Ends
by Gumnut
5 Jul 2002
Time is often the rescuer. You know that, no matter what happens, everything has an end, a point in time that will bring a stop. Whether it stops positively or negatively is left up to other forces of nature, but it will stop…eventually.
"Aeryn. Aeryn, NO!"
She was woken abruptly from a deep sleep to hear Crichton's yell and the thud of his body falling out of bed. She was out of bed and halfway to the door before she remembered. This Crichton was not her John, this was not her place. Not her place. But his silence beckoned. John had woken the same way, the same name on his lips, many times. The dream was always the same. Him in Farscape, her falling, falling, down through the ice, him waking himself up screaming her name.
Her John had had her to comfort him, clasping her to him desperately trying to prove to himself that, yes, she was alive and well. This Crichton…it wasn't her place. She couldn't.
She stumbled back to bed.
xxxxx
The hard floor came up and hit him. He felt it in every joint, every point of contact with the cold surface. He lay there, willing the dream images away, aware, as always, that they weren't quite all nightmare. They were based in reality.
The slight breeze of Moya's atmospheric scrubbers whispered across his exposed skin, cooling, prompting goose pimples as his body moved to conserve heat. He shivered.
Aeryn.
Oh, Aeryn. His pain. Her pain. Their pain.
He had dreamt of her falling to her death many times before, the nightmare was an old nemesis. But this time it echoed with the desperation of losing her a second time. Not to her death, but to his.
She had died and come back. He had survived, barely.
He had died, and not. She had not survived.
He knew she was shattered. It was in her eyes when she looked at him. In her stance, in the trembling hands she denied were trembling. She was falling, falling away from him. And in his own way, he had killed her again.
A sudden need to see her, to reassure himself that she lived, urged him off the floor. Cold muscles complained, joints ached, but he stumbled to his feet, threw on a shirt over his underwear, and stumbled out into the darkened corridor.
xxxxx
She knew the moment he reached her door. She had expected him to appear, part of her had hoped, the other, wilted, burnt part had dreaded.
She could see him in her mind's eye, quietly standing in the shadows by the door, his face reflecting his indecision to enter. She knew him well. It pained her heart.
Her own indecision held her still, feigning sleep. She felt his gaze on her and a part of her ached to comfort him. A rustle of fabric, a painfully exhaled breath, the only sounds in the room.
She felt tears building behind her eyes. Her body ached for his touch, but her mind shied away, the thought forever associating his touch with the pain that followed.
She, too, had nightmares that woke her in the night. Radiation induced nightmares that woke her to her own tears. He was not there to comfort her. Never would be again. He couldn't be, she couldn't go through it all again. If he was, it would, and she couldn't.
Still he stood there. Saying nothing, just there, looking at her.
"John." She regretted it the moment she said it. She turned to look at him.
For a moment she thought he would run, he edged deeper into the shadows. She heard him swallow, could almost feel his trepidation in the air.
"Aeryn…I-" He didn't know what to say.
"Bad dream?"
"Yes." Pain in his voice. Of course she knew. "I'm sorry."
She didn't answer, turning away again. Knots formed in his shoulders. His bare feet were cold, he should go, he turned to leave.
"How do you do it?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.
He hesitated. "Do what?"
"Live with the pain." He held his breath, tears sprouted in his eyes as she breathed the words. "Live…love…knowing it will always end?"
He let out his breath in a long sigh that was almost a sob. "I almost didn't. After I…after I killed you…" his voice hitched, "I wanted to die. D'Argo…D'Argo and the others wouldn't let me." He stopped talking as his throat tightened.
"I stood on a ledge and looked down." She whispered. He stopped breathing again.
He had to ask, fearing the answer. "What kept you here?"
She didn't answer. He wondered if anything had.
He broke the silence attempting to answer her original question. "There is always an end. For good or bad. I live for the moment, Aeryn, for there may never be another." He heard her breath catch in a sob. His instincts screamed at him to go to her. He couldn't, it hurt, it was no longer his place. "I know how you feel, Aeryn." His voice was so quiet he wondered if she had heard him.
She had, an equally faint "I know." whispered across the room.
He swallowed. "I love you, Aeryn, always." Not knowing what else to do and fearing his own emotional collapse, he turned and left.
He did not hear her tearful answer in the dark.
"There is no always."
xxxxx
FIN.