Title: Miles to Go
Author: MissAnnThropic
Email: miss_annthropic@yahoo.com
Spoilers: Die Me Dichotomy
Summary: John Crichton's condition after removal of the neural chip.
Disclaimer: None of it's mine. I'm just a sad little fangirl that spends her days writing fanfic and watching taped episodes of her favorite shows :(

"John... please, you must regain your strength," Zhaan said gently, pushing his half-finished tray of food cubes closer to the human astronaut in soft insistence. Her voice carried with it the weariness of the long-haul... there would be no quick rebound for the human this time, and everyone on Moya knew it.

Always a tenuously bound crew compliment to begin with, the very harsh reality of Crichton's condition, coupled with the loss of Aeryn Sun, had many retreating. There was not enough pay-off for them to commit, no good reason to suffer alongside their fallen comrade. No one had forgotten that he'd killed her. Neural chip or no, it had been Crichton's hand that slammed the module into Aeryn's Prowler with murderous intent. With aid or maybe just proper motivation, the human could be quite efficient. Something they'd all learned a heartbeat too late.

John Crichton lay broken and torn in a thousand pieces, but only the unending patience of the Delvian priestess kept her at her vigil to the human's needs and saw that he maintained those functions vital to survival. At least he remembered her, most of the time recognized who she was.

They weren't sure how much of John was left in him. They'd found him on the ice planet strapped to the diagnosian's table, the doctor sprawled on the floor and long dead, and Crichton motionless. He lay there subdued... accepting of his fate and waiting for the strike that would end his pain. The chip was gone, but John was still tied to the table, his brain tenderly exposed to any gentle blow, inviting any benign injury to become potentially lethal. He was laid out like a sacrifice, and he awaited it.

Zhaan had been able to restore the top of his skullcap, made the machine replace what it had dissolved for the surgery, but what had been done to him inside she could not correct. For all her healer knowledge, it was beyond her.

It became obvious at once he could not speak... not coherently. He'd muttered something unintelligible to D'Argo as they tried to coax him into sitting up. The Luxan hadn't bothered to ask John to repeat himself... he was certain he'd heard right the first time and cared not to hear the garbled attempt again.

They carried him back to Moya, settled him in a cell far from Moya's burned section, and left him alone to heal. How far he could ever heal was questionable, but there was little else they could do. They were a wounded crew in a crippled ship, carrying the loss of one comrade and the twisted shadow of another.

With his inability to speak, it took them all a few solar days to realize that not all of Crichton was mentally there. Not the dissociative mania that had beset him with the neural chip, but even with his limited speech capacity it became obvious there were gaps in his memory.

They thought he knew Moya, remembered her, but the image of Pilot startled him every time the clamshell activated. Pilot had stopped projecting his face through the comms to spare the human the repeated shock. Sometimes they weren't sure he remembered Chiana, she caught him off guard and received puzzled looks now and then... he didn't worry about not remembering Jothee since he blanked on faces he knew he should somehow know.

His fine motor functions had been shot to hell... he might never be fit to pilot a ship again. When he'd taken up the pen and notebook Zhaan brought to him (thinking it would help rekindle his neural pathways) he'd tried to write and it had come out a senseless scrawl. Just as meaningless as the gibberish that came from his mouth. He had only tried once, after that so quick to give up and walk away from the endeavor.

He could no longer physically endure long distances. A relatively short and slow walk down Moya's halls forced him to stop and lower himself to the floor to rest. Sometimes he wouldn't try to get up until Zhaan came by and forced him back to his feet. Zhaan would take his hand, manage a weak smile for him, and lead him back to his bed. He always followed, but with a vacancy to his eyes. The luster and glint of the human scientist had been cut out with his language and memories.

Until Crichton's language centers rewired themselves, it remained to be seen how much this John Crichton was the one they once knew.

Early on, Zhaan, seeking answers, had tried to enter into Unity with him to listen past his handicaps to his thoughts, but he must have remembered what the framing hands on his face meant and he knew he didn't want it. He'd pulled away and whimpered, and it was so weak and vulnerable a sound that Zhaan didn't have the heart to push him. He'd suffered enough; what little was left of his mind should be his alone.

Zhaan frowned across the center chamber table as Crichton made no move to eat more. He'd been dropping pounds of battered flesh, beginning to look feeble and sickly. Zhaan's best efforts had done little to help, and she couldn't help but feel like they were losing another crew member, only this one slowly rather than in a microt.

Perhaps the others saw this too and preferred to insulate themselves from the impending grief. With Aeryn Sun's death, there was little room left for more of it. Zhaan often felt it might be something of a blessing that Crichton had so little awareness of his surroundings. He didn't need to see his friends pulling away from him, smelling death on him, while still in their deepest of hearts blaming him for Aeryn. What wasn't giving up or blame was heartache for the man who had been a dear friend to them all. When they could put aside their contempt for him borne of Aeryn's death they could not be near him in love either. They both brought only pain, to say nothing of what Crichton was going through.

