Fic: Like Two Strangers (Farscape)
Title: Like Two Strangers
Author: pellucid
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 3.17 "The Choice"
Author's Notes: 2300 words. Written for hossgal in the Farscape Potluck Ficathon. My apologies to hossgal for my rather liberal interpretation of the following part of her request (not to mention my utter failure to interpret any other part of her request): 3) Any of the non-major races or bit-part players and their commentary on Moya's crew (or any individual or pairing thereof). In other words, an outsider pov, but I leave what the outsider is looking at up to the writer. I'm afraid this was the only fic I felt capable of writing right now.
As ever, gabolange is the best beta a gal could ask for.
***
Valldon, present
The woman wore soft clothes and covered her head, but Gressek knew she was a Peacekeeper by the way she walked: quiet, purposeful, wary. She glanced over her shoulder and he caught a glimpse of her face. His practiced eye sized her up quickly; she was haunted, and she was running.
Later, he would tell her lies to win her favor, to plot her death. Some of what he would tell her was true: he had been a Sebacean once. But he was never a Peacekeeper, and Talyn Lyczak was dead before Gressek ever heard that name.
***
Planet Designation 49-K2-QV, 20 cycles ago
Gressek spotted his contact before she saw him. She wore the clothes of a trader, but there was no mistaking the Peacekeeper in her movements, in the rapid and methodical way her eyes scanned the crowded marketplace. Her stiff demeanor slipped once or twice as she flicked her dark hair out of her face with irritation. He imagined she usually wore it tied back.
Slowly, he raised himself from his seat, tossed some currency on the table, and exited the bar, winding through the crowd, apparently aimlessly. He jostled the contact on her weapon side, catching her hand before she could reach for the pulse pistol he knew was hidden under her tunic, pressing a data chip into it.
"Oh, pardon me," he apologized, studying her for a long moment as her dark eyes widened and her lips pressed thin.
As he moved away, he thought she seemed frightened.
Per the instructions on the data chip, four arns later, she arrived at the lodging he'd rented, punctual to the microt.
"You're all they sent?" he asked as he ushered her in the door.
"How many people do you think it takes to assassinate a governor?" she snapped back defensively.
"That depends." He moved towards the table in the center of the room. "I'm Gressek, by the way. Raslak?" He hefted a bottle and held it out to her.
"Officer Xhalax Sun," she replied. "And no." Her eyes narrowed, skeptically. "Thank you."
She looked brittle, Gressek decided. The hardness was a shell that might shatter at any moment. He hoped it wouldn't get him killed in the process.
He continued to study her as they spread maps over the table, rehearsed their plan. In some ways she seemed green, yet her eyes were haunted, as though she'd seen more than most people her age. Or as though she couldn't file away what she'd seen as efficiently as most Peacekeepers.
He would be the bait; she the sniper on the roof of the governor's vacation cabin.
"You've done this before, right?" he asked.
"I'm the soldier here," she said disdainfully.
He snorted. "Peacekeepers don't like to get their hands dirty if they can help it. What do you think they hire mercenaries for in the first place? I know I can do my job. I need to know if you can do yours."
"I can do it." Her lips were a thin line against her pale face.
***
Virala Prime, 17 cycles ago
It took four jobs with Xhalax before he saw her armor crack. The first three had gone off without a hitch, but when she showed up on Virala Prime to brief him, even edgier than usual, he feared there would be a problem. It wasn't a simple hit like the others. This job required monens of undercover spying, and Gressek couldn't imagine why they were hiring a mercenary, sending an ordinary assassin. But he'd learned not to ask questions, as long as the work was steady, and the Peacekeepers paid better than most.
"Are you comfortable with this?" he asked, glancing up at Xhalax after he'd read the assignment.
She snorted disdainfully. "I do my job. Comfort is irrelevant." She looked like she might be sick.
Posing as runaway Peacekeepers, they infiltrated the Free Sebacean resistance movement; within a monen Xhalax had gotten close enough to the resistance leader to seduce him. The more things went according to plan, the more Gressek worried. She would return from Terev's bed and spend an arn bathing; she was losing weight; she wasn't sleeping.
