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Aeryn wondered if she was ever going to “get over it,” as Chiana kept urging. Actually, her mood did seem to go up and down, which maybe was good.
Today turned out to be one of the bad days.
It had started out all right. It had been a good day right up until an arn ago, actually. No one was chasing them at the moment. They’d found a nice, friendly commerce planet and stocked up on loads of everyone’s favorite foods, leading to a suggestion from Chiana, loudly seconded by Jool, that they declare a holiday and prepare a feast.
D’Argo tried to bow out, but Aeryn pointed out that since he was good with blades, he could help her slice the meat John had purchased to Barbie-Q.
Crais objected even more loudly to the idea of participating, but Jool had dragged him into helping her with her vegetable dish, which was an old Interon party favorite, she claimed.
It had actually been fun, all of them cooking together, getting in each other’s way in the galley. They hadn’t done that in, who knew how long. No one could remember.
Even Rygel, while jealously hoarding his fresh supply of marjools, brought out a sweetcake to share after the meal.
John sniffed at the package suspiciously, and announced, “Fruitcake!” When they all looked at him, John elaborated. “My Aunt Ruth always made fruitcake for Christmas! This looks just like it.”
“Well, then you must have the first piece,” Rygel decreed, but John graciously declined, launching instead into a series of reminiscences about the Christmases of his youth while the others picked at the cake with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
And there it was again, that stabbing pain in her heart. Aeryn couldn’t have even said what caused it, though if she had to guess, it was knowing that she would never go to Earth. She kept her face relaxed, but stood up abruptly.
John’s eyes went to her immediately, even though he’d been looking at D’Argo. He kept his expression even, too, but she knew he knew something had upset her.
Over time, everyone else had learned not to let these little episodes dampen their mood, so it was up to her to deal with it.
She smiled apologetically at John and left. The sad part was, she knew he’d understand, or at least say he did. She heard him continuing with his story as she left the room.
*******
Back in her quarters, Aeryn pulled her boots off and padded around the cell.
Brooding was something new to her. She was still trying to figure out if it helped or hurt, but she’d worked out a pattern over the past few monens.
She asked Pilot to reduce the lighting, then dug out a large white scented candle Zhaan had given her a long time ago. Zhaan had claimed the scent soothed the spirit. Aeryn wasn’t sure about that, but she HAD found that the flickering light helped her calm her mind.
After lighting the candle, she climbed up onto her bed and leaned against the wall, bent legs drawn up tight. She wrapped her arms around her shins, and rested her chin on her knees. Moya surely kept the temperature at optimum, but Aeryn shivered nevertheless. It must be the emptiness in her heart.
She closed her eyes, and John’s happy voice telling stories of the holiday he called Christmas ran rampant through her mind….
She felt some change in the lighting through her closed lids. When she opened her eyes, the candle flame still wavered to her right. But something shadowy stood in the corner of the room.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
The figure stepped forward into the light. At first she thought it was John, but he seemed oddly transparent, and when he spoke to her, she knew it was the other one, the one she had lost. She watched him, but she didn’t move from her position on the bed.
“Hey, Baby,” he said gently.
“You’re dead,” she told him.
“Yep. Half a cycle,” he agreed. “And you need to let go of me.”
“You’re not here,” she persisted. “You’re just a bit of Barbie-Q or Jool’s cooking upsetting my digestion,” though if anything was churning up her stomach, it was her own inner turmoil.
“Doesn’t matter. You still need to let me go, or you’re gonna end up alone.”
“I can’t,” she said flatly. “I gave my heart to you, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
He looked at her sadly. “Aeryn, Honey, don’t take this wrong. You’re Scrooge, I’m Marley.” He paused and cocked his head at her. “It’s okay. I’m here to give you fair warning that you’re going to be haunted by three spirits tonight. They’ll help you find your way. Listen to them, okay?”
She looked at him uncomprehendingly, and he added “Expect the first one in an arn.”
With that, John, the other one, faded back into the shadows of her room.
“Ridiculous,” she told herself. “Spirits don’t exist.” But she remembered the shades of John who had visited her on Valldon, and she shivered.
She unwrapped herself from the position she’d been sitting in, then got up and splashed some water on her face. Thoughtfully, she blew the candle out, then rolled herself in a blanket on top of the bed.
**********
Aeryn came awake all of a sudden, aware of a vague white glow from somewhere in the room. The scent of her candle was still heavy in the air. She lay there without moving, listening to the ambiance.
An oddly familiar voice saying her name caused her to roll over, prop her head up on one elbow, and look at the glow.
