Disclaimer: I do not own Crais and Talyn, and make no money out of writing about them.
Author's Notes: This was written for the Remix/Redux challenge, and is a remix of AstroGirl's story Envy. Thanks to Sabine for the beta.
Continuity: Set some time after Green-Eyed Monster.
Envy (The Fix Me Remix)
By Andraste
"Run the diagnostic again," he murmurs aloud, out of habit rather than necessity.
He listens to the sound of the amnexus system being flushed with fluid and the sound of his own breathing for long moments, before the soft beep that signals a clear set of pipes sounds.
Crais rolls over onto his side, and frowns. "There isn't anything wrong."
He doesn't need to speak aloud for Talyn to know what he means, but even after all this time it helps him to formulate his thoughts. The ship thinks back at him: there is.
Even now that he's lying in bed, the work doesn't really stop. Leviathans don't need sleep, and Talyn murmurs in Crais' head even in his dreams. There will be no rest for him tonight unless he's able to promise honestly that they will fix the problem tomorrow, and in order to do that they have to find out what it is. Crais has begun to envy Pilots, with their minds ever wakeful by nature rather than necessity.
"If it isn't your amnexus system ..."
There are an infinite number of possibilities. Talyn's body grows bigger day by day, twisting itself into a new and better shape. The transition is difficult and often painful. He was designed to function with care from teams of specially trained techs, but Crais has only one pair of hands. Sometimes he wishes Larell was here, or even that he could simply contact her and ask what might go wrong next.
The question is, what has gone wrong now? The amnexus systems flush clear each time, but Crais can feel that Talyn still ... itches. He closes his eyes again and listens through the ship's sensors once more, stretching himself out further and deeper. He picks up the whir and buzz of hundreds of different systems, and each sound is a clue to the puzzle of Talyn's discomfort.
It is difficult not to simply lose himself in the strange harmony of the thousand tiny sounds and fall asleep this way. If he strains, he can even hear the sound of metal bending as the ship grows. Tomorrow, he will be imperceptibly bigger.
The passengers make sounds that are an interruption to the flow of Talyn's systems, but the ship allows them to distract him anyway. Crais follows the impulse; perhaps one of them has done something to cause Talyn discomfort. The Hynerian is eating – does he ever stop? – and the wet sounds of his mastication make Crais's lips curl into an automatic sneer. The Banik is chanting in some language his translator microbes register only as noise. Crais can even hear the sound of his own heartbeat from the outside, and -
- he opens his eyes, as if that will take the sounds away.
"That has nothing to do with your fluid levels," he says, but he can see now that it is not a mechanical fault that troubles Talyn.
They seem to think they're being discreet.
Perhaps he should feel grateful that Crichton has enough tact not to flaunt his new understanding with Aeryn. But the human seems to have forgotten that he lives on a sentient ship who has eyes in every corner, and that Crais sees all that Talyn sees, eventually, whether he wishes to or not.
He doesn't know whether Aeryn has forgotten the sensation, or if she doesn't care that he can see.
Crais understands, now, that this is how things must be. When Aeryn wore the neural link, Talyn lay between them like a pane of cloudy glass, and he saw her mind only dimly. It was enough to make him realize the truth of their position. But Talyn does not understand.
"We do not need her," he says.
He's telling the same lie Aeryn told, and it stings just as badly in his own mouth. Nobody has mentioned the cybernetic bleedback recently, and he hasn't brought it up himself, but ... He is afraid that it's getting worse. He can feel the sores all over him now, in various stages of breaking out and healing over, stinging and itching and fading into scars. Talyn is not the only one who is being bent into a new shape, but Crais is not made of metal.
He feels the pain start up again now, distantly, Talyn demanding to know why she abandoned them, why she is in John's room. Leviathans are not well equipped to understand feelings of such a kind in the first place, and he is young.
"I have explained to you before," Crais says wearily. "We cannot force her to join with us, just as I could not force you to make me your Pilot." Any more than he could force Talyn to do anything at all, these days. "She has chosen to join herself with John instead."
Talyn thinks: it doesn't make sense. Crais thinks that it doesn't have to. If such choices made sense, surely Talyn would have chosen Aeryn in the first place and none of them would be here, in this particular configuration of parts and systems.
He thinks: I need to sleep, and reaches up to pull out the neural interface. It's something he tries to avoid doing – putting it back in is a little more difficult each time – but he doesn't need Talyn's confusion as well as his own. The ship does not try to prevent him.
The contact breaking always leaves him disoriented and bereft. Even if he can't see a way out of their current impasse, life connected to Talyn feels like more than life without him. More pain, but also a contact he never remembers craving until he is left without it.
He shuts his eyes one more time, and tells himself that all he wants is sleep. That he isn't thinking about John and Aeryn, laughing and moaning in another room, skin sliding over skin. That he doesn't wish to have her – someone, anyone – beside him, joined body to body and mind to mind. That Aeryn's happiness doesn't feel like a personal insult.
Listening to Talyn's sounds with his own ears alone, he hears only silence.
