A Chaptered Life
Jun. 23rd, 2003 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernow(ETA to add - I messed with this a little. Still unhappy about the time changes, but I liked writing in the present tense. I suspect I will not allow this to stay in the present, though).
Well, not mine, but beginning the experiment, I guess.
I want to try the Chapter thing, not so much as a WIP - and none of this will be officially posted until it's done - but as a challenge to myself. To see if I can write on a timeline, and actually follow a plot. It also allows me to change character voice, which is a frustration within vignette style fix. Remaining true to one voice is necessary for clarity and consistency, but I'd also like to experiment with narrative, how to advance the story using different perspectives. And yes, one of my all time favorite books is As I Lay Dying. I'm a big Faullkner fan, and love that technique, when it's done well.
So, Blue Eyes. AU after LATP 2. The first few paragraphs I posted a couple of weeks ago. And to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubberneck, I blatantly stole a line from the description of Buckshot. It's still yours, and it's still a great line.
Chapter One
He's weak and the old shoulder injury is bugging the crap out of him. His body is stiff and unweildy, atrophied to a degree despite protests to the contrary from the scientists that he should be his old self.
He shrugs them off, realizes it isn't age so much as stiffness. He's been frozen for 16 cycles, and the muscle stimulants they charged into the statues just couldn't compete with real movement.
Anix, 14 cycles old, blue eyed, curious, and smart as a whip, has been taunting him through recovery. She's lightening fast, and snorted with laughter at his reluctance to hit her. He quickly realized he was no threat to her. She was slender, but speedy and frequently made him smile at her youthful energy.
He hears whispered rumors about her mother, the fierce rebel captain who had insisted upon saving the Royal Planet from further ravages of war, but so far, the soldier hadn't graced him with her presence. The rumors suggest that she's currently off planet, handling a skirmish nearby. It doesn't seem to bother Anix overly. The guards respect her, and the other rebel soldiers look at her with as much fondness as they are capable of.
He is only good for a couple of hours everyday, though, and much of that time is spent with Katralla and the child developing inside her. She hasn't opened her eyes since the explosion released them, but the fetus continues to grow. Tyno, who doesn't look so much older as worn down, sits with her the rest of the time.
His eyes are empty, the trade-off of civil harmony for love not the kind of pain he had expected.
John gets that. He has had cycles to come up with the right words to get Aeryn to stay, and he knows now that they still wouldn't have made any difference. After they'd dragged her back from the Barren Lands, her companion having died from the fall, they fixed her leg before exiling her. She had limped into the chamber one night before departing. She'd stroked his face, his brow, and left, her feelings as opaque as ever.
***
He sits on the mat in the room that has been converted for his use. Anix is stretching, looking at him with a glint of mischief that he has a feeling her mother would disapprove of. Her eyes are so blue that they catch him off guard, and before he can stop himself, visions of parents and children dancing behind his eyes, he asks, "Anna, where's your dad?"
She shrugs, her slim shoulders moving under the tee shirt, and continues to stretch. It’s just such a teenage gesture that he wants to wrap her up, protect her from this universe.
“Did you know him?” Anix shrugs again, reinforcing her gangliness. She’s not quite pretty yet, long limbs and angles, sharp cheekbones and unruly hair. She’s going to be beautiful, though, he’d bet money on it.
“It’s ok, kid. You don’t have to talk about it.” She looks at him them, sitting on the mat, undoubtedly seeing an old man, wanting to say something to make him happy. He misses Chiana acutely at that moment.
“No,” she hesitates, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s not that. I, um, I don’t know my biological father.”
John nods, remembers sitting across that PK triangle, looking at Aeryn, hearing her utter the word lover. Vaguely registering that PK’s are assigned to breed. He shuts that line of thought down, tries to concentrate on the here and now.
“Your mom was a soldier, is a soldier, right?” Anix gives him that full smile that she reserves for the guards she’s trying to charm.
