Findings and Epilogue
Jan. 27th, 2004 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowFound two dollars in my back pocket, which led me to the following conclusions:
A - I need to wash these jeans, 'cause clearly if it was that much of a surprise, it's been too long since they've had a date with the Tide.
B- There is an unexpected benefit to grabbing your own ass.
An hour before ballet, and I'm eating veggie puffs and pretending there aren't sour balls behind me. I'm also trying to pretend cigarettes don't exist. Take away candy and cigarettes and clearly with the self-assgrabbing, all I'm left with is booze and TV. It's just not frelling fair. But both my lungs and my ass will be grateful in the long run, the one for the shiny pinkness and the other for the reduction in size.
So, I'm gonna post the epilogue to Blue Eyes in three parts as I write it. To my trusty beta readers, and well, to any of those who read the monster, I pose a question before I post the heavily unedited Part 1. Does the concept of the epilogue ruin the impact of the story itself? I'm going to write it anyway because it was part of the plan and I need to write the whole thing, but it's an epilogue because the story ends where it does for a reason. I don't want that reason tamped down by a happily ever after, even though it's not really. I'm not sure if I'll attach the epilogue, and I suppose, in part, it depends on whether or not the writing does what I want it to do.
So, here's
Epilogue
He’d never been the kind of man to fill his pockets with stones and wander into the wilderness, drowning himself in absence. He never carried cool earth in a jar like other astronauts, never took it with him in case he died in space and scattered himself among the stars. But here and now, he knelt on the barren, fallow ground of the satellite colony and clutched at the dirt, letting it spill through his fingers. He closed his fist and shoved the dirt into his pocket, then wiped his hands off on his pants, leaving dust smudges on the leather.
Katralla looked very small standing next to the armored soldier, hair grown out, finely blond, curling around her face and down her back. She held her mouth in an indifferent line and he wasn’t sure whether she was hiding joy or sorrow and soon it wouldn’t be his problem and he found that there was loss in that too. They had been, above all else, friends, companions, occasional lovers, even if they’d never taken that next step towards love. Anix, at 16 cycles was taller than Katralla, tall as her mother, and beautiful as she hugged the older woman tightly, with open, honest affection but without tears. Anix was done with tears.
She looked at John, “We have to go,” she said, eyes dry but voice brittle.
He stepped towards his wife and stroked her cheek with dusty fingers and she leaned forward, resting against him for a moment, hands warm on his waist. He held onto her, squeezing tightly and then she backed away and nodded at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, ineffectual, but honest.
“We did our best,” she raised her shoulders in defeat. “It just wasn’t enough.” That was the frelling understatement of the century, but he didn’t have the energy, and it was different for her, failure on an inherent level. "Hubris," he said, half a smile worming itself out of him and she nodded ruefully as it translated. "Yes, we took too much for granted." She’d been born to lead the people of this planet, and they’d just taken that birthright out of her hands. Still, he’d give her what he could with this freedom.
“Anything you want,” he said, watching her closely. “Any place. A new start. They’ll keep you safe. No more duty, just your life, whatever you want to do with it.” She pursed her mouth, and then, as usual, she took the gift and gave it back to him.
“Take care of yourself. Take care of Anix,” she cupped his cheek in her hand. “Be happy John. Find her and be safe, if you can.” He nodded and kissed her softly and watched as she squared her shoulders and allowed the armored commando to escort her onto the waiting ship.
Anix took his hand and rested her head on his shoulder as they watched the ship take off. “It’s time,” she said.
***
The wind blew constantly on Meridia. Every time someone opened the door to the tavern, the wind would catch the door with nimble fingers and slam it against the wall. Made every entrance seem like a scene out of High Plains Drifter. Made his heart stop. That first weeken, it had scraped away all his nerve endings.
Now, nearly a month later, he startled only in reflex, not really noticing the comings and goings as Harvey pranced around in a 10 gallon hat and red shitkickers. He really needed to put up some wardrobe restrictions. Didn’t mean the little bastard would regard ‘em, but a stand really should be taken.
Unfortunately, here at this table, he was gonna have to take another kind of stand.
“We’ve been here too long, Anna. We’re attracting too much attention. We have to move on.” He hated saying it, the words rotten like betrayal, but it didn’t make them less true. He looked at Teyvn who nodded his agreement.
“Then leave me here. I’ll wait for them. No one’s after me.” The two men exchanged glances.
“Not a chance,” Teyvn gritted out.
