Answer and Haiku for Thea part three
Feb. 21st, 2005 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feldmanThea wanted a haiku on waking up and commentary on the 'multiple Johns and Aeryns' portion of "Little Acorns".
roll, tuck, blink back light
savor sleepy bed boy scent
can dreams into jam
Aeryn's hallucinations
The deal they made with Noranti was a truth, a question or a dare; and what's the use of a threat if it's never used, you know? I thought Aeryn needed to go that far before she'd let John know about what happened with Scorpius, before she trusted both him and herself, before she took that risk. I think she needed outside interference to be able to really look at herself and this John, to understand and integrate all the new info, all the changes they'd gone through, to formulate a new strategy--to become the emotional aggressor, which is the place I'd been steering her towards since that first confrontation when John finds out about the Moya connection and she counters with "are you happy?". She needed a "Dog With Two Bones" experience.
Noranti's hand slips into a pocket hidden in the folds of her skirt, and comes out with a leather drawstring pouch. "Take her weapon and yours, and set them in the corridor. Lock the door."
Granny's learned not to do this with fully-armed folk.
Aeryn holds her pistol out to John but he doesn't take it. "You don't have to do this."
She looks at him, expression open and frank.
Yes she does, because he's forced her to it, pushed the issue before she was ready. If she'll ever be ready.
Noranti prods at the stalemate. "Take her weapon, John."
Aeryn shakes the butt of the pistol at him.
Get with the program, John. You forced the issue, now ride it through.
Maybe she'll never be ready to come clean with him, but apparently she's ready for this. He stows the guns out in the hallway, hers and his, and locks the grill door.
Noranti poises powdery fingers in front of her mouth.
Aeryn squares her shoulders and nods.
The pixie dust flies and hits Aeryn like a punch in the face. She reels and gasps, the heels of her hands digging into her eyes.
John reaches out to steady her but Noranti knocks his arms down. He grits his teeth at the old woman and she holds up a warning finger. He settles for a verbal check. "Aeryn, are you okay?"
She blinks in his direction, swaying on her feet.
Noranti takes advantage of Aeryn's off-balance stoop to pull her down close and whisper into her ear. "See deeper."
Her response is a fervent, "Frell." Her eyes have gone wide and watery pink, and he wonders what she sees.
She sees them both, now, the ghost and the man
"See further."
"*You*." Tears well in her eyes and the keening pitch of her voice makes his hair stand on end. "How *could* I forget?"
What the ghost asked her was, "Did you forget what you promised me in the tub?"
"Listen." Noranti is bearing most of Aeryn's weight, and she eases them both to the floor. John kneels down to the same level but Noranti's glare warns against reaching out to Aeryn.
She clings to Noranti with one arm, but seizes John with her stare. Tears spill when she shakes her head, and he can't tell if they're frustration, grief, or rage. "I still love you," her voice is ragged and fierce, "and it still hurts."
"Aeryn."
"Not as sharp. Not as often. And I'm *so* sorry." She holds back the sobs but they mangle her words. "Our daughter was beautiful."
Ahh, that's gonna hurt like hell. But at this point, Zola is still Aeryn's child first, a dead man's child second, and this John's child third. Zola's the last piece Aeryn had of the first John, and letting this John claim the child is almost as painful as losing her was--it's losing her as a tie to the first man. It's also easier to have lost a dead man's child, than the one of the guy right in front of her, than acknowledging that living hurt.
John grabs a handful of Noranti's collar but his words are cut off by Aeryn grabbing his own t-shirt and yanking him close. His chest hurts from the hairs that are also buried in her fist, but his eyes were stinging already.
Noranti hisses,"Do not break the dream state," but it's Aeryn's glare that pins him, and her words that dissect him.
Her ghost asks, "Are you with him because he's the next best thing?"
"Yes, I loved him because he was you." She swallows but her throat doesn't clear, it closes around the hard shapes of the last words. "He's not."
She shakes with the sobs but doesn't cry out and doesn't let go of his shirt. He's rocked forward on his kneecaps and has to brace with a hand on the floor to shift to a position less painful. He cups one hand around her fist.
He reaches his other hand to touch her face but she flinches away, and her eyes squeeze shut.
"No." John sits back on his heels, cradling her fist in both hands. Her knuckles are like iron and his only choice would be to rip himself from her like a band-aid, leaving shirt and chest hair in her grip. "No, he's not the same guy."
This is not the bad thing he's assuming at this point, though--eavesdropping is so very dangerous because you only get half of the conversation.
"I tried to make him but he can't be..." She buries her face in Noranti's shoulder and the words come out broken into pieces, punctuated like an overheard phone conversation. "You left and you can't be hurt no matter what I do, or who I frell, or who...I don't need your frelling permission...or your forgiveness..."
She loves the living man, not because he's a copy, but for himself. Her ghost isn't really upset by this so much as clarifying it for her, showing her the two of them side by side and making her confront the fact that she loves two men--but only one of them is alive to benefit from her love. Pulling back for the sake of her ghost is useless; denying the living man the truth because it requires that she trust him more than she did the ghost is stupid. She says she doesn't need his forgiveness or permission, but this is indeed what she's getting.
You're a jealous bastard the both of you, and she's cheating on a dead man to be with you. John presses her fist tight against his chest, feels it squeezing around his heart.
With half a conversation to work with, John's still a step behind.
She whips her head out of Noranti's embrace and wrenches John so close he can only see her whacked out eyes and a few stars in his vision from his depilated chest. "I did and I do. And that has nothing to do with him."
Her ghost asks, "Do you love me? Do you miss me?" And that's the point--that these emotions and memories have nothing to do with how she relates to the living man--they shouldn't hold her back.
What did he look like in the kitchen, staring at nothing while he watched his bride die? Gibbering at phantoms while all the fantasies that had sustained him were ripped out by the roots.
He's desperate to soothe her and he's worried that it's not only impossible but unwise. That she needs this, perhaps, no matter how gratuitous and cruel it seems from the outside. "Whatever it is, it's okay."
"New strategy." Aeryn's whisper is cracked. "Everything is different now. Every one and every thing."
Now that she knows the shape of the problem, the avenues open to her, she goes right into strategy and action. That's my girl.
"See your path."
Aeryn's lashes flutter, unsettling at this proximity but not as distressing as when her eyes roll back and she falls limp, pulling both of them to the ground with her.
"Granny, so help me God--"
Aeryn twitches back with a laugh and a million mile stare.
Noranti spares him a nervous glance as she coos at Aeryn. "See your path."
Granny's just gone out of her depth, heh.
He is going to smother that old woman with her own hair when this is over.
Aeryn pulls on his shoulder and lurches to a stand, knocking Noranti on her ass. She takes off running.
His fingers graze her boot as he stumbles to his feet after her, but she's already keyed the lock open and is slipping through a crack in the doorway as soon as the grill starts to rise. She blows right past the paired guns on the floor and keeps running, ponytail flying out behind her.
"Lock these up in case she comes back this way!" he shouts at Noranti as he jumps over the pile, picking up speed in pursuit.
Aeryn weaves through corridors, her boots barely hitting the ground as she runs, all her energy channeled to forward momentum.
Aeryn's built for speed and agility, he's lucky she's looking to keep him with her.
"Hold on, woman!"
"Hurry!" she shouts back over her shoulder, her arms braced as if she had a pulse rifle ready in her hands.
Without the barrier of her ghost, it comes down to the triad of Aeryn, John and Scorpius. You and me against the world--only at this point she's *just* gotten to the point where she's looking to build the "you and me" part. Visualization of the goal is the first step--Aeryn and John against Scorpius in her head, against a phantom on-board the ship.
Loose cannon. "*Aeryn!*"
They approach a bend in the corridor and he closes the gap between them, aiming to tackle her against the outer wall of the curve.
Thank god for football practice, eh?
Just short of the curve, she stops on a dime and spins, grappling his arms and using his inertia to swing them around and crash them both hard against the floor.
He gasps, "Aer--"
"Aeryn" is John's default word, the first thing that comes out of his mouth when his brain engages his tongue.
She claps her hand over his mouth and presses him down with her body. She says in the barest whisper, "Shut up." She cranes her neck to peer around the bend in the corridor then reports into his ear. "He's *here*. Are you sure your plan will work?"
Her hand would muffle any reply so he shakes his head.
Because even John doesn't have faith in his own plans. Desperate hope, maybe, but no trace of surety.
"SNAFU, then. Right, let's go." She licks his earlobe and pushes up from the floor, but he holds her fast.
This is a little touch of season two Aeryn, gung-ho and on-the-job. I figure she's had plenty of time to learn about SNAFU, and may even understand the acronym now that she can read English.
Noranti said not to break the dream state. If he was sure it wouldn't harm her he'd do it anyway, but he doesn't know, he's only been on the inside of it before, so he plays along. He meets her puzzled look and whispers, "What are we doing, Aeryn?"
"Here it comes." Her eyes are rose and indigo, and her ponytail spills over her shoulder onto his face.
She's distracted by Moya at this point, at the anxious giddiness of her as she follows Binok into the wormhole.
He spits the hair out of his mouth. "What?"
"Hold on tight!" Her pupils twitch wide open and she arches her back against his embrace while the whole ship rolls around him and drops--
Moya finds that when she's not scared, wormholes are exhilarating fun.
The scent burns in his head. He's grown so used to the slow pulse of it, regular as an atomic clock, that he hadn't paid attention the build up or the pop.
