Fic: Tales of Derring-Do
Title: Tales of Derring-Do (AO3)
Author: katiemariie
Fandom(s): Farscape
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Rylani Jeema Dellos, Scorpius, Wolesh
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1001 (palindromic number!)
Warnings: Mentions of rape and forced pregnancy. Minor gore.
Summary: AU: Rylani tells her son how she escaped from the Scarran dreadnought.
Notes: Written for farscape_land challenge 6, phase 4, "I Hate, Therefore I Am," where the evil vinegar_dog tasked us with picking our least favorite characters, showing why we hate them, and, for extra points, torturing and/or killing them. I chose Wolesh, Scorpius' biological father, for the minor male character option.
The child, after learning what a father was, almost immediately asked if he ever had one. (He'd always been a clever boy. Minutes after his birth, even in the throes of heat delirium, his clear blue eyes flitted around the room as if searching for meaning.) Rylani considered lying, telling the child that Ghebb was his father (for monens aboard the dreadnought, she tried to trick herself into thinking the same), but his emotional exterior needed to grow as tough as the cooling suit Rylani begged, stole, and borrowed to procure. She was not a Peacekeeper; she'd have liked to raise the child in the same sheltered comfort afforded to her as a girl, but she knew he would only survive worlds that hate him if well-studied in that hate. In any case, as he aged, the boy became more and more adept at knowing when she was lying.
“Your father,” she started delicately, “was a very bad man. He worked for bad people who tried to hurt us.”
“What did they do?”
“Well...” She''d never told anyone this before, not even the Diagnosan who helped her give birth. “The bad people-they kidnapped me and he-your father-made me pregnant. With you.”
The boy cocked his head to the side. “Did you love him?”
“No,” she said perhaps too quickly and too loudly.
“Then how did...?”
Rylani suddenly realized the limitations of explaining babies as something that happens when two adults love each other. “There are ways that it can happen without love.”
“But you said babies could only-”
“I know. That's the way it's supposed to happen, but sometimes that's not the way it does.”
“And that's bad?”
“Yes. Very bad. That's why we had to leave.” No matter how tough he needed to be, there were some things Rylani could never share with the boy: her pleas for death, the hours spent damning the abomination colonizing her body. Some horrors were hers alone. But that doesn't mean the boy couldn't know what happened after that. He was just the right age for tales of derring-do and she had to admit she felt only the slightest bit of pride at her accomplishment. A smile formed on her face. “Did I ever tell you how we escaped?”
“No,” he said, his eyes wide with curiosity.
“While I was still pregnant with you, we were kept aboard a Scarran dreadnought. Do you know what that is?”
“A really huge ship.”
“That's right. Most of them time, we were strapped to a gurney in the medical bay with the other women.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“The Scarrans-the bad people did the same thing they did to me to many other women.”
“So,” he said hopefully, “there are other children like me?”
“No. They... died.” She closed her eyes and could see the museum of devastation anew: women's blood boiling them alive in the middle of labor, women ripped apart by the force of the contractions, women screaming when first seeing their child, other women screaming as their child was taken away, women crying over the corpses of their children, women dying in labor, women wishing they had, and the babies: dying, squirming, sobbing, suckling the air for milk that would never come. (On average, the Scarran scientists discovered, Scarran-Sebacean newborns died after seven solar days without food or water.) “We had to escape or that would happen to you.” And me, she added silently. “Once a weeken, we were brought into a special room for heat therapy.”
“Heat therapy?”
“The Scarrans thought if I was given heat delirium often enough while pregnant, you would be born immune to it. Obviously, they were wrong.” Rylani rubbed her hand along the boy's cooling rod pack. “Wolesh, the man who made me pregnant, he would guard me. One day, during heat therapy, he tried to... hurt me again. He took me out of my restraints and threw me up against the wall. He wasn't very smart; none of the Scarrans with big heads were. He threw me against the wall right next to the climate controls. I turned the room's temperature down as far as it would go and he stopped attacking me. He tried, by the cold made him slow and lethargic.”
“Lethargic?”
“Tired. I knew this was my only chance to escape; I'd never be left unguarded like this again. Any microt a team of scientists could walk in, so I had to think quickly. How could I get off the dreadknought without being caught? A pregnant Sebcacean women roaming the corridors would hardly go undetected. I looked over at Wolesh and I got an idea.” Rylani was uncertain if the next part of the story was too gruesome for such a young child, but went on anyway. “Darling, do you know what taxidermy is?”
The boy nodded his head. “It's what your parents did on New Heather.”
“Right. When I was a girl, my parents wanted me to learn the trade so I could take over their business someday. I was never very interested, but I picked up a few things, particularly ways of using extreme temperature to remove blood and organs while maintaining the quality of the animal's exterior. Fortunately, the room for heat therapy had plenty of surgical instruments. The only reliable method of performing surgery on Scarrans is with really cold instruments. Nothing else will cut through their scales. So, I picked up a cold saw and cut off Wolesh's head.”
“You da-cap-i-tat-ed him?”
“Yes.” She squeezed the boy's shoulder affectionately. “Decapitate” was one of the vocabulary words they were working on that weeken. “And then I used something called a gelid laser to disintegrate all of his insides and make his skin rigid enough to stand unsupported. After a few more adjustments, I climbed inside his skin, pulled his head back on, and walked off the dreadnought.”
The boy was silent for a moment, seemingly shellshocked, before grabbing Rylani's hand. “Mother, you are so drad.”
