The Right of Skin, chapter VIII 2/2
The Right of Skin - Chapter VIII 2/2
Setting/Spoilers: Slightly pre-Season One I guess.
Rating: NC-17. Non-con, hetero’ and some minimal slash. Go away if any offends.
Pairings: John/Zhaan, John/Scorpius and/or Various shipmates
Summary: AU. John Crichton is caught on a ship. Aliens are present, and his so-called life aboard Moya begins.
Disclaimers: Farscape and its characters are the property of Jim Henson Productions, and a bunch of other folks who made $$ from it. Me? I make fun.
Note: Please remember that in this version of Farscape there are some details that have come from memory (from Seasons 1 and 2), while others I am making up as I go along - I’m “tweaking” canon to suit this AU. At this writing I have not seen Season Three.
NOTE: Not seen the Peacekeeper Wars movie yet either and, after reading about it, probably won’t. I’m not into conventional romance stories and a plot like “John and Aeryn (who is really human after all) get married and have a baby”. Besides, that plot was done not only on the show but in many fanfictions out there, and done well. I don’t see the need to add to that substantial pile. There may be limited J/A action in this story but, well, we’ll see...
Leaving his hair alone, it was suddenly back to the business at hand and Scorpius walked to his many dials and buttons, resetting this one and that. “Probing your mind has shown me a few things I didn’t expect. For example, I see that you and the Delvan priestess had a rather close thing going.” He put a rather unsavoury sounding accent on thing. “How interesting. Did she give you sufficient pleasure while she was disgustingly sucking that stuff from your body?”
Scorpius sounded angry. John did not know why, nor had he any idea how to answer. Which answer would stave off Zhaan’s death or his own the longest? “What do you care?”
“I would never have let a Delvan sprout sponge from my body. I’m surprised at you, John.” Scorpius turned to him once more, this time his eyes were blazing. Full of hate. “Of all the species or low creatures in the galaxy, you chose to consort with a tawdry, blue-titted weed!”
Rods of pain coursed through John’s spine and down to his toes, making each one explode in agony like tiny bombs, reverberating and ricocheting back up through his legs to his torso and finally re-entering his ravaged mind. White hot spasms of pain spun in on themselves like a twister, until they finally settled down into a dull, steady ache.
John felt the tears on his face before he could stop them, hating himself for the weakness. But the pains mighty roar became a rumble, then a growl, and finally he was left numb. Sweet relief. How exquisite not to feel your own body.
And still Scorpius watched him, the hated face displaying a jumble of things John could not interpret: fury, hate, fascination, even regret, but mostly an intensity of focus offered in his direction that John had never witnessed before. Not in the arns and arns he had previously sat in Scorpius’ god-awful Chair and not since sitting in it once more this day. Scorpius seemed to be as interested in him, in John the human, as in John the creature whose mind held the secret to wormholes.
“What is that, John?”
The pain-producing was put on hold and the horrible Chair temporarily forgotten as Scorpius drew even closer, until they were almost eye to eye. “Your face is wet.” Scorpius said. His tone was a song of surprise. “What is that? What does it mean?”
But John was trying once more to remember that he knew nothing about wormholes but to not tell he knew nothing, trying to not let Scorpius even suspect his great lack of wormhole something-to-tell. “Frell you!”
Scorpius ignored the insult but reached out and let a tear run onto his finger, then down the back of his hand. He sniffed it, and then put the tiny wetness to his tongue. “It tastes of salt.” He said to John. “Remarkable.”
John could not stop the tears as they continued to fall. He was not sad, but his body betray him just the same and shed the damn things again and again to ease the physical and emotional stresses that had built up. Some of them ran down, falling off his chin onto his chest, disappearing under the thin one-piece tunic he wore beneath his flight suit, which Scorpius’ minions had cut off him and tossed aside.
Scorpius noticed the direction of their fall as well and, to John’s ever-renewing shock, reached out and unzipped the shirt, pushing the folds of the garment aside until his chest was fully exposed. “I fear you may shed more of these droplets before this day is done.” He said. “And I fear your tralk priestess will die.”
At that statement, a few fresh tears fell.
“Ah.” Scorpius said as though unlocking an interesting puzzle. “They represent grief, don’t they - the droplets, grief or pain? Regret perhaps?”