“Oh yeah. Her whole life is about being a soldier, being a Captain. Everything in order, everything disciplined, in it’s place.” She leans towards him conspiratorily. “Sometimes I like to leave things scattered around just to make her crazy. I always have to pick them up, anyway, though.”
John grins at that, grins at the ease of talking to this young Sebacean girl who trys to make her mother a little nuts.
“Not real relaxed, huh?”
Anix’s face clouds a little. “She can’t be, I guess. She’s got a lot to do.”
“She want that for you?” he asks, watching her shake her head rapidly.
“No. She made me learn to defend myself, to fight and to shoot, and she gets so angry if I get anywhere near danger.” The adolescent frustration at parental protectiveness surges through the girl, pushing her shoulders back, her chin jutting out. “I’m an adult. She’d killed lots of people before she was my age, and at least I have a good cause. I want to join the rebellion but she just refuses!”
“She doesn’t want to see you hurt, honey.”
Anix sets her jaw. “Well, I don’t think that’s for her to say.”
John knows better than to argue with this line of reasoning. His battles with his own father are still close to his heart, the things that were said, things that can’t be rescinded. It was almost a comfort to know that the battles between parents and their kids were universal.
“Come on kid,” he says, standing up and groaning. “Let’s get this daily ass-whuppin’ over with.”
***
He gets stronger everyday, and his child grows minutely, and his wife breathes the deep, slow breath of the comatose. The palace is a shelter, he finds out quickly. There are refugees filling up the rooms of the extensive compound. The city beyond has been bombed, 10,000 dead in a single strifing run. Tevryn, Anix’s primary glowering guard, has warmed to him a little and tells him the figure in disgust. 10,000 dead in seconds, just to prove a point. John swallows that with bitterness. The palace hadn’t been bombed. Explosives had been set in random places, and the rebel team had arrived too late to deactivate them. They’d driven the Peacekeeper commandoes away after several days of furious combat, which John had slept through, knocked unconscious by the explosion and regeneration.
The rebel troops are using the palace as a temporary base of operations for the region, and mostly John just tries to stay out of their way and regain his strength. One of the commandoes, a former PK, had stopped him in the corridor one day, grabbing his arm, and asking, “Are you really John Crichton?” the disbelief shining in his eyes. John had nodded, not saying anything, and tried not to react to the soldier shaking his head in disgust or wonderment, John wasn’t about to ask which.
He sees the Empress briefly at night, when she comes in to check on her daughter. The events of the past few weekens had aged her far more than the cycles had, and she watches her heir with a look of sadness and anger that John wants very much to slap from her face. He holds his compassion out to her, though. This is still her daughter, not just her empire.
“We will have to choose eventually,” she said softly one night, looking at him and raising a glass of wine to her lips, her glory somewhat diminished in the candlelight. The generators are being used to power the commandoes' systems. Lights for the civilians are not considered necessary during the evening arns. John nodded, avoided looking at Tyno, still wanting him to have a say in this decision.
“Yeah,” he replied, ”I guess we will.” This standing, walking life sometimes feels like just a little too much. He doesn't want to return to his existence as a pigeon perch, but this in-between is hard to take.
He spent 16 cycles standing next to Katralla, watching the play of power and politics, whispering to her and telling her stories. Hearing her laugh, talking of the future of this realm and their child. They didn’t speak of lost love. She never mentioned Aeryn’s final visit, and he pretended not to listen when Tyno came to talk to her. The conversation was never intimate, but still left John, frozen, feeling like a voyeur.
He missed everyone, both his lives, wished for the companionship of his sisters, of DK, of D’Argo and Chi and hell, even Rygel. He wished he could have said goodbye to his dad, ran that scenario repeatedly.
He deliberately didn’t think about Aeryn Sun, considering it an act of loyalty to this new life. Sixteen cycles was plenty of time to get over what might have been. That there had been many pretty, dark haired Sebacean women who wandered in and out of the court over the years was not his fault. That they stirred something in his heart, in his groin, that he wanted to reach out to them, that they left him speechless, gripped by sadness, that wasn't his fault either, right?