"How much longer until we can finish this?" he snapped one evening. "You're becoming a liability. I'm surprised Terev hasn't tired of you by now."
She paled, the dark circles beneath her eyes standing out. "Terev fancies himself…attached to me. He trusts me." She walked over to the window, gripped the back of the chair with such force that Gressek thought it would break.
"That was the plan. So get the rest of the information, kill him, and let's get out of here." She didn't answer, and he moved behind her. "You haven't gotten attached to him, too, have you?" he said menacingly. "If you go soft and compromise this, I will not hesitate to kill you, Xhalax."
She was on him before he could react to her movement, pinned him face-down on the floor, one hand ready to snap his neck while her lips brushed the shell of his ear. "Don't you dare accuse me of being soft. I've done things you can't even imagine, you filthy mercenary."
Her breath was hot against his neck, and he wondered if she would frell him or kill him. She did neither, instead pushing herself away and leaving the room without a word.
The next solar day she finished the job. She passed the code to break the data encryption to Gressek while she went to take care of Terev.
Later, as they left the planet in their wake, she sat shaking on the floor of the transport, her eyes glassy and distant. Gressek knelt before her, cleaning Terev's blood off of her hands, her face.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, looking past him, speaking to no one.
"I thought Peacekeepers weren't supposed to apologize," he replied.
She became aware of him then, eyes focusing after a microt of confusion. "Gressek," she said, almost a question.
"Good work today," he answered, standing up, walking back to the transport's controls.
***
Uncharted moon at the edge of Tormented Space, 10 cycles ago
They were pinned down in a rickety building, more than a metra from Xhalax's prowler, Scarrans closing in. Gressek retreated a bit under Xhalax's cover fire, then returned the favor as she joined him behind an upturned table.
"Frell," she sighed, brushing away a stray piece of hair. Her jaw was less set than usual, and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth; he wondered if this was what resignation looked like on her.
"At least we got the job done," he offered.
She scowled at him. "No thanks to you and your frelling genetic weakness."
She had been unabashedly horrified when she saw his disguise, and it surprised him. He knew all about Peacekeeper xenophobia, but after ten cycles and scores of jobs together, Xhalax knew him as well, he suspected, as she knew anyone. Somehow, he had expected her to understand.
"There was a problem half a cycle ago," he had explained. "I needed to change my appearance."
"It's hideous, and you're a fool for doing it," she had retorted.
Perhaps he had been a fool, he realized, because the disguise was about to get them both killed. They had a Kalish contact on this outpost who had calibrated the DNA sensor to ignore Sebaceans, but Gressek's muddled DNA set it off, sending the entire platoon after them.
It was getting warmer, he realized-the Scarrans were deploying some sort of heat weapon. Xhalax tugged off her jacket and muttered something under her breath.
"Now who is genetically weak?" Gressek hissed at her.
She glared at him. "Frell you."
The walls of the shelter had begun to smolder, and Xhalax was quickly succumbing to heat delirium. Gressek kicked out one of the boards near the ground and surveyed the scene outside. There was just enough of a gap that might allow them to get to some covering brush in the direction of the prowler, but they'd have to move quickly.
"Get up, Xhalax," he urged, yanking her upright. "We've got to move." She was sweating and flushed, and her eyes struggled to focus on him.
"Talyn?" she croaked through a parched throat. "You need to go. If they find us together-"
"Xhalax," he interrupted forcefully. "It's Gressek. You need to get up." He pulled one of her arms around his shoulders and tried to make her stand.
"Talyn?" she asked again, then in a feat of strength that surprised him, grabbed Gressek's jacket in her fists and pulled him around to face her, speaking to him in incoherent gasps. "Talyn, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had to-they forced me-to save Aeryn-I'm sorry-"
"Shhh," he answered, running a hand along the side of her face to calm her. "I know. It's okay," he lied. "We've got to go now."
