Title: For Reason's Sake
Author: MissAnnThropic
E-Mail: miss_annthropic@yahoo.com
Spoilers: Fractures and Revenging Angel
Summary: She takes time, and time is what Crichton doesn't have.
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 :(



'She takes time.'

They were the words spoken from the lips of her lover to himself, but not quite himself, either. If it were truly himself, it would have been the whisper of a ghost to a ghost... some strange spiritual word tag that Zhaan would have understood.

Aeryn did not often seek to understand the nonphysical, so it was rare she would miss Zhaan with this severity. Zhaan would know what to do, in so many ways. Zhaan knew the spiritual intimately, could have made sense of this anarchy for her, and even if the restless soul she could not have tamed, Zhaan could have told her what to do about John. Just because Zhaan knew John. Zhaan had always had an understanding about John Crichton, an innate sensitivity perhaps brought about by their times in Unity that none of the others in the crew had been able to touch. While an enigma to the rest of them, to Zhaan (for the most part) Crichton had been an open book.

Right now, Aeryn would have taken advice on what to do in any form it took. As long as it wasn't John. She looked at this John and saw him. Her Crichton... she tasted him, smelled him, heard his voice whispering what he called 'sweet nothings' in her ear that in fact were far from nothing. And she looked at this one and saw a beautiful body ravaged by radiation sickness. Grieved for a mind that had stayed blissfully sharp and mercifully free until the last minute, a heart that had loved with a suffocating intensity up to the microt it stopped beating.

She couldn't look at him without feeling the rush of reminder of the greatest love and harshest pain she had ever known. Aeryn Sun, Peacekeeper commando, was not trained to handle any of what she felt. She wasn't trained to feel at all, and to find she did to this degree threatened to compress her heart, and even that she could not be without conflict about. To acquiesce and slip into that silent sleep would maybe reunite her with the John she loved, but if she did she would be bringing the pain she felt now upon the John that still lived. What was that human saying Crichton had said once, 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'? It was one human saying that made all the sense in the universe.

'She takes time'. Aeryn wasn't sure her body could withstand 'time' like this.

She sat across the table from him stiffly, feeling obligated to help this John plan his attack on Scorpius, torn between wanting nothing more than to look at him and wanting to do anything but.



****



Crichton studied the maps spread out on the galley table in front of him, trying to concentrate but distracted by Aeryn being so close. He understood what his twin had said, that she took time... hell, that he knew. It had taken him cycles to get as close to her as he had been before the twinning. Time he could handle, it was starting over at even worse odds than the first time that disheartened him. Maybe before he could have done it, but he just didn't have the energy for this anymore. A couple of cycles ago when the universe had been his to embrace and he hadn't been broken and beaten time and again, maybe then... but not now. He honestly didn't expect to survive taking out Scorpius, and with the certainty of death looming he didn't have the strength to try. Or the heart. He loved her, god he did and always would, but he began to think there wasn't enough left of John Crichton to do anything meaningful except to hopefully die ridding the universe of one sick bastard.

This place and everything that came with it had chipped and whittled away at the John Crichton he once was... the eager astronaut his father would have recognized. There was someone else in his place, and even if his body lived through this assault, it wouldn't stop the decay of his mother's son. There seemed so little of John Crichton, human, left... and when he'd found Aeryn could not return to him as the grounding influence she'd always been... well, there just seemed so little point in trying anymore.

Crichton looked up at Aeryn again, wanting to get her attention to ask her a question, but not sure what to say. She seemed to flinch at him saying her name, and she looked zoned out. If he just started into his question he was pretty sure she wouldn't hear half of it. Tapping her was out of the question... right now she might shoot him if he touched her.

He settled on clearing his throat, trying to catch her attention.

He did... boy, how he did.

Aeryn jerked and shut her eyes, a pained expression flitting across her face before she set back in place the cool mask of indifference. Her John had sounded so much like that when he got sick... throat dry and voice hoarse. She saw him again in her mind's eye... dying beside her.

