Fic: Five Things that Never Happened to Xhalax Sun (Farscape)
Title: Five Things that Never Happened to Xhalax Sun
Spoilers: through 3.17 "The Choice"
Rating: R
Summary: this one's pretty self-explanatory, yes?
Huge thanks to danceswithwords for the beta!!!
1.
She doesn't remember meeting Talyn Lyczak. He was just another member of her regiment, had always been there, just another pilot.
She recalls the first time they recreated, but it doesn't stand out as memorable. A raslak-soaked party, the aftermath of a successful campaign, flirting that ended in his quarters. It wasn't great, but good enough that they tried again, sober, and then again and again.
He's become a habit, and she catches herself seeking him out, missing him when he's absent. She lingers in his bed for no particular reason other than they both want to be there. She knows his body by sight and touch: each thin, muscular limb; the large scar across his abdomen from the Qualta blade of an angry Luxan; the smaller scar on his left thigh from the time he got so intoxicated he fell down the stairs; eyes the color of the sea on Halora-mel that soften and smile when they rest on her face.
Once, several cycles ago, she almost crashed her Prowler, caught in a planet's storm, gravity and atmosphere overcoming her skill. She lost control, tumbling helpless towards the planet, pulling up at just the last microt. She hates to fall.
With Talyn it's like flying in that storm over and over, the terror always warring with the thrill. One night it's too much, and she's crying for the first time since she was a young cadet; he's holding her, trying to help but making it worse, and she can't stop falling.
"It's all right, Xhalax," he whispers against her hair. Senseless, terrifying, treasonous words. "This is real. It's all right to feel these things. I love you."
And for a few last arns she clings to him, memorizing the feel, taste, and scent of him, before stealing away while he sleeps.
The next day she's the perfect soldier-uniform spotless, hair slicked back, eyes dry-when she requests an audience with her commanding officer.
"Sir, I have a case of sedition to report."
2.
The child arrives just at the edge of the Uncharted Territories, on a cold, sparsely populated planet.
She and Talyn are alone, and apparently free, after a strategic escape-bribed and murdered techs, jammed Prowler sensor codes, calculated distractions-that she never really believed would work.
For a few breathless arns after Talyn peeled off from his regiment's training formation, Xhalax hidden silent behind the pilot's seat, they waited with anxiety, certain someone would follow. But time and distance elapsed, and they began to taste freedom. She found it terrifying.
She sat in the cramped seat behind Talyn, one hand loosely clutching the sleeve of his flight suit, so that she was connected to something outside of herself, the two of them together and unmoored. She's always preferred the openness of space to planets, with their bulk and heavy atmosphere, but as she looked out the window at nothing but stars punctuating the blackness, she realized how empty space is without a command carrier, a regiment of comrades.
She tightened her grip on Talyn's arm, while the other hand tried to rub away the ache of fear in her swelling abdomen.
She doesn't like the planet they've found, but unless she wants to give birth in the Prowler, they have no choice. They have currency, and discarded their Peacekeeper uniforms for nondescript clothes the first time they stopped to refuel, but people still don't trust two Sebaceans in a Prowler. They take shelter in an abandoned outbuilding with a partially caved-in roof. The wind rattles the rickety boards, and Xhalax is sure she's never been so cold. The temperature drops even further when the pale, blue sun sets, and she thinks of a warm, clean med bay and wonders again if they've made a mistake.
The labor is fast but more painful than she had been led to believe. Neither of them knows what to do, but the infant arrives squalling with determination, despite the inexperience of her parents.
Talyn has built a small fire, around which they hover, watching their tiny female offspring.
"I've never even seen an infant up close before," Talyn says in awe, running his finger across the small head covered with a tuft of dark hair.
"Me neither," she admits, laughing to cover her panic.
"We can do this." She only half believes him, but leans back as pulls her close, his lips brushing her temple. "We should give her a name."
Xhalax looks at the infant in her arms, then turns to Talyn with a smile. "Her name is Aeryn."
3.
Every time she sees a group of cadets, she catches herself watching. Calculating ages, looking for a child with familiar features. She was under anesthesia for the birth and never saw her offspring, but she knows it was a female and believes she would recognize her.
And one day she does. The techs have taken the Prowler sims offline for repairs, and she's on the way back to her quarters in frustration, when the cadets pass. They're about six or seven cycles old, and she immediately starts scanning.
The child is quiet and serious, walking near the end of the group, observing the passing pilots. Her dark hair catches Xhalax's attention-dark-haired cadets always do-and when the girl looks up, Xhalax sees Talyn's blue-grey eyes.