Moya is inside the wormhole.
"She's following Binok!" The excitement in Aeryn's face is a funhouse mirror of the fear surging through him. "We'll be there soon!"
Binok's the matriarch Leviathan, the leader of a pod of ships that treat their local wormhole nexus like a subway system--he squeezes his eyes shut and prays that Binok's driving is enough of a loophole to see them through safely.
I figure it's the steering part that engages his consciousness with the wormhole and therefore opens the possibility of messing things up. The Leviathans use it as a location conduit, so they move through the wormhole the same way John did the first time--if you're unaware of the time consequences, you don't muddle those parameters, you don't even see those off-ramps much less steer into them.
Aeryn's struggling against his grip, eyes fevered.
He doesn't dare release her, so he cranes up and nudges her comm with his chin. "Hey Captain, everything okay up there?" He needs reinforcements.
"Don't worry, John." D'Argo's calm voice transfixes Aeryn, and she ceases to struggle in his arms.
D'Argo just has one of those voices, especially when he's mellow.
"Pilot reassures me that the Leviathan we're following is very familiar with the wormhole system, and this will cut down our travel time considerably without taxing Moya with starburst."
The swishing of skirts and footfalls heralds Noranti, coming around the bend like the cavalry. In a swoop she crouches down and blows a second cloud of powder at Aeryn.
The old woman has great aim, but Aeryn's violent flinch flicks the surplus right into John's eyes.
Aeryn falls limp onto his chest, the crack of her forehead slamming the floor next to his ear echoing with the blow of the drug hitting his brain. In the heartbeat of consciousness before he follows her down, John hears his own "shit" paired with Noranti's faded "oops".
John also has a visionary experience, but it's not as tumultuous as Aeryn's. John hashes out some things with Harvey and we also get to see the Princess and Zola again. Since Thea asked for the multiple Johns and Aeryns part, I've skipped John's golf game with Harvey and the girls.
***
Aeryn walks slowly up the corridor, right thumb hooked on her gunbelt so her fingers brush against the holster. What was she investigating? She can't quite recall.
"There you are!" Zhaan comes up from behind and takes Aeryn's left arm, threading graceful blue fingers with hers and cradling the arm against her soft caftan. She smiles at Aeryn and a look of concern crosses her face. "Aeryn, are you feeling too warm?"
"Warm?" Aeryn follows her gaze and sees that the zip on her green shirt is down nearly to her navel, exposing a great deal more than she's comfortable with. She pulls the tab up to a decent level. "Must have slipped down."
The hard part about writing Aeryn is that she isn't introspective. Putting her into this kind of environment allows the introspection to become manifest, to play out in concrete ways that even an oblivious pragmatist like Aeryn Sun can eventually figure out. So we start with a little playful vulnerability.
"No matter. Everyone else is waiting."
"For what?"
"For *you*." Zhaan leads her through a doorway and into what should be a docking bay. Instead, the bay holds a recreation deck. Zhaan takes a deep breath. "That's much better."
I wanted the confluence of both of her homes, the idea that she took the best part of a command carrier and tucked it into Moya.
Aeryn relaxes as well under the influence of the green surroundings and freshened air. "What are we here for?"
"Your disciplinary hearing." Zhaan gives her a bemused look. "Are you sure it's not too hot here for you?"
Bwa!
Aeryn follows Zhaan's glance and feels her face redden. She jerks the zip back up past her breasts. "It must be broken."
"It doesn't do what you want it to do." Zhaan draws her toward a group of people gathered around a huge tree stump. "That doesn't mean that it's broken."
Aeryn's sharp reply aborts before takeoff. The gathering around the stump consists of a handful of Johns and Aeryns, and with her arrival they'll be evenly matched.
"Easy, love." Zhaan tugs her forward again. "It's a curious human custom, but one you've heard about before--a jury of your peers."
Where did all these Johns and Aeryns come from? Funny you should ask. You see, before I found the glory of supplemental light therapy, I spent a winter season treating my SAD with an SSRI. What they don't tell you about SSRIs is that some folks, when they come off of them (say, in the spring when I no longer needed it) go through withdrawal. Nasty withdrawal with headache, vertigo, vomiting, shaking and REM rebound that'll make you more exhausted after a full night's sleep than when you laid down before. The multiple Aeryns came from one of it seems hundreds of dreams I had over that first week of withdrawal. It featured Aeryn as Ernestine the telephone operator (Lily Tomlin's character), plugging wires into holes in a switchboard and connecting another Aeryn to different parts of herself. Gotta love the subconscious part of the writing process--even through cold turkey a part of the brain kept chugging away at the story.
***
The four Johns and three Aeryns are all dressed differently, and some of them are older than others. The youngest John, dressed in a white t-shirt and soft dark pants, sits on top of the stump. The youngest Aeryn leans against it in her battle flight suit, her helmet by Young John's leg. Young Aeryn looks into the sky where Young John is pointing.
Season one *g*
Aeryn feels a shift as the recreation deck becomes an actual planet with a real sky.
Because he pointed to it. This ties into a Concrete Blonde lyric on one of the mix CDs I made; "you show me things that are so neat to see."
"So it has no name, and no designation of its own, you just call it 'star'?" Young Aeryn's sneer is polished and honed. "As if it were the only one in the universe?"
Aeryn remains standing next to Zhaan, eavesdropping and fighting the urge to slap her younger self.
I think this would be the most difficult part of time travel--not smacking your younger self upside the head.
Young John smiles. "No, not 'star'--'sun'. Like you."
"I'm named Sun because my mother was a Sun."
"Difference is, you're not a point among many. You're the center point, the pole star."
For him.
Young Aeryn shakes her head as if shooing an insect. "There are no unvarying constants. Everything in the universe is in motion, and any decent system of navigation has a method to account for that."
I think the biggest struggle Aeryn had with re-defining herself outside of the PKs is not that she didn't think she was different or special, it was the idea that thinking so wasn't shameful and wrong.
"Granted, but from the point of view of a man on the ground, the sun wheeling in the sky is a lot more useful than the distant stars."
"Just because the man on the ground isn't conscious of his own velocity, doesn't negate the fact that he's hurtling through space just like everything else."
Speaking of hurtling through space...
Another John answers, and Aeryn is taken aback by how different his voice is compared to his younger self. "But if he orbits around a Sun, at least that's something." It's a command voice, low and rough, without the same music. This second John sits on the ground against the base of the stump, in the shadow. He's wrapped in armored leathers up to his neck, but it only emphasizes the pale nakedness of his face and throat.
Did anyone else get that feeling from season four John? My eyes kept being drawn to his throat and the flashes of wrist between his gloves and cuffs. Wrapped up tight with vulnerabilities on display.
Two other Aeryns are talking quietly but at odds a short distance away.
John gets three iterations, Aeryn gets three versions and the core who watches. I drew them up on a piece of paper, dressed them, named them, and then integrated them into core versions of the two of them. At the end, Aeryn makes the choice to face the core John--the living man outside of the vision.
Renegade Aeryn wears a long sleeveless dress, slit up the side. With her long straightened hair she's severe but striking, like a dress-knife in a decorated sheath. It's perfectly obvious to Aeryn now why Lechna didn't trust her for monens. He'd been right not to, but she'd been flirtatious and persistent and just a little bit goofy.
I can definitely see Aeryn considering goofiness as erotic; that playful sexuality is a kink she didn't realize she had until John.
When he finally cracked and let her into his confidence, she'd repaid his trust with a punch to his temple and then crushed his throat with the heel of her boot.
Lechna should have trusted his instincts.
Renegade Aeryn smiles, a quick flash of a grin that doesn't reach her painted eyes. She looks like a Disruptor compared to the third Aeryn, dressed in leathers and a vest, her hair soft down her back in waves the color of coffee.
Young Aeryn is the innocent; Comrade Aeryn is the friend; Renegade Aeryn is the killer. The Johns also sort out accordingly; Young John, Friendly John and Leather John.
"You're talking as if honesty is just another strategy," the third Aeryn's voice rises, "when it's the basis of any alliance. He's a comrade--"
Renegade Aeryn silences her with a pointed look and a head nod toward the approaching Zhaan and Aeryn.
"Here comes another one." A third John smiles from where he leans against the sunny side of the stump, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. He pulls a packet of gum from the chest pocket of the soft flannel that covers his t-shirt. Friendly John offers the pack to Leather John, who takes a piece as he looks Aeryn over.
Friendly John is the guy from "Revenging Angel", the way his soul was before Aeryn came back broken, before she left him and life *really* took a dive.
"Not just another one--thanks." Leather John crumples the foil paper and pauses before tossing the gum into his mouth. "She's *the* one. The core. We can get started now." He climbs to his feet.
Dude's so orally fixated he even chews gum in his wife's dreams.
Zhaan pats her hand before letting go. Aeryn checks the zip of her shirt and watches from a distance.
Zhaan takes the place of Aeryn/Ernestine; plugging in these disparate versions and showing the Core Aeryn how they all fit together; how identity is both shaped and retained. I wanted to reduce him to his component parts--not the twinning split, but the fundamental properties of both men--that their shared story had as much or more relevance as their divergent paths.
Zhaan lifts her hand up and Young John helps her onto the stump's top. "What are you, John Crichton?"
There's no hesitation. "I'm a scientist."
He was, wasn't he? Part of what's so painful about season four is that he's so disillusioned with the traditional Co-Kura stance toward science (pure discovery with no consideration of consequence) that he's lost his normal curiosity drive, something that had been integral to his character up until then.
