End of the Game 1/2
Just a short eppy addition to the Locket here. It's really not that long, but it's wordy enough that I had to split it in half. Go figure! Like it? Hate it? Heck, you know I want to know!
~Nerys
Title: End of the Game
Author: Nerys (ki-nerys@SWBell.net)
Classification: Short Story/episode addition/Aeryn POV
Summary: Aeryn's thoughts as she travels to the desert world for her annual visit
Spoilers: The Locket
Rating: G
Feedback: Yes! Most emphatically, yes!
Flames: Smoke if ya got 'em!
Archive: To anyone who sees fit. Please keep all headers attached and if you could notify me and send a URL along, that'd be great.
Disclaimer: Farscape is owned by Hallmark, Number 9 Australia, Henson Television, yadda, yadda. I own nothing and dream about a great deal.
Author's Note: You know, I loved this episode. Strange thing though, I hadn't actually considered writing an episode addition until I heard Sting's 'Prelude to the End of the Game'. Something about the song just sparked the idea in my head and here we are. I love the song and if you can find it, I highly recommend picking it up. For the US people, it's on the import version of 'Brand New Day'. For the financially impaired (my hand is in the air on that one) you can find it on Napster.
Our love was a river
A wild mountain stream
In a tumbling fury
On the edge of a dreamThey chased us through brambles
They chased us through fields
They'd chased us forever
But the heart would not yieldWhen the fox had done running
At the end of the day
I'm ready to answer
I'm ready to payAnd this rivers still running
And time will come soon
Carried to the great ocean
By the drag of the moon
-Sting 'Prelude to the End of the Game
They think I’m quite mad, you know. My granddaughter, the others who live on the favorite planet, they love me, but they think that I've made you up. They think I conjured you out of my mind and that the tales I tell are nothing more than bedtime stories. Favorite bedtime stories, to be sure, but fiction none the less. I posture and deny the best I can, but you know it does very little good. They just smile and shake their heads. What was it Enixx said the other day? Ah, yes. She said that I told the best stories. Well? Why not? She was raised on tales of you and the others. I can see where she'd have a fondness for them. That doesn't mean she believes me though. How can I explain to her? How can I make her understand that I don't have the gift that it would take to create you out of my imagination? It would take more than I have. I would have to be able to pull the beauty from the stars, the whisper from a spring wind, the warmth of a summer day. It would take magic to create you, indeed, it must have been that very thing that birthed you. I can think of no other word for it.
It's been over a hundred and sixty cycles and I still carry you with me. Your image is around my neck, but that seems a small thing compared to what's in my heart. Ah, Crichton, you have no idea what this has been like for me. For so long, so very long, I could not accept that you were out of my life, that I would never see you again. And I suppose I have yet to completely give up the hope that I will see you one last time. Still, I carried on with the business of life. You know me well enough to know that I'm too stubborn to lay down and die, even if there were times I wanted to. The first twenty cycles were the hardest on me. It wasn't just that I was sorely out of my element on the peaceful idyll of the favorite planet. True, there was nothing to shoot, nothing to defend, no one but myself to fight. That's difficult enough for a former Peacekeeper, I suppose. The greatest challenge though was trying to reconcile myself not with the life I'd left behind, but the heart that ached so very badly for you. I never told you, did I? It seems so strange to me now that I let so much time go by and wasn't able to tell you the things I felt, that I still feel. I can think of no one who would be so understanding. You with your patient ear and gentle heart, you would have understood. And yet it seemed such a monumental thing to tell you how much I loved you, how important you were to me. I can't fathom why now. Perhaps it is because I've loved you for so long now that having these feelings is as natural as drawing in a breath.
I have never let go of you, John. Not even when I was lulled into gentle, complacent affection by the man that was my mate, I never did let you go. He knew, of course. From the very first day that we met to the day he died, he knew that he was always second in my heart. I couldn't even bring myself to feel guilty about that. He was a good man and I can't help but think you'd have liked him. He held me long nights that I lie awake with my heart breaking for the loss of you. He gave me my sons. He deserved more than a woman that could never give her heart entirely and, yet, he was content. He used to tell me that he understood how I felt for you because that was what he felt for me. Feeling like that, he said, should never be looked down upon. He understood, John. How strange. How wonderfully strange. He died too young, as did all three of my children. That was hard, so very hard. And more so because with them gone, the ache for you only seemed to grow hotter, more painful. Many thought that the nights I spent by the fire with tears in my eyes were spent in thoughts of them. They should have been. Some nights they were, but not nearly enough of them. All I could think of was you. Your eyes. Your hands. Your touch. How you have haunted me these many years, Crichton. How sweetly you have haunted me.
I began to tell stories of you and the others because it was natural to do so. I was a stranger, after all, and people were curious about me. As the years went by, the reasoning changed. I spoke of you because memory was all I had. No one minded. Indeed, as I said, tales of you and Moya have become favorites of my children, Enixx, and everyone else who heard them. Would you find it strange to know that I am the village story maker? They believe me to have a gift for fiction. No, that has never been my talent. My gift was knowing you and not forgetting. My stories, as Enixx often tells me, have a beautiful, romantic quality to them. Some of our story has been very dark, John, and I can't help but wonder if, over time, I have idealized you and my time on Moya. When did those horrible days spent running, starving, fighting, weeping…when did they begin to sound like an adventure, a wonderful, exciting adventure? I can't recall. It didn't seem so at the time, did it? All that made so many of those days even bearable was the knowledge that you were there. That, even if I turned you away, you were there if I needed you. How I have missed the comfort and security of that, John. So many times have I wanted nothing more than to sit and talk with you. That seems so strange to me now. I never wanted to talk. Even when I needed to, it always seemed that you had to drag what I needed to say out of me. And now I would give all that I have to simply have that chance again. There's so much that I want to say to you, so much that I wish I had understood and said when I had the chance. I want to tell you that you are the most remarkable creature I have ever met. I want to tell you that I believe you have hope and love enough for the entire universe. I want to tell you how beautiful you are, how gentle, how kind, and how utterly undeserving of what fate dealt you. Most of all, I just want to feel your touch one last time and tell you, finally, how much I love you. And I want to tell you to stay away from this place. The favorite planet is lovely, don't think it's not. But, I don't want to see you ever lose your hope and that would happen if you came here, I think. So much of what makes you Crichton is your steadfast refusal to give up the dream of your home, your earth. I don't ever want that taken from you.