farscape fic; gravity always brings me back to you
gravity always brings me back to you | farscape; john/aeryn | 3393 words | g | post S3 through to the end of S4
Authors Notes: The one thing I selfishly wish we'd gotten more of from Farscape was an exploration of how John and Aeryn finally made peace with the fact that she'd been with John on Talyn, how Aeryn dealt with that grief and came to the conclusion that there was no distinction between the two and how they both got over the pain of the coin toss. I always felt it must have been incredibly hard - for both of them, for different reasons - to move past what they'd been through. This is my version of how they did.
i.
sights and sounds
pull me back down another year
(i was here)
-
Aeryn leaves Moya on the toss of a coin, with no intention of ever returning.
She tells John that if they're meant to be together they will be but she doesn't believe her own words, unable to imagine a time when being with him could feel like anything less than the weight of her own grief and fear. She tells him to trust in the hands of fate but the truth is she doesn't. The lie is just easier than having to choose.
In her prowler she does something she's never done before: she runs away.
She tries to believe that being a soldier again - an assassin in truth like Jool said; there's no point lying anymore, there's no one to lie to - is easier than living the life she had come to think of as real. She tries to believe that by doing so she can return to a time when broken heart was a concept she didn't understand and had no cause to.
But John won't let her go. She should have known he never would, not even from halfway across the universe. He remains in her every thought no matter how much she tries to forget and so she tells herself it's his doing because she left and it was supposed to ease her pain, not make it worse.
No one ever told her that loving someone was like being handcuffed to them for all eternity. No amount of distance can stop her from feeling him.
She wakes some nights (every night) cold and cramped from trying to hold herself the way he once did. She misses the warmth of his body curled with hers. She misses the sound of him breathing next to her. She misses the feeling, so intangible yet all consuming, of being loved. She just misses John. So desperately.
Alone in the universe, far from home - and who knew that Aeryn Sun would ever come to think of anything, or anyone, as home - she slowly finds that her grief has begun to shift into something else, something that seems to ache just as much. Regret.
(For the briefest of microts, when the coin came down, she had wanted to tell him she'd changed her mind - that they could pick a planet together and make everything okay again. But she couldn't. Her fear weighed her down; it would not consent to send her forward.)
Her world is so wrong without him.
The whole point of her leaving Moya had been to find a way to stop feeling. Jool had told her she shouldn't go backwards but for Aeryn that was the whole point. She wanted to go back - to who she had been before he ruined her life. She expected it to be easy but it's not. After all, just how many times in the past three cycles had she told people that she wasn't a Peacekeeper anymore. The truth is she's come too far; going backwards is impossible because she never stops hearing his voice, from so long ago, right back at the beginning - of everything - “You can be more.”
It haunts her every time she lifts her pulse pistol and fires it without hesitation. (This seems to define her whole life now; being haunted by death.)
It's funny the things she remembers now. They creep into her head with no warning and it used to be that all she could think of was the perfection of her time on Talyn; of naming stars with John, of waking to his lips on her neck, of sounding out English words while he played with her hair. For so long that was all she could feel and it was why being on Moya had hurt so frelling much.
But now, there are a million tiny memories clamouring for her attention and she wonders how it was she could have forgotten so many things. (Of course that's the nature of grief for you; cruel and unyielding as it plays tricks with your memory, making you forget things you shouldn't and bringing others to the fore like they're all that mattered - but how was she to know that? She'd never known true grief before.)
Now she remembers the feel of rain on her face, catching it with her tongue, and the way she could still smell it on him when he kissed her later. She remembers the way he'd held her as she cried over the shame of things she'd done as a Peacekeeper, a whole lifetime earlier when shame hadn't even existed for her yet. She hears his voice over and over again, the word 'baby' and sees the way he smiled when he said it, like it was a word just for her. She remembers 'I shouldn't be here' and 'I love you', his hands in her hair and her heart bursting with wanting him.
She remembers everything and it feels like every single moment there's a memory pressing itself into the back of her mind, trying to make her think of him even as she goes about the routines of her new existence. It fills her with so much emotion she's not sure how she can even live with it all inside her.
There is no relief in this new life she's chosen. There's just him - the memory, the possibility, the hopelessness, the very fact of loving him.