Scorpius traced the path of one tear until it spread out and began to evaporate on John’s abdomen. The ugly clawed finger rested there for a microt, as though hypnotised by the feel of the skin. “You are an elegant specimen, John.”
Scorpius whispered it and the creep factor in John’s guts grew tenfold.
“Well formed. Refined in the flesh.”
Serious, serious creep-out factor. John jumped back as far as the chair would allow when without warning Scorpius’ face was again right next to his own. “We could help one another John. We could be and do so much, the two of us. The wormhole technology would bring all this needless suffering to an end, don’t you see that?”
John could feel Scorpius’ body heat, smell his musty stink and sense the nerves on fire beneath the black cooling suit and his plaster-grey skin, right into the marrow of his creaking bones. John had never felt so scared since first laying eyes on the goddamn freak.
Scorpius took John’s head between his deadly hands. “Think of it John!” Scorpius all but yelled it in his face. “Think of it - just you and I.”
John’s heart was in his throat, and just when he thought he might scream back from the terror that Scorpius was even more insane than he had first believed -
“John...”
Zhaan’s voice.
“John...”
Zhaan’s beautiful honey-sweet voice in his head. Zhaan in his mind but not. And his lovely Zhaan in his soul but far away too. Beside him and out there. Lovely Zhaan speaking to him across the billions of footsteps of space. Her meaning rendered without a single word was so clear in his thoughts, and she though far away inside a ship orbiting the Delvan moons was yet standing next to him in the room inserting her warm soul into his, that she may as well have been present in the ungodly room and speaking with her own mouth.
“Talyn has come at last and blasted away the ships tether. I am free, John, because of you. Tell them that I am free.”
John looked up at Scorpius whose unholy face was removed from the glory inside him and her; divorced from what he and Zhaan shared; sequestered from its abounding beauty and severed from its deepest honour. He and Zhaan were affixed to each other for all time, and until this moment John had not had the faintest notion how deeply or how touchable that link was. And because it was a thing Scorpius could not hope to experience, a perfect togetherness he would never share with even the poorest creature that crawled on any soil or flew in any heaven -
John laughed at him.
It started as a single guffaw and grew until it filled the room, shook the floor and pounded the walls with its fists. Zhaan’s parting gift had sparked in John a more complete understanding of the thing-man called Scorpius. It proclaimed the revelation of Scorpius’ true self and state - that of a pathetic, futile, monster-bred only child who indulged in fantasies of little-god-hood. The true nature of his enemy became a mocking delight of the purest sort and John laughed himself empty.
Scorpius recognised something was amiss of course and reacted as John thought he might. But it didn’t matter now. Though Scorpius leaped to his controls and cranked the Chair to its highest level, John minded not. Though the pain that ripped through his mind, forcing open that last crack of light where-in no useful illumination lived, he did not care. John had nothing to give and Scorpius had nothing to gain.
Because there was nothing in the secret. The secret was empty. It was the black space of deceit. It was the dark matter of the soul. There was no wormhole knowledge anymore. The wormhole was gone forever. Only the untruth about its existence remained. And this Scorpius read in the display of his abominable brain machine. It had all been - every last shred of it - a lie.
And still John did not fret.
Scorpius got on his communication link to his fighters and screamed into it at the top of his rage and voice: “Kill that Delvan bitch. Kill her! Kill her!”
“You’re too late!” John yelled this time, relishing in having finally got one over on Scorpius the monster child, and loving it. Loving it! “She’s already gone. You’re too late, you miserable fucking carcass.”
Scorpius listened as the words came in. “We can’t, sir! The transport is already beyond firing range. I’ve never seen a ship with this kind of fire power - he’s taking us out one by one, we - “
Then there was silence.
John’s body was weary to the bone and he wondered if he was dying. But soon, when his breathing calmed down and he knew with almost certainty that he was not dead, John opened his eyes to see Scorpius looking down at him, and noting that his face was normal again if such a word could be applied.
In fact Scorpius was strangely calm.
John was in his right mind enough to squirm under his nemesis’ unwavering gaze. Under those hateful eyes time was removed from around them. All that remained was Scorpius and himself and what was to come. Endless things to come. Endless awful things. John did not know what but he was a pretty good guesser. It would probably not be pleasant.
