Title: Connection
Author: AstroGirl
Fandoms: Farscape/Blake's 7
Characters: Jenna Stannis & Pilot
Rating/Warnings: G-rated. Mild spoilers for FS's "The Way We Weren't" (season 2) and B7's "Spacefall" (episode 2).
Length: 379 words
CONNECTION
Tentatively, Jenna touches one of the creature's arms. Its wrinkled gray surface is warm and dry, and softer than it looks. He ought to be terrifying, she thinks. But he's not. He's beautiful.
"And you're physically connected to the ship?" she asks, a touch of wonder in her voice.
"Not only physically. Moya and I are neurally linked."
"Neurally? Does that mean you have access to each other's minds?" She hesitates before the last word, unsure whether it applies. Does a living ship have a mind? A computer can, if it's sophisticated enough, but she hasn't enough experience with animals to know how complex they need to be before they develop something she'd call a mind.
"In a manner of speaking," says Pilot. "We can communicate a variety of thoughts and emotions. And I am tuned into Moya's perceptions. I feel what she feels."
Jenna closes her eyes for a moment, remembering the feeling of Zen in her mind. Completeness and connection and a keen, tender awareness of her own human self, complex and flawed and beautiful. And beneath it all, half-understood but deeply felt, the sensation of what it was like to be Zen, to have a hyperspace reactor for a heart and starlight falling naked on your skin.
"Like being completely known," she says, barely a whisper.
"Excuse me?" says Pilot. And then, surprised, "Are you crying?"
She isn't, not really. Not much. Jenna Stannis has never been someone who cries. But a massive claw gently brushes a drop of moisture from her cheek.
She touches the claw as he begins to pull it back, curling her hand around it softly. "Tell me what it's like," she says. "Tell me all about yourself. And about Moya."
"Are you sure?" he asks, slowly. As alien as his face is, she can read it with no difficulty. Why are you interested in me?, it says. I'm only the Pilot. People mostly only expect me to fly the ship. She knows that feeling. It's part of why she left the Federation.
"I'm sure," she says. "Tell me everything. From the beginning."
He hesitates for a moment. Then, "When I was young," he says, "I so very much wanted to see the stars..."
Jenna holds his claw, and listens, and smiles.