“You’re dead, too,” she said to the image of Velorek in front of her. “I can see through you,” she added crossly. Except for being translucent, he looked just the same as the last time she had seen him, four, maybe five cycles ago on Moya. Every bit as dark and handsome and sympathetic as when she had betrayed him.
“I’m here to help you, Aeryn,” he said. “Come with me.”
“If I have to have a ghost, why can’t it be John?” she asked, humoring him.
Velorek took a step towards the bed, and she sat up, still wrapped in the gold blanket, but prepared to defend herself. He held his hand out to her and repeated, “Come with me.”
The other’s voice – “Listen to them” – echoed in her mind, and she stood up abruptly and took his hand. It seemed solid enough.
Velorek walked toward the wall, and Aeryn followed. To her surprise, they walked through the walls until they were outside of Moya, flying through space without a spacesuit.
“It’s almost like being on the terrace,” she said in wonder. “It’s beautiful.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Where are we going?”
His response chilled her to the bone.
“The past,” he said. She tried to draw away, but he held fast and they flashed through space almost like starburst, now approaching a Peacekeeper Command Carrier.
In spite of herself, Aeryn was fascinated as they moved in through the walls, to find themselves standing in the crèche. It was deep in the night cycle, and the children should have been asleep. But there, in one corner of the room, a small, dark-haired child was intently watching the woman who stood over her, speaking in a whisper.
“My mother,” Aeryn whispered more to herself than to the spirit beside her.
“They can’t hear us,” Velorek told her. “Yes, your mother. She loved you. And she told you you were special. You believed her, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Aeryn nodded, still watching the childhood visit she had replayed over and over again while Talyn tried to stay one step ahead of a Retrieval Squad headed by a later incarnation of this woman who had loved her daughter so much she risked everything to see her, just once. “And I spent my whole life trying to BE special.”
“It set you apart,” he said, waving one hand and moving them out of the crèche, out of the command carrier, across space.
Once again they were aboard a Leviathan, and Aeryn dared hope they were back on Moya. Home.
But as they floated through the tiers, passing Peacekeepers, and prisoners, it came to her that although this WAS Moya, it wasn’t home, not yet. “This is still the past, isn’t it?” she asked, fearfully.
Her former lover nodded. “Our past,” he said briefly. She saw herself in the corridor, angry that she had humiliated herself trying to get Captain Crais to return her to prowler duty, taunted by the other grunts. They thought she thought she was too good for them – and they had been right.
“Set apart,” Velorek said again, leading her on. She knew what was coming, and indeed, she saw herself and Velorek as they’d been at the last, when she’d kept him distracted, recreating, while Crais and his men came for him. She saw the sorrow in his eyes when he knew what she’d done, and she saw the pain in her own eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, whether to the shade in front of her or the ghost beside her, she wasn’t sure.
“I told you you were special,” the spirit said.
“Don’t. I know what I did. Why am I here? What am I supposed to learn? That I betrayed John too? I know that already.”
“No,” Velorek said gently. “That you were special – but you were apart. Alone. Unhappy.” He touched her arm and they walked through the walls again, this time outside of Moya and towards Talyn, floating in space beside his mother.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t make me.”
But they were already there, in John’s quarters on Talyn, the quarters that had become theirs. Her eyes filled with tears as she stood, watching herself nestled comfortably in John’s arms, running her fingers over letters in a notebook. Her future. Their future, she had allowed herself to believe. But she had no future any more.
And yet, as she watched John play with her hair, whisper in her ear, correct her pronunciation, then try to distract her with kisses, she found she felt the same pleasure, the same joy. The same peace. She smiled and turned to her companion.
“You were happy,” Velorek smiled back. “The one time in your life you weren’t apart. You weren’t alone. You were more.”
“I am more now,” she began indignantly, but he interrupted and swooped her away to that awful room on Valldon.
She watched herself tell the ghost of the other to go away. She heard herself declare she was a Peacekeeper, nothing more. Velorek turned accusing eyes on her.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said weakly, and found herself back on Moya, alone in her bed, tangled up in her blanket.
She yanked the blanket off and looked around the room cautiously, sensed nothing. “What have you done to me, John?” she said, and fell into a fitful sleep.
**********
Aeryn again awoke suddenly. This time the glow was blue. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she felt dried tears on her cheeks.
“I’m glad my meribel candle soothes you, child.”
“Zhaan,” Aeryn said. Like Velorek and the other before her, Zhaan was seemingly a transparent spirit. “Am I dreaming?”