That's all she has left, whether she wants it or not.
She had loved him and he died. Yet he lives and she still loves him. She knows it isn't simple (loving him has never been simple) but she understands her mistake now. The possibility of losing him again isn't nearly as painful as not being with him at all.
Aeryn knows she should go home, go back to Moya, but her courage fails her. She had never thought of herself as a coward before but fear has taken on a whole new definition since leaving the Peacekeepers. It seems to be hopelessly entangled with the meaning, she now understands, of love.
But then fate intervenes - later John will call it 'being screwed in the fine print' - as Scorpius saves her life and returns her to where she needed to be. It figures that it takes almost dying to be reunited with John. It seems to be their pattern; love and death, one never far from the other.
It's hard to think through the heat delirium but when she sees him there in front of her, one thought makes itself clear in her head: everything will be okay now. And of course he tells her that very thing. It's so like him, she thinks as she collapses in his arms.
They're not okay though. (It would have been too easy.)
ii.
letting names hang in the air
-
She finds herself back home on Moya but nothing is the same.
Once again she returns to fighting her grief, her pain, and her longing when she expected to find solace. But she's stronger now and she forces herself to think of John's own words once spoken about her: “Aeryn takes time.”
She had taken that time, even as it had caused him pain, so she won't blame him now - this John, (the only John) her John - for needing the same.
Aeryn Sun learns patience.
(On a foreign planet they hold guns on each other and she's terrified that this might actually be how they die. John quips that he thought the coin toss ended badly and she sees the fear in his eyes; his worst nightmare is to be the cause of her death again. He's wrong though; the coin toss was worse than this. They have guns pointed at each others heads but they're at the mercy of someone else's control and they know it. When they tossed that coin it was their own doing and they're still living with the consequences.
It takes all she has not to pull the trigger and they're both on the floor before they feel themselves released. His fingers find hers and he holds her hand lightly. She'd like to reach out and pull him closer but she doesn't. Since returning to Moya she's let him define their boundaries and he doesn't seem ready for much more.
He finds her again at the graves of those she killed. She wonders if he knows how much this tears her up inside. When he brushes his fingers across her hair and lets her rest her head against his leg she closes her eyes and tries to hold her breathing steady.
It's not easy to settle for less than all of him.)
He returns to Moya and she's there, waiting for him. It could be like they never left. But it's not.
There are so many ghosts between them and instead of fighting them he takes the cowards way out, with words he knows hurt her: “I would put my life in your hands. But not my heart.”
He tries, oh how he tries, to forget her but he just can't.
John Crichton learns that the hold Aeryn has on his heart will never be undone.
(She goes with him to Earth - they all do but it means something different with her - and it's not like that first time, with the Ancients, when Aeryn and Earth had seemed completely incompatible. She doesn't blend in entirely but she tries so hard and even through the pain that lingers he understands that she just wants to be there for him.
They kneel behind his childhood home as he prepares himself to see the long dead mother he's missed so much and she squeezes his hand to give him strength.
At Christmas, in his home, with his family, she stands in front of him with tears in her eyes asking him if he wants her here and he hates himself for causing her pain.
He's been gone for three years, and back for barely weeks but Olivia, his dad, even Caroline, all seem to see the reality, without him ever saying a word, that Aeryn is everything to him. The distillate of lakka might cloud the truth in shadows for just a little while but it never really goes away; she's always there in the corner of his mind and she is everything.
He knows she always will be.)
They find their way back to each under a canopy of false words (“There's nothing more between us.” “Nothing.”) where nothing really means everything.
There are still ghosts to face, still fear and pain, but there's hope too and relief at being back where they both know they belong. This time the choice is theirs both.
Together they finally learn that they will always be stronger united than apart.
iii.
how did it go so fast
you'll say as we are looking back
and then we'll understand
we held gold dust in our hands
-
Most of the crew are asleep when she creeps into his quarters quietly and cautiously, aware that Scorpius could be monitoring the comms. She sits on his bed beside him and takes the starchart he's working on from his hands. He watches as she begins to write, in his words, English and familiar, I can't sleep. Her printing is wobbly and childlike and it makes him smile.
