The apocalyse may now commence

[itsallovernow]

Dude, not only am I going to close my eyes and to to sleep in about three minutes (ignore the time stamp, it's really 11:48 p.m.), but I actually posted to farscapefriday for the first time in forever! Yeah.

One of leadensky's requests for the wishlist challenge was Collateral Damage. What happens to the folks caught in the wake of the bad luck that follows the Moya crew like a plague of space locusts? I love this idea, and I can see how easy it would be to turn this into a full fledged story, but I wanted to see how much I could convey from the outline, from the reactions. More than I expected, I think, and less than I needed.

So, Season 2. PG.



Fault Line

She cuts through their bindings in silence, no sound of voices, traffic – pedestrian or otherwise - just the sawed fraying of strands snapping against a sharp blade, of heavy breathing and the skipping hum of an old generator powering a fan in the ceiling.

Aeyrn puts the knife back in her boot, stands up and watches as he and D'Argo shake free of the ropes, shake off captivity. John scrubs at the blood on the side of his face, talks his stomach into staying put, not hurling on his own boots.

There's an elephant in the room, pink and hallucinogenic and far from sanguine, ex-sanguinated maybe and he curls his face in disgust at the pun, at the spectre of a girl dead on the ground, blood a sticky pool that's going to stain the permacrete floor. Probably won't matter much, John thinks, unwilling to look at her, unwilling to look at D' or Aeryn or anything but his own hands, rubbed raw from ropes tightly and inexpertly tied. Blood has caked on his eyelashes and he scrubs it away, the flakes dark and smelling of copper and dirt. He wipes his hands on his pants.

Maybe if they'd tried to harder to get free, put up more of a fight, but it hadn't seemed necessary at the time…

"We need to go." Apparently Aeryn's done with the silence. "They're coming." It's all she says, all anyone says for a very long time.

***
He doesn't hassle her for the pilot's seat, and the silence holds the rest of the way back. She's furious, so angry that she cuts them both dead, leaves no room for words or questions or apologies or their own rage. There's room in the pod for flight and fight, not much left for human weakness, for Luxan compassion, for Sebacean choice. They left the girl there, just left her and shame leeches his need for noise, for speech. D sits behind him in one of the small alcoves and he doesn't say anything either. He has his qualta blade on his lap, and things would have been different if they'd gone in as themselves, if they hadn't agree to follow the rules, left their defenses behind.

***
Zhaan cleans their wounds – a tonic for Aeryn's headache and linament for the welt on her neck, sealant for John's scalp and a washcloth to clean off the blood, ice for D's testicles and a bandage for the chunk missing out of his arm.

"One girl did all of this?" Chiana's voice is brighter, more curious than he can take. She leans into D'Argo, mouth a moue of sympathy, fingers slipping around John's ear.

"No," Aeryn says, voice harsh, all judgment and no pity. "We did this."

***
He's tempted, later, to apologize. But he doesn't feel sorry.

"We don't know that she wasn't lying," Aeryn says, drinking the rough Geltian liquor that they'd acquired before they day took a sharp left towards hell.

"Pilot has a record of this system," D'Argo replies slowly. "We might have been there before. He thinks."

"Had to've been more than a cycle," John muses, reaches forward enough to move Aeryn's hair off her neck, to see the prickly rash of the poison on her delicate skin. "God, I don't even remember that place."

"Several planets in that system, and if we really were there a cycle ago, we had no business being that close to Peacekeeper space, now or then." Aeryn's voice is tight, but some of the anger is bleeding off. This is the kind of tight she wears when she's nearing drunk, when she's nearing tears, nearing the end of bad, worse, worst. This is the kind of tight that makes his own eyes prick.

She can hear herself, puts her cup down with too much deliberation. "I'm going to bed," she says, and she doesn't look at any of them on the way out.

***
Chi sits against the bench, head lolling against his knee while they stare out at stars and nothingness. D'Argo snores against the table and John keeps watch. He'd switched to tea when Aeryn left.

