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Rating: R (deals with suicide)
Disclaimer: “Farscape”, its characters, and its situations don’t belong to me – they are the property of The Jim Henson Company, Rockne S. O’Bannon, the Sci-Fi Channel, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia, and the wonderful actors who bring them to life. No copyright infringement is intended – they have been borrowed for the reader’s enjoyment and to challenge my writing abilities only.
Author’s note: This fic is meant to sound extremely disjointed, going from tense to tense, idea to idea, even switching view sometimes. It is what I feel could have been a possibility for Crichton, especially after seeing the ending of the Liars, Guns, and Money trilogy. That scene where he asks D’Argo to kill him inspired this – after all he’s been through, I felt this could be it, so obviously this contains some things that never happened in the series (very minor ones). An utter despair and inability to feel – I took the idea and went with it (focusing more on feeling than specific character traits).
Another note: This is a re-write of my original fic by the same name. Anything in < > is thoughts or voices in Crichton’s head. I got some incredible feedback and inspiration from someone and had to try again (thank you Tamara!!). Please let me know what you think.
“This is one of the good days.” Somehow I remember that toast – we were relieved, smiling, laughing. How come I remember that?
I closed my eyes, I opened my eyes, I’ve listened, I’ve plugged my ears – no matter what I see darkness, hear darkness. I feel the pressure of an unbearable existence over my body – it adds another brick to the pile on my chest. I go to draw in a breath to fight the tears forming and almost double over in pain – is this what it’s like to have a heart attack? To feel unrelenting pain ripping at your lungs, your heart with jagged spears? Efficient as a bayonet, but never clean, never a simple cut – always slow, hard, heavy-- messy – I could feel the blood slowly dripping from my body, if only it had been blood – blood I could see - thoughts, words, I couldn’t. Thoughts, ideas, delusions, invisible words on wisps of air – they were what cut me. They gave me pain, give me the flood of warmth inside – I still think it one of life’s mysteries that the pain is so warm – not burning, but warmth in a cold existence. Mine.
Constant pain, dull, throbbing, aching-- pulsing through my veins. The tears won’t fall no matter how hard I try – I tense, I let go – they remain there, taunting me with release…but refusing me the gift. I wanted to fall to the floor, bury my face in my hands, feel the heated moisture on my cheeks, smell the salty confirmation that feeling existed. I want to scream, punch the ground, fight someone – I know the others wanted that too. You can do anything you set your mind to. Who said that? Some stupid Earthman who never saw life as it really is. Someone who never questioned the exact nature of their existence. Someone not me.
I can’t distinguish the voices anymore – Scorpy, Harvey, friend, foe, shards of memories begging to be made whole. Fragments of my past tear around my mind, flashing in front of my eyes, desperate to be recognized. Desperate to find their place…where they had been torn from. They cry out for calm…for a oneness they haven’t known since John Crichton – a man from a planet so primitive that “mind-rape” was the closest his language could get. All the voices want….need….one wants this, the other wants that – they all want, they all need, and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. Do you have any idea how damned difficult it is to mediate between voices – you can’t touch them, but they can sure as hell touch you. Ignoring them is a possibility – but they’d work together then – actually work as one to scream me into submission - into acknowledging them. A wake up call from within if there ever was one.
My friends. They keep reminding me why I’m alive. I’m a valued friend, a competent tech, a first-rate inventor of immediately needed plans, a relief to talk to, needed…..<John there is no escape…come to me….give him the technology John and stop the pain….you want the pain gone….NONONONO!!!! Scorpius needs you John….you need Scorpius to be rid of me….I need the wormholes…I need….> NO! No more, please God no…no voices.. – oh so needed. Focus on their faces….your friends….remember your friends…. they speak of friendship, family, and emotional ties. The things I taught them…the words and emotions I brought to the ship. The irony does not escape me. Role reversal at its finest…they feel, they express…I stare. The whisper came again… wormholes, wormholes, wormholes – knowledge no one else has – unique. Always unique.
Fix damaged circuit; be there for Chi; tell Aeryn I love her; figure a way to that planet; figure wormholes to go home…to get the others home; give knowledge to Scorpy—Harvey--hide knowledge from Scorpy…Harvey…Scarrans, and all brain-pickers of the Uncharted Territories. The rambling continued, on and on, day after day. Whatever random thoughts came into…well, whatever was left of my brain. I can’t stop it. The jagged pieces of displaced memories…they want silence too….the rest know silence means they’ll be silenced….they won’t stand for it….they get louder….the memory shards cry out in protest….Scorpy and Harvey overtake them…my friends, in the distance, trying to get above them….oh..if there is a God….. I’ve--I’ve forgotten what silence is….I-I-I want to smash my head against the floor, to lose consciousness just for some blessed peace…..silence….