He lays down, gently pulling her with him and she settles in against his body as she reaches for his hand, pulling it around her waist until he's anchored to her. She can feel his face pressed into her hair and he feels her fingers tracing lines over his palm.
They close their eyes and sleep.
When he wakes he reaches for her but she's not there. For a moment he panics as he wonders if she was ever there at all (it wouldn't be the first time he'd dreamed her where she wasn't) but he can smell her all around him and he remembers; Scorpius. They're keeping up the pretence of their ruined relationship.
He understands the necessity but it doesn't make it any easier.
It's hard at first. The threat of Scorpius hangs heavy over their heads and there's no knowing whether it's ever safe to talk. There are still things that need to be said, wounds they need to help each other heal, but they have no place to say them and sometimes Aeryn wonders if either of them are even ready to. It might be easier to just pretend they'd never been apart.
Instead they begin to re-learn intimacy in silence. Words don't seem important when he brushes his fingers against hers as they pass in one of Moya's passages, or when she slides into his bed each sleep cycle, or when they steal a microt somewhere dark so that she can sit between his legs as he wraps his arms around her and breathes her in.
They live for these quiet moments of comfort. Maybe it's what they needed all along.
The words will wait.
They find a brief moment of privacy while restocking the galley on a commerce planet.
“I used to think about teaching you English,” he says abruptly as he lifts a crate onto the transport pod. “In case you ever wanted to come to Earth with me.” He doesn't look at her as he says it but his voice betrays his feelings; sadness, uncertainty, regret.
“I know,” she tells him, standing in front of him so he has no choice but to see her face as she replies. “That's why I wanted to learn.”
It's bittersweet this admission, for both of them, with echoes of all the things that have stood between them. But it's an honest start and they need that.
Then the others return and they keep their distance, trying to recreate the tension that's supposed to exist between them. Sometimes that feels like the hardest part. They don't want to have to pretend anymore, they want to just be.
They tell themselves the time will come. With them it's always been about time.
They know they can't exist in silence forever though and John works at finding a way to get around the comms without Scorpius knowing. Somehow Pilot seems to understand that things have changed between them again - perhaps Moya senses their happiness when they press themselves into one of her dark corners - and conspires to help them, routinely finding 'glitches' that need to be checked and other sundry reasons to disable them for short periods of time.
Eventually he does find something, some way to ensure their privacy - the details don't really matter to her - and Aeryn begins to talk.
“You didn't miss the dance you know,” she says softly as she runs her fingers across his cheek.
“Aeryn don't,” he says, shrinking from her touch, voice laced with that special kind of pain she's sure only she has heard from his lips. She curls her fingers more firmly around the back of his neck, pulling him close to brush his lips with hers.
“Not the whole dance, John, just a few steps.”
He closes his eyes against her, isn't ready to deal with this, but she keeps talking because she needs him to understand and she knows it will haunt them both forever if they don't make their peace with it.
“What happened on Talyn - it wasn't everything. It could never have happened without all that came before it. You once asked me if I loved John Crichton. Not him, not you - John Crichton. I have only ever loved John Crichton.” She pulls back to look at him directly, begging him to see the truth in her eyes but he won't raise his face to hers.
“Do you remember the first time we kissed?” she asks, leaning her head against his now.
“Of course I remember,” he answers quietly.
“And when you told me you loved me?” she continues, voice soft with fondness for the memory.
“Yes, Aeryn. I remember it all. Every moment, every second of you, until you left on Talyn with another version of me.” There's still bitterness in his voice and she wishes she could erase it.
(Sometimes it's painful to see how much he's changed since they first met. The innocence he had back then has been twisted by all the darkness they've seen, shifted into pain and guilt and regret. It's not that she loves him any less because of it, just that she hates to see it in his eyes where there used to be so much hope.)
“I'm sorry that things got complicated,” she tells him. “I wish they hadn't; I wish I'd never had to know the pain of losing you and I'm sorry that you feel like you lost me too. But I loved you long before there were two of you and I remember so much more than just the time I spent on Talyn.” She tries but fails to keep the emotion out of her voice and he lifts his head to look at her, his face softening as he sees the tears welled up in her eyes.