"He really tongued her?"

"Mmm hmmm."

"Huh."

"Think she'll pay him back for it?"

He sighs. "I think she already did."

***
He can tell by the sound of her breathing that she's not asleep. He doesn't need anything that obvious to know she doesn't want company. He's got his boots in one hand, gun in the other and despite the signs, he doesn't intend to hold tonight's vigil alone.

He drops his burdens in the corner and shuts the door, stripping off his pants, goes to sit beside her on the bed.

"Go away John."

Her voice is rough, abraided. He lays down beside her, one leg dangling off the bed, his hip against the curve of her back.

"Zhaan thinks she remembers the old man. Thinks she may have bought herbs from his store." He lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "I don't … remember..."

She doesn't say anything and he takes a deep breath. "Would they have killed him, do you think? Or just interrogated him? Christ, I can't imagine that he did anything particularly helpful… maybe not shooting at us was enough…"

"It wouldn't have mattered…" Aeryn swallows heavily. "Interrogation… wouldn't have left him good for much."

"Yeah," he whispers, "that's what I figured."

He rolls to his side, grateful the scalp wound's on the left, slides his arm around her waist. She doesn't move away, doesn't relax into him either.

"She had a gun and she didn't know how to use it," Aeryn says finally, and sits up, sliding out of his grip, turning to look at him in the ambient light of the room. "And you and D'Argo just let her…"

She punches his shoulder, hard enough to mark him and he winces, rolls back onto his back, sits up. The room spins lazily and he faces her across the narrow bed.

"We didn't know what to do..."

"So tonguing me to keep me from shooting that girl seemed like a good option?" Her voice was dark with loathing.

"I don't know about good option…"

The guttural clicks of Sebacean indicate a phrase he's pretty sure is not a compliment.

"Out. Leave John. We are done with this discussion."

Her skin is soft under his grip, the muscle hard and he can feel the bone of her shoulder under his thumb. She stills, and he tries to breathe, the weight of choice, of the day squeezing his lungs.

"We owed her… Her whole family… Just because they'd helped us…"

"You can hardly afford to get hit in the head again, and D'Argo is fortunate he already has a child," she growls back. "We didn't cause her suffering, her family's suffering."

"Collateral damage," he whispers and lets go of her arm.

"I won't feel guilty for that," she says. "I can't."

There's darkness, and there's silence, her hitched breathing and his sorrow. There's space here, too much room to move, to grieve, and he wants to close it up, press close to her and block out the rest. She's her own fortress right now though, and he's got nothing to breach with. And what does it say that he wants to sink into the sword instead of swaying back. Aeryn is honed, hewn, a weapon and a blade and she made the decision that neither he nor D'Argo was willing to make. It was becoming a pattern. She'll bear the weight and all he has to do is carry this thin scar and the look in the girl's eyes when the pulse blast finally hit. He wishes that she'd have looked less... relieved.

"She would have killed you," Aeryn's voice is gravel and concrete, rough colorless surfaces and it scrapes him, pushes him to his knees. Her voice leaves him with scars and scabs.

"So you shot first."

"Yes." She turns away, scoots back down into the bed. "And I'd do it again."

He waits for a minute, for ten, counts out heartbeats, the hum of breath and movement. The angle of her body is a line in the sand. He curls against her, angle to angle, a parallel track. He breathes her scent, mouth soft against the fading welt on her neck, the acrid taste of linament on his tongue, fingers on her hip. Her shoulder dips down, knees curling up and she lets him press against her in the dark.





Got home in time to watch 2/3 of Earl. "Karma doesn't have fists." God I love this show. So much love, it's unnatural. And much of that love is rooted in Jason Lee's eyebrows.