"You are my friend. You risked your life to save me, to join my madness and reflect to me the best parts of myself. You shone a light into the dark that allowed me to escape."
"You're exaggerating, Blue." He shakes his head with a smile and jumps down to the grass. "I just gave you a reminder, that's all."
"No appreciation of the risk, no interest in the danger. You took action out of love and assumed the consequences as they came." Tears well as she looks at each of the men in turn. "When Aeryn died and I merged with you once more...I found that so much of my rage had bled into you during our first Unity, and had found a home in the cycles since. I'd had no idea."
I like the idea that Zhaan had multiple reasons for giving her life to get Aeryn back; for Aeryn, for John and for herself; for love and guilt and recompense.
Leather John corrects her. "It wasn't from you, Zhaan."
"You don't understand." Zhaan leans down, reaching out to him with her other hand, but only as a gesture. "I didn't send you down the path, but I had shown it to you. I had scattered the seeds, even if others tended the shoots."
Leather John looks down, hand resting on his weapon, and Aeryn knows that he hasn't conceded the point. He thinks the darkness was inside him all along.
I agree with him. I think Zhaan's vision of John as an innocent stems more from bias than real observation. She never really sees him as any different than her first impression, discounting how hard and cynical he becomes because he'd been the source through which she'd regained stability and calm. He saw her in the best light and I think she returns the favor.
Zhaan includes Aeryn with her eyes. "You both taught me a vital lesson about love. That love requires courage, that love is only as worthy as the demonstration of it."
I love it when Aeryn interrupts Zhaan's seek, telling her that her love isn't worth a damn if she won't get off her ass and help them survive. Aeryn didn't need to study to find out what love is; she understands in her gut. It's the courage to follow her gut that Aeryn learned from her exile aboard Moya. Even with Velorek, a good part of why she turns him in is to try to prove to herself by her actions that it isn't love.
Leather John crosses his arms tight over his chest and looks at the clouds.
"Love is only as worthy as the demonstration of it" cuts both ways for him, makes him even more uncomfortable in his skin, here with these Aeryns.
The John in flannel tells Zhaan, "That's just what friends do, Blue." He glances a smile at the Aeryn in a vest, and she offers him a quick sloppy grin before she schools her face to sobriety.
They are *so* doing it.
"You, John Crichton." Even without Zhaan's gesture, everyone seems to know that she means the man in the soft flannel shirt. He climbs the stump and faces her expectantly. "What are you?"
"I'm your friend."
"And her friend as well?" Zhaan stoops to pick up Young Aeryn's flight helmet.
Again, no hesitation. "Yes."
Zhaan offers the helmet to Friendly John. "Yet, you killed her."
Ba-zing!
"I didn't mean to." Grief seizes his face, and Aeryn looks away. She notices that Young John is nowhere to be seen, and that the other Aeryns have drifted to stand around her.
Damned chorus, following one all over the place.
Zhaan sets her forehead against Friendly John's. "The mark of mature intelligence is to learn from one's mistakes. But this was not your mistake to learn from. This murder was Harvey's, and he did learn from it. And you...you deserved to be spared from it." She looks sideways at Aeryn. "It was not the sole reason, nor the main reason, but on its own it might still have been reason enough for what I did."
I figure there's some bleed-over between the two of them, both out cold with Granny's pixie dust. This is why their visions are both set in the recreation deck, and why Harvey's parole pops up in Aeryn's vision.
"Rationalization." Young Aeryn scoffs. "She was always good at that."
*smack*
"Yes." Comrade Aeryn crosses her arms and tosses her hair over her shoulder with a cold glance to Renegade Aeryn. "I think we got that instead of her rage."
Comrade Aeryn is pissed at Renegade Aeryn because I think there was a component of self-loathing when she was with the Renegades, that she was betraying some of the things she'd learned about life when she was on Moya--even though the pain was such that she was driven to that life and she did learn something from it, I think it still doesn’t sit well with her.
"Her rage wouldn't have done us any good." Renegade Aeryn's voice is silky soft. "Her shrewdness is something we could have used more of."
Aeryn wants them to shut up, because just hearing all these permutations of her voice is making her skin itch. Friendly John is gone and Leather John climbs onto the stump.
He's the most recent iteration, the one she doesn't understand, and the closest to the core (the living man out side of the dream state).
Leather John stands before Zhaan in a deliberately casual stance, most of his weight on one leg and his gloved fists loose at his sides.
He even carries himself differently; diffident, wary, ready to react.
Zhaan steps closer despite the distant challenging look on his face. "What are you, John Crichton?"
His mouth smirks, but the eyes above it are preoccupied and cold. He talks more to himself than to Zhaan. "Mad, bad and dangerous to know."
The cynical badass, the guy table-dancing at Katratzi.
Zhaan smacks his arm flirtatiously, as easy as breathing. Leather John brings his full attention to her with a playful look of contrition.
I picture this as a mom-type interaction, that kind of teasingly rough affection.
Aeryn's never understood that kind of feminine tactic; she's always meant her violence. It seems dishonorable to use it mockingly, but coming from Zhaan it's a gentle reprimand and it's taken as such. The affection in her voice softens the words. "You can be an ordeal, John Crichton. Sometimes I feel sorry for her, having to deal with you. That is, when I don't feel sorry for you, for choosing to love her."
*Amen*
"There's nothing I wouldn't do for her." The playfulness is gone, but no heat replaces it. His voice is cold and a bit sick. "Damned little that I haven't already done."
Stuff she won't hear about until much later, when he tells her about what he did to get her back from the Scarrans.
Zhaan responds with even more warmth. "Your love is too much like death, John Crichton."
This is the most satisfyingly Zhaan line I've written.
He shrugs. "It's what I have to give."
Nice volley, there.
"No." Zhaan lays her palm against the leather-armored chest. "Curiosity, optimism, joy--these things are still in here." She snaps open the clasps of the jacket and slides her hand inside to rest on the same spot. "As well as empathy and humour. You aren't so injured that you've lost these things, even if your injuries have made them sore and stiff."
Boxed up and put away in the attic, seemingly useless and needless vulnerabilities; pieces of himself he doesn't show anymore, doesn't share freely. He starts to break them out later, when he begins to feel safe.
"That your official diagnosis?" His expression is a parody of pleasant affability. "Or are you just trying to make me feel better?"
"I'm trying to make Aeryn Sun understand, and I need your help." Zhaan pegs Young Aeryn with her gaze. "What are you, child?"
Young Aeryn bristles at the word 'child', and her reply is crisp with pride. "Officer Aeryn Sun, Special Peacekeeper Commando, Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment."
Zhaan speaks to the Aeryn she brought in. "That's what I thought." She turns back to Young Aeryn. "I know you better than you know yourself, but that isn't as difficult as it sounds."
Young Aeryn laughs with a slight sneer. "You know nothing about me."
"Don't I? I know that the shameful pieces of yourself that you've tried so viciously to eradicate are in fact strengths. You are emotionally weak, egotistically proud, and insatiably curious. There is nothing you will not attempt, no matter how daunting or how badly you may fail. You have always been more than what they've told you to be."
Ernestine, plugging in another cable, this time connecting Aeryn to another piece of Aeryn.
"I am a pilot, that is what I was born and bred to be. I want nothing more than to fly, and serve, and die with honor."
"You are also a liar, but only to yourself."
"I do *not* lie!" Young Aeryn scrambles up the stump but Zhaan leans down and grabs her by the collar of her grey t-shirt.
Her voice is hard and the words inescapable as she drags Young Aeryn roughly up onto the stump. "Tell me about love, Officer Sun. Tell me about desire, and duty, and the forbidden dirty things that brought you into this world. Tell me about your mother, Aeryn Sun. Explain to me how this secret didn't shape you at all."
Because love is shameful behaviour in the PKs, because Aeryn's memory of her mother must have been a dirty little secret for her, a peek into a different way of thinking and being that she'd had to tamp down like a fetish she could never express.
Young Aeryn gasps around the cloth constricting her throat, clawing at Zhaan's arm and looking wide-eyed up at her.
Speaking of tamping down what wants to be expressed...
Leather John watches, impassive but for his slightly open mouth.
Despite her painful grip, Zhaan's voice becomes soft. "You cannot explain this to me because it isn't true. You were raised in intentional ignorance of the heart, but your mother taught you one thing about love that no ship-bred Peacekeeper ever learns--love is action, it can change the universe, and you owe your existence to it."
Zhaan releases her grip and kneels down next to Aeryn, catching her angry glare. "You were very good at what you did then. You can be so much better at what you do now, because now you allow your once shameful secrets to shine out as your greatest strengths; your curiosity, your dignity, and your love."
This is what Renegade Aeryn struggled with, knowing she was neglecting some of her strengths by working in a PK-style system yet unable to make herself risk being hurt again.
She rises to her feet and speaks to Leather John. "And you, John Crichton, are not just the man you've become. You are also the men you have been and the child that you were. Nothing takes these things away from you except your stubborn refusal to acknowledge them. You are still a scientist, and a friend, and a good man, as well as a killer. You must decide what these things mean, because they all exist within you. You have to share them, all of them, with her."
For a few microts the image flickers between the clean cold man wrapped in black, and one very different; sweaty, with hollows under the eyes and a dead Captain's scuffed red leathers covering his shaking frame. He gasps as his knees give way, but by the time he catches himself against the wood, he's resolved back into black leathers. His hands spread against the wood's rough surface for balance, and his gloves are gone. He blinks as if his vision is blurred.
