Firsts

[itsallovernow]

Season 3 challenge. NC-17. Cross-posted to farscapefriday. Go on over and pay your respects for the community's 3rd birthday!!



This day is filled with firsts.

First time she failed to log a flight plan. First time she put her feet on alien soil as a something less than a soldier. First time she saw a ghost.

Her life has been vectors and starbursts, combat and conflict, flash fires and lust, love and cover fire. Her life, up 'til now, has been her own. She's come here to discard it.

She sees him for the first time standing in a doorway next to a young whore. It's raining and Aeryn's hair is wet, clinging to her face and her neck in heavy greasy tendrils from the mix of chemicals and pollution in the air. He leans against the doorjamb, feet in a pile of trash, eyes so blue that she can see them from where she stands. His presence should surprise her. It doesn't. He's haunted her since the moment they met - stubborn, irritating, helpless, intriguing, compelling, frustrating. He's been a constant niggling presence in her thoughts, in her space for cycles now. Why should it be any different after his death?

He bites his lip, compassion ripe on his beautiful face, looks at the tralk shivering in the rain, her thin arms clutched over her chest for warmth. The girl is tall, Aeryn's height, wears a brown dress, some sort of netting underneath.

Aeryn's voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. "I'll give you 30 kretmas for your clothing." The girl looks up, startled. Frightened. It's more than she'd likely earn in a weeken. Peacekeepers aren't welcome in this world, and if they come, they don't pay for sex. The girl's fear is tangible, scented. She's waiting for the trap, but the money is too much to turn down.

"There's a place," she whispers, gesturing with her chin. "Where we can go…"

Aeryn's mouth turns up in disgust. "I don't want to frell you," she says, not entirely without mercy. "I just want your clothing."

She digs in her pouch, finds the currency, opens her palm and shows it to the girl. Shivering, she starts peeling off the dress, the underlayer, hands them to Aeryn. She gives the girl the currency.

"I… I won't ss… ssell my boots," she stutters. Aeryn shakes her head. What can that possibly matter?

"Fine."

The girl huddles in the doorway in tattered underthings and John looks at Aeryn with angry eyes. She meets his gaze, watches droplets of water slide along his cheek, down into his collarbone and doesn't imagine the taste of his throat, the scrape of his skin along her tongue. She shucks off her long coat, tosses it to the girl, walks off to find lodging.

She will not die on this planet wearing the uniform of her former life, the parody of a soldier. She will die, will meet her fate -whatever it is - in the thin vulnerability of John's fantasies, in the vision he had of what she could become.

***
The first night in the room, she lies awake listening for the sound of pulse fire and engines. She listens for the hum of a ship and for the soft breathing, the gentle snoring she's grown used to. Her ghost refuses to comply.

Instead, he sits in the chair, oddly fastidious in the afterlife, disdainful of the garbage, and fiddles with her discarded gunbelt.

"Not sure I like the idea of you only having a knife," he says. "Someone's gotta get awfully close for a knife to be useful."

She turns onto her side, away from him, so he can't see the vicious flash of her teeth. Craving that violence, craving an enemy a hair's breadth away, close enough to slip a blade into is not part of the new regimen.

He gives up finally, drops the belt to the floor and comes to her. He stretches his long frame behind her body, tucking up so close that his heat is stifling. She welcomes it, wonders if a ghost could send her into the living death, if he could cling tightly enough to fool her body, to flood her senses, her neurons.

He moves her hair, kisses her neck, slips his hand into the slit of the dress, strokes her thigh.

"You're not gonna die here," he whispers, cups her sex with his fingers, gentle. She shifts her body, lets him slip his arm under her head, turns her cheek to sink her teeth into the soft cloth of his shirt. He strokes her sex through the layers of netting and cotton, strokes her into release despite the barriers because he knows her body, whispers fine, hot things into her ear until she sees stars, sees the bright flare of radiation.

He's hard against her back, soft against her neck. He kisses her tears, strips her of the dress, strips her of her barriers and she hates him as she clings to his skin, his arms, his back, hates him as he slides into her, hot and hard and sweet. Too sweet, like the candy he'd purchased on Nimar prime that had hurt her teeth, that had made him ill.

She pounds her hatred into his back, scratches at him with her, whispers it into his ear. Reaches to the side, knocking over the empty bottles of fillip, searches for a weapon. He twists his hips, teeth grazing a nipple and she bucks up, fist tightening, lets go of the thought of violence. He doesn't let her go, and she gives in, slides her hands down to rest at the small of his back, fingers slipping against the sweat that pools there, tastes the salt of his skin, that patch on his neck that had drawn her in the alley.