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

this is utterly beautiful. i can't even quote favorite phrases or sentences because it's all so elegant and full of just the right edge. the unfurling of the story, of what happened is perfectly done. as always when i read your farscape stories i feel as if i'm watching an episode that i somehow just missed; it's that true. thank you for writing more.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I so, so said thank you and LJ ate my comment:)

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

*g* been there, had that happen. in fact it's happened so much now i copy and paste from an open email so i can replace it as needed. ah, technology. ;)

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

lovely. all anger and sharp edges, broken glass against wounded skin.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

Thea, I'm as dense as a post and I have to admit inspite of your lovely words that conveyed so much of John and Aeryn's angst and personality, I couldn't figure out what happened. I'm sorry and it is my fault for being a very literal reader kind of person. Sigh. Could you explain it to me so I can delve deeper into your story. I really could see why Aeryn was so pissed and I loved the budding rapor and John's need for and to give comfort.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - the explanation is as long as the story. Basically what you need to know is that early on, they had encountered this girl's father, and when they left, when the PKs came through looking for them, this man was taken and interrogated and things went south for him from their. The daughter runs into them (because they've either returned to the planet, or to one where she's now living) and tries to capture them. During that flurry, Aeryn's willing to take her down, but John and D' stop that from happening (they don't remember meeting her father, but she's a girl, they feel bad, etc). Due to this action, he and D are captured and the girl pretty much loses it. The fallout is that when Aeryn wakes up, the girl is about to kill John and D'Argo and leaves Aeryn with no choice but to kill her.

The most important thing is that it's about fallout and impossible choices and survival. There has to be some ambiguity about what happens because they don't remember being on that planet, it's one of many, don't remember any special help, and it's likely that all that happened was that they bought some supplies, or ate in a cafe, something innocent. But the line of guilt from cause to effect is sort of meaningless to someone dealing with grief and loss.

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

Oh, you are a sweetheart to fill me in. Isn't it true that an innocent act can snowball into violence at the end of a long chain of events and the originating cause can be lost in the shuffle. You portrayed that causation and total unimportance of the originating act so well that it truly didn't matter that I couldn't understand what had originally happened. Aeryn's and John's reactions were true to themselves--the intense guilt, anger, fear, and raw need. I'm fascinated by how you constructed the story.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It's part of an ongoing series of thoughts on absence and pause in the writing process. In every other art form the things you leave out are as important as the things you put in, and I believe that to be true of writing. It's figuring out how to do that that's the challenge.

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

I never thought of this concept applying to words, but it makes sense. I know in drawing that one very powerful method of building up an image is to color the white space--the areas between images or outside of an image. The end result is that the shading illuminates the edges of an object without truly revealing it and your eyes much do the rest. It is difficult to achieve but when you do it is very powerful. Writing a story where you illuminate the emotions and feelings as well as the ramifications of an act without explaining, reveals the activity slowly and foggily but to very powerful ends because you feel it with the characters. It is even more interesting when that first catalyst is not even truly realized by your characters -- revealing its edges to them as well through outcomes.

I love this and am probably over-analyzing (but I learn best that way).

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

It's much the same idea, and I'm very interested in it conceptually. It's harder to wrangle in literal fashion though.

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

It's silly, because I don't ever remember posting a response to this challenge (even when I came up with it years back - bad fangirl! bad!) but, oh do I love the stories that have come out of it.

This one takes a different tact than most - usually the stories do what I thought of at first - look at the OC's - but it's great and sad and horrible to watch Our Crew deal with their own...I don't have a word for it - it's not their fault, not their blame. Maybe "karma" fits best.

Anyway. Loved the structure of this one.

This was my favorite line(s):

Her skin is soft under his grip, the muscle hard and he can feel the bone of her shoulder under his thumb. She stills, and he tries to breathe, the weight of choice, of the day squeezing his lungs.

- hg

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

First, I would love to see your take on it (OC or otherwise!!!).

I wanted to look at this sort of damage and how the ramifications come back to our crew. They don't have any room to worry about people left behind. They can barely keep going from day to day. But the fact is that people have gotten hurt, and I wanted to see what that did for them, how they balanced the necessity of survival and action with a feeling of responsability. I also really wanted to deal with this idea of them being hit in the face with consequences and there being some sort of question about the reality of whatever lead to those consequences, or if not the reality, that the encounter was so insignificant that no one remembered it.

