Such Stuff
a Farscape story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2004
Disclaimer: Not mine. So not mine.
For apathocles in the Stark ficathon. Possible spoilers up through "Bad Timing." A great big "THANK YOU!" to astrogirl2 for multiple betas and helping me whip this puppy into shape. Yay ficathon!
Everyone dreams but Stark.
Stark knows this because all the dreams, at night, by day, during the somnolence
caused by frenzied loving in someone's quarters, all those dreams pile in like puppies.
D'Argo's child and Rygel's feast and Chiana's brother and Crichton's Isa's Cream,
these roll and tumble through Stark's head while the time drifts by.
Aeryn dreams.
Stark listens too deeply to Aeryn's dreams sometimes. She dreams of blood and death,
and Stark trembles at the anger, pulls the blanket closer to hide away, is always unable
to pull completely away from the torment. Often, too too often, Stark sinks even
deeper into those visions in the hope that, deep within the images of horror, Aeryn will
also grant some glimmer of peace, of sanctity. And sometimes, she does.
When the dreams are over-loud, Stark wanders the corridors, touches Moya. The
Leviathan dozes between starbursts, twinning her dreams with Pilot's, so that Stark
cannot tell where either begins or ends or just goes on. Stark likes these dreams, can
fall into them and can feel the slide of interstellar particulate matter tickling across
Moya's hull, at the same time sensing a parent touch Pilot's young head in affection.
Stark loves them so much, loves these dreams and these souls, and will do anything to
protect them.
Can do nothing.
Stark is mad. Everyone knows it, whispers it not quite out of earshot, and points. Ever
since ... No.
Bad thoughts do bad things, and Stark has had enough bad thoughts to last ten
lifetimes. And perhaps that's where the problem lies.
Stark is not corporeal, not completely, not even much. Thought creates reality; this is
truth, something known by Stark's people and shared as mother-wisdom crooned into
cradles. Stark has seen too much reality. So, sometimes without meaning to and
sometimes meaning to very much, Stark ... drifts.
The first truism of any telepathic race is that one's own mind is the easiest and hardest
to read. Stark drifts and reads Stark's own mind:
He is Stark the Banik slave, and Scorpius tortures him again and again in the
Aurora Chair, demanding secrets of Katratzi and more. Stark hates him and Stark
loves him a little, and Stark sits in his own filth in the Chair and in his cell, gibbering
madly.
She is Stark the freed prisoner, and Crichton loves her more than any of those others
because of their captivity together on the Gammak Base. Crichton tells her things
about his home, and names stars after her, and she is loved.
He is Stark the Dominar, ruler of a million worlds, with women as he desires them and
the Peacekeepers beneath his heel. When the Luxans come to parlay, he swarms his
forces over their world too.
She is Stark the Peacekeeper, and her weapon is her mind, as she rips and tears through
the puny defenses of her enemies. She rises to Commandant, plays with men, dreams
of a single peaceful government throughout the universe.
It is Stark the half-breed Sebacian/Scarran, double-raced and double-gendered, and it
hates both species with a passion that drives it to alliance after alliance in hope of
vengeance on both. When it meets its Sebacian father, it squeezes the life from him,
blood dripping over its dead white hands, and it finds consummation in his death.
She is Stark the Luxan, and she seeks vengeance for the death of her husband.
He is Stark the Delvian, and his father was taken away by the invaders.
He is Stark the Human, and he is lost from home forever.
If Stark dreams, Stark dreams Stark's own dreams, separated only by universes and
bound far tighter by the bond of one incorporeal and indivisible mind. Really, there is
little wonder why the others believe their own frightened murmurs of Stark's madness.
Truth is harder than rumor, and truth requires belief in a fractured multiverse.
This truth cannot be expressed save in fantastical mathematics that only
Crichton cares about anyway. Madness is easier, to say and to do and to believe.
And Stark can pretend that same lunacy, almost always, can not slip for weekens at a
time. Can smile vapidly and caper, and listen. Can not try to explain.
It is only at night, or what passes for night, when the lights are dimmed and the others
are dreaming and Stark's feet are tired from wandering, only then is it difficult to
pretend these other realities are not just as real as this one.
Stark slips into the bed, eyes already closed, pressed lips trying not to mumble
impossible secrets, and maybe maybe Aeryn will not be roused, but no, this time she
wakes. She looks at Stark and oh! She is sweet perfection in her bald nakedness and
Stark loves her so much!
Aeryn asks, "Are you all right? Was it the same dream?" Aeryn thinks Stark dreams,
does not understand.
And Stark kisses Aeryn with deep passion, and Stark wraps her small arms around
Aeryn but she cannot ever reply.