No Parenthesis
By Red (therightbrain)

rating -- mostly harmless (pg)
spoliers -- takes place somewhere between Dog With Two Bones and Promises.
summary -- Aeryn's thoughts as she goes on one last mission
disclaimer -- Farscape and all related characters and elements belong to the Jim Henson 
Company, which is very much not me. I do not own them, I do not make any money off of 
them.

*

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-- e.e.cummings

*

I will do this and then I will leave. Because I think, quite possibly, I've gone the wrong 
way. I'm hoping this realization hasn't come at me too late. I will go back, if I can. In 
fairness, I'll allow that it's possible that I can't go back. That doesn't bear thinking about, 
however. Unfortunately, by the burning in my chest, I can tell that seed of doubt has 
already taken root. What else can I do, though? I've gone the wrong way. 

Or maybe it wasn't the wrong way, maybe it was the right way, only now I've been down 
this way for too long. For a while it was easy, and for a while it was right, and for a time 
my mind was clear. I would rise in the morning with my purpose, I would strap my pistol 
to my thigh, I would stride to my prowler, and the goal of the day, whatever it may be, 
would fall before me. That done, I would return to my bunk at night and rest soundly in 
dreamless sleep. 

And then the dreamless became dream-filled and haunted. And now I rise in the morning 
and my purpose feels lost, my pistol is the only thing I know is still solid. My stride has 
lost its measure, and confidence has become pretending. While I try to believe that the goal 
of the day is my own, the truth -- this is just a distraction -- chips away at my focus, 
eroding my faith. And I hate it. I am split in two and I would rage at the universe if I 
thought it would care. I'm tempted to rage anyway. Madness, while painful, looked easy.  

Never mind. I will do this and I will leave. For one more day I will focus. For one more 
day I will forget. For one more day I will fill myself with another's purpose. I have a 
cause, and though I know I might never have sought it or carried its banner on my own, I 
also know it is a just cause. Most importantly, I know what it is for a thing to be truly just. 
So what, if perhaps it's not my justice? I know now there is a justice of a broader sort, a 
justice the length and breadth of the universe. And occasionally we little beings are 
instruments of it. Odd as that seems. Especially to me. I know only too well how easily 
justice is twisted, and I served a mangled ideal for a sorry majority of my life. To realize 
that, and then to see that justice will have me still ... I think I've learned how it feels to be 
humble. 

Some come to humility in simplicity, I think. Born to take things as they come, give and 
receive in equal measure, never hoarding the gaudy and base over the ethereal and rare. I 
wonder what it's like to live like that, to know the value of a day just for itself. I am simple 
in my own way, I suppose. Material possessions have little meaning to me. But I was far 
from humble. Service, but not just service -- advancement, pride. To reach higher, to gain 
rank, to be elite, to fly my prowler in  infinite skies solely for myself. That's what I 
hungered for and battled for and spat blood for. Duty allowed me to do those things, but it 
was the *things* I wanted, not devotion to duty. I think that's what saved me, though, if I 
was indeed so lost. When I felt that duty fail, when I knew that duty wasn't enough, when 
that duty left me empty, I was free. 

Someone told me once that I would not know the day without knowing the night. I pointed 
out that I grew up on a Command Carrier and day and night were not much different from 
one another. Obtuseness as self-defense. It saves having to actually consider such things. 
Thoughts like that led to questioning and questioning was dangerous. Thoughts like that 
were traitors, and thoughts like that had to be buried down as deep as they would go, and if 
at all possible, forgotten completely. There was only to be one duty, one justice, one way, 
no alternatives could ever be necessary. So I hid my traitor-self in obtuseness, and even 
after I'd left, it was a difficult habit to give up. Now I see the point, or rather, acknowledge 
it, of course. Never let it be said Peacekeepers, or former Peacekeepers, can't learn to 
grasp such things. 

The duty I was taught, and the duty I struggled with inside, seemed light and dark to each 
other. There is, like justice, a larger duty. A truer duty, maybe. Peacekeeper duty to team I 
can see in that larger duty; Peacekeeper duty to Peacekeeper ideals is as far from true duty 
as it could be. It's amazing it can still bear the word. That split began in my soul, in my 
understanding, so many cycles ago. 

Now that I'm free to consider such things--though, still not an entirely comfortable 
process--duty, to the larger universe, now seems to me to manifest as duty on a smaller 
level. My duty to my unit, whomever they might be, feels more true than my duty to 
whatever our larger goal or company is. That's not to deny that I have that duty to goal, or 
obligation, it's just to say that the smaller duty feels larger and the overwhelming feeling is 
that if I fail at that, then any duty after crumbles. And the more personal the bonds to team, 
the larger that smaller duty becomes, and then to leave it, is like leaving breath behind. 

