape belongs to the geniuses at the Jim Henson company. I am merely filling in holes that seemed to fit to me, but were never truly explained.

Author's Note: This takes place after their destruction of the Command Carrier in Season 3, and before Aeryn leaves in Dog with Two Bones. If you haven't seen it and you don't follow the show faithfully, this will be very confusing seeing as I'm filling in Aeryn's thoughts and reasons behind everything she chooses to do. I tie in everything in her past as well as thoughts of the future, and hope it works with her character. This is my first story, so please review. :D

Chapter 1: Guilt

I can't do this anymore.

I thought I could. I thought I could beat my own ridiculous emotions, continue to be cold, unfeeling, unattached. I thought I could just…ignore him. Pretend he wasn't there. I suppose that's what a commando, however many cycles out of service, gets for thinking. His face, his voice, his special Human scent…it's impossible to ignore it all. Every time I look at him, I have to deal with the almost unbearable pain that knifes through me at the sight of him, alive. Every time I have to face the torturous fact that he is not the man that I shared the most blissful few monens of my life with on Talyn. He is not the man whose body I spent hours exploring, tasting, and committing every inch to sensory memory. He is not the man that suffered, writhed in pain, and died in my arms.

And yet—he is.

That, if anything else, is what made up my mind. He is John Crichton. No, he isn't the same as he was with me, because he didn't go through what the other one went through with me. If he had, he would be. The thoughts are so confusing, even to me, but the lines between the two is swiftly blurring. But I watched him die once. And every time I look at him I see it again. I've had enough.

And now…

I press my hand to my stomach. I am pregnant. I found out on the Command Carrier a few solar days ago. The medic had given me a strange look as she told me. I remember feeling my heart nearly stop in my chest. I had been worrying about getting us all off the Carrier without sacrificing a single life, but at that moment it was revealed that I had a new dilemma.

I am a soldier. I can carry an inactive embryo for up to seven cycles. Even at this moment, lying here on my bed in the middle of the sleep cycle, this thought eats away at me. This child could be John's, and yet it could be the offspring of any other man I recreated with during the past few cycles.

It could be Velorek's.

The thought punctures my painstakingly guarded heart. I betrayed Velorek to his death. Had I done the same to John? Of course, not in the same way, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that yes, I had. I long ago swore that I would protect him. He is Human, lost and confused, in a world he knows barely anything about. I had vowed to guard him, teach him, protect him from any harm. I had failed. While I had been off kicking the dren out of Charrids and assisting Rygel, I had left him stranded. He had done the only thing he knew how to do in a time of crisis: sacrifice himself to protect others. If I had been there, I could've found another way. Maybe, maybe I could've forced that treacherous frelnik Furlow to close the device. Why…why did it have to be John?

Frell him, always being so noble. If he wasn't such a good man, with such a courageous, open nature, maybe I wouldn't have always had to protect him, teach him. Maybe we'd still be together.

"Maybe." I roll the word over my tongue, making sure I was saying the word in English. English, the language he had taught me during our time together on Talyn. "Maybe." So many frelling maybes. There should be no maybes. I should've been there. I wasn't and my lapse resulted in my lover's death. One slip can cause fatality. It was my fault he died.

My mother's words come back to me as I think this: "I wasn't an assassin until I killed your father. I was a pilot."

I was a pilot. John tore me away from that life. He made me discover, learn, feel, love…now though he is alive, he is dead. I as good as killed him…there is nowhere to go now. I can't stay here; I can't take the heart-wrenching aching pain of his touch, his voice, his very presence. I can't look at him, alive in front of me, without seeing him dead in my arms. I can't return to being a Peacekeeper, not after what we just did. But as I ponder this I'm starting to remember something I learned on the Command Carrier.

The ex-Peacekeeper unit. It's a squad of renounced or retired Peacekeepers who track down and stop terrorist beings like Sheyangs and Tavleks and even renegade Peacekeeper tyrants, any of which that might be getting brave thoughts and putting innocents in danger.

"I wasn't an assassin until I killed your father. I was a pilot…I was bred to be a pilot. But they made me kill again and again…"

Xhalax had been a pilot, which was why I was bred as one as well. The woman I remember, the one who sat by my bed and told me that I had been a product of love, told me how much she loved my father, how much she loved me, had been gone when I saw her again. My mother had been forced to kill her lover to protect her rank, and Peacekeeper Command had still never fully let her regain status. To fall in love and have a child is a crime to the Peacekeepers. Sex was a means for release and recreation, and childbirth was permitted only if the woman was on a breeding roster. They simply could not allow my mother to get away with what she'd done. Xhalax had been in terrible agony after killing my father. After carrying out each and every assassination, after killing countless people, she forgot about Talyn, my father. Forgot the pain, forgot the mere memory of him.

There is a knock on my door. I start and call out, "Who is it?"

"It's John. Aeryn, can we talk?"

My heart leaps to my throat. I attempt to say strongly, "No, I don't think so," but it comes out weak and vulnerable. The sound of it makes me cringe. "Listen, Aeryn…" his voice floats muffled through the door, "There are things I need to say, things we need to talk about. About…about where we're going from here. Please let me in."

I get up and open the door. He stands there; warm, real, alive, and gives me a shy look. "Hey," he whispers, reaching out to touch my arm. I barely move, a mere fraction of a dench away from his touch, but he gets the point. He drops his arm and says, "This needs to stop, Aeryn. We can't live like this."

You're right.

"I don't feel like talking, Crichton."

John frowns and I see a tear glistening in his eye.

Those beautiful blue eyes.

I see those eyes staring blankly into space as his cooling body relaxes and he takes his last breath.

I take a shaky breath, more like a gasp for air, and dismiss him by saying, "I'm busy." He nods, giving up, and before I can stop him he lifts a hand to my face and strokes my cheekbone in that way of his. At his touch, ten thousand emotions and sensations hit me all at once and tears spill unbidden out of my eyes. I quickly jerk away and slide the door closed in his face.

I turn and sag into the door, the warm metal pressing through the leather of my vest to reach my skin. Moya feels my pain. She throbs slowly, attempting to regulate my heartbeat. She knows my anguish, and she is there for me, but this time there is no comfort. I slowly slide to the ground, bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, hugging myself. The tears finally break the emotional stone barrier and I sob into my arms, biting myself to muffle the sound.

The agony that grips me when I look at him…I'm living in a constant state of regret, shame, grief, and guilt. I can't live like this anymore. I am a soldier. To show emotion means dead. I had seen that firsthand…twice. The tears ebb away as I finally make up my mind as to what I'm going to do now.

"They made me kill again and again. And finally I stopped caring."

I want the pain gone. I want to stop feeling what I have felt since the moment I realized John was going to die.

I stand up and begin to pack my things.

I don't want to care anymore.