AERYN'S JOURNEY # 26 - A PREFECT MURDER
Jul. 23rd, 2010 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nymeria_dwAERYN'S JOURNEY - A Prefect Murder
(a Farscape fanfiction)
Author: Nymeria
Disclaimer: the Farscape universe and its characters do not belong to me - I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Rating: PG
Setting: Season 4 Episode 9
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I have killed before.
When I was a soldier it was part of my life: facing people in battle, raining down death and destruction from my Prowler or joining the troops for cleanup work on planetary missions.
When my life changed, I killed in self-defense or to protect my comrades, my friends.
Even when I became an assassin there was still a reason for the blood I spilled, a worthy cause that required to eliminate a threat, or an injustice.
But never, ever, this blinding wave of madness.
"That's all I remember: thinking I can't stop myself."
Not even a thought, at that, more like the faint echo of a stranger's voice in my mind, uttering words with little or no sense at all. More like a nightmare from which there is no waking up, no respite.
And reality is much worse than the nightmare itself.
"What about the others?"
"What others?"
All I remember is the one man, the local chieftain hit by a pulse blast, going down with a burst of energy blossoming on his chest.
All I remember is the compulsion, the need to take his life, obliterating everything else, blinding me to all except him.
"D'Argo for one." That's impossible, he wasn't even there! He wasn't– "He'll be all right."
The weight lifts from my chest a little, but it's still just a pebble out of a mountain. And the burden gets more intolerable by the microt.
"How many? How many people did I kill?"
"Seventeen."
The horror of not being able to trust one's recollections is something I can hardly bear, but the misshapen priest seems intent on bringing it all to the surface. He says I have been used. Does that really make a difference?
For a moment I wonder if this is what John felt when Scorpius took possession of his mind, but there's no time to dwell on the past because the present needs to be addressed. The old man is relentless in his pursuit.
"There was a child."
Humming under his breath while I worked on the Prowler, looking at me with candid interest, his presence not unwelcome despite the constant, curious hovering. Until–
"I hit the child." I still feel the sting of the slap on my palm, the softness of his cheek giving way under the vicious blow. "No." That is not possible, there would be no reason for me to do that. "That wasn't real." I need to believe it. "I never really hit him. I never - actually - hit the child."
You don't hurt the helpless.
The priest doesn't challenge me on this. It's a small measure of comfort, and I'll take whatever I can get.
Listen! That's what this gnarled creature urges me to do.
And suddenly I focus on a memory, a real one - I'm certain of that. The annoying buzz that sounded so loud in this place where silence holds the landscape in its grip.
The same annoying buzz I'm hearing now and takes the shape of a green-bellied insect biting John on the neck.
"A bug. A bug bit me!"
More than one. Welts on my arms, the noise in my ears and then…the marketplace, the screams and the blood.
"I killed them all."
It still looks like a dream - a bad one. About insects driving people to murder, using them as pawns.
It seems irrational, but the alternative is so much worse, and through it all there's John drawing strength from the certainty of manipulation - something he's quite familiar with - and using it to brace us both and carry on, despite the palpable reluctance to come closer, to willingly offer what he once used to give without restraint.
Yet, it barely makes a difference.
This narrow stone stairway is a mirror for our predicament, naked rock on one side and a deep abyss on the other, the wind battering us as do the nightmare images that flash in our minds, frightening in their stark reality. What is more fearsome is the ease in our loss of control - real or imagined - the strength of the desire to hurt, maim, kill.
What did you see?
Nothing I could - would - put into words. If I do, if we do, it might become real.
It almost did.
Being so close to that man, to the terrible cravings he spawned, was almost our undoing.
Even now, thinking back to those nightmare-like microts, I feel the dread of what could have been. Even now I feel the ghosts of the buzzing insects - the creatures he used to fight his battles just as Ullom used contagions to fight his - and the crawling sensation on my skin, the acid burn of the sheer need for destruction.
Even its memory can be terrifying.
What held us back, what prevented us from turning the images of death into reality, I don't know.
The old priest says it was because it went contrary to our nature, and desires.
You know I really thought…the coin toss ended badly.
It did.
Are we really strangers to that? To the compulsion to hurt each other? I don't know. We certainly are not strangers to witnessing each other's death.
What I know is that those first moments of freedom, lying spent on the carpet, fingertips barely touching, were filled with a sense of peace I have never felt in my whole life.
I wish I could capture back some of it now, among these dirt mounds - seventeen of them - on a terrain as cold and bleak as my soul, made even colder by the stark grief radiating from the child.
I feel like reaching out to him, to give him back something of what I took, but I know there's no way you can breach the shell that death wraps around you. Not so soon.
The touch on my hair is so soft as to seem almost ghost-like, but the warmth coming from John's hand is real, and welcome.
As I lean into it, careful not to take more than what is being offered, I feel some of the ice in my chest melt.
It's not much, but it's enough.