Zhaan could understand why they were uneasy around John. At times, she wanted to look away from what he reminded her of, too.

Crichton finally turned his eyes up to her, then a crinkle of confusion creased his brow and he looked around the center chamber a microt.

Zhaan was almost certain he didn't remember Aeryn dying. She wasn't even sure he had any clear memories of her at all. Only that when everyone was eating quietly in the center chamber together he would suddenly look up and scan his dinner mates, knowing that SOMETHING wasn't right. While he couldn't name the absence, he just knew something was missing.

He did a lot of searching. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he knew something vital was not where it should be. Zhaan was reluctant to explain to him that he was looking for Aeryn. She didn't want to relive her death over and over, since Crichton would have to hear the story more than once for his addled brain to grab hold.

In truth, the longer Aeryn slipped his mind the better for him. Recovery would be difficult enough without the memory of hearing the woman he loved calling a watery 'Crichton!' before sinking beneath the icy currents.

Crichton cast his eyes down again, sitting quietly with no hint of motion.

Zhaan sighed sadly. He would not be talked into eating anything more for now. She stood, moving toward him with hand outstretched, "You should rest."

Before her hand reached him he flinched away, almost tucking back from her with a pained expression. She could feel that he knew he'd done something wrong. He had some sense of shame, of guilt, but he didn't know what it was he'd done. He only shunned compassion that he knew in some way he wasn't deserving of. Zhaan reproached herself for that tiny voice inside her that said it was good he felt shame and guilt for his actions. It wasn't his fault, never would he have consciously harmed Aeryn, but it had been his hands, his voice, his deception on all the surfaces characteristics that had ended her life so abruptly. All the things their external senses reported identified the murderer as John Crichton. It was a hard memory to shake.

Zhaan waited, knowing Crichton would eventually move, it just took him a moment to gather his thoughts as they were tenuous and elusive. Then it was a task of taking control of his muscles, their information pathways short-circuited and interrupted.

And he did move, getting slowly to his feet, pausing as though uncertain of his balance, then turning to look at her. Zhaan gestured toward the doorway, intending to take him back to his room.

Crichton grumbled something senseless, but the glower in his once handsome and open face spoke what his tongue could not. He didn't want her company.

Zhaan relented and didn't move to follow. From past experience he would probably get lost, but Pilot would keep an eye on him via DRDs, and if he sank to the floor in exhaustion Pilot would summon D'Argo and the Luxan would come and wordlessly lift the human and take him back to his quarters.

They were the new rhythms and patterns of a gnarled and broken crew, going through the motions of merely holding each other together when every seam strained to give way.



SSSSSSSSS



Crichton slowly walked the long corridor of one of Moya's inner tiers. He had sensations about her, about the walls, impressions he felt inclined to do nothing but trust. There was affection here, friend, home, mother. The colors were right, correct as some things just randomly were around this immense, never-ending network of hallways. John knew he knew these things and more, but they were locked in amber within his brain. They were there, but he couldn't get to them. His access codes to the files were obsolete and he'd lost his cheat sheet.

His memories came in fits and starts, snatches of information that he clung to in all their senselessness. Blue, Zhaan... there was trust. The one with tentacles, a feeling something like that to a brother shrouded him. Floating, Buckwheat... he didn't think that the lack of adoration there was an oversight on his brain's part. He was hazy on how it was he was here, on mother, but he remembered flight, speed, Earth. He knew he wasn't near home, without knowing how he remembered it. He knew the Farscape One module was safely 'parked' somewhere in the ship. The fuchsia food cubes tasted like day-old okra. Dad had talked about heroes before he left. Hubble was run over by a car when he was fifteen. The large male alien's name started with a 'D'. She stole his underwear.

Crichton stopped abruptly in the hall and looked back the way he'd come, expecting someone but not sure whom. He knew it wasn't Zhaan, or Buckwheat, the big guy, or that... that white girl. He sought someone else, but whoever it was he never quite remembered.

Of all the confused thoughts fluttering half-formed through his mind, he knew this one was important. There was something he should know, should remember. A face he should recall. Something screamed at him to remember this, railed at him for forgetting in spite of all his efforts.

He was trying to remember, because somehow this missing piece was everything... and always he just had this hollow feeling in his gut that SOMETHING aboard was amiss. Someone was missing, gone... there was a presence among them that should be there but was not. He was angry at himself for not knowing, because he knew he should know. He should know.

He waited for it to come back to him, because something so imperative surely would. And maybe then he could stop searching.

He found himself stock still and consciously told his feet to keep going. Maybe what he sought would be just down the hall.

Broken words spun through his thoughts in a disjointed cacophony. He clung to one, and it propelled him. He knew there was more to it, lost to him now, just as the face he hunted for but wouldn't recognize until he saw it again.

He let a hand reach out to touch the wall, the love of friend, and since his mouth would never cooperate he thought the hauntingly familiar, truncated sentiment to himself 'I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep' as he tirelessly roamed the halls.

He would keep searching, because he was driven by broken memories and promises of his own he didn't remember making.



END