His hands find her waist now and he pulls her closer, resting his chin on her shoulder as he whispers “I'm sorry” into her hair.
“I love you,” she whispers in return. “Only you.”
Each night she tells him a memory, a moment in time when she loved him, a moment in time when she knew he loved her. And sometimes she tells him of the moments that his twin loved her. Sometimes he almost smiles as if they're his own memories - they so easily could have been. The words are always familiar, things he would have said if it had actually been him, and it's almost like deja vu because even though he knows they're not his memories, he can still feel the depth of the love contained in them, as if they were.
He starts to understand what she meant when she told him there was no distinction in her mind between the two of them and the bitterness of the things he missed fades when she's in his arms recounting the ways John Crichton has made her happy.
Piece by piece they reclaim their history together.
In the end it will always be simple. John Crichton and Aeryn Sun love only each other.
They're hiding in Pilot's den together when she gives him his belated Christmas present. She's so happy to give it to him, so happy just to be with him again, and he's filled with an overwhelming sense of contentment for the first time in so very long. This is all he wants, for the rest of his life, just this. Just her.
But there's work to be done and they both have to leave. He tells himself they'll have their normalcy one day, they'll lie in bed and watch TV like normal people; he'll make sure of it. He keeps that thought in his mind the whole time he's trying to get through Scorpius' whacked out mental training camp and it helps him survive.
He comes back.
Aeryn doesn't.
He finds one of his star charts open in his quarters. She's been practising. Her handwriting still doesn't quite look native but it's purposeful and sure, just like her. Next to the brightest star he reads two words - beyond hope.
John Crichton cares about one thing. One. Nothing that came before matters and he won't think of the future without her in it. He makes a deal with Scorpius and crosses realities just to find her, determined that this will be last time anything, or anyone takes her away from him.
He finds her, like she knew he would, and there's no hiding anymore. They stand together, willing to fight for their happiness.
And later, amongst the chaos of yet another of his mad plans, they find a quite moment in an elevator and he pulls her close to dance. It's his way of telling her that he gets it now; it doesn't matter what he missed, only that the rest of the dance is his.
One day they'll find it hard to remember why they ever thought anything was big enough to keep them apart when the universe had worked so hard to bring them together.
Authors Notes: The one thing I selfishly wish we'd gotten more of from Farscape was an exploration of how John and Aeryn finally made peace with the fact that she'd been with John on Talyn, how Aeryn dealt with that grief and came to the conclusion that there was no distinction between the two and how they both got over the pain of the coin toss. I always felt it must have been incredibly hard - for both of them, for different reasons - to move past what they'd been through. This is my version of how they did.
i.
sights and sounds
pull me back down another year
(i was here)
-
Aeryn leaves Moya on the toss of a coin, with no intention of ever returning.
She tells John that if they're meant to be together they will be but she doesn't believe her own words, unable to imagine a time when being with him could feel like anything less than the weight of her own grief and fear. She tells him to trust in the hands of fate but the truth is she doesn't. The lie is just easier than having to choose.
In her prowler she does something she's never done before: she runs away.
She tries to believe that being a soldier again - an assassin in truth like Jool said; there's no point lying anymore, there's no one to lie to - is easier than living the life she had come to think of as real. She tries to believe that by doing so she can return to a time when broken heart was a concept she didn't understand and had no cause to.
But John won't let her go. She should have known he never would, not even from halfway across the universe. He remains in her every thought no matter how much she tries to forget and so she tells herself it's his doing because she left and it was supposed to ease her pain, not make it worse.
No one ever told her that loving someone was like being handcuffed to them for all eternity. No amount of distance can stop her from feeling him.
She wakes some nights (every night) cold and cramped from trying to hold herself the way he once did. She misses the warmth of his body curled with hers. She misses the sound of him breathing next to her. She misses the feeling, so intangible yet all consuming, of being loved. She just misses John. So desperately.
Alone in the universe, far from home - and who knew that Aeryn Sun would ever come to think of anything, or anyone, as home - she slowly finds that her grief has begun to shift into something else, something that seems to ache just as much. Regret.
(For the briefest of microts, when the coin came down, she had wanted to tell him she'd changed her mind - that they could pick a planet together and make everything okay again. But she couldn't. Her fear weighed her down; it would not consent to send her forward.)