A loud crack sounded overhead, and a burning roof beam came crashing to the floor, striking Xhalax. Gressek jumped back, looked for a microt at her body sprawled on the floor. The skin along the left side of her face and neck was badly burned; if she wasn't dead already, she would be soon.
"I'm sorry, too, Xhalax," he murmured, then turned, wriggled between the broken boards of the shelter, and fled.
***
Valldon, present
Gressek spotted her on the street, limping through shadows on an artificial leg, and his eyes didn't trust what they saw. He'd looked for her before, many times, in the spirit world; when he couldn't find her, he wondered if she hadn't had a soul. It hadn't occurred to him that she might not be dead.
He followed her, watched her follow the young Peacekeeper he'd seen earlier that day. The young woman had reminded him of Xhalax, cycles and cycles ago; he laughed at the irony that Xhalax herself should appear in pursuit.
She sat at a table in a bar when he joined her without invitation. "I thought you were dead," he said casually.
Her eyes widened for a moment in surprise, then narrowed as she recognized him. "They say there are lots of dead people here," she replied coldly. She took a long swallow of fellip nectar. "Did they send you to kill me?"
"Peacekeepers?" he asked, surprised. She looked terrible, but he had assumed it was a disguise, assumed she was on a job, the young woman her mark. "I'm retired. I live here now," he explained.
She laughed sharply. "Why the frell would anyone want to live here?" she asked disdainfully. "But I never did understand you very well, Gressek."
He reached for her fellip nectar and took a sip. "No, you wouldn't understand the appeal of a world full of ghosts, would you, Xhalax. You were always running from yours."
She looked at him sharply and snatched the bottle back.
"So, old partner," he began conversationally, "what brings you to my neck of the woods? Not on a job?"
He watched her study the bottle in front of her; a drop of condensation ran down the side, and she traced it with her finger. "It is a job," she replied deliberately, "but not for the Peacekeepers. And you're going to help me-" her eyes snapped up to look at him "-old partner."
"You sure you can afford me? My services command quite a sum."
"That's why you live in a hellhole like this, is it?" she said doubtfully. She reached into her jacket, tossed a handful of coins on the table. "Consider that a down payment."
Gressek nodded in agreement. "So what's the job? The Peacekeeper girl?"
Xhalax looked surprised for a microt. "Yes. Her name is Aeryn. You'll get close to her, earn her trust. Tell her you're her father, Talyn Lyczak." She looked past Gressek, eyes seeming to focus on the wall over his shoulder. He watched her fingers tighten around the bottle she held, knuckles white. The names "Talyn" and "Aeryn" rang in Gressek's ears.
"She's your daughter," he guessed, though it seemed strange to think of Xhalax as anyone's mother.
Her eyes fixed him carefully. "Yes," she answered. She picked up the bottle, drained the rest of its contents. "And Talyn was my lover, her father. He died 20 cycles ago. I killed him."
Gressek held her gaze and didn't allow the sudden understanding to show on his face. He had watched her kill countless people, had helped her do it. This death had been behind all of them, the root of the flashes of fear he'd caught on her face back in the early days, the instant before she pulled the trigger.
"And now you're going to kill her, too," he said, his voice neutral.
"Aeryn is weak," she spat. "She was a soldier, and she threw it all away, everything that I gave her."
Cycles ago, Gressek kept expecting her to shatter under the weight of the secrets she kept. He looked at her now and realized how wrong he had been. Instead, her hardness had built up, layer by layer, into a fearsome strength.
"Okay," he agreed. "Tell me the plan."
***
He recognized her betrayal the microt before it happened, when Xhalax brandished her weapon at him and fixed him with her eyes. There was the old familiar flash of fear, and then resolution as she ordered him to turn over.
Even as he begged for his life, as he heard Aeryn beg for him, he wanted to look at Xhalax, wanted to watch her kill him. He wondered if she had been able to look Talyn in the eye when she killed him, if she would make Aeryn turn away as well.
He heard his own voice crying, "Xhalax, stop!" but he wanted to laugh instead. He remembered first bumping into her in a crowded market square, the wind blowing a piece of dark hair across her startled face; he had hoped this woman wouldn't get him killed.