He had talks in his head with Alex, with Caroline, with Luanne Johnson and Karen Shaw, and shut out the weird little figure of Scorpius that dances around, taunting him in this motionless state.
All in all, it had been bad, but not as bad as he expected it to be. He was safe. He was free, mostly, of Scorpy, He would someday have a family. If that rang a little hollow, well, he attributed it to the Han Solo lifestyle.
Then one day he woke up and he was flesh again, and his wife lay like Sleeping Beauty in a royal bedroom. Problem was, they couldn’t decide who was the prince.
***
And so life continued in this vein for another weeken.
***
He was giving Anix a run for her money this afternoon he thought. Sweat glistened on her young body, and a feral grin stretched over her lips. But he felt good, edgy, stronger than he had in so long. She swung, he feinted and ducked, got a blow in to her abdomen, refused to not feel a little joy at her grunt of pain. Cockiness had always been a flaw, though, and he was unprepared for her to feint a roundhouse, catch herself and use her momentum to land close and deliver a perfect Pantak jab.
“Damn,” he had time to think,” do they all learn that trick?” before he hit the mat, sinking into blackness and stars.
He heard her voice first, the tones not dulled by memory, and thought he was hallucinating. Funny, though, that particular blow usually didn’t make him hallucinate.
“Anix. Humans are very susceptible to Pantak jabs. Perhaps you should have considered a different counter attack.”
He heard the girl’s annoyed sigh, “Well I didn’t want to hurt him.” Which made him grin, and open his eyes, and quickly close them again. He was dreaming, or seeing things, or something.
“Crichton,” he heard. He kept his eyes shut tightly.
“Crichton,” and he couldn’t be dreaming.
That tone, that frellingannoyinghuman tone was not the one he dreamt about. Besides, the firm shaking his shoulder was receiving didn’t feel the least dreamlike. He breathed in, confirming her scent- sweet, spicy, alien and specific.
“Anix, is he taking medication?” he heard her say in frustration, before hearing his name uttered sharply one more time. He breathed in again, and opened his eyes to meet the grey gaze of Aeryn Sun.
“Hey old man, sorry about that.” Anix said, shadowed behind her. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t stop looking at Aeryn, couldn’t do anything but shrug a little.
She was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She also still scared the crap out of him.
Aeryn Sun sat back on her heels, regarding him assessingly.
Anix knelt down beside him, grinning wryly. “Mother, this is John Crichton.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, finally getting his breath back.
They continued to look at each other, and before he could help himself, he raised his hand towards her, meaning to touch the delicate bones of her face, but she caught his hand, wrapping her cool fingers around his, and in the interval, it sank in.
Sitting up slowly, he looked back and forth from one dark haired Sebacean to the other, and said softly. “I should have known.”
Well, not mine, but beginning the experiment, I guess.
I want to try the Chapter thing, not so much as a WIP - and none of this will be officially posted until it's done - but as a challenge to myself. To see if I can write on a timeline, and actually follow a plot. It also allows me to change character voice, which is a frustration within vignette style fix. Remaining true to one voice is necessary for clarity and consistency, but I'd also like to experiment with narrative, how to advance the story using different perspectives. And yes, one of my all time favorite books is As I Lay Dying. I'm a big Faullkner fan, and love that technique, when it's done well.
So, Blue Eyes. AU after LATP 2. The first few paragraphs I posted a couple of weeks ago. And to
rubberneck, I blatantly stole a line from the description of Buckshot. It's still yours, and it's still a great line.Chapter One
He's weak and the old shoulder injury is bugging the crap out of him. His body is stiff and unweildy, atrophied to a degree despite protests to the contrary from the scientists that he should be his old self.
He shrugs them off, realizes it isn't age so much as stiffness. He's been frozen for 16 cycles, and the muscle stimulants they charged into the statues just couldn't compete with real movement.
