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Disclaimer: Farscape and all related characters are owned by Jim Henson Company. No copyright infringement intended. (Yeah, right, as if I could possibly injure these guys in a manner the real writers haven't!)
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AWAKENINGS (excerpt) - by Robert Desnos
Who is this nocturnal visitor with an unknown face?
What does he seek, what does he spy?
Is he a poor man demanding bread and shelter?
Is he a thief, is he a bird?
Is he a reflection of ourselves in the mirror
Back from a transparent abyss
Trying to re-enter us?
Then he realizes that we've changed.
What does he become then?
Where does he wander? Does he suffer?
Is this the origin of ghosts?
The origin of dreams?
The birth of regrets?
On my planet, where the rain falls in an ever endless curtain, a properly tainted soul may find ghosts in every window.
I am Alyst, first to be conceived and second to be born child of the human John Crichton. It is said-by the insufficiently intimidated-that I greatly resemble she, the Peacekeeper whore and traitor, the Sebacean that Crichton loved above all things, even his Earp.
It is fitting, then, that it was the human's desire to reunite with this paragon of chaos that led him quite accidentally onto my crumbled stoop.
I am Alyst, daughter of Katralla, and my greatest relief is that she was not alive to witness his reemergence. By the time he returned to the Uncharted Territories and I, of course, some one hundred cycles had passed since my conception. The Scarrens had come in his absence, and both the unknown and known of our universe had fallen to complete and utter ruin.
Perhaps insanely, I expected a hero. When word drifted through our Royal Planet survivors that a strange man, a man who acted as a Peacekeeper yet talked as an alien, had landed his equally strange module in one of our deserts and walked in random circles, I expected to be fully vindicated for my girlish dreams. Surmising that he had no real goal in sight for his journeys and would happily continue his pointless meanderings until he fell dead, I sent runners out to collect him.
"Where have you been, hero?"
Those were my first clipped words to the man, as he stepped through my doors and down my vast ceremonial hall, boots kicking up dust and dried blood. When his eyes finally settled, turning from the evidence of our destruction to myself, the only evidence of our surviving power, he smiled. "Earth. Never even got to say one of those cowboy hellos, before that wormhole shot me back off through a rabbit hole, Alice."
"Alyst." I corrected, wondering briefly how he had come to know even a distorted version of my name. My runners were mutes, by my choice.
His eyes flickered, and then died once more, as he did a slow turn, whistling as he took in further damage. "The place looks different."
"Do you not know who I am? Do you not know who died here?" Anger coursed through me…sensibly, I should have grasped that his nonchalance could very well have been his salvation, the only buffer keeping a man of emotion and regret such as John Crichton above water. But the John Crichton that stood before me then was a far different ghost than the John Crichton whose image and vid I had viewed each night before my childhood meditations.
His hand gripped my throat before I had finished the tirade, his blue eyes-ice, not sky-pushing into mine. "I named you Alice." His voice rose to a shout. "Look, she said, at the wonders I have seen." Widened, darkened, his grin did, raising the hairs on my arms. "But then the wonders were too fucking much to handle and she went home through her rabbit hole and lived happily ever after. But then again, she was just a 'lil storybook princess. Real life ain't like that, huh?"
"I think you may be insane." I told him flatly, pulling his hand away from my neck and turning to sit on one of the broken thrones. The human threw back his head and laughed until tears were running down his tanned, filthy face.
"Couldn't you at least have cleaned up?" He finally halted the snorting and cawing, taking a seat by my side. The throne, of course, would have been his, rightfully, as Katralla's consort, had he not been human. Still, Tyno had never fitted it well. A cracked yet apparently strong hand smoothed over the arm rest, gingerly. I fought the warring of contempt and pity I knew to be in my tones. "My runners were instructed…"
"Oh, loosen up, sprite. Your old man doesn't look any worse than your ivory tower."
"Why are you here?"
"You mean aside from the fact that I was all trussed up and drug in by your henchmen?" Some of the humor faded from his face, and he seemed to settle more fully into the Peacekeeper mode I had heard so much about. "Note, spud: Daddy doesn't like playing turkey."
"Yes, all is noted, Crichton." I turned to face him squarely, surprised to see that his eyes matched mine. This was something that my mother had always said, but I had never trusted the opinions of others, and his holo image had failed to do the man justice. "A wormhole, did you say?"
"You sound like her." One of the dirty fingers reached out, tracing my jaw. I fought the desire to pull away, reminding myself that the man was my blood, of my history. "How's that possible? I wonder if our kid will ever sound like that. Elegant, chopped up PK speak."