Her world is so wrong without him.
The whole point of her leaving Moya had been to find a way to stop feeling. Jool had told her she shouldn't go backwards but for Aeryn that was the whole point. She wanted to go back - to who she had been before he ruined her life. She expected it to be easy but it's not. After all, just how many times in the past three cycles had she told people that she wasn't a Peacekeeper anymore. The truth is she's come too far; going backwards is impossible because she never stops hearing his voice, from so long ago, right back at the beginning - of everything - “You can be more.”
It haunts her every time she lifts her pulse pistol and fires it without hesitation. (This seems to define her whole life now; being haunted by death.)
It's funny the things she remembers now. They creep into her head with no warning and it used to be that all she could think of was the perfection of her time on Talyn; of naming stars with John, of waking to his lips on her neck, of sounding out English words while he played with her hair. For so long that was all she could feel and it was why being on Moya had hurt so frelling much.
But now, there are a million tiny memories clamouring for her attention and she wonders how it was she could have forgotten so many things. (Of course that's the nature of grief for you; cruel and unyielding as it plays tricks with your memory, making you forget things you shouldn't and bringing others to the fore like they're all that mattered - but how was she to know that? She'd never known true grief before.)
Now she remembers the feel of rain on her face, catching it with her tongue, and the way she could still smell it on him when he kissed her later. She remembers the way he'd held her as she cried over the shame of things she'd done as a Peacekeeper, a whole lifetime earlier when shame hadn't even existed for her yet. She hears his voice over and over again, the word 'baby' and sees the way he smiled when he said it, like it was a word just for her. She remembers 'I shouldn't be here' and 'I love you', his hands in her hair and her heart bursting with wanting him.
She remembers everything and it feels like every single moment there's a memory pressing itself into the back of her mind, trying to make her think of him even as she goes about the routines of her new existence. It fills her with so much emotion she's not sure how she can even live with it all inside her.
There is no relief in this new life she's chosen. There's just him - the memory, the possibility, the hopelessness, the very fact of loving him.
That's all she has left, whether she wants it or not.
She had loved him and he died. Yet he lives and she still loves him. She knows it isn't simple (loving him has never been simple) but she understands her mistake now. The possibility of losing him again isn't nearly as painful as not being with him at all.
Aeryn knows she should go home, go back to Moya, but her courage fails her. She had never thought of herself as a coward before but fear has taken on a whole new definition since leaving the Peacekeepers. It seems to be hopelessly entangled with the meaning, she now understands, of love.
But then fate intervenes - later John will call it 'being screwed in the fine print' - as Scorpius saves her life and returns her to where she needed to be. It figures that it takes almost dying to be reunited with John. It seems to be their pattern; love and death, one never far from the other.
It's hard to think through the heat delirium but when she sees him there in front of her, one thought makes itself clear in her head: everything will be okay now. And of course he tells her that very thing. It's so like him, she thinks as she collapses in his arms.
They're not okay though. (It would have been too easy.)
ii.
letting names hang in the air
-
She finds herself back home on Moya but nothing is the same.
Once again she returns to fighting her grief, her pain, and her longing when she expected to find solace. But she's stronger now and she forces herself to think of John's own words once spoken about her: “Aeryn takes time.”
She had taken that time, even as it had caused him pain, so she won't blame him now - this John, (the only John) her John - for needing the same.
Aeryn Sun learns patience.
(On a foreign planet they hold guns on each other and she's terrified that this might actually be how they die. John quips that he thought the coin toss ended badly and she sees the fear in his eyes; his worst nightmare is to be the cause of her death again. He's wrong though; the coin toss was worse than this. They have guns pointed at each others heads but they're at the mercy of someone else's control and they know it. When they tossed that coin it was their own doing and they're still living with the consequences.
It takes all she has not to pull the trigger and they're both on the floor before they feel themselves released. His fingers find hers and he holds her hand lightly. She'd like to reach out and pull him closer but she doesn't. Since returning to Moya she's let him define their boundaries and he doesn't seem ready for much more.
He finds her again at the graves of those she killed. She wonders if he knows how much this tears her up inside. When he brushes his fingers across her hair and lets her rest her head against his leg she closes her eyes and tries to hold her breathing steady.