The End
Author's Notes: This was written for the Remix/Redux challenge, and is a remix of AstroGirl's story Envy. Thanks to Sabine for the beta.
Continuity: Set some time after Green-Eyed Monster.
Envy (The Fix Me Remix)
By Andraste
"Run the diagnostic again," he murmurs aloud, out of habit rather than necessity.
He listens to the sound of the amnexus system being flushed with fluid and the sound of his own breathing for long moments, before the soft beep that signals a clear set of pipes sounds.
Crais rolls over onto his side, and frowns. "There isn't anything wrong."
He doesn't need to speak aloud for Talyn to know what he means, but even after all this time it helps him to formulate his thoughts. The ship thinks back at him: there is.
Even now that he's lying in bed, the work doesn't really stop. Leviathans don't need sleep, and Talyn murmurs in Crais' head even in his dreams. There will be no rest for him tonight unless he's able to promise honestly that they will fix the problem tomorrow, and in order to do that they have to find out what it is. Crais has begun to envy Pilots, with their minds ever wakeful by nature rather than necessity.
"If it isn't your amnexus system ..."
There are an infinite number of possibilities. Talyn's body grows bigger day by day, twisting itself into a new and better shape. The transition is difficult and often painful. He was designed to function with care from teams of specially trained techs, but Crais has only one pair of hands. Sometimes he wishes Larell was here, or even that he could simply contact her and ask what might go wrong next.
The question is, what has gone wrong now? The amnexus systems flush clear each time, but Crais can feel that Talyn still ... itches. He closes his eyes again and listens through the ship's sensors once more, stretching himself out further and deeper. He picks up the whir and buzz of hundreds of different systems, and each sound is a clue to the puzzle of Talyn's discomfort.
It is difficult not to simply lose himself in the strange harmony of the thousand tiny sounds and fall asleep this way. If he strains, he can even hear the sound of metal bending as the ship grows. Tomorrow, he will be imperceptibly bigger.
The passengers make sounds that are an interruption to the flow of Talyn's systems, but the ship allows them to distract him anyway. Crais follows the impulse; perhaps one of them has done something to cause Talyn discomfort. The Hynerian is eating – does he ever stop? – and the wet sounds of his mastication make Crais's lips curl into an automatic sneer. The Banik is chanting in some language his translator microbes register only as noise. Crais can even hear the sound of his own heartbeat from the outside, and -
- he opens his eyes, as if that will take the sounds away.
"That has nothing to do with your fluid levels," he says, but he can see now that it is not a mechanical fault that troubles Talyn.
They seem to think they're being discreet.
Perhaps he should feel grateful that Crichton has enough tact not to flaunt his new understanding with Aeryn. But the human seems to have forgotten that he lives on a sentient ship who has eyes in every corner, and that Crais sees all that Talyn sees, eventually, whether he wishes to or not.
He doesn't know whether Aeryn has forgotten the sensation, or if she doesn't care that he can see.
Crais understands, now, that this is how things must be. When Aeryn wore the neural link, Talyn lay between them like a pane of cloudy glass, and he saw her mind only dimly. It was enough to make him realize the truth of their position. But Talyn does not understand.
"We do not need her," he says.
He's telling the same lie Aeryn told, and it stings just as badly in his own mouth. Nobody has mentioned the cybernetic bleedback recently, and he hasn't brought it up himself, but ... He is afraid that it's getting worse. He can feel the sores all over him now, in various stages of breaking out and healing over, stinging and itching and fading into scars. Talyn is not the only one who is being bent into a new shape, but Crais is not made of metal.
He feels the pain start up again now, distantly, Talyn demanding to know why she abandoned them, why she is in John's room. Leviathans are not well equipped to understand feelings of such a kind in the first place, and he is young.
"I have explained to you before," Crais says wearily. "We cannot force her to join with us, just as I could not force you to make me your Pilot." Any more than he could force Talyn to do anything at all, these days. "She has chosen to join herself with John instead."
Talyn thinks: it doesn't make sense. Crais thinks that it doesn't have to. If such choices made sense, surely Talyn would have chosen Aeryn in the first place and none of them would be here, in this particular configuration of parts and systems.
He thinks: I need to sleep, and reaches up to pull out the neural interface. It's something he tries to avoid doing – putting it back in is a little more difficult each time – but he doesn't need Talyn's confusion as well as his own. The ship does not try to prevent him.
The contact breaking always leaves him disoriented and bereft. Even if he can't see a way out of their current impasse, life connected to Talyn feels like more than life without him. More pain, but also a contact he never remembers craving until he is left without it.
He shuts his eyes one more time, and tells himself that all he wants is sleep. That he isn't thinking about John and Aeryn, laughing and moaning in another room, skin sliding over skin. That he doesn't wish to have her – someone, anyone – beside him, joined body to body and mind to mind. That Aeryn's happiness doesn't feel like a personal insult.
Listening to Talyn's sounds with his own ears alone, he hears only silence.
The End