THE TERRACE HAD BEEN THEIR PLACE.
They would sit or stand and watch.
They would touch without touching.
They would understand one another in the comfortable silences.
All around them - blazing stars and radiant dust and beautiful cataclysms, all his stellar dreams spread before him - for all that wonder, the infinite beauty of the cosmos - he would only have eyes for her.
The Creature remembered. That's what he truly was, just possessing the other name because it was convenient, would suit him when the time came.
He knew her in his heart as if it were only yesterday, as if he'd been here himself then. She had been superb and real and she had smiled that Smile – that Smile that he could feel, that Smile that peeled open his soul, and made every one of his cells light up - at him, for him and him alone.
No.
He has never stood here with her. That was not possible.
The memories and emotions that made this place special belonged to them.
He was the Creature now and he stood here now only as a final test.
He would have laughed if he could have remembered how. Things weren't funny. They hadn't been for a long time.
He might have cried. He'd forgotten how to do that, too.
Feelings were for other men. Those with hope.
He had learned, had Kaarvok's Creature.
He had finally paid attention.
Out among the abandoned and dispossessed, the angry, the lost, the cruel. His heart and body bore the scars of those new lessons.
He had not wanted it. Now, though, he knew the truth of it.
Two from one, both claimed identical. Nonsense. At the moment of his creation the Creature and John were inescapably different.
Aeryn had seen those differences – the gathering darkness at the base of him, the twisted-bastard creation of Kaarvok he was – and then she had followed her remorseless feminine instincts and she'd chosen as she should have.
She was not one to be fooled.
"We don't say goodbyes."
A ghost slept in his synapses, it too a copy, it likewise a creature, though they had not spoke for some time.
Here then the differences showed themselves – this ghost was one John had purged, but the Creature didn't want his gone. He would continue to use his own personal Scorpius' for his own ends, use the knowledge.
Harve would be persuaded to full acquiescence or Harve too would go. He understood the necessities, the hard decisions to be made, did the once-Harvey. Now he understood and he would acquiesce. It too was a survivor, another bastard creation.
Bastard sons of monsters, they.
They would be brothers.
"We don't say goodbyes."
She'd flowered on Talyn, when she felt it all for the first time openly and honestly, without fear. John had been there. It did not matter if the feelings, thoughts and motivations of the Creature were the same.
Of course they were. Then.
He would never know those moments, though, they could not be recaptured, they could not be duplicated. All those firsts - gone forever - never to be reclaimed.
Jealous, arrogant entitled monster, he'd chided himself. They were never meant for you to know.
Crais had allowed him to view some of Talyn's logs, his memories, on the trip back from Osakis Lashing. They were incomplete and Talyn in no real shape to be thorough.
The Creature had not existed on Talyn in any form, not a specter, not a thought, not a memory, not a "what about…?".
As it should have been.
The Creature had pondered and raged and it was all futile until he purged it from himself. He did not know how - yet. All he knew with any certainty was what he was not. For now, it had to be enough.
He understood now, these essential truths:
The necessity of one day at a time - taken as it came - one night at a time.
Master the very minutiae of life, to be wary, to be ready.
The way of the gun, the way of the shadows and the dark silences.
Allies only of the moment, and you trusted nothing but your tools, your instincts and your skills. Only ever yourself.
There was no safety, nowhere was secure, no one could ever be trusted fully, for in the end all betrayed - and since the grave was the end for all, it didn't matter if you lived or died.
John's enemies, who would make no distinction and were thus his enemies, did not, would not rest.
Unlike John, however, The Creature did not run.
Never again would he run.
Frivolities wasted time – and wasted time would get you nothing but death, wrapped prettily and hand-delivered by Fate.
Home was wherever he stood at the moment.
Love nothing. If you love nothing, you lose nothing.
John had done many, many very stupid things because he'd allowed himself that weakness.
The Creature will not make those mistakes.
"First things first" has become his new mantra. A commandment, an unalterable will, a pledge, a promise.
This, he realizes, is a gravesite. Perhaps it's fitting. He does not know yet.
A man with John Crichton's face entered this terrace. He will die here.
The Creature will depart and he will not look back.
In his heart, new shadows coil. He gathers them close. How good they are. How right.
She has taught him well.
Her world. Her ways. All or Nothing.
The Creature was never meant for her all.
He will live on Her Nothing. How good it is. How right.
Do not hate her comes unbidden.
He almost smiles. The Creature does not hate. There is no anger because he has no right to be angry.
"Angry" meant that he was betrayed or slighted somehow, but he wasn't, he hadn't been – it hadn't been a contest, simply because he had never been a contestant.
Nothing she had done had been "wrong" - how could it have been? She was not responsible for his temporary delusions of Crichtonhood.
Aeryn Sun was never, had never, would never be his, they shared and would share nothing. He remembers what he remembers because those memories are merely copies, memories of a life in which he had had no stake.
He is not real, they are not real.
One last thing, one last necessary thing - sent into the ether and all those places between. Perhaps one day, by some off whim of fate, she'd hear it, pretend for the briefest of moments that he had mattered enough for it to mean something.
"Goodbye."
