THE VIGILANTE PULLED AWAY FROM ELACK.

Crais had been correct that the Peacekeepers would treat her better. She told them what he told her to tell them and she got a berth rather than a cell. They would, she was informed, drop her near a system where she could secure transport back to Abbanerex. Any of her enquiries as to Crais were firmly ignored.

"He's a Peacekeeper prisoner," is all she would get.

For his part, Crais felt remarkably sanguine about it all. He had done his best. He'd had some remarkable experiences. He had, he believed, learned a great deal.

He had been a farmer's son, he remembered.

Until his eleventh cycle he had grown up in a family dominated by his father, his mother having died in childbirth delivering his brother. He had learned positive values, love of life, the respect for the inherent worth of growth. He was sponge for knowledge, he never forgot a thing, never failed once in the pursuit of his goals, driven by a father's pride, driven by needs he did not understand.

There was nothing in that early life that would have precipitated the birth of a monster.

He had stepped from one life with its lessons, into another with its demands. He had not been given the choice to make the decision, but once in…

He had become a child soldier, one in an army of millions upon millions – an army that no longer knew the why of itself. An army of machines of flesh – stripped of values replaced by demands – to survive, be brutal - to conquer, be cold - to rise, be ruthless. You will have become an elite.

Out of those millions upon millions, that boy who watched, absorbed, learned – learned well and had clawed, intrigued, subverted and murdered his way to the top – as high as he, conscripted as he was, could aspire. Power was the only goal.

Power and control. Power to be. Control over one's destiny, one's own life.

He knew the lie of that now.

Power had its privileges, most certainly, yet somehow power in and of itself always rang a tad …hollow. No matter how high he climbed, his power was provisional. It had taken him a very long time to learn that particular lesson, but he had learned it, finally.

No power is absolute if it can be taken away.

There was always a bigger, more ferocious monster above you, one with sharper teeth climbing behind you.

Do not care for that which you must eat, he'd always told himself. Feed or starve. Watch your enemies, for they have lessons to teach you.

It had been easy, as it always was, to fall back on the handy excuses: duty, breeding, this-is-the-way-of-things.

I was a soldier, and a soldier's duty is to follow orders, to smash any enemy, to die well.

Yet, Bialar Crais had been a farmer's son. The son of a man who valued the power of life, of the strength gained through growth, who understood that growth was as essential to those who coaxed the land to life as the land itself.

His father had been rife with metaphors.

"I give you and your brother up because I have been allowed no choices, Bialar. You will have to make those choices for me, as you go. Help your brother see them. Remember who you were taught to be, remember where you come from. Grow and be strong."

He had been young and the collective voices of the millions upon millions… well, they spoke to a lonely and discontented boy who found himself powerless.

He had forgotten.

He had learned the lesson of growth, had thought it had meant to aspire, though he had never learned just what it was he was climbing toward. He had forgotten how to grow.

Then…

Velorek.

No. He'd been the catalyst, but not the reason. Of that entire incident, he remembered her face most vividly.

That pilot from the Pleisar.

She had done her duty – as had been expected.

He had extinguished the traitor - as he'd deserved. That was simply the way of things.

So, why, he had wondered then, as he did not wonder now, did she look as if he had pronounced her own doom? She had done nothing but her duty. So they had been recreating - had she been so weak as to step over the line and romanticize something so basic and meaningless as sex?

She was soon lost in the ranks of the Pleisar, though he had watched her from time to time, intrigued by her, perhaps even attracted to her.

How things can change.

A brother's death, a day of madness that stretched into cycles and lessons taught on a farm twisted beyond recognition. All he knew by then was hate and how subtle its tendrils could be. Driven to madness, to revenge, he went blind.

Why had I condemned her so summarily? Because she defended an enemy? Been contaminated by the murderer of my brother?

No. Now he thought he understood, however imperfectly:

I condemned her because I hated her. I hated her for that look on her face so long ago. I did not recognize it until much later - the dread of betrayal, the agony of duty over love, the terror of knowing that you can never go back and fix what you have broken. I hated her because she found what I could not.

In the coldness of a cell on a ship bound for his death, Bialar Crais stood alone and knew that he had been defeated all those cycles ago – before he had even begun.

I am the author of all their unhappiness.

He had been a farmer's son. She had been born into Peacekeeper life. How had she grown? How had she learned so much more than he who has started life so mundanely – so frightfully normally?

He had known, she had told him, but he had not understood.

"What you took from me? It wasn't worth a damn!"

Aeryn had shown him then. Then she had showed Talyn.

Watch your enemy.

John Crichton.

Weak. Inferior. Insidious. Contaminant.

She'd continued to teach him his enemy's lessons:

This is what it means to need someone.

So simple it had felt like a lie. So basic it had seemed so foolish and weak.

This is what it means to need someone.

It had been a terrifying thing to witness.

The man who had inspired Aeryn Sun to such heights of ecstasy and longing, desire and strength – inferior? She had stepped from the cold control of the millions on millions into domination of self, into the freedom that returned far more than had been given up.

For a moment, for only a moment, he had seen matchless strength, real power. Power that gave life, that defied death.

The disease of love.

It just didn't seem possible.

I am a monster.

What do I owe to the dead? What do I owe to the living? I am a monster. I cannot make amends. I have done too much for forgiveness. I cannot seek redemption. All I can do is pay. I have had power, but I have never been strong. I have had longing but I have never had love.

Watch your enemy, for they have lessons...

I've listened, Crichton. I have learned.

Crais smiled to himself. Talyn had been afraid of Crichton, of his seeming power over his beloved Aeryn. Her need for that man had terrified him.

Shall I tell you what I've learned, Crichton? I was the arbiter of your path. I sent you on a journey that delivered you firmly into the hands of fate. Yes, I understand fate, now. If it had not been for me, you would never have found her. More importantly, she would never have found you. How odd to think of it – I am the poison that heals. I am an engine of destruction that forces all in my wake to rebuild – for the better, but not because of me – in spite of me. I think I understand it now, imperfectly, but I am on my way.

He thought about it, about the 'Other' Crichton, the one here now, remembered his father.

What are you? What were you? What can you be? Are you a poison that heals or is Talyn right to fear you?

There were no recriminations to be made. Only choices. The choices not made, he realized, was as important, in many ways, as the ones that were.

Crichton - you are another rife with metaphors.

Yet, I am a farmer's son.