Author: pellucid
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 3.17 "The Choice"
Author's Notes: 2300 words. Written for hossgal in the Farscape Potluck Ficathon. My apologies to hossgal for my rather liberal interpretation of the following part of her request (not to mention my utter failure to interpret any other part of her request): 3) Any of the non-major races or bit-part players and their commentary on Moya's crew (or any individual or pairing thereof). In other words, an outsider pov, but I leave what the outsider is looking at up to the writer. I'm afraid this was the only fic I felt capable of writing right now.
As ever, gabolange is the best beta a gal could ask for.
***
Valldon, present
The woman wore soft clothes and covered her head, but Gressek knew she was a Peacekeeper by the way she walked: quiet, purposeful, wary. She glanced over her shoulder and he caught a glimpse of her face. His practiced eye sized her up quickly; she was haunted, and she was running.
Later, he would tell her lies to win her favor, to plot her death. Some of what he would tell her was true: he had been a Sebacean once. But he was never a Peacekeeper, and Talyn Lyczak was dead before Gressek ever heard that name.
***
Planet Designation 49-K2-QV, 20 cycles ago
Gressek spotted his contact before she saw him. She wore the clothes of a trader, but there was no mistaking the Peacekeeper in her movements, in the rapid and methodical way her eyes scanned the crowded marketplace. Her stiff demeanor slipped once or twice as she flicked her dark hair out of her face with irritation. He imagined she usually wore it tied back.
Slowly, he raised himself from his seat, tossed some currency on the table, and exited the bar, winding through the crowd, apparently aimlessly. He jostled the contact on her weapon side, catching her hand before she could reach for the pulse pistol he knew was hidden under her tunic, pressing a data chip into it.
"Oh, pardon me," he apologized, studying her for a long moment as her dark eyes widened and her lips pressed thin.
As he moved away, he thought she seemed frightened.
Per the instructions on the data chip, four arns later, she arrived at the lodging he'd rented, punctual to the microt.
"You're all they sent?" he asked as he ushered her in the door.
"How many people do you think it takes to assassinate a governor?" she snapped back defensively.
"That depends." He moved towards the table in the center of the room. "I'm Gressek, by the way. Raslak?" He hefted a bottle and held it out to her.
"Officer Xhalax Sun," she replied. "And no." Her eyes narrowed, skeptically. "Thank you."
She looked brittle, Gressek decided. The hardness was a shell that might shatter at any moment. He hoped it wouldn't get him killed in the process.
He continued to study her as they spread maps over the table, rehearsed their plan. In some ways she seemed green, yet her eyes were haunted, as though she'd seen more than most people her age. Or as though she couldn't file away what she'd seen as efficiently as most Peacekeepers.
He would be the bait; she the sniper on the roof of the governor's vacation cabin.
"You've done this before, right?" he asked.
"I'm the soldier here," she said disdainfully.
He snorted. "Peacekeepers don't like to get their hands dirty if they can help it. What do you think they hire mercenaries for in the first place? I know I can do my job. I need to know if you can do yours."
"I can do it." Her lips were a thin line against her pale face.
***
Virala Prime, 17 cycles ago
It took four jobs with Xhalax before he saw her armor crack. The first three had gone off without a hitch, but when she showed up on Virala Prime to brief him, even edgier than usual, he feared there would be a problem. It wasn't a simple hit like the others. This job required monens of undercover spying, and Gressek couldn't imagine why they were hiring a mercenary, sending an ordinary assassin. But he'd learned not to ask questions, as long as the work was steady, and the Peacekeepers paid better than most.
"Are you comfortable with this?" he asked, glancing up at Xhalax after he'd read the assignment.
She snorted disdainfully. "I do my job. Comfort is irrelevant." She looked like she might be sick.
Posing as runaway Peacekeepers, they infiltrated the Free Sebacean resistance movement; within a monen Xhalax had gotten close enough to the resistance leader to seduce him. The more things went according to plan, the more Gressek worried. She would return from Terev's bed and spend an arn bathing; she was losing weight; she wasn't sleeping.
