Title:  The Better Part

 

Category:  Missing scene for Fractures

 

Summary:  John's looking for something

 

Spoilers:  Only up to Fractures.  Nothing beyond.

 

Rating:  PG for John's language

 

Disclaimer:  Not mine.  Never will be.  No money made, no infringement intended. 

 

Notes:  Thanks to Amy for the beta.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Moya was quiet.

 

Not that it was ever loud on board, except when they were in the middle of getting their asses kicked.  Seven or eight people just couldn't make that much noise, not sharing a ship the size of Moya.  It probably had been pretty loud back when she was occupied by hundreds of goose-stepping and order-shouting Peacekeepers.  But now, it could get insanely quiet.  At night, John could wander these tiers for hours and not run into anyone else. 

 

But he'd gotten used to it, the silence.  Along with the claustrophobia, the dim lighting, and the unending brown walls.  At least they were among the few reliable things in his life.  Except even that status quo had been shot to hell the last half a cycle.  With the crew pared down to just him, D'Argo, Jool, and Chiana, it had gotten even more impossibly silent.  Late at night, sometimes, he could swear he could hear his own blood pumping through his veins.  Now, all those reliable things just served to remind him of all the things he'd lost.  How alone he was.

 

//Guess who Aeryn loves right now, John?  He wins.  And you lose.//

 

He shook his head until he couldn't hear Harvey's voice any more.  Bad enough he butted into John's psyche in real-time -- John really didn't need him on instant replay. 

 

Being down this far reminded him of his first night on Moya.  When he'd wandered these halls, carrying all his worldly possessions in a standard-issue IASA bag, trying to find somewhere he could sleep.  In the end, he'd done the math.  It was a simple equation, really:  the number of hours in a sleep cycle versus the number of homicidal alien escaped prisoners.  The result was that he’d picked a cell away from everyone else on board. D'Argo and Aeryn were way too volatile to risk being within their radar reach.  Rygel was too much of an unknown, and John didn’t know how seriously to take his threats.  He would have risked sleeping somewhere near Zhaan, figuring she seemed like the closest thing to someone he could trust here, until he caught her meditating naked.  Too much blue, no way to deal with it at the time.

 

Zhaan...  He wondered what Zhaan would have made of them now.  In the half-cycle since she'd sacrificed herself for them, they'd managed to get separated from the others, piss each other off, get banished from Moya, and nearly kill each other during an argument.   And that was just his group.  No telling how the other group had fared.

 

No, if nothing else, John didn't think Zhaan would be thrilled with their inability even to look after themselves these days.  It was a shame, really, since that was about all any of them were good at.  He'd have thought they'd be a little more adept by now. 

 

But they weren't.  He wasn’t.  He hadn't learned a damn thing about playing it smart in the Uncharted Territories.  Because if he were looking after himself, he wouldn't be walking down this particular tier, about to do what he was about to do.  It was going to be a spectacularly masochistic thing to do, and he had no illusions about that.  The smart thing to do would be to turn around before he committed himself. Go back up and work on the immediate problems they had.  The smart thing would be not to ask questions he didn't really want to know the answers to.  Not to beat a dead horse.

 

But he couldn't do it.  He had to know.  As much he didn't want to know, he needed to know.

 

There was noise up ahead, and he could see one of the cell doors was open, just around the bend of the corridor.  The noise was faint, and if it hadn't been deathly quiet down here to begin with, he'd never have heard it at all.  But it was deathly quiet down here, and he did hear it. 

 

Standing just outside the door, John could see him through the cell bars.  His back to John, oblivious to his presence.  He was standing still, fiddling with a bag on the table. 

 

Crais.

 

As John watched, Crais unfolded a few clothes out of a dark bag, silently stacking them on the table.  Standing here unnoticed, John expected to feel the usual anger and loathing he'd come to associate with Crais.  The fantasy about how good it would feel to connect his fist with that arrogant sneer.

 

But it wasn't there today.  No anger, no disgust, no repulsion.  A whole lot of nothing, actually.  Maybe he was just sick and tired of feeling pissed.  Pissed at Crais, pissed at Scorpius, pissed at Harvey, pissed at D'Argo, pissed at that damn wormhole.  Pissed at the Other Him.  Pissed at himself.  Pissed at Aeryn.  Maybe he just didn't have enough 'pissed' left any more to waste it on Crais' sorry hide.

