itsallovernow | Tiny fic - spoilers inherent

Wanted a moment for Chi, her grief, and because after this, I refuse to believe that D'Argo is dead, dead. But I needed to sob some more.
***
Hierarchy

There's life in the balance on tier 10, Crichton's life, his eyes wide and starring, broken and full of stars. She cares, she really does, but right now, all she's got is stillness. Her legs went numb and arn ago, but she can't bring herself to move from the table. Her body feels bolted, weighted down.

There's new life up there too, the narl pale and perfect, eyes bright as day, bright as his mother, his father, this frelled family he's been birthed into. Someday, she knows that's going to mean something to her.

It's her second birth, and she's retiring from midwifery. Too much gunfire, too much love and blood and death. She hopes they don't name the baby Talyn.

Clutching the qualta blade, it's warm solid weight straining the muscles in her arms, she gave it to Jothee like she was composed, like she was resigned and proud until she broke at the end.

She hates herself for the tears, but she has never hated herself for her loves, her hates, her needs. She won't start now, but there's still part of her that didn't want to cry in front of Jothee. When he left the room, her shoulders fell, and she pressed her fists into her belly, trying to hold it in. They're still there, bruising her skin with the force of pressure, but she's afraid that if she lets go, it will all spill out onto the table like vomit and guts and saltwater.

It hurts, so frelling much, hurts like the pain she saw on Aeryn's face, raw and angry and gaping, gashing. Hurts like salt, like raslak in an open wound, and she doesn't want to think about waking up tomorrow without D'Argo, maybe without John. Hyneria is… an option. She'll plant some prowsa fruit, and sob salt and water into the soil, and figure out what to do next… Nebari tears in Hynerian soil. D'Argo would have liked that. She likes that. Assuming Hynerians have soil. Or she could find the resistance, no peace treaty there. Options stretch around her, expanding full and elastic until they snap back upon her like a band, closing in, demoic and black and rubbery and she screams.

The cry hurts her throat, her chest, new eyes wet and she'd like to claw them out, give them back, find something to match this. She's done with loss. Nothing was supposed to hurt like this after Nerri, nothing. She screams again, and it doesn't help.

Aeryn's low voice saying her name cuts through the scream. Chiana hiccups her sob, scrubs at her face and turns to see the soldier holding her child. Aeryn's face is white, drawn. She surely hasn't slept yet, and her own world hangs in the balance somewhere on tier 10. Chiana should ask about Crichton, can't. Not quite yet.

Aeryn swallows, gently rocks with the child. The motion is unconscious, graceful, accommodating the extra weight on her gun side.

"I won't lie to you." Her voice sounds like cracked glass. She looks at Chiana's clenched hands, takes in the blood, and raises her chin.

Chiana tucks her hands under her armpits. "Don't, don't wanna wash yet. The blood…" She doesn't explain further. Aeryn purses her mouth, eyes dark. She understands, has enough blood on her own hands.

"It doesn't get better."

Chiana looks away, holds up her chin. "Yeah."

Aeryn pauses, and the loss in her voice lays Chiana down. "It gets further though, distant until you feel like you can look at it, reach out and put your fingers against it."

"Yeah." There's been plenty of loss in her life, plenty of death. This isn't novel, but it isn't old either, hurts new, hurts fresh. D'Argo and plans and his hands on her skin, his heat and laughter, his face burned onto her new eyes.

She wants the attention to shift, to tilt, wants to strike out at someone else even though Aeryn carries her own pain right now. "Do you miss him?"

"D'Argo? Yes. Of course. Yes." Aeryn told Pilot. Shaken, and watching the universe break, she'd been the one to tell Pilot, to take on that grief.

Chiana shakes her head with a snap, white hair in her eyes, anger, need, nameless, voiceless things.

"No. Not, not D'Argo. The other one. The clone."

She looks back at Aeryn, withdraws a little. Mother or not, Aeryn has violence on her face, in the bleak, hard set of her mouth.

For a microt, Chiana thinks about taking back the question, offering scattered, solemn apologies. But she doesn't. There's a niggling curiosity pushing at her, and she hangs onto it, a change from the snake of hurt lodged in her chest.

Silence stretches, vast and black, and then Aeryn curls her arms around her child. The narl snuffles at her breast, tiny fists stretching and then collapses back into boneless sleep. Aeryn swallows, and answers.

"Yes." No posturing, no hesitation in the word, and no regret either.

Oh. "Even though…?"

"He died Chiana. I watched him go. He was happy. He'd done his duty. And he died. It didn't make him better, didn't make him less gone, doesn't...I watched John Crichton die."

"And now?" She's desperate to push against Aeryn's open wounds, see if the blood matches her own.

Aeryn's words are steady, sand paper rough but firm, tearless. "And now I'm watching it all over again."

She'd like to say something fitting to that, but she can't, isn't capable of matching the rage and the loss and the conviction with anything but her own lashing pain, so she turns from it. The desire to wound fading like candlelight, and then Aeryn is in front of her, cool hand on Chiana's face.

"There isn't a hierarchy of pain, Chiana. There isn't more or worse or better. It's just there, and it tears, rips us up like shrapnel and pulse fire. Nothing makes it better."

Her dark tears spill over Aeryn's white hand, blue-black rivulets and Aeryn bows her head, touching her forehead to Chiana's. "He died like a warrior. That's all I've got, Chiana. And, somehow, we didn't."

The baby is so close, tiny nose, scrunched face so near to Chiana's own that she can't help herself, touches his downy skin, his lips. "Did it hurt, when you…" She's never asked, never thought she would, could.

"Yes," Aeryn whispers. "Hurt more when I came back."

"Okay," Chiana breathes out, closing her eyes. "Okay.

Current Mood: accomplished

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spoonishly.livejournal.com

Yes.

Excuse me. I must go cry again.

This was just...yeah, it made me cry and (even though it's easy to do with the miniseries still fresh) it takes a lot for fic to do that to me.

I'm sad for Chiana and so incredibly sad for D'Argo and then there's Aeryn pain and man.

I'll go cry again. It's good to cry and get it all out.

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I Don't Get Out Much, So I Read - Thea's Journal

Tiny fic - spoilers inherent

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