Anix set her jaw and narrowed her eyes at him and John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Nearly two cycles on the Royal Planet, Anix growing out of her awkward adolescence into something bright and beautiful and reckless, and he really didn’t want to have to kill the big Sebacean for looking at his daughter like she was Godiva chocolate and aged raslak.
“If they were coming, they’d have been here already. Something musta happened.”
Anix fingered the cut on her collarbone, the line still pink after a monen as it faded into a scar, her first battle wound. “She made the arrangements, sent the codes for a date to meet here. She’ll be here! Besides, we were early.” She turned her flashing anger on John, like the date of their arrival had jinxed the meetup, like escaping a coup, abandoning Katralla and Tyno had been a choice and he growled at his child. Her shoulders slumped.
“John, I’m sorry.”
Teyvn took a small swallow of raslak. “They may not have heard about the coup. It was sudden, and you know what kind of intel we’ve been getting, spotty as it is. Uprisings in the Scarran sectors; the Nebari takeover of part of Tormented Space. Things have been ugly for the past few monens.”
Things had been ugly for a lot longer than that. They’d gotten jumbled reports of Peacekeeper weapons, unstoppable if unstable. And death. They’d received a lot of reports about people dying all over the universe. They came in the morning mail with the food cubes. Once, there’d even been a vague rumor that the hybrid scientist in charge of PK weaponry had been assassinated. But it wasn’t a rumor they’d had the resources to confirm.
Anix put her hand on John’s forearm, the long slim fingers cool on his skin. “ A few more days, then we’ll go, find somewhere else to hide and try to contact them. This isn’t unusual. Delays are inevitable. It’s why we chose to meet on Meridia.” She looked to Teyvn for confirmation and he shrugged noncommittally.
“It’s hard to nail down an exact date,” he agreed. “Things come up.”
John turned his arm over and grabbed her hand, squeezing roughly. “Two days, Anna. Then we have to assume the worst and we have to go. It’s just not safe.” She looked stubborn, ready to argue, but the last monen had taken a toll on all of them and she nodded her head reluctantly.
“There’s a tadek game going on next door,” she said pulling back her hand. “I think I’ll go watch.”
“Stay in range,” he said, then looked pleadingly at Teyvn as Anix slipped through the crowd. Teyvn rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, hauling himself up out of the chair, wincing at the initial pressure on his knee which had never quite recovered. “I’ll keep her out of trouble.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” John said, staring into bottle of fellip nectar. “I shouldn’t be here.”
Teyvn clasped his shoulder, the reassurance unusual from the other man. “We’re doing what we can. They’re safe, Crichton, safe as they can be, and we are doing what we can.”
“Thanks, man.” He watched Teyvn follow his daughter out of the bar, and sat back in the booth, ready to continue waiting. It would almost be a relief, to think they’d be able to leave this place behind, not have to face Aeryn yet, not have to explain why he was here on this refugee planet with their daughter and her soldiers and without his wife, slinking back in defeat.
He’d done his duty, living his life, making a life with Katralla, a good life if truth be told, if a little lacking, building back the planet, working on wormholes. And there’d been those days, those ones that brought the occasional missives from to Anix, from her mother, ending with her wide grey eyes and terse words for him on the state of the rebellion, always ending with final wishes to stay safe and stay in place. Travel had been too risky, the promised cycle turning into nearly two before Aeryn would risk Anix going anywhere.
So he’d gotten more time with his daughter as his fears for Aeryn and D’Argo and the rebellion roiled in his gut, and finally, when the people revolted, when the palace erupted with internal violence, they’d taken what they needed and fled, the choice to go with Anix, to meet up with Aeryn and D’Argo an obvious one.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They didn't know he was coming, didn't know what had happened or what he could do. He took a long swallow of fellip nectar, no longer impressed by the resemblance to beer, no longer even sure if it did taste like beer and slammed the dead man down on the table at the same moment as the door slammed open.
His head shot up and two figures filled the doorway: a Luxan, tattooed and tall, Qualta blade strapped to his back, and a Sebacean female, a soldier, straight-backed, dark-haired, achingly beautiful. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t move, all the lessons, all the torment and discovery and all the everything of the past two cycles shuttled to the back of his mind as she walked into the center of the room, hawkish and predatory, freezing as her eyes adjusted.
She swept the crowd like a hardened criminal dismissing the meaningless who and what before spotting him. The color drained from her face, and he saw his name form full on her mouth while he sat there, waiting for her to come to him.