The vision flickers, showing that the armored shell is there because it protects incredible vulnerability; visually it's the injured faltering man she pulled out of the Gammak Base cell, the guy who's making it up as he goes along, the one who *needs* her.
Comrade Aeryn takes an intrepid step forward, but Renegade Aeryn grips the woman's arm to stop her, her painted face gone completely blank.
Renegade Aeryn holds the least amount of delusions; she knows that Leather John can't be helped right now, that it must play out.
Young Aeryn is nowhere to be seen.
Zhaan gestures to Comrade Aeryn, who shakes the Renegade Aeryn's grip from her arm. The Comrade doesn't approach the stump right away, but fixes the Renegade with a fierce look of anger and not a little disgust.
She'll get hers, though.
Renegade Aeryn shifts under the glare, flickers for a microt like a cable channel going out; her hair and skin slick with the sweat of fever, her body bound in an icy black suit, her dark-rimmed eyes holding only defeat.
Renegade Aeryn mirrors Leather John; the killers are hard because they have to be to survive--but no one wants to live like that. Aeryn, back on Moya to die, finds herself rescued from her own Gammak Base scenario. But how do two broken people save each other?
Zhaan calls, "Aeryn Sun" and the Comrade, earnest and unshakeable, climbs onto the stump. Leather John is sitting off the back edge, turned away from everyone. She reaches down to lay a hand on his shoulder, but his arm comes up and waves her off. She straightens reluctantly, and faces Zhaan.
Her attempts to get close to him throughout season four are rebuffed and rejected; her gung-ho perseverance is not what will break through the shell.
"What are you, Aeryn Sun?"
There's some hesitation in her reply, she's already bracing for Zhaan's response as if they're sparring. "I am a soldier."
Zhaan inclines her head. "And what does that mean?"
There's no pause this time as Comrade Aeryn lifts her chin. "Helping the defenseless."
"You went after him fearlessly, though it cost you your life. As Crichton had brought me back, you in turn brought him back."
"I tried."
"And succeeded, even if it wasn't the success you'd had in mind. The shock of your death allowed Crichton to regain control, gave him another chance for life, and freedom." Zhaan closes the distance between them. "And what you did for him, I in turn did for you. The Goddess was testing my understanding of the lesson. Though I choked on the fear, I did not want my love for either of you proved false by my cowardice. I went after you."
"You shouldn't have." The bitterness in Comrade Aeryn's voice makes the Renegade flicker again.
With Aeryn grieving and alone, working as an assassin, dying under the care of Scorpius, how much more wasted could Zhaan's sacrifice have been? Wouldn't it have perhaps been better to have stayed dead in the first place?
"I had to. Once I knew what must be done, I couldn't refuse to do it." Zhaan looks down at some undefined point between the Comrade and herself. "I had done too much of that in my life, and I understood that I couldn't bear that shame again...knowing that I had refused to learn a lesson that had been taught to me twice. I didn't have it in me to be so obstinate, to turn the Goddess away and rely solely on my rage to keep me warm in her absence."
Comrade Aeryn's voice chokes. "I didn't want to take your life."
"The only time it was ever my life was in the moment I gave it to you." Zhaan grasps the woman by her shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. "I have killed in the service of love, should I have refused to give my life for that same cause? This one act was penance, justice, the restoration of hope, the continuation of a circle."
The weight of all these is what overrode the fear and the certainty of death. I think her only guilty regret was what she did to Stark.
Tears fall unheeded down the Comrade's cheeks. "You shouldn't have forced me."
Renegade Aeryn's whisper is hoarse, "What's done is done." She stops flickering, and settles into the drawn eyes and fever suit. When she wavers on her feet, Aeryn braces her around the waist and lets the woman lean against her strength.
The Renegade accepts that she can only move forward, embrace her vulnerability and ride it out. By offering support, the core integrates the Renegade on her own.
"Do children have a choice when they come into the world?" Zhaan's tone softens and gains a hint of humor. "Aeryn, this was a circle you brought yourself into when you gave your life in the service of love--you cannot command that sacrifice to flow in only one direction."
Leather John sings quietly from the back of the stump. "*Let it float...it floats back to you...*"
The cynical badass, turned away and singing quietly so we don't hear the catch in his voice.
"Frell." The Renegade snickers against Aeryn's shoulder, soft and rueful. "Love Boat, my mivonks."
Renegade Aeryn, on the same wavelength as Leather John.
"You recover quickly from injury when you keep calm and let yourself rest." Zhaan takes Aeryn's hand, turns it palm up. "But you still have a sliver." Precise blue fingers prod at the flesh, pulling it taut and catching a section between merciless fingernails.
You know, I'm still not sure if the sliver is anything specific. It seems to me the sliver's a MacGuffin, it could be anything from Zola to secrets to pain itself--the important part is Aeryn breaking through her stoicism to cry out.
Aeryn's felt the sliver before but couldn't get it out, couldn't see it well enough to even determine the material. She only succeeded in forcing it deeper, and so left it alone to work itself out.
Zhaan eases the sliver through the sore flesh toward the calloused surface. "Cry out if it hurts."
Aeryn keeps her hand motionless in Zhaan's warm grip. "It's fine."
Zhaan drives a fingernail into the skin, angled underneath the sliver. It must be sliding out along a nerve, which sings pain up past her elbow and into her shoulder. "Cry out, Aeryn."
The flesh of her palm is hot and tender, and Aeryn catches her lip in her teeth to bear the sting.
John gets to his feet and joins them, looking down at Aeryn's hand with a distant curiosity while Zhaan digs and Aeryn's eyes water.
Ready for whatever she might need.
Zhaan pinches the flesh white enough that the sliver can just be discerned by the eye. Aeryn lets herself wince.
John catches her eye and then looks back at her palm, apparently waiting for something to happen.
He's willing her to cry out, to make that move toward him.
Zhaan digs her fingernails in a scissor angle on either side of the sliver, and Aeryn gives out an angry, "Ow!"
Zhaan fights dirty, but thank god for that.
John lets out a resolute sigh, reaches into his jacket and pulls something out of the ammo pocket of his vest. Zhaan lets him take Aeryn's hand.
He supports it from underneath with one hand, hooking his fingers and thumb on the sides of the palm, spreading it so the creases become red lines on the smooth surface. The sliver is centered in a hot red spot, the blood rushing back now that the pinch has been released. His other hand holds a sharp stylus, and he begins to carefully pick through the dead skin of the callous.
I really like the gentle ruthlessness here; the infliction of pain for the greater good.
The pain has eased back to a local soreness, so Aeryn watches John's intent expression. It's the same face he wears when he's making or fixing something, jaw loose, everything soft and gentle and focused where he's looking. A smile quirks in the corners of his mouth and he blinks, pulls back.
There's a sliver of metal clinging to the end of the stylus. Still holding her hand, he turns and blows the sliver off toward the grass, tucking the tool back into his ammo pocket.
There's something about a burly guy with precise grace; power and control. I'm a sucker for contrasts.
Zhaan is a slip of blue at the edge of the field, robe fluttering behind her on the breeze.
Maybe the sliver is Zhaan?
He plants a warm kiss on the red spot, then takes his other thumb and rubs the slight dampness into her palm.
Even as a killer, he still tries to kiss it and make it better. Such a weird thing, you know? Hence...
Such an odd creature. Aeryn feels it's safe at this point to assume this thought will ambush her on occasion for as long as she lives. To think that when she first met him he couldn't even open a door, and now he can open tunnels through space itself, through time. She steps closer, their hands still clasped awkwardly. "What are you?"
An excellent question.
"Yours."
The most relevant answer. Hers to understand and protect, to support and love. Only he's not making it easy, so she'll have to pull it out of him.
There's humor in his expression, a trace of the smirk that drove her mad in the beginning, a taste of the open smile she's still desperate to see. She smiles at that hint, and it blossoms.
The realization is complex and devastatingly simple: this Human she's mated herself to, is not to be understood by observation, but by participation. You learn how someone fights by sparring with them, exposing yourself to their blows as you attempt to land your own. Exposure to risk brings knowledge. The proof of strength is in the testing. Your opponent learns you in turn, tests you and forces you to improve.
She slides her hand up to his forearm, feeling him return her secure grip. They stand close enough that the breeze can't dissipate the heat gathering between them, and he watches her as if listening to her think.
I didn't want them to kiss, didn't want it to be sexual or eyes closed--it's about partnership, about her opening her eyes to *see* him as he is. I didn't want affection I wanted unmasked regard.
What did her younger self say--honesty is the basis of any alliance. He is her sworn lover, her comrade, her partner. She needs to know what he is made of, what his responses are, and she can only find that out by testing them. She's weighing her reluctance against her need to know.
She doesn't want to risk that he'll see this as another betrayal, that he'll pull away again when he hasn't even come back to her yet. So much to lose, so much lost already, so much time spent pretending that she knew him when in fact she was afraid to test his responses and confirm that she didn't.
She clasps his forearm tightly, and his grip on hers is firm and sure. Fear can only be conquered with action, with strength. Their alliance is only as strong as her willingness to risk herself for it.