Anix, 14 cycles old, blue eyed, curious, and smart as a whip, has been taunting him through recovery. She's lightening fast, and snorted with laughter at his reluctance to hit her. He quickly realized he was no threat to her. She was slender, but speedy and frequently made him smile at her youthful energy.
He hears whispered rumors about her mother, the fierce rebel captain who had insisted upon saving the Royal Planet from further ravages of war, but so far, the soldier hadn't graced him with her presence. The rumors suggest that she's currently off planet, handling a skirmish nearby. It doesn't seem to bother Anix overly. The guards respect her, and the other rebel soldiers look at her with as much fondness as they are capable of.
He is only good for a couple of hours everyday, though, and much of that time is spent with Katralla and the child developing inside her. She hasn't opened her eyes since the explosion released them, but the fetus continues to grow. Tyno, who doesn't look so much older as worn down, sits with her the rest of the time.
His eyes are empty, the trade-off of civil harmony for love not the kind of pain he had expected.
John gets that. He has had cycles to come up with the right words to get Aeryn to stay, and he knows now that they still wouldn't have made any difference. After they'd dragged her back from the Barren Lands, her companion having died from the fall, they fixed her leg before exiling her. She had limped into the chamber one night before departing. She'd stroked his face, his brow, and left, her feelings as opaque as ever.
***
He sits on the mat in the room that has been converted for his use. Anix is stretching, looking at him with a glint of mischief that he has a feeling her mother would disapprove of. Her eyes are so blue that they catch him off guard, and before he can stop himself, visions of parents and children dancing behind his eyes, he asks, "Anna, where's your dad?"
She shrugs, her slim shoulders moving under the tee shirt, and continues to stretch. It’s just such a teenage gesture that he wants to wrap her up, protect her from this universe.
“Did you know him?” Anix shrugs again, reinforcing her gangliness. She’s not quite pretty yet, long limbs and angles, sharp cheekbones and unruly hair. She’s going to be beautiful, though, he’d bet money on it.
“It’s ok, kid. You don’t have to talk about it.” She looks at him them, sitting on the mat, undoubtedly seeing an old man, wanting to say something to make him happy. He misses Chiana acutely at that moment.
“No,” she hesitates, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s not that. I, um, I don’t know my biological father.”
John nods, remembers sitting across that PK triangle, looking at Aeryn, hearing her utter the word lover. Vaguely registering that PK’s are assigned to breed. He shuts that line of thought down, tries to concentrate on the here and now.
“Your mom was a soldier, is a soldier, right?” Anix gives him that full smile that she reserves for the guards she’s trying to charm.
“Oh yeah. Her whole life is about being a soldier, being a Captain. Everything in order, everything disciplined, in it’s place.” She leans towards him conspiratorily. “Sometimes I like to leave things scattered around just to make her crazy. I always have to pick them up, anyway, though.”
John grins at that, grins at the ease of talking to this young Sebacean girl who trys to make her mother a little nuts.
“Not real relaxed, huh?”
Anix’s face clouds a little. “She can’t be, I guess. She’s got a lot to do.”
“She want that for you?” he asks, watching her shake her head rapidly.
“No. She made me learn to defend myself, to fight and to shoot, and she gets so angry if I get anywhere near danger.” The adolescent frustration at parental protectiveness surges through the girl, pushing her shoulders back, her chin jutting out. “I’m an adult. She’d killed lots of people before she was my age, and at least I have a good cause. I want to join the rebellion but she just refuses!”
“She doesn’t want to see you hurt, honey.”
Anix sets her jaw. “Well, I don’t think that’s for her to say.”
John knows better than to argue with this line of reasoning. His battles with his own father are still close to his heart, the things that were said, things that can’t be rescinded. It was almost a comfort to know that the battles between parents and their kids were universal.
“Come on kid,” he says, standing up and groaning. “Let’s get this daily ass-whuppin’ over with.”