(a Farscape fanfiction)
Author: Nymeria
Disclaimer: the Farscape universe and its characters do not belong to me - I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Rating: PG
Setting: Season 4 Episode 9
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
I have killed before.
When I was a soldier it was part of my life: facing people in battle, raining down death and destruction from my Prowler or joining the troops for cleanup work on planetary missions.
When my life changed, I killed in self-defense or to protect my comrades, my friends.
Even when I became an assassin there was still a reason for the blood I spilled, a worthy cause that required to eliminate a threat, or an injustice.
But never, ever, this blinding wave of madness.
"That's all I remember: thinking I can't stop myself."
Not even a thought, at that, more like the faint echo of a stranger's voice in my mind, uttering words with little or no sense at all. More like a nightmare from which there is no waking up, no respite.
And reality is much worse than the nightmare itself.
"What about the others?"
"What others?"
All I remember is the one man, the local chieftain hit by a pulse blast, going down with a burst of energy blossoming on his chest.
All I remember is the compulsion, the need to take his life, obliterating everything else, blinding me to all except him.
"D'Argo for one." That's impossible, he wasn't even there! He wasn't– "He'll be all right."
The weight lifts from my chest a little, but it's still just a pebble out of a mountain. And the burden gets more intolerable by the microt.
"How many? How many people did I kill?"
"Seventeen."
The horror of not being able to trust one's recollections is something I can hardly bear, but the misshapen priest seems intent on bringing it all to the surface. He says I have been used. Does that really make a difference?
For a moment I wonder if this is what John felt when Scorpius took possession of his mind, but there's no time to dwell on the past because the present needs to be addressed. The old man is relentless in his pursuit.
"There was a child."
Humming under his breath while I worked on the Prowler, looking at me with candid interest, his presence not unwelcome despite the constant, curious hovering. Until–
"I hit the child." I still feel the sting of the slap on my palm, the softness of his cheek giving way under the vicious blow. "No." That is not possible, there would be no reason for me to do that. "That wasn't real." I need to believe it. "I never really hit him. I never - actually - hit the child."
You don't hurt the helpless.
The priest doesn't challenge me on this. It's a small measure of comfort, and I'll take whatever I can get.
Listen! That's what this gnarled creature urges me to do.
And suddenly I focus on a memory, a real one - I'm certain of that. The annoying buzz that sounded so loud in this place where silence holds the landscape in its grip.
The same annoying buzz I'm hearing now and takes the shape of a green-bellied insect biting John on the neck.
"A bug. A bug bit me!"
More than one. Welts on my arms, the noise in my ears and then…the marketplace, the screams and the blood.
"I killed them all."
It still looks like a dream - a bad one. About insects driving people to murder, using them as pawns.
It seems irrational, but the alternative is so much worse, and through it all there's John drawing strength from the certainty of manipulation - something he's quite familiar with - and using it to brace us both and carry on, despite the palpable reluctance to come closer, to willingly offer what he once used to give without restraint.
Yet, it barely makes a difference.
This narrow stone stairway is a mirror for our predicament, naked rock on one side and a deep abyss on the other, the wind battering us as do the nightmare images that flash in our minds, frightening in their stark reality. What is more fearsome is the ease in our loss of control - real or imagined - the strength of the desire to hurt, maim, kill.
What did you see?
Nothing I could - would - put into words. If I do, if we do, it might become real.
It almost did.
Being so close to that man, to the terrible cravings he spawned, was almost our undoing.
Even now, thinking back to those nightmare-like microts, I feel the dread of what could have been. Even now I feel the ghosts of the buzzing insects - the creatures he used to fight his battles just as Ullom used contagions to fight his - and the crawling sensation on my skin, the acid burn of the sheer need for destruction.
Even its memory can be terrifying.
What held us back, what prevented us from turning the images of death into reality, I don't know.
The old priest says it was because it went contrary to our nature, and desires.
You know I really thought…the coin toss ended badly.
It did.
Are we really strangers to that? To the compulsion to hurt each other? I don't know. We certainly are not strangers to witnessing each other's death.
What I know is that those first moments of freedom, lying spent on the carpet, fingertips barely touching, were filled with a sense of peace I have never felt in my whole life.
I wish I could capture back some of it now, among these dirt mounds - seventeen of them - on a terrain as cold and bleak as my soul, made even colder by the stark grief radiating from the child.
I feel like reaching out to him, to give him back something of what I took, but I know there's no way you can breach the shell that death wraps around you. Not so soon.
The touch on my hair is so soft as to seem almost ghost-like, but the warmth coming from John's hand is real, and welcome.
As I lean into it, careful not to take more than what is being offered, I feel some of the ice in my chest melt.
It's not much, but it's enough.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-23 06:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-24 10:40 am (UTC)The road is getting more difficult as I progress, but with such encouragement I can find the drive to go on!
Thank you so much!!!!