Author: Delorne

Title: This New Silence

Author Email: Delorne

Archiving: Anywhere. Please contact author before archiving. I'm sure they would like to know where their babies are.

Rated PG-13, Implications of future violence.

Angst, and just plain hurt (no comfort here).

Warnings: Major Chrichton self-inflicted guilt and pain here. This piece is dark and follows right after "Inccubator". It examines why some attitudes have seemed to harden so much, and why no one is trying to stop it. This will be the first in a series and will continue with Moya's John Crichton and his journey to healing or disaster.

Disclaimer: Farscape characters, props, terminology, and any other items used, that are the property of The Sci-Fi Channel and Jim Henson's Muppet company belong to them. Characters, props, terminology, and any other items I create belong to me. Remember that and give respect where respect is due.

This New Silence

Frustration leads to rage…some would say. I would say that I am beyond frustration, but I have not seen rage. I don´t know where the hell it is, but I have a sick premonition simmering in my gut, that it´s on its way.

It is coming. This last hope of home was resuscitated and then committed suicide in right in front of me, but at least no one else died this time. Those words…this time. It seems like an ointment made out gasoline. This wound that I am, this family that I have cut apart again and again…doesn´t seemed healed by that pathetic excuse.

I am seemingly intent on destroying everything I have loved in my obsession to find home.

D'Argo was right, it was my fault. Zahn is dead because I saw the Three fuckin´ Stooges, and I couldn´t let go. Hell, I can´t even let go of this cup, and it´s empty. I certainly can´t let go of Aeryn. She´s out there somewhere in deadly danger…with the other me.

Danger and sex. It´s a package deal I can´t return, but it keeps returning to me every damn sleep cycle, when I see Aeryn, and him…me, but not me, not here, not now. Never now.

Felipe nectar does not a warm, goofy, drunk Crichton make. Not now at least. I´m alone. Right now, forever, always it seems. No, wait. That´s not true. I got my half-breed mad scientist always with me. Good ‘ol Scorpy. At least he´s never abandoned me.

I finally release my white-knuckle grasp on the copper cup and wince as the warmth returns to my hand. I was chasing that warmth away. I had wanted to be as cold as the endless vacuum outside. So cold, that the throbbing of ‘almost made it´ in my head would ebb, that my pain could freeze, that I could just sit, and drink, and think of nothing.

But I can´t, so I pour a drink for my inside-the-head friend and gulp the sweet fire. That didn´t make any better, but at least now that sharp pain of guilt, doesn´t pierce my chest every time I breathe.

My senses are tryin´ so damn hard to leave me, but I still feel a presence behind me when the door opens.

I don´t want to look. I don´t care. I just want to pass out.

Whoever it is, doesn´t get the frellin´ hint. In the blurring edges, I can see it´s D´Argo, and he´s just standing there like some mourner waiting to clasp my hand, and tell me how sorry he is for my loss. But he won´t. He can´t. That´s just D´Argo.

“If you´ve come here to give me another lecture…don´t.” I wave the cup clumsily in the air to prove the point.

He doesn´t get the point, or just refuses too. He sits down besides me, and pours himself a drink. He´s pretending to look out the window, but he´s watching me.

This silence, save the natural humming of our living ship, seems so common these days, that I almost forgot that it was never there before.

Not literal silence…D´Argo, is not a very talkative guy. We would go days without talking to each other. Just working in companionable silence, and immediately picking up where we had left off, before. This new silence here, and now, it´s so different.

This silence, I have learned from my parents, comes from the giving up of understanding. D´Argo has given up trying to understand, what I do, why I do it, and why the hell can´t I just stop, and get on with my life here.

And it seems, I am my father. And I have given up trying to explain myself to him. This quiet is frustrating. And my gut boils with the knowing that I will eventually fly into pieces, and take some of them with me.

Maybe I´m not the real Crichton. Maybe I am the copy. I am thin carbon paper, torn apart in this vacuum of this lost friendship, and I am floating away, insignificant pieces of trash.

But I can´t. I won´t let these horrible images, this future happen. It can´t happen. I won´t let it. I can´t be here any longer. I cannot leap from this canyon wall to the other side, because the other side will not let me land. If have jumped over there, I am only digging my bloody nails into the bedrock of his indifference, their indifference.

When I was bleeding to death, floating above the floor, possessed by the alien, they would not believe. They could not believe. So, what difference does it make that I am now bleeding to death on the inside?

“Ever think that you´ve been on this ship too dam long?” I slam my cup down, mimicking D´Argo´s action. Without realizing it, on some level I´m still trying to connect, trying to feel accepted.

D´Argo nods, gets up and leaves. But his silence stays, an impermeable velvet wall that completely engulfs me.

When we reach the next planet. I will be gone. They have another. Maybe they will let him back in. Maybe they will try to understand him. Maybe, by Aeryn´s side, he will recover, and his frustration will be the healthy pink of a new relationship, and the fierce love of a fierce woman.

The small galley window is brimming with stars, with possibilities. I never thought I would ever feel comfort in leaving this living home and my strange family. But tonight, for the first time I do. Better that this John leave this ship, than this John´s rage leave it moist with blood.

I shudder at the image, and take another drink, and wait for the next planet.

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