Crichton saw he'd made a mistake (though it seemed lately that was all he did with her), and gave up. To hell with the maps and Scorpius and himself, and even to hell with Aeryn. He didn't mean to be the one that lived, but she was going to hold that against him anyway. And the funny thing was it was so easy to die out here... it would take so little to get himself killed, and now he was wondering how it could suddenly seem so hard. How had he managed to not get himself killed while Aeryn was gone, anyway? As it turned out he wasn't doing himself or her any favors with the efforts.

He remembered waking up to a pool of his own blood and longed for that one microt to be there again... so that time he could just not get up.

Aeryn was unaware of the maelstrom of thoughts stirring through Crichton's mind... she knew only she had to get some distance from him. Everything about him was the other John, the one she'd had to watch die... the one she'd curled next to after he slipped away because she just couldn't bring herself to let go.

Aeryn stood and moved toward the right wall, occupying herself with getting a glass of raslak to drink.

Crichton brought his hands up to his face, hiding behind them until a voice actually broke the silence. A voice, of course, that was not Aeryn's.

"Crichton..." Jool began from the hallway outside the galley, striding into the room and moving toward him. She still had the eye patch on her right eye from the flying bits of boolite and didn't see Aeryn standing by the wall quietly. Crichton considered alerting Jool to the unseen company, but she continued before he could say a word.

"Does your species have some kind of natural involuntary cardiac resuscitation function?"

Crichton frowned, confused, "Excuse me?"

Jool sighed, and in that one sigh he could tell the red-haired scientist was upset... which was not unusual for Jool. It made her even more blunt than usual, though.

Jool put her hands on her hips, "Well, if you're going to insist on going through with this suicide mission of yours, I wanted to review what little information this ship has amassed on your medical profile. I figure you're going to need it. So does your species have a natural means of restarting the heart?"

John shook his head, "Nothing without help, you'd need a defibrillator or someone doing CPR..."

Jool cocked her head, put upon and almost accusing, "Well, you did something when you died a few days ago."

Aeryn went very still from her unnoticed corner, while John dropped his eyes and folded his arms on the table top. He didn't want to deal with this.

Jool took his silence as cue to continue, "The recorded readings of your cardiac activity clearly indicated your heart stopped for half a micron, and we were all rummaging around looking for D'Argo's Qualta blade in the neural nexus, so you had to have done something to revive yourself. I just want to know if this is something I should take into consideration when I outline a medical emergency procedure for you."

John shook his head, "Don't go to the trouble, Jool, it's fine."

Jool frowned, perturbed, "That's not good enough... you're always on my eema to be the doctor on this frelling boat, and I can't do that if you start getting taciturn."

Crichton shook his head softly, mostly to himself. Why not? It would get her out of his hair, and at this point he didn't care what Aeryn overheard... she didn't care about him, the copy, anyway.

"I don't know the medical explanation for why I didn't stay dead, I only know that I knew I couldn't die because I had something to live for. Not very technical, but it's the only answer I've got."

Jool scowled, disliking the lack of scientific rigor his answer had, and ventured, "Well, whatever... does this happen with humans all the time?"

Crichton sat back, trying not to become short-tempered. Jool was just trying to help, but he was tired of her... just like he was tired of everything. "It never happens in humans, by all rights I should have stayed dead. I don't know why I didn't."

Jool nodded, backing off to see Crichton getting edgy. She'd been through enough of his manic, obsessive behavior on Moya during Aeryn's absence to recognize when he was spiraling. "Well, whatever this 'reason to live' dren is... I'll just assume that it's a fail-safe and just make note of it."

Crichton said quickly, face dark and voice cold, "Don't count on it. You can only kill a Crichton so many times," and stood and left the room.

Jool turned to look after him, and in doing so she finally saw Aeryn by the right wall. Crichton strode out of the galley swiftly, without a word, not even glancing at Aeryn as he moved by her.

