Memories

(A Farscape Fanfic By Beth A. Carpenter)

(Authors disclaimer: The characters of Farscape belong to Henson Productions. I just borrowed them for a short time.)

Bialar Crais was simply having a bad day. He had spent the morning tearing apart a faulty weapons array, banging his head as he crawled out from under the panel. He then spent the next three arns arguing with Crichton over whether or not to upgrade the array. And now he was tearing apart his quarters looking for the programming disk and Crichton would be there in less than an arn to help reprogram the array. He was getting very angry.

Crais sat down on the edge of the bed, hanging his head in his hands and scrubbing his face with his palms. Talyn knew he was upset and, for once, the young Leviathan ship left him alone. He rested his chin in his hands, closing his eyes for a brief moment. Something caught Crais' eye when he opened them, a shiny box sticking out from under a pile of clothes lying in the corner.

Crais stood up and dug out the box, sitting back down on the rumpled bed. He hadn't looked at it since he had escaped Scorpius, and frankly, he wasn't sure why he had grabbed it. He placed the box on the bed and carefully opened it, laying the lid in the middle of the bed so that it wouldn't slide off the satin sheets onto the deck.

Inside Crais found a pile of data disks, small pieces of plastic he remembered was filled with Peacekeeper information. He snorted to himself, wondering just how useful the data would be. He gathered them up, laying them in the box lid, making a mental note to himself to review them later. Beneath the disks were slips of plastic transparencies, letters from his brother Tauvo, gone thanks to the freak crash between his ship and Crichton's Farscape module. Crais smiled to himself as he gingerly lifted them as well.

There were a bunch of odd and ends in the box, things Crais had no idea why he had kept. But beneath all the junk, hidden in the bottom of the box, was a photograph, slightly faded and dusty. Crais' eyebrows drew down as he wrestled with the frame, dislodging it from the box. He turned it over, his breath catching in his throat. A pair of vivid emerald green eyes stared at him, captured for all time on the paper. Crais stood up slowly and began to pace, his mind drifting back, his memories returning to the woman he once wanted to make his wife....

Sheera G'Lian rolled away from Crais, her sleek muscular body covered with a thin sheen of sweat. She grabbed the silver goblet filled with Fillip nectar and turned back towards him. "You realize that this is the last night we'll get to spend together for a while," Sheera commented quietly, sipping the sweet liquid and handing the goblet to Crais. She ran her hands down his hard bronze chest, curling her fingers so that her nails grazed the sensitive spot just beneath his ribs.

Crais' body jerked slightly and he let the goblet slip from his hand, clanking to the floor as he pushed Sheera back on the bed. Her auburn hair fanned out beneath her head, a stark contrast against the green sheets. "You could leave the Peacekeepers. We both could," he said, his lips against her throat.

"Crais," Sheera admonished. "We've had this conversation before." She arched beneath him as he caressed her body with his mouth.

He rested his chin on her stomach, looking up at her as he stroked the underside of her breasts. "And we never finish it." Crais closed his eyes as Sheera ran her fingers through his hair.

"Because there is nothing to finish, Bialar," she whispered. "They'll never let us go." She tugged on his hair, coaxing him to move back up, her lips meeting his.

"Then we go anyway. Find some planet in the uncharted territories and make a new life," he answered between hungry kisses.

Sheera rolled Crais over, straddling him and sitting up. "You sound like you have this planned," she remarked, tossing her long hair over her shoulder as she began to move, watching as his eyes closed, grinning in satisfaction when he moaned.

Crais grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh. "I do. Sheera, I love you and I want you."

"You already have me, Bialar."

He stopped the slow movement of her hips, his eyes locking with hers. "It's not enough. Sheera, will you.."

The alarm sounded and both of them jumped up, quickly dressing, all thoughts of leaving their jobs and ranks pushed to the backs of their minds as they rushed down the corridor, strapping on pulse pistols as they went. The cruiser was under attack by a group of raiders. He saw her smile at him as she climbed into the cockpit of her Prowler and he continued on to the command deck.

Crais never had the chance to finish his question for Sheera never returned from the fight. He watched in agony as her ship was destroyed in a ball of burning gas and metal, spinning out of control into another raider ship.

"Hey, Captain Crunch! You find that disk?"

Crichton's voice broke Crais from his reveries. He brushed a single tear from his cheek, thankful that his back was to him. He spied the disk peaking out from under a pile of transparencies and grabbed it, thrusting it at Crichton as he turned back to the box. "Here."

Crichton looked at him oddly. "Hey Crais. You okay?"

He looked at Crichton and after a moment nodded. He waited until the Commander shrugged and walked up the corridor. Crais gazed back down at the picture of Sheera and raised it to his lips, laying a gentle kiss on her face. "I still love you," he whispered, laying the picture back in the box and following Crichton's singing form back to command.

( 2001 Beth Anne Carpenter