It's not easy to settle for less than all of him.)
He returns to Moya and she's there, waiting for him. It could be like they never left. But it's not.
There are so many ghosts between them and instead of fighting them he takes the cowards way out, with words he knows hurt her: “I would put my life in your hands. But not my heart.”
He tries, oh how he tries, to forget her but he just can't.
John Crichton learns that the hold Aeryn has on his heart will never be undone.
(She goes with him to Earth - they all do but it means something different with her - and it's not like that first time, with the Ancients, when Aeryn and Earth had seemed completely incompatible. She doesn't blend in entirely but she tries so hard and even through the pain that lingers he understands that she just wants to be there for him.
They kneel behind his childhood home as he prepares himself to see the long dead mother he's missed so much and she squeezes his hand to give him strength.
At Christmas, in his home, with his family, she stands in front of him with tears in her eyes asking him if he wants her here and he hates himself for causing her pain.
He's been gone for three years, and back for barely weeks but Olivia, his dad, even Caroline, all seem to see the reality, without him ever saying a word, that Aeryn is everything to him. The distillate of lakka might cloud the truth in shadows for just a little while but it never really goes away; she's always there in the corner of his mind and she is everything.
He knows she always will be.)
They find their way back to each under a canopy of false words (“There's nothing more between us.” “Nothing.”) where nothing really means everything.
There are still ghosts to face, still fear and pain, but there's hope too and relief at being back where they both know they belong. This time the choice is theirs both.
Together they finally learn that they will always be stronger united than apart.
iii.
how did it go so fast
you'll say as we are looking back
and then we'll understand
we held gold dust in our hands
-
Most of the crew are asleep when she creeps into his quarters quietly and cautiously, aware that Scorpius could be monitoring the comms. She sits on his bed beside him and takes the starchart he's working on from his hands. He watches as she begins to write, in his words, English and familiar, I can't sleep. Her printing is wobbly and childlike and it makes him smile.
He lays down, gently pulling her with him and she settles in against his body as she reaches for his hand, pulling it around her waist until he's anchored to her. She can feel his face pressed into her hair and he feels her fingers tracing lines over his palm.
They close their eyes and sleep.
When he wakes he reaches for her but she's not there. For a moment he panics as he wonders if she was ever there at all (it wouldn't be the first time he'd dreamed her where she wasn't) but he can smell her all around him and he remembers; Scorpius. They're keeping up the pretence of their ruined relationship.
He understands the necessity but it doesn't make it any easier.
It's hard at first. The threat of Scorpius hangs heavy over their heads and there's no knowing whether it's ever safe to talk. There are still things that need to be said, wounds they need to help each other heal, but they have no place to say them and sometimes Aeryn wonders if either of them are even ready to. It might be easier to just pretend they'd never been apart.
Instead they begin to re-learn intimacy in silence. Words don't seem important when he brushes his fingers against hers as they pass in one of Moya's passages, or when she slides into his bed each sleep cycle, or when they steal a microt somewhere dark so that she can sit between his legs as he wraps his arms around her and breathes her in.
They live for these quiet moments of comfort. Maybe it's what they needed all along.
The words will wait.
They find a brief moment of privacy while restocking the galley on a commerce planet.
“I used to think about teaching you English,” he says abruptly as he lifts a crate onto the transport pod. “In case you ever wanted to come to Earth with me.” He doesn't look at her as he says it but his voice betrays his feelings; sadness, uncertainty, regret.
“I know,” she tells him, standing in front of him so he has no choice but to see her face as she replies. “That's why I wanted to learn.”
It's bittersweet this admission, for both of them, with echoes of all the things that have stood between them. But it's an honest start and they need that.
Then the others return and they keep their distance, trying to recreate the tension that's supposed to exist between them. Sometimes that feels like the hardest part. They don't want to have to pretend anymore, they want to just be.
They tell themselves the time will come. With them it's always been about time.
They know they can't exist in silence forever though and John works at finding a way to get around the comms without Scorpius knowing. Somehow Pilot seems to understand that things have changed between them again - perhaps Moya senses their happiness when they press themselves into one of her dark corners - and conspires to help them, routinely finding 'glitches' that need to be checked and other sundry reasons to disable them for short periods of time.