A microt later the cadets are gone down the corridor; she knows that following them could arouse suspicion. She memorizes the girl: her expression, her features, those eyes of Talyn's that she hasn't seen in four cycles but will never forget.
She arrives at her quarters with fists clenched tight, fingernails digging four small, bloody crescents into each palm.
The next weeken is full of strategy. She learns the cadets' schedule, where they train, where they sleep. It seems safest to go while they sleep.
The corridor where the cadets bunk is dark and silent in the middle of the sleep cycle. She slips into the room and looks down the long rows of beds, dozens of cadets sleeping in neat lines. She freezes, suddenly unsure why she is executing such an absurd and dangerous plan. Cadets want to fit in; they don't want to be marked out as different. Besides, she has nothing particular to say, and she knows it would make no difference to the child anyway.
She forces herself back out of the room, caution winning out over recklessness. She is grateful for her training.
Transfer orders arrive two solar days later; they know what she almost did and are mercifully removing the temptation. As she flies away on the transport, she only looks back once.
4.
She once asked Talyn if he would die for love.
People did, she knew. She had seen them, fighting futilely for love of their miserable planets, their inept commanders, their small families.
"Die for love?" Talyn had answered. "Yes. For love of you I would die."
"Would you kill for love?" She remembers the way he rolled over to look at her then, his hand brushing a strand of hair off of her face.
"I've certainly killed for less," he replied with a smile, and she didn't know how to explain what she really meant.
She remembers the conversation when they drag him in, already bleeding and struggling to stand. It is the first time she's seen him in four cycles, and when his eyes fix her, she's nearly overcome with nausea. She went looking for their daughter. She got caught. She has condemned them all through her weakness.
"Xhalax," he gasps, earning a boot in the ribs.
There is no guard standing over her, no one to beat her if she speaks to him, but she has no words. She wonders if they told him what she did, if he understands why, if he could possibly forgive her. She knows she will never forgive herself.
They bring the child in next. Her wide-eyed expression betrays a little fear at the scene: the clean, dark room with guards, the mother she must recognize in chains, the father she's never seen restrained and beaten.
Xhalax looks at her lover and at their child and is glad that she's brought their family together.
They kill the child first, one clean pulse blast to the head. She doesn't make a sound, and Xhalax tries to be proud.
Talyn is next, executed the same way. His eyes never leave her face, but she can't tell if the expression is love or hate.
And as the executioner approaches, she wonders what she's dying for after all.
5.
She went to Valldon to kill her weakness, finally and completely, but when the battle is over, the weakness has won.
Her daughter wants to save her, so she imprisons Xhalax, first on the gunship, then on a leviathan; Aeryn's friends stand guard, curious and untrusting.
"People can change, Mother. It isn't too late," Aeryn says.
But it is too late. Xhalax changed long ago, caught for a weak moment in a pair of blue-grey eyes, the ramifications spinning out of control, beyond all her power to undo. She already knows the terrible cost of emotion, knows that falling is one-way. It's Aeryn who needs to learn.
She has her chance when Aeryn, Crais, and the Luxan leave the leviathan for supplies. The insufferable Hynerian has been left as her guard, and he's no trouble at all, though she takes care to kill him more thoroughly this time.
She takes the Nebari tralk and her know-it-all girlfriend by surprise, and they're dead before they can protest.
Her body comes alive in this killing; her muscles are sharp and alert, and the knife in her hand, wiped clean on the leg of her trousers, is a comfort. For a moment she wonders if enough spilled blood might yet wash away her weakness. It is an idle thought; she cannot re-fight that battle. But Aeryn must see, must recognize her own weakness, must hurt if she is ever to be strong.
Crichton is in the maintenance bay, working on his primitive little ship, unsuspecting. She knows what this man is worth to the Peacekeepers, but turning him in won't redeem her. Redemption is a fiction she no longer has any use for.
He doesn't hear her approach, and she's disappointed enough that at the last moment she makes a noise so that he'll turn, like Talyn had turned, and look at her with the expression she's seen once before, on Talyn's face, of surprise, confusion, and recognition. There's no time for him to react as the knife slides cleanly between his ribs, except to grip her sleeve briefly before his fingers grow slack.
She leans against the wall of the maintenance bay and opens an artery in her wrist, a quiet death for herself. She doubts, suddenly, if her daughter will understand. But she's too tired to worry, and she thinks instead of Talyn, Aeryn, the price of love, and how it feels, finally, to be free.
