Disclaimer: Not mine. But it was fun.

Description: Two Crichtons. And then one dies. Aeryn gets drunk and falls apart while thinking about her love for the man, and the Crichton's that's left.

Author's note: This story has MEGA typos and spelling errors. I wrote it while I was in a mood, I think the tone is more effective if it's not perfect. Some details may be askew, but all in all...I think it came out the way I wanted it to.



"My world was on fire and no one could save me but you. Its strange what desire will make foolish people do. I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you. I never dreamed that I'd lose some body like you. And I don't want to fall in love. No, I don't want to fall in love....with you...." -Chris Issak



Officer Aeryn Sun was drunk. Not just drunk, totally drenfaced. Smashed. Wallowing in misery wasn't something she was used to, but even frellip nectar dulled the pain if you drank enough of it.

She silently sipped from her glass, the alcohol like-quality of the nectar making her eyes glaze over, and her skin flush pink. Her body tempurature was elevated slightly above what was safe for those of her race; who had a weakness for heat. She'd taken leave of her senses. She stared out at the stars, beyond Talyn, the baby gunship, biomechanoid living ship, and reflected. She didn't want to reflect. But her mind wouldn't go to sleep. She'd numb it instead, she decided, and took another gulp of her drink. John Robert Crichton, Jr. was dead. Dead. The clone of the man she loved had ceased to be. Okay, Aeryn, why is this a problem? Why is this effecting you so hard, she asked herself, berating herself for her emotions.

"Because I'm not supposed to feel period. I wasn't raised to feel. I was raised to fly a ship. To be a pilot, an officer. A Peacekeeper. THAT is my breeding. Since birth. It's who I am."


Crichton had told her she could be more. Which one? The one who was dead, or the one that was alive? Did it matter? They were the same person. The exact same person. Only there was one of them left. Ah, yes. THAT was the issue. She'd seen Crichton die. The man she'd come to love, against her will. And it scared the living FRELL out of her. Her life could have gone some many different ways. Instead, she'd met up with Crichton, and her entire existance had changed. She'd been forced to leave her Peacekeeper life. Forced. And she had no clue how to survive on her own. Not really.

Peacekeeper training could have kept her alive, but it wouldn't have made her whole. Never again. And Crichton had filled the void that was his fault. Against her will, again. He'd made her fall in love with him. Made her feel. Made her feel love and passion and a world of hurt. Did she hate him for it? She couldn't. That was impossible. And the thought of losing him and the chance with the Crichton that was left made her stomach turn. Had he felt the same way when she'd died? Before Zhaan had seen how much hurt he'd been in and brought her back?

She took another giant swing on her drink, and snarled at her refelction in the glass window she was staring out of.

"Pathetic."

She pushed back the tendrils of hair that escaped her ponytail and heaved a heavy, burdened sigh. How did she handle this? All these emotions flooding through her, that she'd never had to deal with before. All of them, every single sensation was new to her. She'd had sex before. But never like with Crichton. THey'd been discouraged from forming meaningful relationships. Her parents had had a relationship. Her mother had come to her and made her know that she had been birthed out of love rare to Peacekeeper soldiers. Had her origins been what made her lose her mind when she stood up for Cricthon and gotten herself "irreversibly contaminated"? What had she been frelling THINKING?


"Obviously, I wasn't thinking."

Her accent was thicker than normal, her voice and words slurred with the effects of way to much frellip nectar. So, she'd fallen hard and fast for him, a stranger to her. And she'd fought it for almost three cycles, tooth and nail, as if loving him would rob her of her very identity. And wouldn't it have? She would no longer be "Officer Aeryn Sun, yadda yadda...." She would have been some weaker, less strong woman. Someone who had to lean against antoher. And that wasn't the person she was brought up to be.

She grimaced as she took another sip, both at the taste of the by-now warm nectar and the path of her thoughts. Neither one was appealing and yet she kept drinking, kept the thoughts coming. But now...she'd given in. It had been almost a cycle of sharing his thoughts, his love, his bed. Was it really that bad? No. It was enjoyable. She'd grown so much as a person, and he'd helped her every single step of the way. So how did she handle seeing him, or what certainly was a PART of him -what else is a clone?- die. And the last remaning Crichton could die as well. She'd opened her heart, foolishly. And now she'd have to risk hurt. Pain. Agony. She'd shatter into a thousand peices if he left her. THAT was the problem. She'd let him in and now she had become exactly what she didn't want to be. Dependant. Weak. And at risk for being hurt in the worst way. Her very heart and soul.


Frell the glass. She threw it over her shoulder, ignoring the clatter of metal upon Moya's deck and went straight for the bottle of nectar, sucking down the liquid as if each drink were her last. It was funny....even after all this, she wasn't any more numb than when she started. Every part of her body tingled with grief, and anxiety. She couldn't handle Crichton's reaction to his clone dying, either. He'd died. He was alive, and yet he was dead. It had scared him. She didn't need to hear the words, she could see it in his eyes. The same way she'd come to learn what kind of a mood he was in when he woke up by which eyebrow was higher. She'd felt his fear.

She rolled her lips inward and closed her eyes against the tears the threatned to fall. She couldn't stop tortruring herself by picturing that look, over and over and over and over. His pain was her pain, as well. She was weak. Weak and dependant. What she'd tried so hard not to become.

With an anguished, shattered sob, she threw the bottle of nectar against the glass window. It shattered just as her heart had, the slightly yellow liquid making the stars beyond blurry and watery. Tears streamed down her face, her body wracked with emotions she just couldn't contain anymore. She'd kept so much inside for so many cycles. She'd had to. But now, the dam had broke lose. Her mother...her father....the ones she'd never know, but craved. Crichton, and his loss. The feeling that one day, she'd lose him, as well, and the idea that she loved him more than she wanted to keep her own life. Talyn, and Crais....undecided at which one of the pair ruled the other, but certain it meant utter destruction of Talyn either way.

It all came pouring out of her, until she was a sobbing, hysterical puddle of Sebacean on the floor, rocking back and forth as her face became staturated with her tears and it became impossible to breath. She desperately wiped at her face, struggling to calm herself, but even her hands shook with rage, anger, depression, denial, and a deep intense -hated- feeling of love for John. He was her water, with out which she would die. He was her rock, her stability, her constant on a sea of a life that had no boundries and there was no way of knowing what would happen next.

When everything else changed around her, he was her constant. The one true thing she could count on. And she could lose him at any moment, torn away from her by that very same life, as his clone had. It was just way to much to think about.

Her body tempurature rose to unstable heights, the drink and her tears spiking it up to unsafe levels. In the end, it was the inebration that caused her to slip into a deep sleep there on the floor.

Just before she passed out, she had a breif, insistant feeling that things would turn out okay. Didn't everything always work out in the end? It comforted her just enough that when she finally sunk into the welcomed black darkness of unconsiousness, it was Crichton's face that she saw. And his smile, relfected in his clear blue eyes, was for her.