She prepares to spar with herself, and with her husband.
roll, tuck, blink back light
savor sleepy bed boy scent
can dreams into jam
Aeryn's hallucinations
The deal they made with Noranti was a truth, a question or a dare; and what's the use of a threat if it's never used, you know? I thought Aeryn needed to go that far before she'd let John know about what happened with Scorpius, before she trusted both him and herself, before she took that risk. I think she needed outside interference to be able to really look at herself and this John, to understand and integrate all the new info, all the changes they'd gone through, to formulate a new strategy--to become the emotional aggressor, which is the place I'd been steering her towards since that first confrontation when John finds out about the Moya connection and she counters with "are you happy?". She needed a "Dog With Two Bones" experience.
Noranti's hand slips into a pocket hidden in the folds of her skirt, and comes out with a leather drawstring pouch. "Take her weapon and yours, and set them in the corridor. Lock the door."
Granny's learned not to do this with fully-armed folk.
Aeryn holds her pistol out to John but he doesn't take it. "You don't have to do this."
She looks at him, expression open and frank.
Yes she does, because he's forced her to it, pushed the issue before she was ready. If she'll ever be ready.
Noranti prods at the stalemate. "Take her weapon, John."
Aeryn shakes the butt of the pistol at him.
Get with the program, John. You forced the issue, now ride it through.
Maybe she'll never be ready to come clean with him, but apparently she's ready for this. He stows the guns out in the hallway, hers and his, and locks the grill door.
Noranti poises powdery fingers in front of her mouth.
Aeryn squares her shoulders and nods.
The pixie dust flies and hits Aeryn like a punch in the face. She reels and gasps, the heels of her hands digging into her eyes.
John reaches out to steady her but Noranti knocks his arms down. He grits his teeth at the old woman and she holds up a warning finger. He settles for a verbal check. "Aeryn, are you okay?"
She blinks in his direction, swaying on her feet.
Noranti takes advantage of Aeryn's off-balance stoop to pull her down close and whisper into her ear. "See deeper."
Her response is a fervent, "Frell." Her eyes have gone wide and watery pink, and he wonders what she sees.
She sees them both, now, the ghost and the man
"See further."
"*You*." Tears well in her eyes and the keening pitch of her voice makes his hair stand on end. "How *could* I forget?"
What the ghost asked her was, "Did you forget what you promised me in the tub?"
"Listen." Noranti is bearing most of Aeryn's weight, and she eases them both to the floor. John kneels down to the same level but Noranti's glare warns against reaching out to Aeryn.
She clings to Noranti with one arm, but seizes John with her stare. Tears spill when she shakes her head, and he can't tell if they're frustration, grief, or rage. "I still love you," her voice is ragged and fierce, "and it still hurts."
"Aeryn."
"Not as sharp. Not as often. And I'm *so* sorry." She holds back the sobs but they mangle her words. "Our daughter was beautiful."
Ahh, that's gonna hurt like hell. But at this point, Zola is still Aeryn's child first, a dead man's child second, and this John's child third. Zola's the last piece Aeryn had of the first John, and letting this John claim the child is almost as painful as losing her was--it's losing her as a tie to the first man. It's also easier to have lost a dead man's child, than the one of the guy right in front of her, than acknowledging that living hurt.
John grabs a handful of Noranti's collar but his words are cut off by Aeryn grabbing his own t-shirt and yanking him close. His chest hurts from the hairs that are also buried in her fist, but his eyes were stinging already.
Noranti hisses,"Do not break the dream state," but it's Aeryn's glare that pins him, and her words that dissect him.
Her ghost asks, "Are you with him because he's the next best thing?"
"Yes, I loved him because he was you." She swallows but her throat doesn't clear, it closes around the hard shapes of the last words. "He's not."
She shakes with the sobs but doesn't cry out and doesn't let go of his shirt. He's rocked forward on his kneecaps and has to brace with a hand on the floor to shift to a position less painful. He cups one hand around her fist.
He reaches his other hand to touch her face but she flinches away, and her eyes squeeze shut.
"No." John sits back on his heels, cradling her fist in both hands. Her knuckles are like iron and his only choice would be to rip himself from her like a band-aid, leaving shirt and chest hair in her grip. "No, he's not the same guy."
This is not the bad thing he's assuming at this point, though--eavesdropping is so very dangerous because you only get half of the conversation.
"I tried to make him but he can't be..." She buries her face in Noranti's shoulder and the words come out broken into pieces, punctuated like an overheard phone conversation. "You left and you can't be hurt no matter what I do, or who I frell, or who...I don't need your frelling permission...or your forgiveness..."
She loves the living man, not because he's a copy, but for himself. Her ghost isn't really upset by this so much as clarifying it for her, showing her the two of them side by side and making her confront the fact that she loves two men--but only one of them is alive to benefit from her love. Pulling back for the sake of her ghost is useless; denying the living man the truth because it requires that she trust him more than she did the ghost is stupid. She says she doesn't need his forgiveness or permission, but this is indeed what she's getting.
You're a jealous bastard the both of you, and she's cheating on a dead man to be with you. John presses her fist tight against his chest, feels it squeezing around his heart.
With half a conversation to work with, John's still a step behind.
She whips her head out of Noranti's embrace and wrenches John so close he can only see her whacked out eyes and a few stars in his vision from his depilated chest. "I did and I do. And that has nothing to do with him."
Her ghost asks, "Do you love me? Do you miss me?" And that's the point--that these emotions and memories have nothing to do with how she relates to the living man--they shouldn't hold her back.
What did he look like in the kitchen, staring at nothing while he watched his bride die? Gibbering at phantoms while all the fantasies that had sustained him were ripped out by the roots.
He's desperate to soothe her and he's worried that it's not only impossible but unwise. That she needs this, perhaps, no matter how gratuitous and cruel it seems from the outside. "Whatever it is, it's okay."
"New strategy." Aeryn's whisper is cracked. "Everything is different now. Every one and every thing."
Now that she knows the shape of the problem, the avenues open to her, she goes right into strategy and action. That's my girl.
"See your path."
Aeryn's lashes flutter, unsettling at this proximity but not as distressing as when her eyes roll back and she falls limp, pulling both of them to the ground with her.
"Granny, so help me God--"
Aeryn twitches back with a laugh and a million mile stare.
Noranti spares him a nervous glance as she coos at Aeryn. "See your path."
Granny's just gone out of her depth, heh.
He is going to smother that old woman with her own hair when this is over.
Aeryn pulls on his shoulder and lurches to a stand, knocking Noranti on her ass. She takes off running.
His fingers graze her boot as he stumbles to his feet after her, but she's already keyed the lock open and is slipping through a crack in the doorway as soon as the grill starts to rise. She blows right past the paired guns on the floor and keeps running, ponytail flying out behind her.
"Lock these up in case she comes back this way!" he shouts at Noranti as he jumps over the pile, picking up speed in pursuit.
Aeryn weaves through corridors, her boots barely hitting the ground as she runs, all her energy channeled to forward momentum.
Aeryn's built for speed and agility, he's lucky she's looking to keep him with her.
"Hold on, woman!"
"Hurry!" she shouts back over her shoulder, her arms braced as if she had a pulse rifle ready in her hands.
Without the barrier of her ghost, it comes down to the triad of Aeryn, John and Scorpius. You and me against the world--only at this point she's *just* gotten to the point where she's looking to build the "you and me" part. Visualization of the goal is the first step--Aeryn and John against Scorpius in her head, against a phantom on-board the ship.
Loose cannon. "*Aeryn!*"
They approach a bend in the corridor and he closes the gap between them, aiming to tackle her against the outer wall of the curve.
Thank god for football practice, eh?
Just short of the curve, she stops on a dime and spins, grappling his arms and using his inertia to swing them around and crash them both hard against the floor.
He gasps, "Aer--"
"Aeryn" is John's default word, the first thing that comes out of his mouth when his brain engages his tongue.
She claps her hand over his mouth and presses him down with her body. She says in the barest whisper, "Shut up." She cranes her neck to peer around the bend in the corridor then reports into his ear. "He's *here*. Are you sure your plan will work?"
Her hand would muffle any reply so he shakes his head.
Because even John doesn't have faith in his own plans. Desperate hope, maybe, but no trace of surety.
"SNAFU, then. Right, let's go." She licks his earlobe and pushes up from the floor, but he holds her fast.
This is a little touch of season two Aeryn, gung-ho and on-the-job. I figure she's had plenty of time to learn about SNAFU, and may even understand the acronym now that she can read English.
Noranti said not to break the dream state. If he was sure it wouldn't harm her he'd do it anyway, but he doesn't know, he's only been on the inside of it before, so he plays along. He meets her puzzled look and whispers, "What are we doing, Aeryn?"
"Here it comes." Her eyes are rose and indigo, and her ponytail spills over her shoulder onto his face.
She's distracted by Moya at this point, at the anxious giddiness of her as she follows Binok into the wormhole.
He spits the hair out of his mouth. "What?"
"Hold on tight!" Her pupils twitch wide open and she arches her back against his embrace while the whole ship rolls around him and drops--
Moya finds that when she's not scared, wormholes are exhilarating fun.
The scent burns in his head. He's grown so used to the slow pulse of it, regular as an atomic clock, that he hadn't paid attention the build up or the pop.
Moya is inside the wormhole.
"She's following Binok!" The excitement in Aeryn's face is a funhouse mirror of the fear surging through him. "We'll be there soon!"
Binok's the matriarch Leviathan, the leader of a pod of ships that treat their local wormhole nexus like a subway system--he squeezes his eyes shut and prays that Binok's driving is enough of a loophole to see them through safely.