Spoilers: through 3.17 "The Choice"
Rating: R
Summary: this one's pretty self-explanatory, yes?
Huge thanks to danceswithwords for the beta!!!
1.
She doesn't remember meeting Talyn Lyczak. He was just another member of her regiment, had always been there, just another pilot.
She recalls the first time they recreated, but it doesn't stand out as memorable. A raslak-soaked party, the aftermath of a successful campaign, flirting that ended in his quarters. It wasn't great, but good enough that they tried again, sober, and then again and again.
He's become a habit, and she catches herself seeking him out, missing him when he's absent. She lingers in his bed for no particular reason other than they both want to be there. She knows his body by sight and touch: each thin, muscular limb; the large scar across his abdomen from the Qualta blade of an angry Luxan; the smaller scar on his left thigh from the time he got so intoxicated he fell down the stairs; eyes the color of the sea on Halora-mel that soften and smile when they rest on her face.
Once, several cycles ago, she almost crashed her Prowler, caught in a planet's storm, gravity and atmosphere overcoming her skill. She lost control, tumbling helpless towards the planet, pulling up at just the last microt. She hates to fall.
With Talyn it's like flying in that storm over and over, the terror always warring with the thrill. One night it's too much, and she's crying for the first time since she was a young cadet; he's holding her, trying to help but making it worse, and she can't stop falling.
"It's all right, Xhalax," he whispers against her hair. Senseless, terrifying, treasonous words. "This is real. It's all right to feel these things. I love you."
And for a few last arns she clings to him, memorizing the feel, taste, and scent of him, before stealing away while he sleeps.
The next day she's the perfect soldier-uniform spotless, hair slicked back, eyes dry-when she requests an audience with her commanding officer.
"Sir, I have a case of sedition to report."
2.
The child arrives just at the edge of the Uncharted Territories, on a cold, sparsely populated planet.
She and Talyn are alone, and apparently free, after a strategic escape-bribed and murdered techs, jammed Prowler sensor codes, calculated distractions-that she never really believed would work.
For a few breathless arns after Talyn peeled off from his regiment's training formation, Xhalax hidden silent behind the pilot's seat, they waited with anxiety, certain someone would follow. But time and distance elapsed, and they began to taste freedom. She found it terrifying.
She sat in the cramped seat behind Talyn, one hand loosely clutching the sleeve of his flight suit, so that she was connected to something outside of herself, the two of them together and unmoored. She's always preferred the openness of space to planets, with their bulk and heavy atmosphere, but as she looked out the window at nothing but stars punctuating the blackness, she realized how empty space is without a command carrier, a regiment of comrades.
She tightened her grip on Talyn's arm, while the other hand tried to rub away the ache of fear in her swelling abdomen.
She doesn't like the planet they've found, but unless she wants to give birth in the Prowler, they have no choice. They have currency, and discarded their Peacekeeper uniforms for nondescript clothes the first time they stopped to refuel, but people still don't trust two Sebaceans in a Prowler. They take shelter in an abandoned outbuilding with a partially caved-in roof. The wind rattles the rickety boards, and Xhalax is sure she's never been so cold. The temperature drops even further when the pale, blue sun sets, and she thinks of a warm, clean med bay and wonders again if they've made a mistake.
The labor is fast but more painful than she had been led to believe. Neither of them knows what to do, but the infant arrives squalling with determination, despite the inexperience of her parents.
Talyn has built a small fire, around which they hover, watching their tiny female offspring.
"I've never even seen an infant up close before," Talyn says in awe, running his finger across the small head covered with a tuft of dark hair.
"Me neither," she admits, laughing to cover her panic.
"We can do this." She only half believes him, but leans back as pulls her close, his lips brushing her temple. "We should give her a name."
Xhalax looks at the infant in her arms, then turns to Talyn with a smile. "Her name is Aeryn."
3.
Every time she sees a group of cadets, she catches herself watching. Calculating ages, looking for a child with familiar features. She was under anesthesia for the birth and never saw her offspring, but she knows it was a female and believes she would recognize her.
And one day she does. The techs have taken the Prowler sims offline for repairs, and she's on the way back to her quarters in frustration, when the cadets pass. They're about six or seven cycles old, and she immediately starts scanning.
The child is quiet and serious, walking near the end of the group, observing the passing pilots. Her dark hair catches Xhalax's attention-dark-haired cadets always do-and when the girl looks up, Xhalax sees Talyn's blue-grey eyes.