“That wasn’t very nice of you John.” Scorpius said softly. “And after all we’ve been to each other.”
Scorpius roamed the room silently for a moment, seeing in an instant his own future separate from the Nation, disavowed and on his own with his one moderately armed ship and his few but loyal crewmen. No wormhole knowledge was to be, so there was no reason for the Peacekeepers to retain his services and back his research. Scorpius was without friends or funds now.
All he had left was a human.
With his eyes John followed Scorpius silent movement around the room. He could guess the things that concerned Scorpius now: What was to become of him? Where should he go? What will he do?
Scorpius stopped and turned to face John. There was not so much malice in his eyes but the grim knowledge of inevitability. Scorpius brought his face as close as he could while still keeping his gaze fixed on Johns. “You know John that I can’t let a betrayal like this pass? You understand that, don’t you?”
“There’s no betrayal if there’s no love to start with.” John pointed out. “Or even mild tolerance.”
“Love? Who said anything about love? It’s a frivolous, useless emotion. Gets in the way of true accomplishment.”
“It sure got in your way, didn’t it?”
“You mean your love for the priestess? Was it love or guilt? Doesn’t matter now, I suppose.” Scorpius spoke into his communicator. “Fraxx. Come to the Chair room.”
After a very short while there was a knock at the door, and a creature entered without waiting for it to open. Scorpius seemed to expect such behaviour and waved it into the room. John assumed it was sentient. Hard to tell beyond the thick tongue lolling out from behind and all those sharply angled black teeth. Save for the red eyes, teeth and tongue, he might have passed for an exceptionally ugly Sebacean.
“This is Fraxx, John.” Scorpius cordially introduced. “He is a Qootwaq specialist whom I hired some time ago. His talent is, shall we say, unique.”
“I’ll ba-bet.” It was all he could manage. Words were too much now. Pain was everywhere. Exhaustion seeped in to take up its ironic rule. From inside the metal cuff, he could no longer even lift his hand from the arm of The Chair. Anything this banana-tongued freak show might do could hardly make him feel worse.
“I’ll say goodbye now, John.” Scorpius said with all pleasantness, walking over to him the way a jaguar might to a rabbit. John held his breath when Scorpius leaned down - he really hated that smell.
John prepared himself for almost anything. It was easy. He was too tired to fight anymore. He did not care what happened to him now. It had all been too much. Surrender was much easier than fighting to the last breath. What did it matter anyway? Scorpius could have sliced open his ribcage and pulled out his liver and he would hardly have blinked. John would not have been surprised at any of a host of atrocities from the black devil before him.
But not this. Not what did happen. With the possessive arrogance of the victor Scorpius pressed his own stone-carved mouth to John’s swollen lips and kissed him ever so tenderly. It was so sudden and so matter-of-fact John was not at first sure it was happening. Yet there was Scorpius’ dead mouth still on his own. Scorpius seemed to be testing him, trying him out - getting a taste! As though John were a slice of cake never before sampled.
When it was over, John wanted to vomit.
Scorpius appeared satisfied, and took a step back. He was in triumph. Smiling. “Yes, very well formed.” He said, and then cruelly - “And now, John, let me show you the kind of things that make me laugh.”
Scorpius turned to leave but first summoned his “friend” to his side. Holding up a finger of warning, he said to Fraxx “No permanent handicaps or disabling injuries.” Staring at Fraxx, eye to eye, “He is to be left fully intact. You understand me?”
Fraxx nodded, looking bored, as though he knew the rules and come-on-and-leave-already!
When Scorpius had left, Fraxx walked over to John and spent a moment looking down at him, at all of him. Then he took a small knife from his pocket and ran its blade over his tongue, drawing out a tiny river of purple blood. He smacked oversized lips.
“Hey,” John managed a weak whisper. S-o-o-o tired. “Sca-scorpy said no inj’ries.”
“No permanent injuries.” Fraxx sounded like a lizard, too. Scorpius the devil, Fraxx the lizard - quite a mixed household.
“Wha’r you gonna’ do w’th’knife?”
Fraxx laughed softly. “Don’t worry, I don’t practise crude torture. You won’t be left less than male. Besides...” another laugh, “...after you’ve bitten off a cock, what else is there?”
FS
Chapter IX asap J