***
He gets stronger everyday, and his child grows minutely, and his wife breathes the deep, slow breath of the comatose. The palace is a shelter, he finds out quickly. There are refugees filling up the rooms of the extensive compound. The city beyond has been bombed, 10,000 dead in a single strifing run. Tevryn, Anix’s primary glowering guard, has warmed to him a little and tells him the figure in disgust. 10,000 dead in seconds, just to prove a point. John swallows that with bitterness. The palace hadn’t been bombed. Explosives had been set in random places, and the rebel team had arrived too late to deactivate them. They’d driven the Peacekeeper commandoes away after several days of furious combat, which John had slept through, knocked unconscious by the explosion and regeneration.
The rebel troops are using the palace as a temporary base of operations for the region, and mostly John just tries to stay out of their way and regain his strength. One of the commandoes, a former PK, had stopped him in the corridor one day, grabbing his arm, and asking, “Are you really John Crichton?” the disbelief shining in his eyes. John had nodded, not saying anything, and tried not to react to the soldier shaking his head in disgust or wonderment, John wasn’t about to ask which.
He sees the Empress briefly at night, when she comes in to check on her daughter. The events of the past few weekens had aged her far more than the cycles had, and she watches her heir with a look of sadness and anger that John wants very much to slap from her face. He holds his compassion out to her, though. This is still her daughter, not just her empire.
“We will have to choose eventually,” she said softly one night, looking at him and raising a glass of wine to her lips, her glory somewhat diminished in the candlelight. The generators are being used to power the commandoes' systems. Lights for the civilians are not considered necessary during the evening arns. John nodded, avoided looking at Tyno, still wanting him to have a say in this decision.
“Yeah,” he replied, ”I guess we will.” This standing, walking life sometimes feels like just a little too much. He doesn't want to return to his existence as a pigeon perch, but this in-between is hard to take.
He spent 16 cycles standing next to Katralla, watching the play of power and politics, whispering to her and telling her stories. Hearing her laugh, talking of the future of this realm and their child. They didn’t speak of lost love. She never mentioned Aeryn’s final visit, and he pretended not to listen when Tyno came to talk to her. The conversation was never intimate, but still left John, frozen, feeling like a voyeur.
He missed everyone, both his lives, wished for the companionship of his sisters, of DK, of D’Argo and Chi and hell, even Rygel. He wished he could have said goodbye to his dad, ran that scenario repeatedly.
He deliberately didn’t think about Aeryn Sun, considering it an act of loyalty to this new life. Sixteen cycles was plenty of time to get over what might have been. That there had been many pretty, dark haired Sebacean women who wandered in and out of the court over the years was not his fault. That they stirred something in his heart, in his groin, that he wanted to reach out to them, that they left him speechless, gripped by sadness, that wasn't his fault either, right?
He had talks in his head with Alex, with Caroline, with Luanne Johnson and Karen Shaw, and shut out the weird little figure of Scorpius that dances around, taunting him in this motionless state.
All in all, it had been bad, but not as bad as he expected it to be. He was safe. He was free, mostly, of Scorpy, He would someday have a family. If that rang a little hollow, well, he attributed it to the Han Solo lifestyle.
Then one day he woke up and he was flesh again, and his wife lay like Sleeping Beauty in a royal bedroom. Problem was, they couldn’t decide who was the prince.
***
And so life continued in this vein for another weeken.
***
He was giving Anix a run for her money this afternoon he thought. Sweat glistened on her young body, and a feral grin stretched over her lips. But he felt good, edgy, stronger than he had in so long. She swung, he feinted and ducked, got a blow in to her abdomen, refused to not feel a little joy at her grunt of pain. Cockiness had always been a flaw, though, and he was unprepared for her to feint a roundhouse, catch herself and use her momentum to land close and deliver a perfect Pantak jab.
“Damn,” he had time to think,” do they all learn that trick?” before he hit the mat, sinking into blackness and stars.
He heard her voice first, the tones not dulled by memory, and thought he was hallucinating. Funny, though, that particular blow usually didn’t make him hallucinate.