Eventually he does find something, some way to ensure their privacy - the details don't really matter to her - and Aeryn begins to talk.
“You didn't miss the dance you know,” she says softly as she runs her fingers across his cheek.
“Aeryn don't,” he says, shrinking from her touch, voice laced with that special kind of pain she's sure only she has heard from his lips. She curls her fingers more firmly around the back of his neck, pulling him close to brush his lips with hers.
“Not the whole dance, John, just a few steps.”
He closes his eyes against her, isn't ready to deal with this, but she keeps talking because she needs him to understand and she knows it will haunt them both forever if they don't make their peace with it.
“What happened on Talyn - it wasn't everything. It could never have happened without all that came before it. You once asked me if I loved John Crichton. Not him, not you - John Crichton. I have only ever loved John Crichton.” She pulls back to look at him directly, begging him to see the truth in her eyes but he won't raise his face to hers.
“Do you remember the first time we kissed?” she asks, leaning her head against his now.
“Of course I remember,” he answers quietly.
“And when you told me you loved me?” she continues, voice soft with fondness for the memory.
“Yes, Aeryn. I remember it all. Every moment, every second of you, until you left on Talyn with another version of me.” There's still bitterness in his voice and she wishes she could erase it.
(Sometimes it's painful to see how much he's changed since they first met. The innocence he had back then has been twisted by all the darkness they've seen, shifted into pain and guilt and regret. It's not that she loves him any less because of it, just that she hates to see it in his eyes where there used to be so much hope.)
“I'm sorry that things got complicated,” she tells him. “I wish they hadn't; I wish I'd never had to know the pain of losing you and I'm sorry that you feel like you lost me too. But I loved you long before there were two of you and I remember so much more than just the time I spent on Talyn.” She tries but fails to keep the emotion out of her voice and he lifts his head to look at her, his face softening as he sees the tears welled up in her eyes.
His hands find her waist now and he pulls her closer, resting his chin on her shoulder as he whispers “I'm sorry” into her hair.
“I love you,” she whispers in return. “Only you.”
Each night she tells him a memory, a moment in time when she loved him, a moment in time when she knew he loved her. And sometimes she tells him of the moments that his twin loved her. Sometimes he almost smiles as if they're his own memories - they so easily could have been. The words are always familiar, things he would have said if it had actually been him, and it's almost like deja vu because even though he knows they're not his memories, he can still feel the depth of the love contained in them, as if they were.
He starts to understand what she meant when she told him there was no distinction in her mind between the two of them and the bitterness of the things he missed fades when she's in his arms recounting the ways John Crichton has made her happy.
Piece by piece they reclaim their history together.
In the end it will always be simple. John Crichton and Aeryn Sun love only each other.
They're hiding in Pilot's den together when she gives him his belated Christmas present. She's so happy to give it to him, so happy just to be with him again, and he's filled with an overwhelming sense of contentment for the first time in so very long. This is all he wants, for the rest of his life, just this. Just her.
But there's work to be done and they both have to leave. He tells himself they'll have their normalcy one day, they'll lie in bed and watch TV like normal people; he'll make sure of it. He keeps that thought in his mind the whole time he's trying to get through Scorpius' whacked out mental training camp and it helps him survive.
He comes back.
Aeryn doesn't.
He finds one of his star charts open in his quarters. She's been practising. Her handwriting still doesn't quite look native but it's purposeful and sure, just like her. Next to the brightest star he reads two words - beyond hope.
John Crichton cares about one thing. One. Nothing that came before matters and he won't think of the future without her in it. He makes a deal with Scorpius and crosses realities just to find her, determined that this will be last time anything, or anyone takes her away from him.
He finds her, like she knew he would, and there's no hiding anymore. They stand together, willing to fight for their happiness.
And later, amongst the chaos of yet another of his mad plans, they find a quite moment in an elevator and he pulls her close to dance. It's his way of telling her that he gets it now; it doesn't matter what he missed, only that the rest of the dance is his.
One day they'll find it hard to remember why they ever thought anything was big enough to keep them apart when the universe had worked so hard to bring them together.