Author: katiemariie
Fandom(s): Farscape
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Rylani Jeema Dellos, Scorpius, Wolesh
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1001 (palindromic number!)
Warnings: Mentions of rape and forced pregnancy. Minor gore.
Summary: AU: Rylani tells her son how she escaped from the Scarran dreadnought.
Notes: Written for farscape_land challenge 6, phase 4, "I Hate, Therefore I Am," where the evil vinegar_dog tasked us with picking our least favorite characters, showing why we hate them, and, for extra points, torturing and/or killing them. I chose Wolesh, Scorpius' biological father, for the minor male character option.
The child, after learning what a father was, almost immediately asked if he ever had one. (He'd always been a clever boy. Minutes after his birth, even in the throes of heat delirium, his clear blue eyes flitted around the room as if searching for meaning.) Rylani considered lying, telling the child that Ghebb was his father (for monens aboard the dreadnought, she tried to trick herself into thinking the same), but his emotional exterior needed to grow as tough as the cooling suit Rylani begged, stole, and borrowed to procure. She was not a Peacekeeper; she'd have liked to raise the child in the same sheltered comfort afforded to her as a girl, but she knew he would only survive worlds that hate him if well-studied in that hate. In any case, as he aged, the boy became more and more adept at knowing when she was lying.
“Your father,” she started delicately, “was a very bad man. He worked for bad people who tried to hurt us.”
“What did they do?”
“Well...” She''d never told anyone this before, not even the Diagnosan who helped her give birth. “The bad people-they kidnapped me and he-your father-made me pregnant. With you.”
The boy cocked his head to the side. “Did you love him?”
“No,” she said perhaps too quickly and too loudly.
“Then how did...?”
Rylani suddenly realized the limitations of explaining babies as something that happens when two adults love each other. “There are ways that it can happen without love.”
“But you said babies could only-”
“I know. That's the way it's supposed to happen, but sometimes that's not the way it does.”
“And that's bad?”
“Yes. Very bad. That's why we had to leave.” No matter how tough he needed to be, there were some things Rylani could never share with the boy: her pleas for death, the hours spent damning the abomination colonizing her body. Some horrors were hers alone. But that doesn't mean the boy couldn't know what happened after that. He was just the right age for tales of derring-do and she had to admit she felt only the slightest bit of pride at her accomplishment. A smile formed on her face. “Did I ever tell you how we escaped?”
“No,” he said, his eyes wide with curiosity.
“While I was still pregnant with you, we were kept aboard a Scarran dreadnought. Do you know what that is?”
“A really huge ship.”
“That's right. Most of them time, we were strapped to a gurney in the medical bay with the other women.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“The Scarrans-the bad people did the same thing they did to me to many other women.”
“So,” he said hopefully, “there are other children like me?”
“No. They... died.” She closed her eyes and could see the museum of devastation anew: women's blood boiling them alive in the middle of labor, women ripped apart by the force of the contractions, women screaming when first seeing their child, other women screaming as their child was taken away, women crying over the corpses of their children, women dying in labor, women wishing they had, and the babies: dying, squirming, sobbing, suckling the air for milk that would never come. (On average, the Scarran scientists discovered, Scarran-Sebacean newborns died after seven solar days without food or water.) “We had to escape or that would happen to you.” And me, she added silently. “Once a weeken, we were brought into a special room for heat therapy.”
“Heat therapy?”
“The Scarrans thought if I was given heat delirium often enough while pregnant, you would be born immune to it. Obviously, they were wrong.” Rylani rubbed her hand along the boy's cooling rod pack. “Wolesh, the man who made me pregnant, he would guard me. One day, during heat therapy, he tried to... hurt me again. He took me out of my restraints and threw me up against the wall. He wasn't very smart; none of the Scarrans with big heads were. He threw me against the wall right next to the climate controls. I turned the room's temperature down as far as it would go and he stopped attacking me. He tried, by the cold made him slow and lethargic.”
“Lethargic?”
“Tired. I knew this was my only chance to escape; I'd never be left unguarded like this again. Any microt a team of scientists could walk in, so I had to think quickly. How could I get off the dreadknought without being caught? A pregnant Sebcacean women roaming the corridors would hardly go undetected. I looked over at Wolesh and I got an idea.” Rylani was uncertain if the next part of the story was too gruesome for such a young child, but went on anyway. “Darling, do you know what taxidermy is?”
The boy nodded his head. “It's what your parents did on New Heather.”
“Right. When I was a girl, my parents wanted me to learn the trade so I could take over their business someday. I was never very interested, but I picked up a few things, particularly ways of using extreme temperature to remove blood and organs while maintaining the quality of the animal's exterior. Fortunately, the room for heat therapy had plenty of surgical instruments. The only reliable method of performing surgery on Scarrans is with really cold instruments. Nothing else will cut through their scales. So, I picked up a cold saw and cut off Wolesh's head.”
“You da-cap-i-tat-ed him?”
“Yes.” She squeezed the boy's shoulder affectionately. “Decapitate” was one of the vocabulary words they were working on that weeken. “And then I used something called a gelid laser to disintegrate all of his insides and make his skin rigid enough to stand unsupported. After a few more adjustments, I climbed inside his skin, pulled his head back on, and walked off the dreadnought.”
The boy was silent for a moment, seemingly shellshocked, before grabbing Rylani's hand. “Mother, you are so drad.”