A microt later the cadets are gone down the corridor; she knows that following them could arouse suspicion. She memorizes the girl: her expression, her features, those eyes of Talyn's that she hasn't seen in four cycles but will never forget.
She arrives at her quarters with fists clenched tight, fingernails digging four small, bloody crescents into each palm.
The next weeken is full of strategy. She learns the cadets' schedule, where they train, where they sleep. It seems safest to go while they sleep.
The corridor where the cadets bunk is dark and silent in the middle of the sleep cycle. She slips into the room and looks down the long rows of beds, dozens of cadets sleeping in neat lines. She freezes, suddenly unsure why she is executing such an absurd and dangerous plan. Cadets want to fit in; they don't want to be marked out as different. Besides, she has nothing particular to say, and she knows it would make no difference to the child anyway.
She forces herself back out of the room, caution winning out over recklessness. She is grateful for her training.
Transfer orders arrive two solar days later; they know what she almost did and are mercifully removing the temptation. As she flies away on the transport, she only looks back once.
4.
She once asked Talyn if he would die for love.
People did, she knew. She had seen them, fighting futilely for love of their miserable planets, their inept commanders, their small families.
"Die for love?" Talyn had answered. "Yes. For love of you I would die."
"Would you kill for love?" She remembers the way he rolled over to look at her then, his hand brushing a strand of hair off of her face.
"I've certainly killed for less," he replied with a smile, and she didn't know how to explain what she really meant.
She remembers the conversation when they drag him in, already bleeding and struggling to stand. It is the first time she's seen him in four cycles, and when his eyes fix her, she's nearly overcome with nausea. She went looking for their daughter. She got caught. She has condemned them all through her weakness.
"Xhalax," he gasps, earning a boot in the ribs.
There is no guard standing over her, no one to beat her if she speaks to him, but she has no words. She wonders if they told him what she did, if he understands why, if he could possibly forgive her. She knows she will never forgive herself.
They bring the child in next. Her wide-eyed expression betrays a little fear at the scene: the clean, dark room with guards, the mother she must recognize in chains, the father she's never seen restrained and beaten.
Xhalax looks at her lover and at their child and is glad that she's brought their family together.
They kill the child first, one clean pulse blast to the head. She doesn't make a sound, and Xhalax tries to be proud.
Talyn is next, executed the same way. His eyes never leave her face, but she can't tell if the expression is love or hate.
And as the executioner approaches, she wonders what she's dying for after all.
5.
She went to Valldon to kill her weakness, finally and completely, but when the battle is over, the weakness has won.
Her daughter wants to save her, so she imprisons Xhalax, first on the gunship, then on a leviathan; Aeryn's friends stand guard, curious and untrusting.
"People can change, Mother. It isn't too late," Aeryn says.
But it is too late. Xhalax changed long ago, caught for a weak moment in a pair of blue-grey eyes, the ramifications spinning out of control, beyond all her power to undo. She already knows the terrible cost of emotion, knows that falling is one-way. It's Aeryn who needs to learn.
She has her chance when Aeryn, Crais, and the Luxan leave the leviathan for supplies. The insufferable Hynerian has been left as her guard, and he's no trouble at all, though she takes care to kill him more thoroughly this time.
She takes the Nebari tralk and her know-it-all girlfriend by surprise, and they're dead before they can protest.
Her body comes alive in this killing; her muscles are sharp and alert, and the knife in her hand, wiped clean on the leg of her trousers, is a comfort. For a moment she wonders if enough spilled blood might yet wash away her weakness. It is an idle thought; she cannot re-fight that battle. But Aeryn must see, must recognize her own weakness, must hurt if she is ever to be strong.
Crichton is in the maintenance bay, working on his primitive little ship, unsuspecting. She knows what this man is worth to the Peacekeepers, but turning him in won't redeem her. Redemption is a fiction she no longer has any use for.
He doesn't hear her approach, and she's disappointed enough that at the last moment she makes a noise so that he'll turn, like Talyn had turned, and look at her with the expression she's seen once before, on Talyn's face, of surprise, confusion, and recognition. There's no time for him to react as the knife slides cleanly between his ribs, except to grip her sleeve briefly before his fingers grow slack.
She leans against the wall of the maintenance bay and opens an artery in her wrist, a quiet death for herself. She doubts, suddenly, if her daughter will understand. But she's too tired to worry, and she thinks instead of Talyn, Aeryn, the price of love, and how it feels, finally, to be free.