Aeryn's Journey - #19 INTO THE LION'S DEN
Jan. 15th, 2010 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nymeria_dwAeryn's Journey - Into the Lion's Den
(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 3 - episodes 20/21
Notes: I added some dialogue that was part of the deleted scenes for episode 21 - it was too good, IMHO, to be ignored.
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
Death haunts me.
Wherever I turn, whenever I try to escape it, I find it there, staring me in the eye.
Life has become an endless parade of death, and I am responsible for a great deal of it, no matter how right might have been the reasons for this…task.
Once there was this place I called home, where things were simple and straightforward. A place of metal corridors I could walk through blindfolded, because they were engraved in my brain.
Once there were people I called comrades, friends, that knew me as instinctively as I knew them.
Once there were rules that separated wrong from right, that made choice unnecessary.
All gone.
What used to be home vanished in fire and screams.
It had become an alien place, where every corridor was full of uncharted dangers and the metal walls exuded only cold rejection, but it was the last link to my former self. The last place that still held something of the past, after so much was stolen from me by unbearable loss and a deep chasm.
My old comrades, my friends, are gone, and with them any chance to explain, bridge the gap. I only drink with Peacekeepers. Then you are a traitor! All that's left is charred flesh.
The rules disappeared a long time ago and this is now the most devastating of losses, because without them I don't know who I am anymore. Where to go.
And that's not all.
As I walk along the corridors of my adopted home, stroking her warm walls for comfort, both hers and mine, I can feel our shared pain through my fingertips.
Talyn was home too, if only for a little while, a place where the two sides of my life met and fused: the straight, metal corridors that hinted at order and discipline, and the warm, living walls that spoke of life and love.
Love.
I had given in to that most forbidden of emotions inside Talyn's walls, had deluded myself into believing that I could let it change me – be more. What I am is less, because I lost it all, together with the young being that gave his life for ours.
At least he was not alone when he died.
Cold comfort.
Having shared their link, however briefly, I know how dependent on each other they had become – for good and for bad. I can comprehend their choice of sacrifice, but this does not balance the terrible, terrible waste of life and potential.
The life of a beautiful, sad, confused creature.
The life of a former commander. Enemy. Ally. Friend.
All the times that I’ve lied to you, hurt you.. Starting from the moment I declared you irreversibly contaminated–
Listen to me, THAT was the beginning of my life!
The blossoming of mutual understanding, and forgiveness, snatched away by death.
Death.
I am so tired of it, so tired. And I don't know where to find relief, let alone peace.
The silence of Command seems to echo the screams I keep hearing in my mind, and in its semi-darkness I see the flare of explosions that are forever engraved in my eyes.
We're sitting close, yet separated by a deep gulf, and I regret the weakness that made me seek his company You're just like him, I mean…you are him– finding instead a distant silence that sounds louder than the screams.
Both wounded, both hurting, we are unable to touch again the tenuous connection that still lingers – Fly safe… – hiding behind lowered lids or symbols scratched on paper and skin.
It feels as if our minds and souls have been completely drained of life…
Life.
The thought flares with searing intensity, the awareness buried by other concerns coming to the fore, undoing hard-won denial.
- You have a fetus in stasis –
Turmoil beats at the inside of my chest like a caged bird, held at bay only by rigid control and long-ingrained training.
I don't know what to do with myself, how will I know what to do with–?
You live for me.
I don't know how. I don't know.
(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 3 - episodes 20/21
Notes: I added some dialogue that was part of the deleted scenes for episode 21 - it was too good, IMHO, to be ignored.
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
Death haunts me.
Wherever I turn, whenever I try to escape it, I find it there, staring me in the eye.
Life has become an endless parade of death, and I am responsible for a great deal of it, no matter how right might have been the reasons for this…task.
Once there was this place I called home, where things were simple and straightforward. A place of metal corridors I could walk through blindfolded, because they were engraved in my brain.
Once there were people I called comrades, friends, that knew me as instinctively as I knew them.
Once there were rules that separated wrong from right, that made choice unnecessary.
All gone.
What used to be home vanished in fire and screams.
