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Summary: Goodbye, you big, beautiful, blue b*tch.
Spoilers: Self-Inflicted Wounds, Pts. 1 & 2.
Disclaimers: Farscape is the property of Henson Company, Hallmark Entertainment and the Sci-Fi Channel. Story concept is the property of Christopher L. Stine. All characters used here are for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended and no monetary compensation has been received.
Category: Sci-Fi, Drama.
Archiving: Certainly. Please let me know when you do it.
Note: Thank you, Virginia. Enjoy.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
-Kahlil Gibran
There is nothing left of you to bury.
It would be redundant since you’re dead. The species of everyone else on Moya could fertilize the ground after we died and were interred in it. I have heard the romanticized notion to be laid to rest without a coffin or sarcophagus and slowly decay and nourish the soil around you- maybe even help a sapling grow into a tree as its roots pushed right through you, still growing and needing. Delvians need the soil, not the other way around.
Still, it would depend on your funeral customs. Each the worlds I have visited have their own versions. I’ve heard a million cultures cover their dead in dirt, even more cremate them, lay them in the sides of mountains or preserve them in sand or mud. I have watched nomads build platforms to lay their patriarchs on the highest aerie to be picked apart by birds as their eyes remained fixed on the sky. I have watched others be released into the bluest oceans, to drift into its depths. I have seen the bodies of Peacekeepers jettisoned into space to be claimed by the fires of a sun. I prefer none of those.
Except, they would probably have an elaborate funeral for me anyway. Loved ones hold the sentimental belief that they need to give you something special, to show you some kind of reverence, whether you’re a simple farmer or a frelling leader of a planet. But when you’re dead, you’re dead- an empty vessel. The important part of you has gone on to something even better. I’m sure you would have agreed.
Frelling fools.
I picture myself simply disappearing. My life expires and I become silent and still. Then my skin quickly dries and slowly peels away revealing dried tissue and organs, which flake off in pieces bit by bit. Finally, brittle bones disintegrate and I fade into dust- my molecules drifting off into forever and scattering until you can no longer measure the being in physical terms. I think that would be perfect- blending into everything. It’s what you did; I saw it with my own eyes.
Her room smells like a tomb when I enter it for the first time in two solar days. The quiet thrumming noise and slight vibrations Moya makes when moving through space are barely detectable. The walls remain charred black, like the other tiers, with only small patches of gold showing through the scarring. The surface skin is sloughing in places, and it makes me sick to look at it. Moya heals slowly- but not just from the burns.
Almost nothing is salvageable of hers or anyone else’s possessions after the fire. Not that any items we had were irreplaceable. The money from Natira’s Shadow Depository can buy us supplies for cycles to come, so it’s hardly a problem. But you can’t replace a mother.
A mother.
It feels like an eternity since I’ve seen my real mother. She’s long gone, and I miss her. I try to imagine normal things mothers do for their children like her rubbing my youthful back to comfort me from an approaching storm, or lulling me to sleep with a bedtime story or the smells of her cooking in the morning. We’re too old for those things now, but part of me easily pictures Zhaan in that role.
I’ve never asked her if she had any children. All the worlds I have visited and I’ve never even seen a Delvian child. I still don’t know how Delvians breed. I pictured an ancient tree were blue pods fall from the branches and a small Delvian unfolds its limbs waking up into its new world. And all the adults became the young ones parents, providing them with a communal knowledge and love that freed them from the dependence of only one provider.
Eight hundred and twelve cycles is a long time to live, to grow. She needed only one microt to decide if she would sacrifice her life. Such a trade.
“What are you doing here?”
Stark is standing in the doorway when I turn to respond. Half his face that is not covered looks older under the dim light. He’s wearing the new outfit she had bought him on the last commerce planet we had been to. This is the first time I’ve heard him talk since she died.
“I said, what are you doing here?”
“I’m thinking about the past. About her.”
“You wish to take that?”
He pointed to the ornate bottle in my hand I had picked up while reminiscing. It was a swirl of blue, red and yellow glass with a delicate, ornate top. The inside of it smelled of exotic oils. There was little else in the room that survived the flames.
“No. You can have it. I was merely remembering.”
Stark looked away. “I have no need for it.”
“Are you all right?” The question seemed ludicrous, but I could think of nothing to say to comfort him. Being a Stakira by birth made death his preordained trade.
“You are the third person to ask me that in less than a solar day, and I will tell you exactly what I told the other two- I’ll be fine.” He looked back at me. “Why are you so concerned?”
“Because… I wouldn’t be.”
His mouth opened, starting to respond, but didn’t.
“Stark, she said there was no blame.”
His face grew darker. Nothing said would make things better, but I try, like a fool.
“I don’t know you that well, Stark, but if you want to talk…”
He was already gone. His footsteps padded softly down the corridor. He once said his body was simply a vessel to hold his true essence. In the past two solar days, he had become that- passing through the ship and all of us like a ghost.
Try and imagine a pain that twists and writhes in you, never letting go or leaving you in peace and then betraying you by leaving you alive while all those around you pass to the quiet transition that death brings. Imagine absorbing a dark part of every soul that you help pass into death and that darkness adds on to another and another building a soul that is the total culmination of the dark. That soul accumulates great power over itself and spirals to the brink of madness. Then you find something that mitigates that despair and the one thing that makes that existence bearable. Lose it all too soon, and you have the evolution that is Stark.
We, at least, had over two cycles with her. There was no one else to talk to better who could ease my fears, my doubts or my anger- and I had them even if I tried not to show them. I was raised proud. I was taught to think in terms of survival, to keep myself alive at all costs. It’s a selfish way to be, but circumstances make me what I am.
She was none of those things to me.
When I was young I dreamed of space because it’s the dream of all youth to aspire to something so wondrous. As I got older and traveled through space it no longer felt so special. Once in space I dreamed of home, or the idea of it. Still do. Priorities shift like the stars when you’re lost among them. It’s easier to realize what’s most important to you
“Pilot? How is Moya?”
He hesitates before answering me. “She’s recovering, but still feels some pain. We so wish Zhaan were here…”
“So do I.”
The Pathfinders become a fading memory, removed from Moya’s hull by the simple press of a button. It was too easy, and she shouldn’t be dead because of it. If there was a planet close enough- if we could have buried her in it’s soil- if we hadn’t stopped to examine that wormhole- if, if, if. There are too many ifs. It’s too late. We said our goodbyes. Why lament about it now?
Pilot says nothing else. The annoying redhead Crichton revived from the cryo-chamber is exactly that. Chiana weeps. Aeryn quietly works in silence feeling guilty- it was Zhaan’s essence that brought her back to life on the ice planet. Crichton sulks in his room, blaming himself. I want to blame him too; his obsession with wormholes blinds him.
But she never let me hold a grudge. She wouldn’t stand for any of that.
“Fool the others if you will, but I see the greater good in the small Hynerian.”
“Have I ever told you how much I appreciate your counsel?”
“Every time you let me.”
“Goodbye, you big, beautiful, blue bitch.”
I turn my hover-throne and leave the room. There is no need to remain among the ruins. We continue on. Reckless, misguided and in sorrow, we continue on.
I never asked her if she had children.
Would you?