He kind of wanted to stand up, stride over, pick her up, twirl her around like a girl in a bad car commercial, but he was stuck with watching, trying to get his brain to transmit orders to his mouth and body. And this was hardly the place for vocal, gushing reunions. Stand offs and shoot outs, but not joy and that’s when it hit, low and tight in his belly and his groin, flooding relief that he wasn’t making this up, that she was alive, safe, here in front of him. Suddenly he could stand, could register the half smirk on D’Argo’s face and the shock on Aeryn’s.
She was in front of him, hand on her gun, other hand wrapped around the back of the chair, knuckles so white he could see the outline of bone underneath, “Anix?” she breathed, low and scared, and he put it all together and reached towards her, shaking his head, saying, “No, god no,” saying her name when, a shout came from beyond them, giddy and gleeful and Anix barreled into her mother, a child again in her joy and Aeryn slumped against the chair and held onto her child for dear life.
A - I need to wash these jeans, 'cause clearly if it was that much of a surprise, it's been too long since they've had a date with the Tide.
B- There is an unexpected benefit to grabbing your own ass.
An hour before ballet, and I'm eating veggie puffs and pretending there aren't sour balls behind me. I'm also trying to pretend cigarettes don't exist. Take away candy and cigarettes and clearly with the self-assgrabbing, all I'm left with is booze and TV. It's just not frelling fair. But both my lungs and my ass will be grateful in the long run, the one for the shiny pinkness and the other for the reduction in size.
So, I'm gonna post the epilogue to Blue Eyes in three parts as I write it. To my trusty beta readers, and well, to any of those who read the monster, I pose a question before I post the heavily unedited Part 1. Does the concept of the epilogue ruin the impact of the story itself? I'm going to write it anyway because it was part of the plan and I need to write the whole thing, but it's an epilogue because the story ends where it does for a reason. I don't want that reason tamped down by a happily ever after, even though it's not really. I'm not sure if I'll attach the epilogue, and I suppose, in part, it depends on whether or not the writing does what I want it to do.
So, here's
Epilogue
He’d never been the kind of man to fill his pockets with stones and wander into the wilderness, drowning himself in absence. He never carried cool earth in a jar like other astronauts, never took it with him in case he died in space and scattered himself among the stars. But here and now, he knelt on the barren, fallow ground of the satellite colony and clutched at the dirt, letting it spill through his fingers. He closed his fist and shoved the dirt into his pocket, then wiped his hands off on his pants, leaving dust smudges on the leather.
Katralla looked very small standing next to the armored soldier, hair grown out, finely blond, curling around her face and down her back. She held her mouth in an indifferent line and he wasn’t sure whether she was hiding joy or sorrow and soon it wouldn’t be his problem and he found that there was loss in that too. They had been, above all else, friends, companions, occasional lovers, even if they’d never taken that next step towards love. Anix, at 16 cycles was taller than Katralla, tall as her mother, and beautiful as she hugged the older woman tightly, with open, honest affection but without tears. Anix was done with tears.
She looked at John, “We have to go,” she said, eyes dry but voice brittle.
He stepped towards his wife and stroked her cheek with dusty fingers and she leaned forward, resting against him for a moment, hands warm on his waist. He held onto her, squeezing tightly and then she backed away and nodded at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, ineffectual, but honest.
“We did our best,” she raised her shoulders in defeat. “It just wasn’t enough.” That was the frelling understatement of the century, but he didn’t have the energy, and it was different for her, failure on an inherent level. "Hubris," he said, half a smile worming itself out of him and she nodded ruefully as it translated. "Yes, we took too much for granted." She’d been born to lead the people of this planet, and they’d just taken that birthright out of her hands. Still, he’d give her what he could with this freedom.
“Anything you want,” he said, watching her closely. “Any place. A new start. They’ll keep you safe. No more duty, just your life, whatever you want to do with it.” She pursed her mouth, and then, as usual, she took the gift and gave it back to him.
“Take care of yourself. Take care of Anix,” she cupped his cheek in her hand. “Be happy John. Find her and be safe, if you can.” He nodded and kissed her softly and watched as she squared her shoulders and allowed the armored commando to escort her onto the waiting ship.
Anix took his hand and rested her head on his shoulder as they watched the ship take off. “It’s time,” she said.
***
The wind blew constantly on Meridia. Every time someone opened the door to the tavern, the wind would catch the door with nimble fingers and slam it against the wall. Made every entrance seem like a scene out of High Plains Drifter. Made his heart stop. That first weeken, it had scraped away all his nerve endings.
