Paper Life
by analise

Spoilers: YES - Infinite Possibilities 2
Rating:G
Category: J/A, Angst, post Ep
Archive: Anywhere, just let me know
Summary: Post Episode - Infinite Possibilities (Icarus Abides)
Feedback: Yes, please. analise@2...
Disclaimer: The Farscape characters don't belong to me. Obviously.

Notes: 
I've never actually written a post-ep before. Never once felt the
urge. But lord. Ouch. After 'Icarus Abides' (and who didn't already know, just
from the title, what would happen?) I had to indulge myself. This is very short,
perhaps the shortest (and fastest) thing I have ever written. Just something I
felt like I had to get out. . 

+++++++++++++


There is a certain kind of comfort in pain. Especially when I can feel
nothing but the dry texture of pulp paper beneath my fingertips,
the crackle-whisper of sound and sensation as I stroke the pages ever so
softly. Back and forth, certainly smudging the words scribed beneath, those
lines of text nearly invisible in the darkness. Fascinating, I think
distantly, fascinating that these thin sheets contain the width and breadth
of the cycles we had together.

My eyes are dry now. Too dry. I have no tears left, I wonder if I know what
tears mean anymore. Moisture streaking my cheeks, anguish distorting my
features. Nothing now. Perhaps he took it with him when he left me.

I gave him my soul, and now it's gone.

The journal sits in my lap, open and laid bare before my unseeing gaze.
Letters form words from a place I have seen only in dreams, heard about only
in wistful midnight whisperings. Not the sum of a life, never that. How can
parchment contain the catch in his voice when he laughed or the way the
starlight silvered the elegant lines of his back? But he spilled his
thoughts onto these pages and here, alone now, it is all that remains.

I could hate it. I am close to hating it. The little curl on the end of
certain letters, that his star charts are both useless and precious. The
fact that he will never write another word in it again. That I had him and
now I only have it. I do hate it.

And still I run my hands over each page again and again, as if the life
within the slanted lines and swooping symbols, the life they depict, might
somehow soak into my skin. Into the cold places inside me.

I feel that I might never be warm again. It occurs to me that I don't care
if am.

There is familiarity here. He taught me my name. The edge of a fingernail
scrapes down the texture of pressed pulp found on some long-ago commerce
planet. 'Aeryn' lies scattershot on page after page, I know. I have seen it
in so many places throughout the journal. Three cycles of his life with us.
With me. If I had such a book, mine would only contain three cycles, too. He
birthed my life.

And he left me adrift in it.

A sharp violent movement sends the book flying across the tiny space of the
chamber we had shared for such a short time. The sound it makes when it
connects with the wall is not as comforting as I'd hoped. A few monens, in
the end. I will not regret the time wasted before. I will not regret the
blissful time after. Not even knowing it to be the architect for my pain
now.

One moment. Another. My legs do function, I find, as I uncurl from my 
seated position against the wall. I do not know how long I have been sitting 
here, in the dark. Uncounted breaths since they made me let him go. 
Since I told them I wanted to be alone. My feet touch the floor and I lurch 
on numb limbs to the far wall where my hands seek and find the rough
texture of the journal's cover. Tuck it close against my chest. Back to the
bunk, back to the wall. Back to the book.

It still smells like him in here. I can almost hear the cadence of his voice
when I close my eyes. I will not indulge in the fantasy of how his hair felt
against my palms or the soft texture of his lower lip between my teeth.

Of how his...

My head falls back against the wall with a soft thud, and I clench my
fingers around the journal, feeling it bite against my palms. The pain
comforts me slightly, but means little. When Velorak died, I felt shame.
When Zhaan died, I felt pain. When my mother died, I felt regret. And now.
This is loss. This is emptiness. This is indescribable.

They will be coming for me soon enough, I know. We will bury him in the cold
of space, so far from his home. The trivial ceremony of it. Empty. They
think some closure will be gained, perhaps. Foolish sentiment. I had
happiness. I had hope. I had him. Now I have nothing. That absence is a void
in my heart. Committing his vacant shell to space will not fill it.

I want to shake my fist at the Universe. I want to beg and plead and abase
myself before any and all powers. But I only sit in the dark. With the book.
Alone in a way I never believed was possible. Do you know that before I met
him I didn't even know what need was? That being strong was all I thought I
wanted? That being strong meant being solitary? It is laughable, and so I
laugh. Hard, cold and humorless. No hint of a catch. 
 
I accused him once of ruining my life. And he did. Spectacularly. He gave
 my parchment existence the death it deserved and gifted me with a 
replacement that even now fills me with wonder. I had wanted to spend 
the rest of my life thanking him. Every day.

I thank you, John Crichton.

I whisper it now and hope he hears. My fingers resume their slow stroking
through the pages, listening to the rustle of the thick pages as they turn.
In the dark, I cannot see the words.

I love you, John Crichton.

I can't pray. I don't know how. I won't hope, because I no longer believe. I
am alone, because he is gone.

And all I have left of him is paper.



END

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