"How much longer until we can finish this?" he snapped one evening. "You're becoming a liability. I'm surprised Terev hasn't tired of you by now."
She paled, the dark circles beneath her eyes standing out. "Terev fancies himself…attached to me. He trusts me." She walked over to the window, gripped the back of the chair with such force that Gressek thought it would break.
"That was the plan. So get the rest of the information, kill him, and let's get out of here." She didn't answer, and he moved behind her. "You haven't gotten attached to him, too, have you?" he said menacingly. "If you go soft and compromise this, I will not hesitate to kill you, Xhalax."
She was on him before he could react to her movement, pinned him face-down on the floor, one hand ready to snap his neck while her lips brushed the shell of his ear. "Don't you dare accuse me of being soft. I've done things you can't even imagine, you filthy mercenary."
Her breath was hot against his neck, and he wondered if she would frell him or kill him. She did neither, instead pushing herself away and leaving the room without a word.
The next solar day she finished the job. She passed the code to break the data encryption to Gressek while she went to take care of Terev.
Later, as they left the planet in their wake, she sat shaking on the floor of the transport, her eyes glassy and distant. Gressek knelt before her, cleaning Terev's blood off of her hands, her face.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, looking past him, speaking to no one.
"I thought Peacekeepers weren't supposed to apologize," he replied.
She became aware of him then, eyes focusing after a microt of confusion. "Gressek," she said, almost a question.
"Good work today," he answered, standing up, walking back to the transport's controls.
***
Uncharted moon at the edge of Tormented Space, 10 cycles ago
They were pinned down in a rickety building, more than a metra from Xhalax's prowler, Scarrans closing in. Gressek retreated a bit under Xhalax's cover fire, then returned the favor as she joined him behind an upturned table.
"Frell," she sighed, brushing away a stray piece of hair. Her jaw was less set than usual, and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth; he wondered if this was what resignation looked like on her.
"At least we got the job done," he offered.
She scowled at him. "No thanks to you and your frelling genetic weakness."
She had been unabashedly horrified when she saw his disguise, and it surprised him. He knew all about Peacekeeper xenophobia, but after ten cycles and scores of jobs together, Xhalax knew him as well, he suspected, as she knew anyone. Somehow, he had expected her to understand.
"There was a problem half a cycle ago," he had explained. "I needed to change my appearance."
"It's hideous, and you're a fool for doing it," she had retorted.
Perhaps he had been a fool, he realized, because the disguise was about to get them both killed. They had a Kalish contact on this outpost who had calibrated the DNA sensor to ignore Sebaceans, but Gressek's muddled DNA set it off, sending the entire platoon after them.
It was getting warmer, he realized-the Scarrans were deploying some sort of heat weapon. Xhalax tugged off her jacket and muttered something under her breath.
"Now who is genetically weak?" Gressek hissed at her.
She glared at him. "Frell you."
The walls of the shelter had begun to smolder, and Xhalax was quickly succumbing to heat delirium. Gressek kicked out one of the boards near the ground and surveyed the scene outside. There was just enough of a gap that might allow them to get to some covering brush in the direction of the prowler, but they'd have to move quickly.
"Get up, Xhalax," he urged, yanking her upright. "We've got to move." She was sweating and flushed, and her eyes struggled to focus on him.
"Talyn?" she croaked through a parched throat. "You need to go. If they find us together-"
"Xhalax," he interrupted forcefully. "It's Gressek. You need to get up." He pulled one of her arms around his shoulders and tried to make her stand.
"Talyn?" she asked again, then in a feat of strength that surprised him, grabbed Gressek's jacket in her fists and pulled him around to face her, speaking to him in incoherent gasps. "Talyn, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had to-they forced me-to save Aeryn-I'm sorry-"
"Shhh," he answered, running a hand along the side of her face to calm her. "I know. It's okay," he lied. "We've got to go now."
A loud crack sounded overhead, and a burning roof beam came crashing to the floor, striking Xhalax. Gressek jumped back, looked for a microt at her body sprawled on the floor. The skin along the left side of her face and neck was badly burned; if she wasn't dead already, she would be soon.