“Does it matter?”
When the Sebacean only shrugged, Zhaan continued, “Come with me, Aeryn.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me John sent you?’
“Come with me,” Zhaan’s shade repeated, holding out her hand, and Aeryn decided she owed her that much.
She got up and reached out to touch Zhaan’s robes. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Just to the galley,” Zhaan told her, her voice melodious and joyful. “Nothing too frightening.”
“If you don’t think walking through the walls is frightening,” Aeryn said, whistling in the dark.
When they reached the galley, it appeared that the party from earlier in the evening was still in full swing. Aeryn guessed that they had been taking turns telling holiday stories. D’Argo was just beginning a tale about a Life Day celebration when Jothee had been very young and was trying to eat the decorations. Jool was hanging on his every word, and Chiana was occupying herself trying to snurch marjools from Rygel.
“She doesn’t even like marjools,” Aeryn said, to make conversation.
“But she’s living life,” Zhaan told her. “To the fullest.” With a beatific smile she added meaningfully, “If Rygel catches her….”
Aeryn’s attention was diverted by Crais. He was sitting at the table with a contemplative expression on his face. And what he was contemplating appeared to be the one person that she had been trying not to look at from the moment they had walked through the wall and into the room.
John.
“Look at him, child,” Zhaan said.
Aeryn did. At first glance, he seemed happy enough. Relaxed. But when she really looked, she could see the lines in his face. The hint of sadness behind the beautiful blue eyes. Every once in a while he threw a glance at the empty chair she had vacated earlier. She looked back at Zhaan. “Is that because of me?”
“You’re his center, Aeryn, his anchor. You know that,” the spirit chided.
And so did the others, Aeryn realized. One by one, they snuck glances at him. No one said anything overt, no one broke the mood, but they were worried about him. And surprisingly, more than one of them looked at her chair, too.
“This is a family,” Zhaan reminded her. “You’re all connected.”
Aeryn thought about the evening she’d just spent, cooking and eating and laughing. Connected. Not alone.
“John. If I can’t….Will he be all right?”
Zhaan looked at her. “He’ll live, if that’s what you mean. But something inside of him WILL die.”
Aeryn looked away, arms wrapped tightly around herself and lost in thought.
“And think on this, child,” Zhaan added. “I gave my life for both of you. For you to be together, as you were meant to be.”
“That’s not fair, Zhaan,” she said, staring at the floor. After a moment she looked up and continued, “I did it, I gave my heart to the other one. He took it with him when he died.”
“Oh, Aeryn,” Zhaan said, shaking her head. “He didn’t take it with him, he wants you to be happy. You sent it after him yourself.”
Before Aeryn could even react, once again she was lying in her bed, this time clutching her pillow for dear life.
Her candle was lit, though she was sure she’d blown it out before all this had started. She stared around the room as if she’d never seen it before, and said with a sigh, “Crichton, if you’ve got any more frelling spirits to torment me with, you’d better send them now.”
*********
As if in answer, the room darkened as a new figure stood between Aeryn and the candlelight. This apparition was dark, hooded and cloaked, but Aeryn had no trouble recognizing it as Xhalax Sun, her mother.
Realizing that the first two spirits had shown her the past and the present, Aeryn said, “Well, Mother, are you here to show me the future? I don’t think I want to see it.”
Xhalax merely pointed imperiously towards the wall, and Aeryn, resigned to her fate this night, got up and touched the rough cloak. Without a word, Xhalax swooped them out into space once more, back to that room on Valldon where she’d been so recently with Velorek.
This time, the spirit beside her directed her attention not to Aeryn’s grieving earlier self, but to her mother. She watched the grim charade play out as Xhalax taunted her, killed the counterfeit Talyn, threatened Aeryn herself.
She listened to Xhalax’s harsh voice. “To know how close I was to love. So close...and then to lose it all in an instant. I've heard loved ones leave you in pieces. That little by little you start to forget things about them, but that's not true. You lose them, everything, instantly, and suddenly nothing can replace them. Nothing."
Watching now with a clarity of purpose, Aeryn saw things the woman she was then had been too drunk, too deadened of spirit, to notice or understand. She saw something in Xhalax’s eyes that she feared she would see in her own, if she looked in a mirror.
“Are you saying this is me, my fate?” she demanded of her guide. “That I’m doomed to become a bitter, useless woman. Set apart from everyone? Alone?”
The shade beside her only accused her with its silence.
Aeryn rejected the accusation. “That was YOUR future,” she said angrily. “Show me mine.”