Jool blinked, startled to find Aeryn there and regretting what she'd discussed with the human in front of her.

Aeryn was looking after the direction Crichton had gone, then looked slowly over at Jool and asked in that emotionless Peacekeeper voice, "John died?"

Jool nodded weakly, then awkwardly recalled the diagnosis, "Blunt head trauma, bleeding in the skull and coma."

Aeryn set her glass down slowly, keeping her eyes trained on the inanimate object. Slowly, without a word, she left the galley as well. Soon Jool was standing there alone, wondering what further damage she had done to their fractured crew.



****



Aeryn found Crichton on the terrace, somehow knowing beyond a doubt that was where he would be. What she couldn't figure out what why she'd come after him.

He was standing with his back to the doorway, head dropped toward his chest... Aeryn could read that body, the one that had belonged also to a man she knew inside and out, and could see the utter fatigue and defeat there. Though she'd never seen it in her John, she knew the slump in his shoulders was indication he had given up. Whatever 'it' was, she couldn't hazard to guess, but he'd stopped trying in any case. The one other time she'd seen John, and it may have really been this John then, give up this completely he'd ended up a statue.

Aeryn took a single step closer toward him, then halted. He was still a painful reminder, but for right now she couldn't pull herself away... not to the distance she'd been able to keep so far.

With no other way to open up a discussion, she half-asked, half-stated, "You died."

Crichton didn't startle, as though he might have expected her to be there, and slowly looked over his shoulder at her. The fact it was the first volunteered words she offered didn't even crack his darkness. He crossed his arms over his chest, turning his eyes to a wayward star near Moya's starboard side. "We both died... I came back." He shrugged nonchalantly, as if it were such a mundane and trite thing to come back from the dead.

Aeryn felt a frown tugging at her lips and she risked one step closer.

Crichton shifted to stand at an angle to her, not quite facing her but not quite turned away.

Aeryn asked flatly, "How... what was the reason you wouldn't tell Jool?"

Crichton slowly, as if being drug down by the relentlessly agonizing pursuit of him by the demons of this space, said in that same dark, dangerously apathetic voice, "Aeryn... don't. It won't do either of us any favors."

In that, she knew, she had her answer. Even if Crichton didn't want to outright tell her. That was different, her Crichton, this Crichton before she left would have said it. Now he shied from it for the harm it could cause... to her or him she wasn't sure.

Crichton looked up at her slowly, and she saw it in his eyes as she had in his frame. The same look from the Royal Planet, the lusterless glaze right before he laid down in defeat because he just couldn't do it anymore. Just couldn't go on, he'd called it. Even in death, the other John had not had that look. He'd been alive right to the end... this John seemed somehow like the dark shadow of the man she'd lost.

Crichton stated softly, very plainly, "I don't have it in me to start over, Aeryn."

Aeryn knew what he was talking about, and she felt the first real connection to THIS John because she felt exactly the same way he did. Her lips thinned into a long line and she responded lowly, "Neither do I."

Crichton nodded ever so faintly, as if he'd known that all this time, and looked again at the stars. They were two shades darker of the people they used to be... equally descended into blackness from the last time they had stood together. Aeryn had changed while she was gone, but John had too. It ached in Aeryn's chest to think that, even now after everything that had happened, they matched.

Crichton sighed slowly, blinking heavily as he asked her in a voice that almost lent itself to being thought of as thinking aloud, "Where does that leave us?"

Aeryn didn't have the answer, at least not the kind that would fix or heal. She knew only what she felt, and that she offered up.

"Lost."

Crichton nodded again. His eyes tracked to the field of stars and Aeryn saw his attention fall to the brightest glimmer in the heavens. Her John's insights and confessions let her know what he was thinking, and she took a slow step away from where he stood.

She said nothing more to him, but in her mind she thought desperately, 'Don't look for me there anymore... I'm not that light. I can't be the guide when I'm just as lost as you are.'



END