And this is where I think I've gone the wrong way. Or gone this way for too long. I could 
give myself to the larger purpose and shun the smaller. I could lose myself and for a time 
that worked. However, as with before, my duty was empty and I used myself to try to fill 
it up. With no true faith in that smaller duty, I succeeded only in using myself up. Now it's 
time to leave. Not to run from this, but to return to that. 

My true duty is to unit, team ... family. And, oddly, to myself. I am no longer an 
interchangeable piece, easily cast aside or left behind. Not for myself, not for others. That 
in itself is terrifying enough, but I have no illusions about my place. I think that is my 
home. I think they are my friends. I think they may even be as close to family as this ex-
Peacekeeper could have ever managed. I think that there is somewhere I belong, not solely 
for my skills or rank but for the whole of me. I think. I hope. Hope ...

Though I tried, I failed to fully distance myself from those ties of that true, smaller duty. I 
feel it pull at me even now. It's not the cold duty of words, but a powerful embrace of 
purpose. I miss it. I left to find myself, to find peace, to try to understand what I had and 
what I lost. Perspective, in other words. And now I'm done. Perspective tells me that I am 
far from where I'm meant to be. Perspective tells me that I've got things I need to finish, to 
address, and perspective tells me that there is not always a tomorrow. 

I never counted on the possibilities of tomorrow, nor did I ever count the riches of them. A 
Peacekeeper life is service and death. Today your enemy's death; tomorrow perhaps your 
own. Death was nothing to grieve, it was a part of service. You honor your comrades' 
sacrifice, as you expect they'll honor yours. To be a Peacekeeper is to be one of many; if I 
fell, yet another would take my place and the universe would hardly mourn. In that we 
were eternal, immortal. Part of an endless tide, crashing over the universe. We were all the 
Peacekeepers before us and all the Peacekeepers after us.

Now I am solely myself. Far from eternal, far from immortal. I did not ever expect to live 
as long as I have. I did not ever expect to grieve. I did not ever expect to be bound so 
tightly to another, that on his death I would feel so wholly lost. Having only just begun to 
live for things beyond service, for things contained in that greater, smaller duty, the loss 
was a pain that staggered me, crushed my spirit and tore what hope I had from my grasp. 
Never had I felt so wounded, nor so vulnerable. Never had I so hated and feared 
tomorrow. For the first time in cycles, I was desperate to return to the simplicity of 
unquestioning service and death.

Twice I was told that I could be more than my training, my service. One man I didn't 
believe, the other man I was afraid to believe. What was I, if not a lifetime of training? 
What was I meant to be? What was I, if separated from the endless line of Peacekeepers? 
From that endless duty, from that endless service? I still don't know all the answers to 
those questions, but I no longer think there's a single answer or a time limit to when I'll 
find them all. I think it comes down to hope. Who do I hope I'll be? Where do I hope to 
be? So while I ran to find the perspective that distance could give, I realize that what I hope 
for doesn't lie in this direction. This was comfortable, familiar, a fallback on that lifetime of 
training. It was time and space, and a place to breathe and heal from that shocking, 
unfamiliar sting of grief. But it wasn't movement. I have to go back. 

I have to go back to him. To them all, but mostly to him. I don't know what I hope for. I 
don't know if I'll feel the sick pull of no tomorrows when I see him, a suffocating 
blackness stretching into what should have been our tomorrow. Or if maybe I'll see ten 
thousand tomorrows, the cycles spinning out ahead of us into the future, unknown. 

Another thing to hate -- the wondering uncertainty. More distraction. Distraction from 
moving on, moving forward. I'm impatient with the distractions now. I will finish this and 
I will go back and I will sort these distractions. I want a dream of tomorrow, I want to taste 
that almost decadent hope, but I will settle for a resolution to the wondering.

"Sun?"

"Yes," I acknowledge, rising out of my thoughts.

"You know your target?"

"I do."

"The Prime Lukythian --"

"Will be removed," I finish briskly. I will do this and then I will go. I will focus on this 
purpose for one more day, and then I will find my own. 

I stand, I check my gear, I slide my hand down the solid weight of my pistol at my thigh, 
gripping it tightly for a moment, anchoring myself to it, and I stride to my prowler. Once 
more. Then home.