Anyway, I'm so very glad it worked for you!!

[scout27.livejournal.com]

That was absolutely fantastic.
You really have a voice for these characters...that was a WONDERFUL story.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!

[kernezelda]

While I don't know what exactly happened, the aftermath is very vivid and sharp, painful to read and envision.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I thought about making the before more specific, showing how point A lead to point B, but mostly, it didn't matter in the structure as much as it mattered in my head. I've got more backstory for this than story:)

[scrubschick.livejournal.com]

The way you've crafted this, it's utterly unnecessary to know exactly what happened. In typical Farscape fashion, there were consequences to a previous visit, very few of which were paid by Moya's crew in flesh and blood. Those were paid by unfortunate others. The girl. The old man. But there were consequences of conscience for our friends which were harder to bear than the physical scars they carried away.

*sigh* Beautiful as always.


And Earl rocked last night! Especially the last cup... The one he had in prison. BWAHAHAHA! But the french fry nearly made me puke. *shudder*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

OMG, when I saw that tin cup I literally aspirated my gin and tonic. I couldn't stop laughing.

I think it's interesting to think about how many of the things that they do are innocent, and have consequences anyway, and how hard it is to bear all that.

Thanks dear.

[scrubschick.livejournal.com]

OMG, when I saw that tin cup I literally aspirated my gin and tonic. I couldn't stop laughing.

I was very glad I didn't have anything in my mouth at the time. And the way the camera panned around to show his 'roomie'! I'm still giggling!

[(Anonymous)]

"Karma doesn't have fists."

Hehehehehehe. True enough.

I liked the story, liked that you have to go through all of it to understand what's happenned. But God, depressing much? Still, it fits into the curve of John's character, the extent to which he's depending on Aeryn to anchor him, bolster him in season two. I say Aeryn needs a mug of hot cocoa and her wooby in this fic but she'd probably reject both.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

It's damage, which tends to be depressing, I guess. Change is so very hard, and so not without it's scars and consequences.

And yeah, part of the structure is the slow unfolding of understanding, which I hope works as a narrative device. You have to get to the end to understand the beginning.

Thanks so much for the response.

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! Such a beautiful character study! Part of me wants the whole story, but at the same time, this is enough. And your John and Aeryn are perfect for mid-to-late season 2. I absolutely love Aeryn in this: all anger, directed partly at John and D'Argo for trying to stop her from saving them, but directed more at herself both for having to kill the girl and for feeling bad about doing so. She's trying to come to terms with the fact that she will kill to save John's life, yet even this necessary killing is harder on her than it would have been in her old life. Hmm--I'm not saying this very well. Anyway, perfect Aeryn portrait!

And the collateral damage concept is just so rich overall. Our heroes are a dangerous bunch.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

And the collateral damage concept is just so rich overall. Our heroes are a dangerous bunch.

Agreed, and especially through much of S1, any damage left in their wake would have been collateral. They were fleeing for their lives much of the time, and that tends to leave some bad juju behind.

And thank you. I love the development in Season 2 so very much.

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

Collateral Damage is not a concept common to most tv shows and yet Farscape assails this even in Season 1 -- it is the impact of their actions on others that boomarangs back on Our Crew. By season 2 you get vivid secondary characters whose lives are changed and affected by the Moyans and yet Our Crew might never have known them at all. John feels all of this heavily and Aeryn is growing through it via her changing attitudes towards taking a life or being the Pin Up Girl For Frontal Assault. What is more interesting is when Moyans TRY to make changes they never work out the way they want. It is a complex mess that is enticing.

Can you imagine Stargate taking the time to mourn the dead that the Goual'd have left behind?

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly like to see that on Stargate.

[scrubschick.livejournal.com]

*mutters* I'd like to see anything of depth on SG.