"Crichton." I felt a need to be gentle with my ghost, though I knew enough of his pride to realize he would desire anything but. "You know that time has passed. Aeryn Sun's child was born nearly one hundred cycles ago. I have spoken to him. He is middle-aged, with a mate and fully matured children, very happy. He is unaware of the fact that he is only partly Sebacean. To approach him would only harm him."
"She never told him? My son?" Pain flowered in his eyes, and I involuntarily held out a hand, grasping his. They were not the hands of an old man; John Crichton had reemerged from his wormhole virtually unaltered in body.
His hands were strong and balmy, and I could sense the barely restrained bloodlust in their lines. This was not the man I had whispered my meditations to upon a pedestal, this was not the man my mother had fancied herself lover of, this man was nearly one hundred shades dead, and had only difficulty in restraining the urge to make others so.
"Crichton, you know as well as I that it was for his own well-being. Sebaceans at least bear a chance in the here and now. Too many people knew of the human. Your very existence could have killed your son. He lives under no threat of execution now; shrouded by lies your friends carefully crafted."
"Aeryn." Perhaps he missed the title I had so bluntly used, his eyes seemed alight with life for a spare microt. "She's probably still alive, huh?"
"Some people…" The words formed with hesitation. Some people are too callous to die, entirely shut away in their lusts and obsessions. This I knew to be the case with Sun, and now Crichton. "Some people frighten death away with their passion and fire. She burns, she always has…and once more it is with anger, and sometimes darkness. Often darkness. Aeryn Sun is her own shadow. She always was. Such is Aeryn's way, how she avoids the pain of having lost you again, by returning to the emptiness she was bred for. Peacekeeper Sun may never be again, but they hold no monopoly on sin and death."
"Aeryn's back in frelling PK commando form again?" The human stood, pacing.
"Only arns after the birth of your son, Talyn, Officer Sun left Moya. She did not return, though her presence was made very well known elsewhere. Your friends…Moya's crew…went after her. In the end, short of murder, there was no other end for the battle. They could not kill her. They accepted her exile, and your son became their son. He believes that his Sebacean parents are long dead. He was given a good life despite the dangers, John Crichton, as was I."
"Yeah." His grip shook free, one finger rising to touch my nose, then hovering some inches away. His gaze was distant, and I sensed no intimacy in it. I was apparently no more real to John Crichton at that time than my holo image had been all those cycles ago, and I knew enough to understand that he would never stay for my sake, should the chance arise. I was not wholly certain that he would have in that time long past.
"Yeah." His tones grew stronger, more blistering. "But what about Aeryn? What about Pip, and D'Argo, and Pilot, and the fucking frelling rest? What did they sacrifice because of my stupid wormholes and the mother lode of twisted fate? I've been bouncing in and outta those damn rabbit holes for nearly a hundred cycles, babe…trying to find Earth. I did, eventually. And you know what? Aeryn was right. It was a miserable little backwater planet full of bigots and disbelievers. They didn't care 'bout what I knew, what I thought. The hotshots in charge would rather the Scarrens or Peacekeepers take over than actually have to admit that ETs existed to the general public. They're like infants with their little cradle of a planet poised over a lava pit. Is that what I killed myself looking for? Is that why I didn't stay here and wait to see you born? I might've been old and cranky, but I could have lasted. I could have held you in my arms once. God almighty! Why did I keep pushing it? Aeryn was carrying my child. I could have held him!"
"I never wanted your embrace." I fought to over ride his voice. "I only wanted you to be happy. Katralla told me the same. What good would you have been, Crichton, without your dream, your Earp? Not knowing, you could never have forgotten it, just as you could never have forgotten Aeryn. Perhaps that explains your presence here. I…I hoped for a hero, but you aren't. You are only a man, and one without the only woman he ever needed or desired. My mother and Earp would never have been enough for you without Aeryn Sun, Talyn and Aeryn would never have been enough for you without Earth, and I will never be enough for you in any manner or form."
"You're too much like me." He did not disclaim my statement, but rather weighed it with argument, as if speaking to a particularly stubborn sister. "I bet you wouldn't leave here and help me if I asked."
"I was conceived here. I was born here. This is my planet, and these are my burdens. I cannot change who I am, or how matters have shaped me."
"You're just like her. Aeryn's crazy, you see, in this splintered mirror sorta way. One angle, you get this beautiful creature you want to make love to all night long, and then she shatters. Might be a battle, or a silly little spat. You never know. There are a hundred little Aeryn's waiting to run out and play, and not one of them is any saner or nicer than the other. Then she tries to stitch herself back together, but her smile is just crooked forever. You must have been a good Empress one time, Alice, before the rabbit hole and looking glass got you. I shouldn't have come back. Everyone'll need stitches."
