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He is on Moya, and wormholes come when called, a fury of blue waves tearing at the fabric of space. The edges of possibilities rippling through the darkness and stealing the light of stars. Scorpius has almost become used to this: the leap of the senses, the prickle of physical awareness when the shining blue spills through Moya's corridors and reflects patterns off the walls, paints lines across John's face.
John calls and the wormhole comes, swallowing space as he counts down in an alien tongue. He is drawn into the blue vortex that bleeds through his eyes.
"John," Scorpius says softly.
There is no response. John has somehow slipped his grasp again, and Scorpius is alone on the Command deck.
There is a bed, the smell of dying in the air, and the single light is growing dim in the blue blackness of an unnamed night. Blue is the colour of death, and the names of planets no longer matter.
"I outlived you," he tells the frail creature on the bed. "I outlived all of you." Even if he hasn't, he is still the only one left.
"Never any doubt." The voice is weak, almost overwhelmed by the small, close room. Breath rasps in harsh, wearied cadence. Measured, even now.
Scorpius breathes more deeply, he tries to breathe enough for both. He wants more, has always wanted more. Now he tries to hold John in this moment, in this place, but the universe does not listen to him.
Always John. The universe stretches to accommodate him. The fabric of what-is pulling so tightly that one move reverberates through all of space and time, echoes spreading outward to shift bodies from alignment. One tear is enough to wipe out a world, but there are no more tears. Aeryn Sun will no longer cry for John Crichton.
Scorpius tries, has tried, did try. But his footsteps will not ripple through the smallest lives, and he cannot cry. He has learned but he would trade it back for one wormhole to fold this moment into a length of time.
"You leave me the universe, you know." That and anger because John has not left him enough.
"Yeah." John smiles, and it is a rare thing. A last gift. "Take care of it for me." And he is gone. He has once again slipped away. He only stays long enough to change, and Scorpius does not know where he goes this time. Wormholes are only a way.
They are on a distant shore. He stoops to test the water with his bare fingers, feeling the prickle, the catalyst blooming through his sensitive skin. He has traveled the span of the universe, riding down the blue throats of wormholes, but he has never felt this before, and he turns to John. "Creatures live in here?"
"Fish. Sharks. Squid."
He remembers seeing sharks. John called him a shark, told him why. The teeth. The fixed smile. Killers living in this blue water, but this is John's world.
"Edible by your species, as I recall."
"Yeah." John too is by the water's edge, but he crouches, his body tightly wound within black leather, sharp edges against the backdrop of blue-green world. Gloves tucked into his waistband, his fingers pale against the round grey stones rolling in his palms. The single word is calm, measured, doled out with careful restraint, and Scorpius must fill in the silence with possibilities.
His own hands are still in the water, the tingle stronger, lines of tension crawling up his skin. He pulls back out, into the safety of the air, but the reaction lingers in his flesh. There is no reason to test further. They have already seen the proof in the empty skies and the dead bodies.
"Too much?" The voice does not change. Economy.
"Yes," he replies evenly. There is no more need to hide weakness.
John pulls back his hand, snaps his wrist. One of the stones flicks out, skips once, twice, three times. Three perfect circles of ever-widening waves, sharp even against the greater swells. Time stands still for one breath.
"And you're only a half-breed."
Another stone, another three skips. The stone sinks at the same spot, but Scorpius cannot tell if it is deliberate. John has always possessed a unique kinesthetic sense, an awareness of self and place that has never relied upon mere names. He can always find his way back. Always. Return, though now he chooses carefully, and he never stays long in one place. He will not stay long here.
They are in the transport pod, and John is armoured in leather, in pulse pistols, in his friends and the dead blue light of his eyes. Shielded by intent, by his stillness and his silence. Now, here, the wormholes wait for his call, his countdown.
Scorpius does not have to check his own pulse pistol. He too is ready. He too is in leather, he has always worn gloves. When he looks in the mirror on Moya, he sees what John created. Not the Scarrans.
"The Scarran dreadnought has been acquired and locked," D'Argo says, and Scorpius takes one last taste of the expectant, still air. He has learned: the wormholes will tear apart reality, but they will walk through the rips and remain whole. John holds them, and he is one of them.
"You fight for the universe," he tells John. Assures him, because this is the first time: John's choice to act, instead of react. Scorpius does not know what will happen, how this will end, but he knows that the universe will shudder in response.
"I'm here," John says, and it is more than a promise. He could not be anywhere but here. Finally he has come to understand that. His destiny leads to this, time and space always resetting their paths to this end. Has and always will, and he returns because he knows the way, not because he wants to come.