He's silent as he holds her, silent as he comes inside her, and she knows that he's a ghost. He's never been silent during sex. It doesn't matter. Here, now, in this dank, foul room, she'll take what she can get.

She closes her eyes finally, his weight settled on top of her, and wakes cold and sticky and hazy, alone in the room. She sits up, dresses, finds the knife on the floor and tucks it to her side. She needs more fellip. She needs a reason to stay in this wretched room with the high ledge. John is not the only dead she can name. Perhaps it's time to see what other ghosts this place can offer to her.

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Oh, so lovely and sad.
(I'm almost finished season 2 in my marathon, this makes me anxious to get on to season 3).

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I love Season 3, but it's so heartbreaking.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I'm prepared with my box of tissues.
at least we know that the story doesn't end in season 3..

[scout27.livejournal.com]

Okay, that was absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful.
You captured her in that moment so well...I have tears in my eyes.
Great work

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. Thank you!!

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

Perfect tone for "The Choice"! And this line--She will die, will meet her fate -whatever it is - in the thin vulnerability of John's fantasies, in the vision he had of what she could become.--Wow! This perspective on the brown dress makes the return of PK Aeryn at the end of the ep that much more interesting.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I love that transition at the end, the way it's a physical manifestation, so many parts of herself and her sense of self that she's putting back on like armour. She's put on this skin to be someone else, to be vulnerable to it, and now, she's taking it back.

It's so beautifully done. (And hee, you also have to wonder where you get clothes that are clearly pre-worn. I don't see Aeryn shopping for vintage:)

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

When I list off Farscape's strengths, I usually don't think of it as being a particularly visual show (in the same way, say, that I think of The X-Files as being visual, with its lights and camera angles and pretty shots). But "The Choice" is one of the episodes that really capitalizes on the visual medium, telling the story of Aeryn's grief with costumes, lighting, etc. (I'm thinking, actually, that there may be a connection between the strongly visual eps and the ones that Rowan Woods directed; I should look up a list.) At any rate, yes, I love how without any words, we know exactly what Aeryn has decided in the last scene simply by the way she changes her clothes. Fantastic!

I don't see Aeryn shopping for vintage

Er, no! ;) I think your explanation of the brown dress is far more plausible.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I find it an incredibly visual show, the way light and color and angle make such a difference. The way that imagery is so full of stillness or momentum depending upon the moment and the need. The way it can make you feel nauseaous or elated or startled by the angle and motion of the camera. For me, it's far more visual than X-Files. While, maybe not more visual, but in a different way. As opposed to Stargate which is so... flat on a visual level, and BSG which makes me crazy with it's color palette (although I know that's deliberate).

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

I think what I mean is that Farscape, while making great use of visual effects, isn't as self-consciously visual as a show like X-Files. In X-Files, I'll often find myself pausing to think, "oh, what a pretty shot." In Farscape, the visual effects are almost always in the service of something else: world-building, moving the plot, etc. In many ways, I think that's the greater compliment to Farscape. But it also means that if I'm listing off Farscape's greatest strengths, the visual isn't one of the first things that comes to mind (as opposed to writing and character development, for instance). Though the more I think about it, so many of my favorite Farscape episodes are those that I do think of as being particularly visual: TWWW, AHR, ITLD: WISC.

So I'm pretty sure I'm contradicting myself, here, but I'll blame it on the evil grading that is eating my brain at the moment.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

"Not sure I like the idea of you only have a knife," he says. "Someone's gotta get awfully close for a knife to be useful."

I really like the way this contrasts what Aeryn knows of John's concern for her with her lack of concern for herself at this point. It says something about how much she wants oblivion, and fits neatly with the way she does strap on that gun at the end of the episode, and tie up her hair, and put on the leather, and goes on to walk onto that command carrier expecting never to come out of it alive.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

One of the many,many things I love about the end of S3 is the idea that while Aeryn goes to that planet looking for ghosts, looking for oblivion, she doesn't try to end anything there. She puts on the uniform of a soldier and goes back to die on duty and I love that about her. She's broken, stripped down, and at the end, she follows through on who she thinks she is, not who she should be.

[fourteenlines.livejournal.com]

Oh, holy crap. That first part alone...*shudders*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

That whole arc just breaks my heart.

[cofax7]

oh, fantastic.

I keep thinking there's not much more to say about these people, and then you do this.

Yeah.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Grins:)

I keep thinking there's not much more to say about these people, and then you do this.

I keep thinking the same thing, and then there's all these words:)

[(Anonymous)]

Beautiful. You know Aeryn so well. To reiterate what has been said: the reason for the dress is such a nice touch.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, whoever you are!!