"You made me unique." His ramblings made sense in a dangerous manner to me. "When I was young I enjoyed the heat. I would run to the deserts when in need of space, or to prove my independence. No simple Sebacean can endure. I was partly human. The heat warmed the coldness of my position. Then came the dangers. Your DNA allowed me the cherished gift of compatibility, and I lusted too lowly and too widely for the approval of the estate. I chose long ago too keep my liaisons rather than my duties. I did have a child, the one that would have ruled this world. I loathed the child; she was of caste and of planning, and nothing but deadness and weakness. The Scarrens came and took everyone while destroying everything, and I was only spared because I melted my wealth and laughed openly at them. And I still survive, amongst my ashes and my laughter. These are the gifts you have given, human, not only to myself but to all you have touched. It can not be forsaken. Even by Officer Sun. She has pursued the best of herself while preserving the best of you in the only manner she knew. It has been her solemn duty, that madness. She would thank you, if you would find her."
"I just got here."
"I am still partly Sebacean, Crichton, and young yet. Aeryn will die soon. I have my memory to live with; you must give her one to die with."
He paused in his pacing, then, and bent before my throne, warm human hands cupping my chin. His eyes sought mine, and for once the similarity was unclouded by anger or madness. "Will you be back, Crichton?" I asked softly, refusing to release his gaze.
His lips worked for a moment; before a tentative smile worked it's away across the chapped and sensual lips. "You know what? After Aeryn dies, I'll have nowhere else special to go. I might just come help you do some spring cleaning, sprout. It can't be healthy, all these ashes."
"I have nowhere special to go either. It is arranged, Commander Crichton." I stood, offering my hand.
He bowed. "You take care, princess."
The human whistled as he walked out. It brought the first smile I had donned since those long ago desert seclusions, accompanied only by his image in a locket pressed to my heart.
Aeryn Sun would never grace my skies, or lead my warriors, yet I often wonder if it wasn't something of her that I kept so carefully within myself. If my father had gifted us all with humanity, it was Aeryn Sun who had gifted us with radiance of spirit.
I am not displeased with either legacy.
FIN
Disclaimer: Farscape and all related characters are owned by Jim Henson Company. No copyright infringement intended. (Yeah, right, as if I could possibly injure these guys in a manner the real writers haven't!)
---
AWAKENINGS (excerpt) - by Robert Desnos
Who is this nocturnal visitor with an unknown face?
What does he seek, what does he spy?
Is he a poor man demanding bread and shelter?
Is he a thief, is he a bird?
Is he a reflection of ourselves in the mirror
Back from a transparent abyss
Trying to re-enter us?
Then he realizes that we've changed.
What does he become then?
Where does he wander? Does he suffer?
Is this the origin of ghosts?
The origin of dreams?
The birth of regrets?
On my planet, where the rain falls in an ever endless curtain, a properly tainted soul may find ghosts in every window.
I am Alyst, first to be conceived and second to be born child of the human John Crichton. It is said-by the insufficiently intimidated-that I greatly resemble she, the Peacekeeper whore and traitor, the Sebacean that Crichton loved above all things, even his Earp.
It is fitting, then, that it was the human's desire to reunite with this paragon of chaos that led him quite accidentally onto my crumbled stoop.
I am Alyst, daughter of Katralla, and my greatest relief is that she was not alive to witness his reemergence. By the time he returned to the Uncharted Territories and I, of course, some one hundred cycles had passed since my conception. The Scarrens had come in his absence, and both the unknown and known of our universe had fallen to complete and utter ruin.
Perhaps insanely, I expected a hero. When word drifted through our Royal Planet survivors that a strange man, a man who acted as a Peacekeeper yet talked as an alien, had landed his equally strange module in one of our deserts and walked in random circles, I expected to be fully vindicated for my girlish dreams. Surmising that he had no real goal in sight for his journeys and would happily continue his pointless meanderings until he fell dead, I sent runners out to collect him.
"Where have you been, hero?"
Those were my first clipped words to the man, as he stepped through my doors and down my vast ceremonial hall, boots kicking up dust and dried blood. When his eyes finally settled, turning from the evidence of our destruction to myself, the only evidence of our surviving power, he smiled. "Earth. Never even got to say one of those cowboy hellos, before that wormhole shot me back off through a rabbit hole, Alice."
"Alyst." I corrected, wondering briefly how he had come to know even a distorted version of my name. My runners were mutes, by my choice.