"You will save countless billions," Scorpius says.
"I've stopped counting how many I've killed," John replies.
There is a bed, a dusty sunset, a tired old man cradled in the rumpled sheets, memories drowning in his eyes. "It's time," he whispers.
"We have been here before," Scorpius tells him.
"This how you thought it would be?" The effort to speak the words spends him, takes all his breath.
Scorpius looks down at the seamed face, the wrinkles deep slashes across thin skin. No. This is not how he thought it would be. There should be pulse pistols, Aurora chairs, ships imploding and worlds burning. Everyone else should be dying.
Instead there is quiet, the sounds of foot traffic below and the occasional chirp of an insect not enough to muffle the rattling breath that lifts the frail body from time to time. A slowly slowing count, and the world hesitates, slows down with each breath.
Wormholes will not take him away this time.
They are on a distant shore. Scorpius looks out beyond the waves, thinking of how long, how much time, it has taken them to reach this place, this moment.
A snap of the wrist, and plip, plip, plip. The stone skips across the heaving mass of water before burying itself unerringly in that spot, but still the ripples remain to scar the surface.
John has yet to look around, yet to uncoil from his tight knot. Scorpius does not know how long they have been watching the ocean advance upon them. John is not paying attention, so the day escapes them.
"You have been here before," he finally asks.
"It's just like I remember," John replies. Another quick flick, and there is now only one stone in his hand. Scorpius does not know where the stones came from. John made them appear.
Scorpius stands, pulls his gloves on gingerly. The skin sloughs off, and the flesh burns, will burn for several arns. He will take some of this water back for Sikozu. He wants to see her burn too.
John has not moved from where he is crouched, and Scorpius puts a hand on his shoulder as the waves lap at their boots. "Time," he says.
"There is a time to keep," John murmurs, and when he looks up he looks through, "and a time to cast off."
The last stone is dropped on the sand, is swallowed by the waves.
They are on Moya, and the air is foul with stench, with blood, and the thick carpet of gore muffles their footsteps. They meet over the muzzles of pulse pistols, and Scorpius lowers his gun first.
"This is how you live?" Scorpius snarls. "I am astonished that you manage to survive a single solar day with your carelessness."
"Three cycles," John grits out, skin pale between the swathes of blood. "I survived you."
Blood and bodies everywhere. But merely blood and bodies: not the twisted wreckage of Command Carriers, the blackened craters of Gammak bases, the broken spires of Shadow Depositories. This limited carnage is, Scorpius thinks, a conservation of energy. Unlike the boarders, John's companions don't fight to gain. Simply habit, not to lose, and it is they who still live when others have fallen.
Blood paints the walls of three tiers and all of Moya's crew.
Bits of hair, flesh, drip down around them, and Scorpius cannot contain his anger. "Half a cycle, and you learn nothing from me. Nothing!" Even the Chair was not so monstrous. He has never been so crude. He cares only for the minds, the knowledge. It is John who teaches him how to turn the world and its souls inside out. John who twists time from the ether.
"Scorpy. I'm not the one who's here to take notes."
"I did not come to Moya to learn how to kill like a barbarian."
"All part of the learning experience," John replies, voice an edged weapon. "You want wormholes? Earn 'em." As he leaves the dim light glints off his red-drenched hair. The wet leather drips shadows and gore, and John's footsteps are etched with blood. Lives, rippling with his passing.
He is on a Command Carrier, where everything smells strange, new. There are no Scarrans here. He will make his own place; he will stretch beyond what they allow.
"You have come here to learn," the Peacekeeper says. There is a sneer in his voice, a look in his eyes. Looks askance, steps away, whispers pressed between pale lips: these are nothing here. Torture enough for their own kind, but he is Peacekeeper in name and deed. Not in pure blood and bone, and in this the Scarrans are stronger.
His coming disturbs them. He senses it, he sees it, but they do nothing more than move away, drifting on the edges of his presence. They can use him, and he can use them. They will be his weapon as much as he will be theirs. He has chosen them.
They are on the distant shore, and the heaving blue masses threaten, coming ever closer. John dips his fingers into the water. Flicks droplets at the oncoming waves. The source of his tears, Scorpius thinks. Now the substitute, because John has cried all his own.
"It does not hurt you," Scorpius notes. There is pain in John, but it is not from this ocean of tears.
"I'm Human." Still is implied, because only is no longer true. Even John knows that now, and accepts it. They are dressed for traveling, and a wormhole waits to take them away. Scorpius can see it shimmering in his eyes, but John has not called it yet.