"I'm sorry, too, Xhalax," he murmured, then turned, wriggled between the broken boards of the shelter, and fled.
***
Valldon, present
Gressek spotted her on the street, limping through shadows on an artificial leg, and his eyes didn't trust what they saw. He'd looked for her before, many times, in the spirit world; when he couldn't find her, he wondered if she hadn't had a soul. It hadn't occurred to him that she might not be dead.
He followed her, watched her follow the young Peacekeeper he'd seen earlier that day. The young woman had reminded him of Xhalax, cycles and cycles ago; he laughed at the irony that Xhalax herself should appear in pursuit.
She sat at a table in a bar when he joined her without invitation. "I thought you were dead," he said casually.
Her eyes widened for a moment in surprise, then narrowed as she recognized him. "They say there are lots of dead people here," she replied coldly. She took a long swallow of fellip nectar. "Did they send you to kill me?"
"Peacekeepers?" he asked, surprised. She looked terrible, but he had assumed it was a disguise, assumed she was on a job, the young woman her mark. "I'm retired. I live here now," he explained.
She laughed sharply. "Why the frell would anyone want to live here?" she asked disdainfully. "But I never did understand you very well, Gressek."
He reached for her fellip nectar and took a sip. "No, you wouldn't understand the appeal of a world full of ghosts, would you, Xhalax. You were always running from yours."
She looked at him sharply and snatched the bottle back.
"So, old partner," he began conversationally, "what brings you to my neck of the woods? Not on a job?"
He watched her study the bottle in front of her; a drop of condensation ran down the side, and she traced it with her finger. "It is a job," she replied deliberately, "but not for the Peacekeepers. And you're going to help me-" her eyes snapped up to look at him "-old partner."
"You sure you can afford me? My services command quite a sum."
"That's why you live in a hellhole like this, is it?" she said doubtfully. She reached into her jacket, tossed a handful of coins on the table. "Consider that a down payment."
Gressek nodded in agreement. "So what's the job? The Peacekeeper girl?"
Xhalax looked surprised for a microt. "Yes. Her name is Aeryn. You'll get close to her, earn her trust. Tell her you're her father, Talyn Lyczak." She looked past Gressek, eyes seeming to focus on the wall over his shoulder. He watched her fingers tighten around the bottle she held, knuckles white. The names "Talyn" and "Aeryn" rang in Gressek's ears.
"She's your daughter," he guessed, though it seemed strange to think of Xhalax as anyone's mother.
Her eyes fixed him carefully. "Yes," she answered. She picked up the bottle, drained the rest of its contents. "And Talyn was my lover, her father. He died 20 cycles ago. I killed him."
Gressek held her gaze and didn't allow the sudden understanding to show on his face. He had watched her kill countless people, had helped her do it. This death had been behind all of them, the root of the flashes of fear he'd caught on her face back in the early days, the instant before she pulled the trigger.
"And now you're going to kill her, too," he said, his voice neutral.
"Aeryn is weak," she spat. "She was a soldier, and she threw it all away, everything that I gave her."
Cycles ago, Gressek kept expecting her to shatter under the weight of the secrets she kept. He looked at her now and realized how wrong he had been. Instead, her hardness had built up, layer by layer, into a fearsome strength.
"Okay," he agreed. "Tell me the plan."
***
He recognized her betrayal the microt before it happened, when Xhalax brandished her weapon at him and fixed him with her eyes. There was the old familiar flash of fear, and then resolution as she ordered him to turn over.
Even as he begged for his life, as he heard Aeryn beg for him, he wanted to look at Xhalax, wanted to watch her kill him. He wondered if she had been able to look Talyn in the eye when she killed him, if she would make Aeryn turn away as well.
He heard his own voice crying, "Xhalax, stop!" but he wanted to laugh instead. He remembered first bumping into her in a crowded market square, the wind blowing a piece of dark hair across her startled face; he had hoped this woman wouldn't get him killed.