His eyes flickered, and then died once more, as he did a slow turn, whistling as he took in further damage. "The place looks different."
"Do you not know who I am? Do you not know who died here?" Anger coursed through me…sensibly, I should have grasped that his nonchalance could very well have been his salvation, the only buffer keeping a man of emotion and regret such as John Crichton above water. But the John Crichton that stood before me then was a far different ghost than the John Crichton whose image and vid I had viewed each night before my childhood meditations.
His hand gripped my throat before I had finished the tirade, his blue eyes-ice, not sky-pushing into mine. "I named you Alice." His voice rose to a shout. "Look, she said, at the wonders I have seen." Widened, darkened, his grin did, raising the hairs on my arms. "But then the wonders were too fucking much to handle and she went home through her rabbit hole and lived happily ever after. But then again, she was just a 'lil storybook princess. Real life ain't like that, huh?"
"I think you may be insane." I told him flatly, pulling his hand away from my neck and turning to sit on one of the broken thrones. The human threw back his head and laughed until tears were running down his tanned, filthy face.
"Couldn't you at least have cleaned up?" He finally halted the snorting and cawing, taking a seat by my side. The throne, of course, would have been his, rightfully, as Katralla's consort, had he not been human. Still, Tyno had never fitted it well. A cracked yet apparently strong hand smoothed over the arm rest, gingerly. I fought the warring of contempt and pity I knew to be in my tones. "My runners were instructed…"
"Oh, loosen up, sprite. Your old man doesn't look any worse than your ivory tower."
"Why are you here?"
"You mean aside from the fact that I was all trussed up and drug in by your henchmen?" Some of the humor faded from his face, and he seemed to settle more fully into the Peacekeeper mode I had heard so much about. "Note, spud: Daddy doesn't like playing turkey."
"Yes, all is noted, Crichton." I turned to face him squarely, surprised to see that his eyes matched mine. This was something that my mother had always said, but I had never trusted the opinions of others, and his holo image had failed to do the man justice. "A wormhole, did you say?"
"You sound like her." One of the dirty fingers reached out, tracing my jaw. I fought the desire to pull away, reminding myself that the man was my blood, of my history. "How's that possible? I wonder if our kid will ever sound like that. Elegant, chopped up PK speak."
"Crichton." I felt a need to be gentle with my ghost, though I knew enough of his pride to realize he would desire anything but. "You know that time has passed. Aeryn Sun's child was born nearly one hundred cycles ago. I have spoken to him. He is middle-aged, with a mate and fully matured children, very happy. He is unaware of the fact that he is only partly Sebacean. To approach him would only harm him."
"She never told him? My son?" Pain flowered in his eyes, and I involuntarily held out a hand, grasping his. They were not the hands of an old man; John Crichton had reemerged from his wormhole virtually unaltered in body.
His hands were strong and balmy, and I could sense the barely restrained bloodlust in their lines. This was not the man I had whispered my meditations to upon a pedestal, this was not the man my mother had fancied herself lover of, this man was nearly one hundred shades dead, and had only difficulty in restraining the urge to make others so.
"Crichton, you know as well as I that it was for his own well-being. Sebaceans at least bear a chance in the here and now. Too many people knew of the human. Your very existence could have killed your son. He lives under no threat of execution now; shrouded by lies your friends carefully crafted."
"Aeryn." Perhaps he missed the title I had so bluntly used, his eyes seemed alight with life for a spare microt. "She's probably still alive, huh?"
"Some people…" The words formed with hesitation. Some people are too callous to die, entirely shut away in their lusts and obsessions. This I knew to be the case with Sun, and now Crichton. "Some people frighten death away with their passion and fire. She burns, she always has…and once more it is with anger, and sometimes darkness. Often darkness. Aeryn Sun is her own shadow. She always was. Such is Aeryn's way, how she avoids the pain of having lost you again, by returning to the emptiness she was bred for. Peacekeeper Sun may never be again, but they hold no monopoly on sin and death."
"Aeryn's back in frelling PK commando form again?" The human stood, pacing.
"Only arns after the birth of your son, Talyn, Officer Sun left Moya. She did not return, though her presence was made very well known elsewhere. Your friends…Moya's crew…went after her. In the end, short of murder, there was no other end for the battle. They could not kill her. They accepted her exile, and your son became their son. He believes that his Sebacean parents are long dead. He was given a good life despite the dangers, John Crichton, as was I."