“Anix. Humans are very susceptible to Pantak jabs. Perhaps you should have considered a different counter attack.”
He heard the girl’s annoyed sigh, “Well I didn’t want to hurt him.” Which made him grin, and open his eyes, and quickly close them again. He was dreaming, or seeing things, or something.
“Crichton,” he heard. He kept his eyes shut tightly.
“Crichton,” and he couldn’t be dreaming.
That tone, that frellingannoyinghuman tone was not the one he dreamt about. Besides, the firm shaking his shoulder was receiving didn’t feel the least dreamlike. He breathed in, confirming her scent- sweet, spicy, alien and specific.
“Anix, is he taking medication?” he heard her say in frustration, before hearing his name uttered sharply one more time. He breathed in again, and opened his eyes to meet the grey gaze of Aeryn Sun.
“Hey old man, sorry about that.” Anix said, shadowed behind her. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t stop looking at Aeryn, couldn’t do anything but shrug a little.
She was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She also still scared the crap out of him.
Aeryn Sun sat back on her heels, regarding him assessingly.
Anix knelt down beside him, grinning wryly. “Mother, this is John Crichton.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, finally getting his breath back.
They continued to look at each other, and before he could help himself, he raised his hand towards her, meaning to touch the delicate bones of her face, but she caught his hand, wrapping her cool fingers around his, and in the interval, it sank in.
Sitting up slowly, he looked back and forth from one dark haired Sebacean to the other, and said softly. “I should have known.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 03:23 pm (UTC)'Cause I'm thinking about marking it on my calendar.
This is excellent. I was afraid that the 'where's Aeryn' game was gonna carry it on for a while but this is perfect.
Next chapter, please.
NOW!
;]
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 03:31 pm (UTC)I do like the effect, fading from present to past and back, though.
Re:
Date: 2003-06-23 03:53 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 04:34 pm (UTC)BTW, your icon is messing with my work schedule. I really, really, really want to go home and watch BWOD right now.
That's right up there on my "Sure they only slept together that one time" list of episodes. Top of the list (since I'm now totally distracting myself) is OOTM-if they didn't end up in bed after that cute little 'grin and chase' at the end of that ep, I'll eat my... ack, braindeath. Well, you know what I mean. They so did it.
Dammit, I just don't care about excessive vehicle noise
Re:
Date: 2003-06-23 04:47 pm (UTC)I am a big sucker. I love BWOD (and actually, we just watched OOTM last night. G. always lets me choose what epidsode I want to show him. After bawling all the way through Terms of Endearment, I couldn't actually bring myself to watch IP. That's going to be my guilty pleasure tonight).
Ack, go away rotten bunnies, or I'll send my viscious killer Siamese after you (who would probably hide behind the couch if faced with real, non-catnip laced, prey).
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 08:10 pm (UTC)So are we talking full penetration or some serious slap and tickle action? Which probably got interrupted by some crew memeber or another.
But then what eps would you say should get this treatment? other than the already mentioned ones?
Look at what you two did! Now I think there mught be bunnies knocking at my door. *pout* If I'm really quite maybe they will go away.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 10:07 pm (UTC)Look what you went and made me do:
Look what you went and made me do: <a href:"http://www.livejournal.com/users/crankygrrl/97439.html#cutid1">part one</a>.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 10:08 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-06-24 09:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 04:11 pm (UTC)Ex. unweildy --> unwieldy can be easily caught by spellcheck.
I quite like this, by the way.
Re:
Date: 2003-06-23 04:39 pm (UTC)And thanks.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-23 04:29 pm (UTC)Uh yeah I too would like to be notified when this 'schedule' is set up. Red pen is waiting to mark the dates.
And I am glad you continued this. I remember reading it a bit back and hoped you would continue it.
MORE!
Re:
Date: 2003-06-23 04:33 pm (UTC)But I think you're right. I need to treat it like a WIP, make notes of changes, take suggestions, and when it's done, edit the bejezus out of it.
And more is soon to come. No worries. It'll probably be more than you want:)