DEAD.

That was that. Over. Done. Finito. Kaput. Todt. Krekt, as the Luxans said.

Dead. Be-deaded. Deadish, fried, battered and served up to eternity.

There should have been nothing. He'd been fairly certain that that was how it should have been. The Creature had no ka, no tamashii, no pash as the Nebari would have it, no soul - not a single ethereal spark to light him to some dull heaven full of hallelujahs and not a decent drink for miles.

A quick, empty death - a sharp shunt into nothingness should have been all there was to it.

Nope.

He found himself on a wide plain, dark grass at his feet, stars over his head, a thick ribbon of them dazzling his eyes, making him remember why space had always pulled at him so hard and why he'd always been so happy to let it.

Hanging in that sky was an immense energy field that wound through ultraviolet and back again, and he swore he could feel an electric skittering over his skin, similar to when he'd stood once near Moya's open propulser, the strong magnetic field of it rippling over him.

Floating through it a darkly rust-coloured broken moon, one that had been shattered and gutted by an ancient cataclysm that had spewed its internals across the sky. Warm, scented wind moaned and whispered around him.

This limbo was rather inviting, he had to admit.

He turned slowly around, looking for some structure or landmark, half-expecting a castle in the distance or some gnarled tower with a single light in the single window way up top.

Only wide, dark plain before him, in all directions as far as he could see. Endless and flat, a horizon that stretched forever.

"Are we dead?" Harvey asked him. He too was looking into the sky.

"I'm dead," Crichton corrected him. "You were never really alive."

"If I had feelings, that might have hurt."

"Bite me." Crichton sighed. "Aren't you supposed to fade or something? Where the hell were you when I was at the prison?"

Harvey looked confused.

"I had been trying to converse with you constantly," he said, quite confused. "You never heard me."

"Not a frellin' peep."

"Very strange." Harvey gazed into the distance. "Appears not to matter now."

"Yeah." Crichton dropped himself onto the soft grass. "Guess we wait or something."

Harvey sat near him.

"Well done, John."

"Huh?"

"You accomplished everything you set forth for yourself. Pity it ended like this. I had hoped for…"

"Something else? Women, wine, song? Considering what I could have got…?"

Harvey sent him a skeptical side eye.

"In a universe this vast, with uncountable trillions if not an infinite number of people, civilizations and belief systems, it is the very height of unmitigated arrogance, conceit and mental disorder to assume just one of your simplistic and rather primitive religions have even the most infinitesimal chance against infinity of being correct."

"I'd say you were pretty much right there... but… if this isn't hell, why you gotta be here?"

"Perhaps I'm your 'guardian angel', after all."

"I'll take hell, thanks."

They sat though neither could sense the passage of time. Only the shimmer of energy on him, the faint crackle of it in the air.

Crichton hollered into the distance as a test only for his voice to roll away without an echo, no weight to it, just sent out to vanish.

"Well, that's disheartening," he said when it had gone. "Maybe we're supposed to do something…?"

"I cannot imagine what." Harvey said, flat in his back now, eyes counting stars. He sat up. "I don't dance."

Crichton smirked at him, at the oddness of the saying. It sounded very strange coming out of that face.

"Hold a moment," Harvey then said, squinting into the distance, "we are not alone, after all."

He pointed and Crichton turned to look where Harvey indicated and they were looking at the figure for a while before he realized that it was a person at all.

The wind changed direction and he could suddenly smell a subtle scent, spices and vanilla and musk blended together. That scent pulled him to his feet.

No. For frell's sake, no.

Harvey was gone.

"I'm sorry," came murmured softly before he could see her clearly, that smooth contralto of hers carrying pure through the air. "Things haven't exactly gone the way I'd hoped."

His first instinct was to run and he shook himself for the stupidity of the thought. Where would he go?

I am in hell after all.

"Who hopes? What's the point?" He managed, his voice sounding weak, like a liar caught in a lie.

She looked the way she had, before she left.

"You would never say such a thing," she said.

There was spike of coldness in him at that. It felt… cruel.

"You have me confused with someone else."

His voice was harsh, weighted with his hatred of fate, of this torment he did not deserve.

"Let me die in peace!" he roared to the sky, flinging his arms wide and whirling at the sky. "What more do you want from me?!"

She blinked as if suddenly shocked, as if she only now recognized him.

"It's… you," she said. He felt a horror in her at the recognition, that shock, the realization.

It only hardened him further, stoked the cold fire in him.

"What have you done?" She demanded. "What are you thinking?" It sounded accusatory.

"Go away, Aeryn!" He insisted. "I was trying to survive!"

"I can't go away." She said, softer now. "You know that."

"I don't know," he was certain, "you decided."

"Are you sure?"

Those liquid grey eyes of hers gazed at him. He felt their pull like a physical thing. Despite everything, he knows that whatever it was that fashioned men - fate, evolution, some capricious unlikely god - he had been designed for her – and her alone.

Every borrowed cell knew it. Even knowing it made no difference.

One became indispensable.

One became expendable.

He knew which one he was.

"Doesn't matter now."

"It matters more than ever now." She said with a sure and steady conviction. "You know I love you."

"Not me, Aeryn. I'm the other one. Never me."

Another sigh from her and she turns away, that long lustrous night-black hair flows behind her.

"One in two places."

It sounds like an incantation, a koan he doesn't know, can't parse.

She is there suddenly and he didn't see her move, so startling as she takes him in her arms, presses her lips to his, lightning in them.

She feels real and for just a moment he is blessed by her, by her sweet lips and perfect strong body, the privilege of touching that cool smooth skin, of feeling that exquisite combination of firm/softness of her, and his arms are greedy for her and he crushes her to him, tries to devour her…

…his borrowed heart almost beats then. Almost.

He shoves her away and she is startled, surprised and he does not believe it. He won't. Not for him this torment. Not this pain. An illusion, some trick to lull him into surrender.

He will not. Not ever.

"Go away, Aeryn." He orders her. "Go back to him and forget me."

"I already have," she says and like some insubstantial mist, she vanishes.

Darkness crashed down and crushed him.