I figure it's the steering part that engages his consciousness with the wormhole and therefore opens the possibility of messing things up. The Leviathans use it as a location conduit, so they move through the wormhole the same way John did the first time--if you're unaware of the time consequences, you don't muddle those parameters, you don't even see those off-ramps much less steer into them.
Aeryn's struggling against his grip, eyes fevered.
He doesn't dare release her, so he cranes up and nudges her comm with his chin. "Hey Captain, everything okay up there?" He needs reinforcements.
"Don't worry, John." D'Argo's calm voice transfixes Aeryn, and she ceases to struggle in his arms.
D'Argo just has one of those voices, especially when he's mellow.
"Pilot reassures me that the Leviathan we're following is very familiar with the wormhole system, and this will cut down our travel time considerably without taxing Moya with starburst."
The swishing of skirts and footfalls heralds Noranti, coming around the bend like the cavalry. In a swoop she crouches down and blows a second cloud of powder at Aeryn.
The old woman has great aim, but Aeryn's violent flinch flicks the surplus right into John's eyes.
Aeryn falls limp onto his chest, the crack of her forehead slamming the floor next to his ear echoing with the blow of the drug hitting his brain. In the heartbeat of consciousness before he follows her down, John hears his own "shit" paired with Noranti's faded "oops".
John also has a visionary experience, but it's not as tumultuous as Aeryn's. John hashes out some things with Harvey and we also get to see the Princess and Zola again. Since Thea asked for the multiple Johns and Aeryns part, I've skipped John's golf game with Harvey and the girls.
***
Aeryn walks slowly up the corridor, right thumb hooked on her gunbelt so her fingers brush against the holster. What was she investigating? She can't quite recall.
"There you are!" Zhaan comes up from behind and takes Aeryn's left arm, threading graceful blue fingers with hers and cradling the arm against her soft caftan. She smiles at Aeryn and a look of concern crosses her face. "Aeryn, are you feeling too warm?"
"Warm?" Aeryn follows her gaze and sees that the zip on her green shirt is down nearly to her navel, exposing a great deal more than she's comfortable with. She pulls the tab up to a decent level. "Must have slipped down."
The hard part about writing Aeryn is that she isn't introspective. Putting her into this kind of environment allows the introspection to become manifest, to play out in concrete ways that even an oblivious pragmatist like Aeryn Sun can eventually figure out. So we start with a little playful vulnerability.
"No matter. Everyone else is waiting."
"For what?"
"For *you*." Zhaan leads her through a doorway and into what should be a docking bay. Instead, the bay holds a recreation deck. Zhaan takes a deep breath. "That's much better."
I wanted the confluence of both of her homes, the idea that she took the best part of a command carrier and tucked it into Moya.
Aeryn relaxes as well under the influence of the green surroundings and freshened air. "What are we here for?"
"Your disciplinary hearing." Zhaan gives her a bemused look. "Are you sure it's not too hot here for you?"
Bwa!
Aeryn follows Zhaan's glance and feels her face redden. She jerks the zip back up past her breasts. "It must be broken."
"It doesn't do what you want it to do." Zhaan draws her toward a group of people gathered around a huge tree stump. "That doesn't mean that it's broken."
Aeryn's sharp reply aborts before takeoff. The gathering around the stump consists of a handful of Johns and Aeryns, and with her arrival they'll be evenly matched.
"Easy, love." Zhaan tugs her forward again. "It's a curious human custom, but one you've heard about before--a jury of your peers."
Where did all these Johns and Aeryns come from? Funny you should ask. You see, before I found the glory of supplemental light therapy, I spent a winter season treating my SAD with an SSRI. What they don't tell you about SSRIs is that some folks, when they come off of them (say, in the spring when I no longer needed it) go through withdrawal. Nasty withdrawal with headache, vertigo, vomiting, shaking and REM rebound that'll make you more exhausted after a full night's sleep than when you laid down before. The multiple Aeryns came from one of it seems hundreds of dreams I had over that first week of withdrawal. It featured Aeryn as Ernestine the telephone operator (Lily Tomlin's character), plugging wires into holes in a switchboard and connecting another Aeryn to different parts of herself. Gotta love the subconscious part of the writing process--even through cold turkey a part of the brain kept chugging away at the story.
***
The four Johns and three Aeryns are all dressed differently, and some of them are older than others. The youngest John, dressed in a white t-shirt and soft dark pants, sits on top of the stump. The youngest Aeryn leans against it in her battle flight suit, her helmet by Young John's leg. Young Aeryn looks into the sky where Young John is pointing.
Season one *g*
Aeryn feels a shift as the recreation deck becomes an actual planet with a real sky.
Because he pointed to it. This ties into a Concrete Blonde lyric on one of the mix CDs I made; "you show me things that are so neat to see."
"So it has no name, and no designation of its own, you just call it 'star'?" Young Aeryn's sneer is polished and honed. "As if it were the only one in the universe?"
Aeryn remains standing next to Zhaan, eavesdropping and fighting the urge to slap her younger self.
I think this would be the most difficult part of time travel--not smacking your younger self upside the head.
Young John smiles. "No, not 'star'--'sun'. Like you."
"I'm named Sun because my mother was a Sun."
"Difference is, you're not a point among many. You're the center point, the pole star."
For him.
Young Aeryn shakes her head as if shooing an insect. "There are no unvarying constants. Everything in the universe is in motion, and any decent system of navigation has a method to account for that."
I think the biggest struggle Aeryn had with re-defining herself outside of the PKs is not that she didn't think she was different or special, it was the idea that thinking so wasn't shameful and wrong.
"Granted, but from the point of view of a man on the ground, the sun wheeling in the sky is a lot more useful than the distant stars."
"Just because the man on the ground isn't conscious of his own velocity, doesn't negate the fact that he's hurtling through space just like everything else."
Speaking of hurtling through space...
Another John answers, and Aeryn is taken aback by how different his voice is compared to his younger self. "But if he orbits around a Sun, at least that's something." It's a command voice, low and rough, without the same music. This second John sits on the ground against the base of the stump, in the shadow. He's wrapped in armored leathers up to his neck, but it only emphasizes the pale nakedness of his face and throat.
Did anyone else get that feeling from season four John? My eyes kept being drawn to his throat and the flashes of wrist between his gloves and cuffs. Wrapped up tight with vulnerabilities on display.
Two other Aeryns are talking quietly but at odds a short distance away.
John gets three iterations, Aeryn gets three versions and the core who watches. I drew them up on a piece of paper, dressed them, named them, and then integrated them into core versions of the two of them. At the end, Aeryn makes the choice to face the core John--the living man outside of the vision.
Renegade Aeryn wears a long sleeveless dress, slit up the side. With her long straightened hair she's severe but striking, like a dress-knife in a decorated sheath. It's perfectly obvious to Aeryn now why Lechna didn't trust her for monens. He'd been right not to, but she'd been flirtatious and persistent and just a little bit goofy.
I can definitely see Aeryn considering goofiness as erotic; that playful sexuality is a kink she didn't realize she had until John.
When he finally cracked and let her into his confidence, she'd repaid his trust with a punch to his temple and then crushed his throat with the heel of her boot.
Lechna should have trusted his instincts.
Renegade Aeryn smiles, a quick flash of a grin that doesn't reach her painted eyes. She looks like a Disruptor compared to the third Aeryn, dressed in leathers and a vest, her hair soft down her back in waves the color of coffee.
Young Aeryn is the innocent; Comrade Aeryn is the friend; Renegade Aeryn is the killer. The Johns also sort out accordingly; Young John, Friendly John and Leather John.
"You're talking as if honesty is just another strategy," the third Aeryn's voice rises, "when it's the basis of any alliance. He's a comrade--"
Renegade Aeryn silences her with a pointed look and a head nod toward the approaching Zhaan and Aeryn.
"Here comes another one." A third John smiles from where he leans against the sunny side of the stump, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. He pulls a packet of gum from the chest pocket of the soft flannel that covers his t-shirt. Friendly John offers the pack to Leather John, who takes a piece as he looks Aeryn over.
Friendly John is the guy from "Revenging Angel", the way his soul was before Aeryn came back broken, before she left him and life *really* took a dive.
"Not just another one--thanks." Leather John crumples the foil paper and pauses before tossing the gum into his mouth. "She's *the* one. The core. We can get started now." He climbs to his feet.
Dude's so orally fixated he even chews gum in his wife's dreams.
Zhaan pats her hand before letting go. Aeryn checks the zip of her shirt and watches from a distance.
Zhaan takes the place of Aeryn/Ernestine; plugging in these disparate versions and showing the Core Aeryn how they all fit together; how identity is both shaped and retained. I wanted to reduce him to his component parts--not the twinning split, but the fundamental properties of both men--that their shared story had as much or more relevance as their divergent paths.
Zhaan lifts her hand up and Young John helps her onto the stump's top. "What are you, John Crichton?"
There's no hesitation. "I'm a scientist."
He was, wasn't he? Part of what's so painful about season four is that he's so disillusioned with the traditional Co-Kura stance toward science (pure discovery with no consideration of consequence) that he's lost his normal curiosity drive, something that had been integral to his character up until then.
"You are my friend. You risked your life to save me, to join my madness and reflect to me the best parts of myself. You shone a light into the dark that allowed me to escape."