Now, nearly a month later, he startled only in reflex, not really noticing the comings and goings as Harvey pranced around in a 10 gallon hat and red shitkickers. He really needed to put up some wardrobe restrictions. Didn’t mean the little bastard would regard ‘em, but a stand really should be taken.
Unfortunately, here at this table, he was gonna have to take another kind of stand.
“We’ve been here too long, Anna. We’re attracting too much attention. We have to move on.” He hated saying it, the words rotten like betrayal, but it didn’t make them less true. He looked at Teyvn who nodded his agreement.
“Then leave me here. I’ll wait for them. No one’s after me.” The two men exchanged glances.
“Not a chance,” Teyvn gritted out.
Anix set her jaw and narrowed her eyes at him and John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Nearly two cycles on the Royal Planet, Anix growing out of her awkward adolescence into something bright and beautiful and reckless, and he really didn’t want to have to kill the big Sebacean for looking at his daughter like she was Godiva chocolate and aged raslak.
“If they were coming, they’d have been here already. Something musta happened.”
Anix fingered the cut on her collarbone, the line still pink after a monen as it faded into a scar, her first battle wound. “She made the arrangements, sent the codes for a date to meet here. She’ll be here! Besides, we were early.” She turned her flashing anger on John, like the date of their arrival had jinxed the meetup, like escaping a coup, abandoning Katralla and Tyno had been a choice and he growled at his child. Her shoulders slumped.
“John, I’m sorry.”
Teyvn took a small swallow of raslak. “They may not have heard about the coup. It was sudden, and you know what kind of intel we’ve been getting, spotty as it is. Uprisings in the Scarran sectors; the Nebari takeover of part of Tormented Space. Things have been ugly for the past few monens.”
Things had been ugly for a lot longer than that. They’d gotten jumbled reports of Peacekeeper weapons, unstoppable if unstable. And death. They’d received a lot of reports about people dying all over the universe. They came in the morning mail with the food cubes. Once, there’d even been a vague rumor that the hybrid scientist in charge of PK weaponry had been assassinated. But it wasn’t a rumor they’d had the resources to confirm.
Anix put her hand on John’s forearm, the long slim fingers cool on his skin. “ A few more days, then we’ll go, find somewhere else to hide and try to contact them. This isn’t unusual. Delays are inevitable. It’s why we chose to meet on Meridia.” She looked to Teyvn for confirmation and he shrugged noncommittally.
“It’s hard to nail down an exact date,” he agreed. “Things come up.”
John turned his arm over and grabbed her hand, squeezing roughly. “Two days, Anna. Then we have to assume the worst and we have to go. It’s just not safe.” She looked stubborn, ready to argue, but the last monen had taken a toll on all of them and she nodded her head reluctantly.
“There’s a tadek game going on next door,” she said pulling back her hand. “I think I’ll go watch.”
“Stay in range,” he said, then looked pleadingly at Teyvn as Anix slipped through the crowd. Teyvn rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, hauling himself up out of the chair, wincing at the initial pressure on his knee which had never quite recovered. “I’ll keep her out of trouble.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” John said, staring into bottle of fellip nectar. “I shouldn’t be here.”
Teyvn clasped his shoulder, the reassurance unusual from the other man. “We’re doing what we can. They’re safe, Crichton, safe as they can be, and we are doing what we can.”
“Thanks, man.” He watched Teyvn follow his daughter out of the bar, and sat back in the booth, ready to continue waiting. It would almost be a relief, to think they’d be able to leave this place behind, not have to face Aeryn yet, not have to explain why he was here on this refugee planet with their daughter and her soldiers and without his wife, slinking back in defeat.
He’d done his duty, living his life, making a life with Katralla, a good life if truth be told, if a little lacking, building back the planet, working on wormholes. And there’d been those days, those ones that brought the occasional missives from to Anix, from her mother, ending with her wide grey eyes and terse words for him on the state of the rebellion, always ending with final wishes to stay safe and stay in place. Travel had been too risky, the promised cycle turning into nearly two before Aeryn would risk Anix going anywhere.
So he’d gotten more time with his daughter as his fears for Aeryn and D’Argo and the rebellion roiled in his gut, and finally, when the people revolted, when the palace erupted with internal violence, they’d taken what they needed and fled, the choice to go with Anix, to meet up with Aeryn and D’Argo an obvious one.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They didn't know he was coming, didn't know what had happened or what he could do. He took a long swallow of fellip nectar, no longer impressed by the resemblance to beer, no longer even sure if it did taste like beer and slammed the dead man down on the table at the same moment as the door slammed open.