The spirit appeared to be considering, and then, the universe shifted again, and this time they were on the dark, dingy back streets of what appeared to Aeryn’s eye to be a colony planet. A firefight was going on between two individuals, one of whom she was horrified to see was herself.
“Come on,” the Aeryn Sun in the street called. “You’ve seen the beacon. You may as well give up.”
Aeryn looked at Xhalax, demanding, “Is this real? That can’t be me!” But Xhalax only stared, impassively, at the sight on the street, so Aeryn kept watching as the occasional pulse blast was exchanged.
Her future self, if indeed that were true, had acquired a deep scar across one cheek. Aeryn looked uneasily at Xhalax, and then back to the street. She apparently no longer dressed even somewhat like the soldier she had once been. Her clothing was practical, that much looked like her, but gone were the leathers in favor of something that looked more like cloth, covered with shabby-looking armor. Her hair wasn’t even tied back.
What horrified Aeryn the most, was that that version of herself there on the street wasn’t even TRYING. She was going through the motions of shooting at an opponent who was obviously desperate, and obviously willing to do whatever it took to get away.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she said to the silent spirit beside her. “That bastard, whoever he is, is going to shoot me, isn’t he?”
And indeed, as she watched, a pulse blast caught the woman in the street directly in the face, and that Aeryn Sun fell to the ground as if in slow motion, not moving again.
Aeryn stood, blinking, watching as her killer ran. She stood, unable even to think, as two citizens of the town walked down the street and glanced at the body.
“Frelling bounty hunters,” the first one said. “You’d think we’d at least get some competent ones.”
“This one used to be,” the other replied, kicking the body in the ribs with the toe of his boot. “Hasn’t been more than second-rate for a long time, though. Too much raslak, I’d say.”
The two of them moved on, obviously dismissing the body from their minds.
“That’s it? That’s my life?” Aeryn said. “I’m going to be a bounty hunter? I’m going to die like a raw recruit in a back alley somewhere? Alone?” Her horrified mind dredged up her own voice, saying once, several cycles ago, to Crichton, “I don’t want to die alone.”
Xhalax’s gaze bored into her, and it occurred to Aeryn that she needed to see something else. “Where is John? Show me Crichton’s future,” she demanded.
Reality blurred once more, and they were standing, disconcertingly, deep in the heart of what she somehow recognized to be Scorpius’ laboratories. The hated Scarran half-breed was apparently deep at work on some calculations. John, older, grayer, with a network of fine scars on one arm, was across the room, rapidly adjusting some equipment, flipping switches, looking back at Scorpius for confirmation.
Aeryn gasped at the sight, the last thing she would ever have expected. After what Scorpius had done to John…. What was he doing? Surely he was being coerced. Or perhaps working as a double agent, pretending to help Scorpius. John would do something so frelling stupid.
“Why are we here?” she asked Xhalax. “Does he die here, now? Does Scorpius find out what he’s doing?”
The spirit beside her only pointed commandingly at John, and Aeryn looked at him more closely. She took in the posture, the fussy movements, the sing-song lilt of his voice, and she suddenly realized the truth.
One look into his eyes confirmed it.
It wasn’t John in front of her at all. Oh, it was his body, but his mind was long gone – the construct he had once named, “Harvey,” was in complete command.
“He’d rather be dead,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “How could this happen?”
Once again they were in motion, this time arriving in the docking bay back on Moya. Aeryn was appalled to see D’Argo’s too-still body lying on the floor, both Chiana and Jool weeping over him.
“Frelling Crichton,” Jool was repeating over and over. “He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t. D’Argo was just trying to help him.”
Chiana, though obviously very upset, was more restrained. “It wasn’t him, Jool. It wasn’t John. It was that frelling Harvey. John couldn’t hold him back any more. He just didn’t have the strength.”
“Not since that Peacekeeper bitch left,” Jool said, bitterly.
“She should have just shot him on her way out,” Chiana agreed, bending down and resting her forehead on D’Argo’s chest.
“It IS me they’re talking about, isn’t it?” Aeryn asked into the sudden silence, just to be sure.
Pilot’s voice sounded then, sounding infinitely sad. “Chiana, Joolushko,” he said, “I am sorry to inform you that Moya believes that Talyn has been captured by the Peacekeepers. Crais reported that they had caught up to Crichton, but that there were two Command Carriers in the vicinity. They were under attack, and Moya has lost contact in a way that suggests Talyn is now wearing a control collar.”
“Talyn!” Aeryn exclaimed, sick at heart.