"You're exaggerating, Blue." He shakes his head with a smile and jumps down to the grass. "I just gave you a reminder, that's all."
"No appreciation of the risk, no interest in the danger. You took action out of love and assumed the consequences as they came." Tears well as she looks at each of the men in turn. "When Aeryn died and I merged with you once more...I found that so much of my rage had bled into you during our first Unity, and had found a home in the cycles since. I'd had no idea."
I like the idea that Zhaan had multiple reasons for giving her life to get Aeryn back; for Aeryn, for John and for herself; for love and guilt and recompense.
Leather John corrects her. "It wasn't from you, Zhaan."
"You don't understand." Zhaan leans down, reaching out to him with her other hand, but only as a gesture. "I didn't send you down the path, but I had shown it to you. I had scattered the seeds, even if others tended the shoots."
Leather John looks down, hand resting on his weapon, and Aeryn knows that he hasn't conceded the point. He thinks the darkness was inside him all along.
I agree with him. I think Zhaan's vision of John as an innocent stems more from bias than real observation. She never really sees him as any different than her first impression, discounting how hard and cynical he becomes because he'd been the source through which she'd regained stability and calm. He saw her in the best light and I think she returns the favor.
Zhaan includes Aeryn with her eyes. "You both taught me a vital lesson about love. That love requires courage, that love is only as worthy as the demonstration of it."
I love it when Aeryn interrupts Zhaan's seek, telling her that her love isn't worth a damn if she won't get off her ass and help them survive. Aeryn didn't need to study to find out what love is; she understands in her gut. It's the courage to follow her gut that Aeryn learned from her exile aboard Moya. Even with Velorek, a good part of why she turns him in is to try to prove to herself by her actions that it isn't love.
Leather John crosses his arms tight over his chest and looks at the clouds.
"Love is only as worthy as the demonstration of it" cuts both ways for him, makes him even more uncomfortable in his skin, here with these Aeryns.
The John in flannel tells Zhaan, "That's just what friends do, Blue." He glances a smile at the Aeryn in a vest, and she offers him a quick sloppy grin before she schools her face to sobriety.
They are *so* doing it.
"You, John Crichton." Even without Zhaan's gesture, everyone seems to know that she means the man in the soft flannel shirt. He climbs the stump and faces her expectantly. "What are you?"
"I'm your friend."
"And her friend as well?" Zhaan stoops to pick up Young Aeryn's flight helmet.
Again, no hesitation. "Yes."
Zhaan offers the helmet to Friendly John. "Yet, you killed her."
Ba-zing!
"I didn't mean to." Grief seizes his face, and Aeryn looks away. She notices that Young John is nowhere to be seen, and that the other Aeryns have drifted to stand around her.
Damned chorus, following one all over the place.
Zhaan sets her forehead against Friendly John's. "The mark of mature intelligence is to learn from one's mistakes. But this was not your mistake to learn from. This murder was Harvey's, and he did learn from it. And you...you deserved to be spared from it." She looks sideways at Aeryn. "It was not the sole reason, nor the main reason, but on its own it might still have been reason enough for what I did."
I figure there's some bleed-over between the two of them, both out cold with Granny's pixie dust. This is why their visions are both set in the recreation deck, and why Harvey's parole pops up in Aeryn's vision.
"Rationalization." Young Aeryn scoffs. "She was always good at that."
*smack*
"Yes." Comrade Aeryn crosses her arms and tosses her hair over her shoulder with a cold glance to Renegade Aeryn. "I think we got that instead of her rage."
Comrade Aeryn is pissed at Renegade Aeryn because I think there was a component of self-loathing when she was with the Renegades, that she was betraying some of the things she'd learned about life when she was on Moya--even though the pain was such that she was driven to that life and she did learn something from it, I think it still doesn’t sit well with her.
"Her rage wouldn't have done us any good." Renegade Aeryn's voice is silky soft. "Her shrewdness is something we could have used more of."
Aeryn wants them to shut up, because just hearing all these permutations of her voice is making her skin itch. Friendly John is gone and Leather John climbs onto the stump.
He's the most recent iteration, the one she doesn't understand, and the closest to the core (the living man out side of the dream state).
Leather John stands before Zhaan in a deliberately casual stance, most of his weight on one leg and his gloved fists loose at his sides.
He even carries himself differently; diffident, wary, ready to react.
Zhaan steps closer despite the distant challenging look on his face. "What are you, John Crichton?"
His mouth smirks, but the eyes above it are preoccupied and cold. He talks more to himself than to Zhaan. "Mad, bad and dangerous to know."
The cynical badass, the guy table-dancing at Katratzi.
Zhaan smacks his arm flirtatiously, as easy as breathing. Leather John brings his full attention to her with a playful look of contrition.
I picture this as a mom-type interaction, that kind of teasingly rough affection.
Aeryn's never understood that kind of feminine tactic; she's always meant her violence. It seems dishonorable to use it mockingly, but coming from Zhaan it's a gentle reprimand and it's taken as such. The affection in her voice softens the words. "You can be an ordeal, John Crichton. Sometimes I feel sorry for her, having to deal with you. That is, when I don't feel sorry for you, for choosing to love her."
*Amen*
"There's nothing I wouldn't do for her." The playfulness is gone, but no heat replaces it. His voice is cold and a bit sick. "Damned little that I haven't already done."
Stuff she won't hear about until much later, when he tells her about what he did to get her back from the Scarrans.
Zhaan responds with even more warmth. "Your love is too much like death, John Crichton."
This is the most satisfyingly Zhaan line I've written.
He shrugs. "It's what I have to give."
Nice volley, there.
"No." Zhaan lays her palm against the leather-armored chest. "Curiosity, optimism, joy--these things are still in here." She snaps open the clasps of the jacket and slides her hand inside to rest on the same spot. "As well as empathy and humour. You aren't so injured that you've lost these things, even if your injuries have made them sore and stiff."
Boxed up and put away in the attic, seemingly useless and needless vulnerabilities; pieces of himself he doesn't show anymore, doesn't share freely. He starts to break them out later, when he begins to feel safe.
"That your official diagnosis?" His expression is a parody of pleasant affability. "Or are you just trying to make me feel better?"
"I'm trying to make Aeryn Sun understand, and I need your help." Zhaan pegs Young Aeryn with her gaze. "What are you, child?"
Young Aeryn bristles at the word 'child', and her reply is crisp with pride. "Officer Aeryn Sun, Special Peacekeeper Commando, Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment."
Zhaan speaks to the Aeryn she brought in. "That's what I thought." She turns back to Young Aeryn. "I know you better than you know yourself, but that isn't as difficult as it sounds."
Young Aeryn laughs with a slight sneer. "You know nothing about me."
"Don't I? I know that the shameful pieces of yourself that you've tried so viciously to eradicate are in fact strengths. You are emotionally weak, egotistically proud, and insatiably curious. There is nothing you will not attempt, no matter how daunting or how badly you may fail. You have always been more than what they've told you to be."
Ernestine, plugging in another cable, this time connecting Aeryn to another piece of Aeryn.
"I am a pilot, that is what I was born and bred to be. I want nothing more than to fly, and serve, and die with honor."
"You are also a liar, but only to yourself."
"I do *not* lie!" Young Aeryn scrambles up the stump but Zhaan leans down and grabs her by the collar of her grey t-shirt.
Her voice is hard and the words inescapable as she drags Young Aeryn roughly up onto the stump. "Tell me about love, Officer Sun. Tell me about desire, and duty, and the forbidden dirty things that brought you into this world. Tell me about your mother, Aeryn Sun. Explain to me how this secret didn't shape you at all."
Because love is shameful behaviour in the PKs, because Aeryn's memory of her mother must have been a dirty little secret for her, a peek into a different way of thinking and being that she'd had to tamp down like a fetish she could never express.
Young Aeryn gasps around the cloth constricting her throat, clawing at Zhaan's arm and looking wide-eyed up at her.
Speaking of tamping down what wants to be expressed...
Leather John watches, impassive but for his slightly open mouth.
Despite her painful grip, Zhaan's voice becomes soft. "You cannot explain this to me because it isn't true. You were raised in intentional ignorance of the heart, but your mother taught you one thing about love that no ship-bred Peacekeeper ever learns--love is action, it can change the universe, and you owe your existence to it."
Zhaan releases her grip and kneels down next to Aeryn, catching her angry glare. "You were very good at what you did then. You can be so much better at what you do now, because now you allow your once shameful secrets to shine out as your greatest strengths; your curiosity, your dignity, and your love."
This is what Renegade Aeryn struggled with, knowing she was neglecting some of her strengths by working in a PK-style system yet unable to make herself risk being hurt again.
She rises to her feet and speaks to Leather John. "And you, John Crichton, are not just the man you've become. You are also the men you have been and the child that you were. Nothing takes these things away from you except your stubborn refusal to acknowledge them. You are still a scientist, and a friend, and a good man, as well as a killer. You must decide what these things mean, because they all exist within you. You have to share them, all of them, with her."
For a few microts the image flickers between the clean cold man wrapped in black, and one very different; sweaty, with hollows under the eyes and a dead Captain's scuffed red leathers covering his shaking frame. He gasps as his knees give way, but by the time he catches himself against the wood, he's resolved back into black leathers. His hands spread against the wood's rough surface for balance, and his gloves are gone. He blinks as if his vision is blurred.
The vision flickers, showing that the armored shell is there because it protects incredible vulnerability; visually it's the injured faltering man she pulled out of the Gammak Base cell, the guy who's making it up as he goes along, the one who *needs* her.