A stone skips across the surface, is buried in a blue-green wall of wave. Three hops again. The wave is timed, like the wormholes are timed. Precise ticks, slicing the universe into pieces.
"Are you the stone or the wave?" he asks John.
"The ripples," John replies, and his smile is out of time.
They walk among the ruins of a Scarran outpost, wade through the stench. John's face is masked with soot, and his eyes are heat-bright. There are body-bits everywhere, layers upon layers of Scarran pieces. The bright splash of non-Scarran blood intermingles with the soaked orange earth, but those fragments are too small to distinguish. John cries, tracks through the black shell coating his skin.
Scorpius sees them and is angry. "Isn't your precious Earth worth this?"
At first he is not certain John will answer. Words have become scarce, and Scorpius finds himself filling in the silences. Holding on to the pieces of John Crichton, threading them together with his conversation. Besides wormholes, words and tears are the only things John knows. Scorpius can learn the words if Aeryn Sun has learned the tears, and wormholes only come at John's call.
John pauses to look down, and Scorpius follows his gaze. A Scarran's outstretched hand. There is no arm attached, but there is multi-coloured fur tangled between the fingers. The tuft is stiff where it grows from the red sea, but the upper edges ripple softly in the dry dead wind.
The words are whispers, when they come. "Is anything worth this?"
They are in a command chamber underneath a mountain, and John smiles as he stares at the map so crudely projected against the wall. He whispers underneath his breath. Scorpius cannot hear him, but Aeryn flinches, looks away. John must be counting. Cinco, quatro, tres. Counting, again and again, and the hairs on the Human leaders' arms are standing at attention.
There is no wormhole this time; Scorpius does not see one in those eyes. The blue death is already here, carried in John all the time.
The image displayed is not a hologram, not so advanced, but it will do, Human tools for this Human nexus. Scorpius studies the images, the red lines and blue expanses. Blue reaching from end to end of the world projected. Simple as the answer, obvious as the truth. Blue. As John was the harbringer of death, so his world would prove the hell. Scorpius has learned this word only recently, but he understands the meaning.
The tech drones on. "--deuterium levels in seawater--"
Aeryn Sun is pale, the skin around her eyes tight. She will not cry. She could, but she will not, because she is a soldier once again. Scorpius cannot, and now he knows why.
"--catalyst for an quasi-fusion reaction--"
The images showing the skies are empty, and the darkness surrounding the blue-green ball is absolute except for the single point of light tracking across the equator. Moya, who rides the waves of destruction and bears death within her.
"--Scarran biochemistry--"
John cries, his cheeks wet and his eyes bright, but no one dares a word, not even these Humans who have had barely enough time to understand. Scorpius has cycles and still does not know enough. Wormholes are the way, not the key. John navigates time and space, fixes himself in his memories, where he has been, where he will be, but his tears wash away lives and his world is a weapon.
John does not, never did, need hate in order to destroy.
The lecture continues, as though words will prove the skies right. The Humans watch the screens but Scorpius and Aeryn watch John. There are no words left to him, it seems. They dried up on dusty planets, were soaked up in blood.
They are in the hangar bay, and John is staring at the decking, at a particular spot on the floor. A worn coin winks in his hands, appearing and disappearing between the gnarled fingers. Scorpius does not understand why John comes here to remember. Why this one place, in all of Moya, would remind him most clearly of her. She did not die here.
I won't, John told him once. Not can't, but won't.
Scorpius can see her in those blue eyes, beneath the wormholes that always linger. No tears today, yesterday or tomorrow. No words, then or now. No wrenching of time and space, only John staring at the floor. Lost in thought. Lost in time. A moment that stretches so long Scorpius knows the universe must shatter into pieces if John does not let go of what he holds on to so clearly.
"John," he whispers, afraid of what might happen, what could break.
John looks up to meet his gaze, and time, space, everything rushes in to fill the holes. Fill in all but the emptiness in those eyes, the tunnel leading elsewhere.
"I keep coming back here," John says.
They are in a small room, lit only with one light, and John is dying on the bed.
"No tears?" Scorpius gently mocks him. He wants words always and again, because so long as the words come John is still with him.
"Who do I need to kill now?" There is a smile, but it is a shark's smile, it is the smile John wrapped in tears and gave his world, when he sat on a padded chair in a room and watched the skies empty of the Scarrans. "Who's left?"
"I am."
"Good." John sighs, and it is the sound of letting go. "Your turn now. You've waited long enough."
They leave the distant shore behind, and John does not look back, and Scorpius does not ask if he will return. John always remembers the way.