"Yeah." His grip shook free, one finger rising to touch my nose, then hovering some inches away. His gaze was distant, and I sensed no intimacy in it. I was apparently no more real to John Crichton at that time than my holo image had been all those cycles ago, and I knew enough to understand that he would never stay for my sake, should the chance arise. I was not wholly certain that he would have in that time long past.
"Yeah." His tones grew stronger, more blistering. "But what about Aeryn? What about Pip, and D'Argo, and Pilot, and the fucking frelling rest? What did they sacrifice because of my stupid wormholes and the mother lode of twisted fate? I've been bouncing in and outta those damn rabbit holes for nearly a hundred cycles, babe…trying to find Earth. I did, eventually. And you know what? Aeryn was right. It was a miserable little backwater planet full of bigots and disbelievers. They didn't care 'bout what I knew, what I thought. The hotshots in charge would rather the Scarrens or Peacekeepers take over than actually have to admit that ETs existed to the general public. They're like infants with their little cradle of a planet poised over a lava pit. Is that what I killed myself looking for? Is that why I didn't stay here and wait to see you born? I might've been old and cranky, but I could have lasted. I could have held you in my arms once. God almighty! Why did I keep pushing it? Aeryn was carrying my child. I could have held him!"
"I never wanted your embrace." I fought to over ride his voice. "I only wanted you to be happy. Katralla told me the same. What good would you have been, Crichton, without your dream, your Earp? Not knowing, you could never have forgotten it, just as you could never have forgotten Aeryn. Perhaps that explains your presence here. I…I hoped for a hero, but you aren't. You are only a man, and one without the only woman he ever needed or desired. My mother and Earp would never have been enough for you without Aeryn Sun, Talyn and Aeryn would never have been enough for you without Earth, and I will never be enough for you in any manner or form."
"You're too much like me." He did not disclaim my statement, but rather weighed it with argument, as if speaking to a particularly stubborn sister. "I bet you wouldn't leave here and help me if I asked."
"I was conceived here. I was born here. This is my planet, and these are my burdens. I cannot change who I am, or how matters have shaped me."
"You're just like her. Aeryn's crazy, you see, in this splintered mirror sorta way. One angle, you get this beautiful creature you want to make love to all night long, and then she shatters. Might be a battle, or a silly little spat. You never know. There are a hundred little Aeryn's waiting to run out and play, and not one of them is any saner or nicer than the other. Then she tries to stitch herself back together, but her smile is just crooked forever. You must have been a good Empress one time, Alice, before the rabbit hole and looking glass got you. I shouldn't have come back. Everyone'll need stitches."
"You made me unique." His ramblings made sense in a dangerous manner to me. "When I was young I enjoyed the heat. I would run to the deserts when in need of space, or to prove my independence. No simple Sebacean can endure. I was partly human. The heat warmed the coldness of my position. Then came the dangers. Your DNA allowed me the cherished gift of compatibility, and I lusted too lowly and too widely for the approval of the estate. I chose long ago too keep my liaisons rather than my duties. I did have a child, the one that would have ruled this world. I loathed the child; she was of caste and of planning, and nothing but deadness and weakness. The Scarrens came and took everyone while destroying everything, and I was only spared because I melted my wealth and laughed openly at them. And I still survive, amongst my ashes and my laughter. These are the gifts you have given, human, not only to myself but to all you have touched. It can not be forsaken. Even by Officer Sun. She has pursued the best of herself while preserving the best of you in the only manner she knew. It has been her solemn duty, that madness. She would thank you, if you would find her."
"I just got here."
"I am still partly Sebacean, Crichton, and young yet. Aeryn will die soon. I have my memory to live with; you must give her one to die with."
He paused in his pacing, then, and bent before my throne, warm human hands cupping my chin. His eyes sought mine, and for once the similarity was unclouded by anger or madness. "Will you be back, Crichton?" I asked softly, refusing to release his gaze.
His lips worked for a moment; before a tentative smile worked it's away across the chapped and sensual lips. "You know what? After Aeryn dies, I'll have nowhere else special to go. I might just come help you do some spring cleaning, sprout. It can't be healthy, all these ashes."
"I have nowhere special to go either. It is arranged, Commander Crichton." I stood, offering my hand.
He bowed. "You take care, princess."
The human whistled as he walked out. It brought the first smile I had donned since those long ago desert seclusions, accompanied only by his image in a locket pressed to my heart.
Aeryn Sun would never grace my skies, or lead my warriors, yet I often wonder if it wasn't something of her that I kept so carefully within myself. If my father had gifted us all with humanity, it was Aeryn Sun who had gifted us with radiance of spirit.
I am not displeased with either legacy.
FIN