“What about Rygel and Crais?” Jool wailed.
Turning her back on the horrible scene in front of her, Aeryn turned to the spirit that had brought her to this place. “Is this real?”
The specter’s silence was agonizing, and infuriating. “All right,” Aeryn said, “Then tell me how to avoid this. There must be some way!”
And once more reality shifted, and she was back in that room on Valldon.
On the ledge, Xhalax, wounded now, looked Aeryn in the eyes and said, “I died a long time ago.”
On the ledge, Aeryn hesitated still, and her mother whispered intently, “You live for me!”
On the ledge, Aeryn’s hand relaxed its grip, and her mother fell.
Standing beside the still-silent ghost, Aeryn, understanding at last, watched, not in grief or anger, but in pity. The shell of the woman who once risked everything for love reached the ground – and Aeryn sat bolt upright in her bed.
“That isn’t me. It won’t be me!” she vowed.
She caught her breath and looked around her quarters. The candle was snuffed out, as she had left it earlier. There was no glow in the room, only the suggestion of a shadowy, unseen presence. “John,” she whispered. “Thank you. You can go now. I’ll be all right, and so will he.”
The presence seemed to pass through her and out, dispersing. She could feel her heart melting, the warmth flowing into her for the first time since she had left Valldon in reality, and she smiled.
Hurriedly then, she got out of bed, picking up her boots and struggling to put them on. “Pilot!” she called, urgently. “What time is it!”
“It is nearly time for the beginning of the sleep shift,” Pilot told her.
“That’s all?” she asked, surprised. “John’s spirits were fast.”
“What’s that, Officer Sun?” Pilot asked.
“Never mind,” she said, still smiling. “John. Where is he?”
“Commander Crichton is in the galley with the rest of the crew,” he told her. “I believe they are singing.”
Good! The party was still going on! She looked around for a peace offering to bring, and settled on a bottle of some kind of liquor that John, the one she’d lost, had bought for her.
Stopping just outside the doorway to the galley, Aeryn assessed her appearance. Her hair was a mess, but she just brushed it back out of her face, not bothering even with a ponytail. It would have to do. She could hear Crais trying to teach Jool some kind of tune that sounded like it probably came from his homeworld. It was simple and sweet, and so unlike anything she would have imagined Crais would know.
She smiled to herself and walked in the door.
John saw her instantly, of course. His eyes lit up in pure delight at seeing her. When he took in her expression, he rose involuntarily, startling the others.
She walked across the room to John in the sudden silence, waving the bottle in the general direction of the table. “Hi,” she said. “I thought this might be good with the fruitcake, if there’s any left.”
Everyone relaxed again, and D’Argo liberated the bottle from her grasp and saluted her with it. “I’ll let you know,” he smiled, working the stopper out of the bottle. He made a production of smelling the drink, and then poured small glasses for everyone, including Aeryn.
While he was pouring, Aeryn turned her attention to John. He had resumed his seat, but was looking at her with such longing, she almost couldn’t bear it. She smiled reassuringly at him, and picked up her chair, moving it closer to his and sitting down.
The thought of the dark future she had seen terrified her even more than retrieving her heart and reaching out to John again. WAS that her future? No, it couldn’t be, wouldn’t be.
D’Argo was setting the glasses in front of everyone when Aeryn reached out her hand under the table and took John’s, firmly weaving her fingers with his. He started, then looked at her wordlessly, obviously unsure what to make of her action, afraid to draw any conclusions.
She gave him a pure, blinding smile, the first, she knew, since she had returned to Moya.
And he understood. She could see it in the way the shadows left his eyes.
John reached out his free hand, and gently touched the edges of her hair. He pulled his fingers away again almost immediately, trying, she realized, to be discreet, and then said in a quiet voice, as casually as he could muster, “So, what have you been doing?”
She went for honesty. “I fell asleep,” she said. “I had a very peculiar dream. He, John, he called me….” She wrinkled up her face, trying to remember. “Scrunge? There were ghosts. Three of them.”
John’s head came up. “Scrooge?” he asked in surprise.
“That’s it!” she said, surprised that he knew what was in her dream.
“Hey, wake up you two! We’re trying to have a toast here,” Chiana said, smacking the table with her hand. “You first, old man!”
John grinned at Aeryn, and cleared his throat. To the table at large, he said, “Okay, this is a little something from a story my father always read to us every year on Christmas Eve. God bless us,” he said, raising his glass. “Every one.”
Aeryn squeezed his hand. She felt she’d been blessed by SOMEONE this very evening….