Comrade Aeryn takes an intrepid step forward, but Renegade Aeryn grips the woman's arm to stop her, her painted face gone completely blank.
Renegade Aeryn holds the least amount of delusions; she knows that Leather John can't be helped right now, that it must play out.
Young Aeryn is nowhere to be seen.
Zhaan gestures to Comrade Aeryn, who shakes the Renegade Aeryn's grip from her arm. The Comrade doesn't approach the stump right away, but fixes the Renegade with a fierce look of anger and not a little disgust.
She'll get hers, though.
Renegade Aeryn shifts under the glare, flickers for a microt like a cable channel going out; her hair and skin slick with the sweat of fever, her body bound in an icy black suit, her dark-rimmed eyes holding only defeat.
Renegade Aeryn mirrors Leather John; the killers are hard because they have to be to survive--but no one wants to live like that. Aeryn, back on Moya to die, finds herself rescued from her own Gammak Base scenario. But how do two broken people save each other?
Zhaan calls, "Aeryn Sun" and the Comrade, earnest and unshakeable, climbs onto the stump. Leather John is sitting off the back edge, turned away from everyone. She reaches down to lay a hand on his shoulder, but his arm comes up and waves her off. She straightens reluctantly, and faces Zhaan.
Her attempts to get close to him throughout season four are rebuffed and rejected; her gung-ho perseverance is not what will break through the shell.
"What are you, Aeryn Sun?"
There's some hesitation in her reply, she's already bracing for Zhaan's response as if they're sparring. "I am a soldier."
Zhaan inclines her head. "And what does that mean?"
There's no pause this time as Comrade Aeryn lifts her chin. "Helping the defenseless."
"You went after him fearlessly, though it cost you your life. As Crichton had brought me back, you in turn brought him back."
"I tried."
"And succeeded, even if it wasn't the success you'd had in mind. The shock of your death allowed Crichton to regain control, gave him another chance for life, and freedom." Zhaan closes the distance between them. "And what you did for him, I in turn did for you. The Goddess was testing my understanding of the lesson. Though I choked on the fear, I did not want my love for either of you proved false by my cowardice. I went after you."
"You shouldn't have." The bitterness in Comrade Aeryn's voice makes the Renegade flicker again.
With Aeryn grieving and alone, working as an assassin, dying under the care of Scorpius, how much more wasted could Zhaan's sacrifice have been? Wouldn't it have perhaps been better to have stayed dead in the first place?
"I had to. Once I knew what must be done, I couldn't refuse to do it." Zhaan looks down at some undefined point between the Comrade and herself. "I had done too much of that in my life, and I understood that I couldn't bear that shame again...knowing that I had refused to learn a lesson that had been taught to me twice. I didn't have it in me to be so obstinate, to turn the Goddess away and rely solely on my rage to keep me warm in her absence."
Comrade Aeryn's voice chokes. "I didn't want to take your life."
"The only time it was ever my life was in the moment I gave it to you." Zhaan grasps the woman by her shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. "I have killed in the service of love, should I have refused to give my life for that same cause? This one act was penance, justice, the restoration of hope, the continuation of a circle."
The weight of all these is what overrode the fear and the certainty of death. I think her only guilty regret was what she did to Stark.
Tears fall unheeded down the Comrade's cheeks. "You shouldn't have forced me."
Renegade Aeryn's whisper is hoarse, "What's done is done." She stops flickering, and settles into the drawn eyes and fever suit. When she wavers on her feet, Aeryn braces her around the waist and lets the woman lean against her strength.
The Renegade accepts that she can only move forward, embrace her vulnerability and ride it out. By offering support, the core integrates the Renegade on her own.
"Do children have a choice when they come into the world?" Zhaan's tone softens and gains a hint of humor. "Aeryn, this was a circle you brought yourself into when you gave your life in the service of love--you cannot command that sacrifice to flow in only one direction."
Leather John sings quietly from the back of the stump. "*Let it float...it floats back to you...*"
The cynical badass, turned away and singing quietly so we don't hear the catch in his voice.
"Frell." The Renegade snickers against Aeryn's shoulder, soft and rueful. "Love Boat, my mivonks."
Renegade Aeryn, on the same wavelength as Leather John.
"You recover quickly from injury when you keep calm and let yourself rest." Zhaan takes Aeryn's hand, turns it palm up. "But you still have a sliver." Precise blue fingers prod at the flesh, pulling it taut and catching a section between merciless fingernails.
You know, I'm still not sure if the sliver is anything specific. It seems to me the sliver's a MacGuffin, it could be anything from Zola to secrets to pain itself--the important part is Aeryn breaking through her stoicism to cry out.
Aeryn's felt the sliver before but couldn't get it out, couldn't see it well enough to even determine the material. She only succeeded in forcing it deeper, and so left it alone to work itself out.
Zhaan eases the sliver through the sore flesh toward the calloused surface. "Cry out if it hurts."
Aeryn keeps her hand motionless in Zhaan's warm grip. "It's fine."
Zhaan drives a fingernail into the skin, angled underneath the sliver. It must be sliding out along a nerve, which sings pain up past her elbow and into her shoulder. "Cry out, Aeryn."
The flesh of her palm is hot and tender, and Aeryn catches her lip in her teeth to bear the sting.
John gets to his feet and joins them, looking down at Aeryn's hand with a distant curiosity while Zhaan digs and Aeryn's eyes water.
Ready for whatever she might need.
Zhaan pinches the flesh white enough that the sliver can just be discerned by the eye. Aeryn lets herself wince.
John catches her eye and then looks back at her palm, apparently waiting for something to happen.
He's willing her to cry out, to make that move toward him.
Zhaan digs her fingernails in a scissor angle on either side of the sliver, and Aeryn gives out an angry, "Ow!"
Zhaan fights dirty, but thank god for that.
John lets out a resolute sigh, reaches into his jacket and pulls something out of the ammo pocket of his vest. Zhaan lets him take Aeryn's hand.
He supports it from underneath with one hand, hooking his fingers and thumb on the sides of the palm, spreading it so the creases become red lines on the smooth surface. The sliver is centered in a hot red spot, the blood rushing back now that the pinch has been released. His other hand holds a sharp stylus, and he begins to carefully pick through the dead skin of the callous.
I really like the gentle ruthlessness here; the infliction of pain for the greater good.
The pain has eased back to a local soreness, so Aeryn watches John's intent expression. It's the same face he wears when he's making or fixing something, jaw loose, everything soft and gentle and focused where he's looking. A smile quirks in the corners of his mouth and he blinks, pulls back.
There's a sliver of metal clinging to the end of the stylus. Still holding her hand, he turns and blows the sliver off toward the grass, tucking the tool back into his ammo pocket.
There's something about a burly guy with precise grace; power and control. I'm a sucker for contrasts.
Zhaan is a slip of blue at the edge of the field, robe fluttering behind her on the breeze.
Maybe the sliver is Zhaan?
He plants a warm kiss on the red spot, then takes his other thumb and rubs the slight dampness into her palm.
Even as a killer, he still tries to kiss it and make it better. Such a weird thing, you know? Hence...
Such an odd creature. Aeryn feels it's safe at this point to assume this thought will ambush her on occasion for as long as she lives. To think that when she first met him he couldn't even open a door, and now he can open tunnels through space itself, through time. She steps closer, their hands still clasped awkwardly. "What are you?"
An excellent question.
"Yours."
The most relevant answer. Hers to understand and protect, to support and love. Only he's not making it easy, so she'll have to pull it out of him.
There's humor in his expression, a trace of the smirk that drove her mad in the beginning, a taste of the open smile she's still desperate to see. She smiles at that hint, and it blossoms.
The realization is complex and devastatingly simple: this Human she's mated herself to, is not to be understood by observation, but by participation. You learn how someone fights by sparring with them, exposing yourself to their blows as you attempt to land your own. Exposure to risk brings knowledge. The proof of strength is in the testing. Your opponent learns you in turn, tests you and forces you to improve.
She slides her hand up to his forearm, feeling him return her secure grip. They stand close enough that the breeze can't dissipate the heat gathering between them, and he watches her as if listening to her think.
I didn't want them to kiss, didn't want it to be sexual or eyes closed--it's about partnership, about her opening her eyes to *see* him as he is. I didn't want affection I wanted unmasked regard.
What did her younger self say--honesty is the basis of any alliance. He is her sworn lover, her comrade, her partner. She needs to know what he is made of, what his responses are, and she can only find that out by testing them. She's weighing her reluctance against her need to know.
She doesn't want to risk that he'll see this as another betrayal, that he'll pull away again when he hasn't even come back to her yet. So much to lose, so much lost already, so much time spent pretending that she knew him when in fact she was afraid to test his responses and confirm that she didn't.
She clasps his forearm tightly, and his grip on hers is firm and sure. Fear can only be conquered with action, with strength. Their alliance is only as strong as her willingness to risk herself for it.
She prepares to spar with herself, and with her husband.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 08:49 pm (UTC)Will now spend the rest of the day envisioning neurotransmitters, like sardines, migrating in a giant school across Feldman's brain, beset by the sharks of Seratonin and the Dolphins of Depression.
*note to self: Discovery Channel crack is infectious*
no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 09:18 pm (UTC)The imagery is infectious I tell, infectious!
(And, yeah, today *is* kinda a batshit crazy kinda day)