Necessity

By Cofax
Copyright 2001

Spoilers: Season 1 through "A Bug's Life"
Category: post-ep for "A Bug's Life"
Rating: PG
Distribution: Just let me know where, please.
Disclaimer: Not mine, and no money involved. An attempt at a transformative use under the "fair use" provisions of US copyright law.
Notes: Working my way through Season 1. Again, many thanks to Melymbrosia who made me justify my characterizations and told me it was ready to go.
Feedback makes me do the wacky; send it to cofax7@yahoo.com

There was nothing to be done with the bodies but space them. Zhaan had said some words over them before Pilot closed and vented the airlock. For all the good that would do -- Peacekeepers didn't believe in an afterlife, so Zhaan's words would have been just so much alien noise. John wondered if translator microbes survived death, and if so, what they had made of Zhaan's prayers.

The pale figures tumbled slowly off the port side as Moya turned. Moya's crew needed the clothes, the weapons. It made sense. But Hassan had been so tiny without her leathers. So frail, so naked. Zhaan had said the cause of death was severe cranial bleeding from three massive blows to the head.

She'd reminded him of Gilina. He remembered having a thing for competent blond women. From what D'Argo had said, he still did, or his body did. When it wasn't killing them.

He saw the blue figure move up beside him but didn't turn, his eyes still focused out the viewscreen. She smelled of -- lavender, maybe. Something soothing. It seemed out of place.

"She didn't suffer, John. She was almost certainly unconscious when she died." Zhaan's voice was as comforting as if she had never put off the robes of a Pa'u. Zhaan, their priest and healer, had been ready to kill the Peacekeepers when they came on board, before any of the craziness had started. Before anyone had died.

She paused, then spoke again. "Aeryn seems to be recovering well."

"Yeah." His voice felt thin, stretched; he swallowed with difficulty. "She came back to the world of the living a little while ago. Think she's gonna be okay."

Zhaan stepped closer and looked out the viewscreen. They had long since moved away, but he imagined he could still see, burned onto his retinas, the flash of the Marauder exploding. Larraq was dust, and the virus with him. Larraq had liked Aeryn, and she him. He was probably a pretty good guy. Someone you could play pickup basketball with, get a beer with.

"We are lucky the knife missed any major organs," Zhaan said. John nodded.

Larraq was dust; Hassan's corpse, naked and frozen, would spin through space for millennia before succumbing to some star's gravity; and Aeryn had nearly bled out her life on Moya's warm floor. All in all, a good day.

It had been necessary. Larraq would never have let him close enough to administer the vaccine. Larraq would have sicced Crais onto them again, and the virus would have killed millions. They would all have died. Dad would have understood the necessity.

He wondered what 'a necessary evil' sounded like in Sebacean. If he really wanted to find out, he could ask Aeryn. When she woke up.

John peeled off the red coat on his way out the door, kicked it to the side. Moya's endless corridors lay before him, curving upon themselves in a looping mobius. "Boom," he whispered.

He might never find his way out now.

*Boom.*

End