seraphcelene | Fic: Farscape (John, G) - but then shall you know

It started off as a drabble and kept growing. At a point I said enough. So, here you go.

Title: but then shall you know
A/N: post-Peacekeeper Wars
Summary: "The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam to-day."

Lost in space -- Danger, Will Robinson. Danger -- and he spins out on a thread of would be, could be, baby bumblebee. A crude drawing of Pooh Bear is taped to a side panel and John realizes that an empty honey pot tastes more like the memory of home than clover, and you can never go back or pretend that fate doesn’t fuck you because it wants to but because it can.

“You are a wanted man,” he whispers in the dark to the cold light of stars and the defiant rise of suns.

John surfs the Farscape One through conveniently available wormholes. He can still feel it in his bones when they open, the whisper of something cold and gentle as snow against the back of his neck and every single hair on his forearms stands erect.

“Hop to boys. Wormhole at twelve o’clock.”

And then he falls forward through a glass darkly and into another part of the universe. Only the trip isn’t revelatory. It is darkness still and somewhere, some when, further from home and love and loss and the end of what once made him John Crichton.

He doesn’t care about the consequences. Ignores them mostly. Stuffs everything into the same little box that he used to keep Harvey in. The latch is a little loose and, like with Harvey, John is sometimes bothered by the boxed contents.

The memories rise in a tidal wave, relentless. The dull whine of a sniper’s rifle and the deafening roar of an explosion wake him night after night. He remembers how the hairs on his arms stood on end and how the whisper that usually says wormhole crept over his ears just before he felt the wave of heat at his back. How he glanced back just in time to see a mushroom of red and gold engulfing the prowler. How he spiraled into blackness calling her name and picturing his son safely stowed in back.

He woke among medics with their sad eyes that never quite met his and their smiles that never travelled any further than the curve of their lips. In his dreams and the theatre of his mind they still pat his hands and say, “I am sorry for your loss.”

Chiana came for him. Bundled him up and took him home. Pilot was mostly speechless. “Moya and I,” Pilot said when he could, “are devastated by the loss of Commander Sun and young D‘argo.”

1812 nudged the toe of John’s boot in commiseration.

John wouldn’t cry. Shined Winona for all that he was worth and ignored the basket where D’argo slept at the foot of the bed.

Finally he took the Farscape and disappeared. With blood in his eye and her name on his lips he escaped Moya’s haunted curves for the cold, empty arms of space.

Here there is always room enough to breathe.

In the back of his mind John considers the potential for finding, his potential to be found and remembered. He is somewhat afraid that not tracking his progress means that he’ll run into himself. Himself with a wife and son. But he does it anyway. Flips the coin and rides the knives, never quite crossing his fingers that things will come out just fine.

“Now, I am become death,” he says as a feeling like snow drifts across his neck. “The destroyer of worlds.”