I find myself in a room I don't even *vaguely* remember heading towards. I started eating anyway; eating while not knowing why or how. Always hated drugs…think I always hated drugs… but now I've been overtaking sedatives to rest….still, I’m unable to live...to truly live. I tried *desperately* to quell the damned sense of self-preservation my species is born with. It was telling me every day to eat...to sleep...to fight. To live. Reality has told me that fighting leads to more pain, and pain leads to warmth. My body rejects that particular warmth (fighting means living….with the voices….the pain….the running….the deafening fights in my head….but I must live…the voices need me….must get to Scorpy…must make things right….NONONONO….live for them…..D’Argo….Chi….Aeryn)…that warmth goes against my cold and desolate view. I'm not allowed to do that. That coldness I spoke of whips around and reaches for the warmth of my pain. I-I can’t please them all… Cold…warmth…life…death. I reach for a knife. Warmth - for a short burst to keep the flesh going. Why? A stranger in a strange land...lost, confused, hurting...and yet...and yet quite unable to feel. Anything.
Distant stares, sudden shudders, pain burning my lungs, my heart…..Aeryn. Relief caresses me as she kisses me, touches my chest, my head with untold tenderness….takes away the pain, the voices…I breathe her name….Aeryn…..she laughs. That wasn’t her laugh. Harvey stands in her place…he made me look around, made me see nothing happened, that I was hallucinating. Again. My hallucination was telling me I was hallucinating. That’s a beautiful design. But more memories (visions?) come…faster and faster… – falling asleep in my love’s arms…waking in Scorpy’s chair, D’Argo calming me into rest; waking and cutting myself, losing consciousness…waking again to find I was never asleep. Dichotomous in nature, never ending…never beginning.
Everything’s blurred. The wandering shards of memory tell stories about a past I can’t recall, the other voices tell of a future I can’t bear. Know thyself…..I….that damned pain in my chest again…hard to breathe….knowing oneself means you are somebody, something…right? But…I…I don’t know…. does this mean my whole life was a delusion? An illusion? Is it now? <Of course not John….you are what we make you….>NO!! Nonononono….*I* need to know…..*I* must be somebody….there is a me….oh please….let there be a me….
The deaths and the plans of death – clear as a bell. Clear as hell. Kill shot in the flax; Harvey with the Scarran, playing chess with my pulse pistol. The inquiries into Sebacean poisons…deadly Sebacean poisons. The manic risks in making the plans, the carefully constructed nonchalant attitude, the cuts and burns a decent long-sleeved coat can hide. The ones I did in the dark of night—the ones I must hide from the light of day, from those who live in that light – the chill of my life revels in the warmth that the friction of a blade on skin can cause. *This* is allowed. The sting, the warmth of blood and pus welling in a new groove, a new memory. But the warmth was pushed away – no, my existence was meant to be barren, cold and empty – empty yet filled with the whispers and shouts of…. nonentities (?). There are the tears again – sparkling behind my eyelashes – sparkled like diamonds from home, like a knife here…both beautiful, both deadly – that damned pain in my chest, in my lungs…in my heart…in my head. It begins with the renewed screaming – they all wanted the final hurrah. Vive le Uncharted Territoires!!! Vive la mort…vive le liberte.
The tears are building again, moving to a climax they never seem to reach in a mind, a body, that cannot…is unable…to feel them. Sparkling, fluidity…like the knife. Knife, lungs with fluid. Pain, didn’t want to breathe….so cold…. the voices began to rise as one – NO!! I’ve defied them, I defy them again. Cold….breathtaking pain…..constant screaming…..and the answer right in my hands.
I know I should feel guilt, sadness, should wonder how they will all deal without me, the things I’m supposed to do are the things that I am least capable of doing – I can’t, I don’t, I’ve stopped trying. I can no longer hear….they are deafening….this was never an option…but now…..now I don’t even have the capacity to hope that I’ll meet my friends again….friendship, family, emotional ties….I don’t know them….the voices took over again….earsplitting anger and anguish….
The knife enters my lung – I gasp – it seeks out the beating finally as erratic as what my mind has become. Treacherous keeper of life and sparkling releaser of torment meet – darkness settles. Darkness prevails, the screams of others begin, feeling ceases – no – pain, screaming internal anguish, numbness, physical feeling – they cease……….
<I hope we meet again my friends…..
I said it….I felt it…I can say it…feel it!!!!>
………..for a tear runs silently down his cheek.