His head shot up and two figures filled the doorway: a Luxan, tattooed and tall, Qualta blade strapped to his back, and a Sebacean female, a soldier, straight-backed, dark-haired, achingly beautiful. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t move, all the lessons, all the torment and discovery and all the everything of the past two cycles shuttled to the back of his mind as she walked into the center of the room, hawkish and predatory, freezing as her eyes adjusted.
She swept the crowd like a hardened criminal dismissing the meaningless who and what before spotting him. The color drained from her face, and he saw his name form full on her mouth while he sat there, waiting for her to come to him.
He kind of wanted to stand up, stride over, pick her up, twirl her around like a girl in a bad car commercial, but he was stuck with watching, trying to get his brain to transmit orders to his mouth and body. And this was hardly the place for vocal, gushing reunions. Stand offs and shoot outs, but not joy and that’s when it hit, low and tight in his belly and his groin, flooding relief that he wasn’t making this up, that she was alive, safe, here in front of him. Suddenly he could stand, could register the half smirk on D’Argo’s face and the shock on Aeryn’s.
She was in front of him, hand on her gun, other hand wrapped around the back of the chair, knuckles so white he could see the outline of bone underneath, “Anix?” she breathed, low and scared, and he put it all together and reached towards her, shaking his head, saying, “No, god no,” saying her name when, a shout came from beyond them, giddy and gleeful and Anix barreled into her mother, a child again in her joy and Aeryn slumped against the chair and held onto her child for dear life.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 03:21 am (UTC)You made me cry with the goodbye...**Sniff, sniff**. And I could totally picture John sitting in that tavern with the wind blowing in every time the door banged open. And the visual of Aeryn and D'Argo's entrance...I could really see it.
Does the concept of the epilogue ruin the impact of the story itself?
I don't think I'm qualified to answer that because the only thing I want is for you to keep writing this wonderful story that has me in awe. So of course I'm going to say no. :) I do understand what you're asking. I guess maybe it depends on what else happens in the epilogue.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:18 pm (UTC)I guess maybe it depends on what else happens in the epilogue. And, sigh, that's really it, and I'm struggling to make it work.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:35 am (UTC)There is an unexpected benefit to grabbing your own ass.
*cue hysterical belly-laughter*
*wipes eyes*
Oh, Thea.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:15 pm (UTC)And the betas have Blue Eyes, so wait for the final edit:)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 09:25 am (UTC)*picks jaw up from floor*
No. frelling. way!!!!! I started to read and huh, what's this---a happy ending? John & Aeryn back together, with Anix, like a family? Nah. Must be some sneaky evil torture for the poor gullible reader (ie, me).
And yet... is this real? 'Cos it seems real.
A happy ending. *g* I like it!
*remembers all the tears shed in the reading of this fic, and does the fangirl dance of joy for happy endings, even those still in progress*
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:13 pm (UTC)But, regardless, glad that you're enjoying it:)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 04:55 pm (UTC)Um, wasn't Tevyn Aeryn's sometime recreation partner? 'Cause as good as this line is, I now have to vacuum out my brain. Bad mind! Bad!
The last three paragraphs are fucking awesome. And you know how much I like it when I get my own way. ;]
just to say...
Date: 2004-01-28 05:43 pm (UTC)I'm saving any substantive comments for after all three parts or posted. Or until I come up with substantive comments.
Re: just to say...
Date: 2004-01-28 05:47 pm (UTC)And hopefully it will tie together into something substantial after all three parts are done, not so much a happy ending as a resolution:)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 05:58 pm (UTC)You may now commence with the brain vaccuming while I decide whether I like the line enough to keep it- my preference for what sounds good so often outweighing the impact of the words themselves:) 'Cause I can see Teyvn looking at a girl like this without any intention of doing anything about it:) But then... well, maybe you're right:)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:09 pm (UTC)okay, but my co-workers are starting to look at me with alarm...
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 06:39 pm (UTC)This rocks so far - can't wait to start (or, I should say, continue) the journey again!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-30 07:24 pm (UTC)Blue Eyes
Date: 2004-04-09 07:50 pm (UTC)Looking forward to the rest of the epilogue, and your eventual posting somewhere of the full story when you've 'smoothed it out' to your satisfaction.
Re: Blue Eyes
Date: 2004-04-10 12:11 am (UTC)I'm hoping that it'll read as new and improved, and at the very least it'll read as new and punctuated:)
The epilogue is on hold for now, decided to finish Vol. 1 before going on to Volume 2, as it's gonna be another story instead of an epilogue:)