It had become an alien place, where every corridor was full of uncharted dangers and the metal walls exuded only cold rejection, but it was the last link to my former self. The last place that still held something of the past, after so much was stolen from me by unbearable loss and a deep chasm.
My old comrades, my friends, are gone, and with them any chance to explain, bridge the gap. I only drink with Peacekeepers. Then you are a traitor! All that's left is charred flesh.
The rules disappeared a long time ago and this is now the most devastating of losses, because without them I don't know who I am anymore. Where to go.
And that's not all.
As I walk along the corridors of my adopted home, stroking her warm walls for comfort, both hers and mine, I can feel our shared pain through my fingertips.
Talyn was home too, if only for a little while, a place where the two sides of my life met and fused: the straight, metal corridors that hinted at order and discipline, and the warm, living walls that spoke of life and love.
Love.
I had given in to that most forbidden of emotions inside Talyn's walls, had deluded myself into believing that I could let it change me – be more. What I am is less, because I lost it all, together with the young being that gave his life for ours.
At least he was not alone when he died.
Cold comfort.
Having shared their link, however briefly, I know how dependent on each other they had become – for good and for bad. I can comprehend their choice of sacrifice, but this does not balance the terrible, terrible waste of life and potential.
The life of a beautiful, sad, confused creature.
The life of a former commander. Enemy. Ally. Friend.
All the times that I’ve lied to you, hurt you.. Starting from the moment I declared you irreversibly contaminated–
Listen to me, THAT was the beginning of my life!
The blossoming of mutual understanding, and forgiveness, snatched away by death.
Death.
I am so tired of it, so tired. And I don't know where to find relief, let alone peace.
The silence of Command seems to echo the screams I keep hearing in my mind, and in its semi-darkness I see the flare of explosions that are forever engraved in my eyes.
We're sitting close, yet separated by a deep gulf, and I regret the weakness that made me seek his company You're just like him, I mean…you are him– finding instead a distant silence that sounds louder than the screams.
Both wounded, both hurting, we are unable to touch again the tenuous connection that still lingers – Fly safe… – hiding behind lowered lids or symbols scratched on paper and skin.
It feels as if our minds and souls have been completely drained of life…
Life.
The thought flares with searing intensity, the awareness buried by other concerns coming to the fore, undoing hard-won denial.
- You have a fetus in stasis –
Turmoil beats at the inside of my chest like a caged bird, held at bay only by rigid control and long-ingrained training.
I don't know what to do with myself, how will I know what to do with–?
You live for me.
I don't know how. I don't know.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-15 06:27 pm (UTC)And thank you. Just a moment, a brief memory, a longer-lasting regret. All that was needed.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-15 09:48 pm (UTC)For your words and for pointing me to that little, incredible scene that was so much more than the sum of its parts.
I guess that together with the last frames of the episode it set the mood for this piece, the quiet despair as you rightly defined it, for irretrievable losses.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-16 10:42 am (UTC)That interaction was what I'd wanted the entire series, ever since Thanks for Sharing. Not what he wanted (if he even knew what that was) but someone to talk to him, to be aware he actually existed.
To know that moment was filmed, but then removed, hurt badly and still does.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-16 03:30 pm (UTC)Agreed. It was the moment - the revelation - of the change: the understanding that many (if not all) of the emotional choices he'd made had often led to tragic results. The understanding of his human (I mean, sebacean..) fallibility and at the same time his acceptance of that fallibility and the acceptance of his final sacrifice as a way to atone for it.
(Not to mention that I can hardly envision him without Talyn: as I wrote, they were too intertwined to be able to exist separately from each other).
Besides that, he's reaching out to someone else - finally without ulterior motives, just to bare his soul to another living being. It was, to me, some sort of legacy, some way to say "remember us".
'Touching' does not even start to cover it.
On the other side, when Aeryn tells him that being declared irreversibly contaminated was the beginning of her life, means she understands that loss can have a positive side, too. In that place of her journey she's not yet ready to see it consciously, but it's *there*, ready to develop in the near future.
All in all, it was just a handful of seconds, and they could have found room for it shaving them off from...I don't know, the wormhole ride or the scenes of the carriers' destruction.
We'll never know why they choose to leave it out but, as I said, I'm glad that at least the dvd extras let us have this small jewel...