 

Crais must have finally sensed that he was being watched, because he turned sharply around.  Reached for a weapon that wasn't there.  "Crichton," he recovered quickly, half-smiling, "you startled me."

 

John moved forward to lean casually on the doorway.  "Not used to ghosts walkin' around, huh?"

 

"Something like that."  He smoothed out the clothes carefully.  His ponytail was tightly wound, not a hair out of place.  Black, starched uniform and polished boots.  How pathetic that Crais was still desperately clinging to the Peacekeeper look, as though that would make things better.  Hell, John had given up trying to cling to who he'd been a long time ago, trading out his IASA clothes for the practical, harsh things that originated in the Uncharted Territories.  Things that fit his life now.  But Crais was still trying to fool himself, pretending he wasn't like the rest of them -- banished, on the run, hunted, occasionally humiliated, reduced to just trying to stay alive.

 

John suddenly realized what he did feel about Crais right now.  Pity.  For the pathetic little man that was standing in a cell deep in the bowels of what used to be his own prison ship.  He must have come all they way down here for the same reason John had done so almost three cycles ago -- because he was alone and defenseless and unwelcome.  Away from his ship and any semblance of control he maintained through it, unarmed, and rifling through his one small bag of salvaged belongings.  But still futilely trying to pretend he was more than he was.

 

//Like trying to pretend you're anything to Aeryn right now?//

 

//Shut up, Harvey.//

 

Or was that himself?  It was getting harder to tell the two apart...

 

"What are you doing with the bag?"  John walked all the way into the room, but stayed just close enough to the exit that he was blocking the way out.  He needed to remind Crais who was in control here.  This was his ship, his friends, his responsibility, and Crais was gonna understand that.  The fact that it gave John the tiniest amount of pleasure was completely beside the point.  "You're not going back to Talyn?"

 

"I..." Crais stopped, like he was trying to decide what to say.  Not like him to be at a loss for words.  Of course, it also wasn't like him to be quiet and unobtrusive, either.  Or to hide way down here.  "I have been... rethinking... my staying with Talyn."  As he finished, he looked up almost defiantly at John.  Was he expecting John to gloat, to give in to the ugly satisfaction he wanted to feel?  Or looking for John to give him a reason to rethink his rethinking?  Validation?  Argument?  Pity?  What?

 

"I know you're not thinkin’ you're gonna stay here."

 

Crais smiled faintly again, with a grim, resigned sort of amusement.  "You would take in criminals -- thieves and murderers -- before you would take me in, wouldn't you, Crichton?"

 

"Bet yer ass.  I can trust them."

 

Folding the now-empty bag into crisp, clean quarters, Crais glanced up toward John.  "As... unlikely... as it may sound, I have missed our little conversations.  I can always rely on you for… certain reminders."

 

Certain reminders.  Like his reminders to John?  Reminders of a life left behind?  Of every thick-headed bully in 12 years of public school?  Reminders of all the bricks in Aeryn's life-long wall?

 

"Well, I can't say that I missed you," John countered.

 

A short, knowing nod.  "I would not expect you to have." 

 

Crais ran one hand over the pile of black clothes.  Everyone was in black around here lately.  Like they were all in mourning.  Maybe they were.  Or maybe this place just sucked the color out of everything like some giant, living black hole. 

 

"I suspect that you didn't come all the way down here," Crais started, not looking up, "to discuss our checkered history."

 

"No, I didn't."  John cracked one knuckle.  It seemed to echo in the silence.  "Aeryn told Pilot you might be able to help with a sorta medical problem we've got."

 

"Medical?"

 

"Sort of.  Jool can explain."

 

Crais made an unhappy face, either at her name or at being asked to help.  No way to know which annoyed him more.  "Of course."

 

"She's in Maintenance.  And bring some gloves."

 

Another face, this time a little more disgusted than annoyed.  Wait 'til he saw the Boolite spread all over the table in Maintenance.  John was still digging goo out from underneath his fingernails.

 

"Very well."  But Crais still didn't move.  "You could have commed me."

 

Well, Crais wasn't stupid.  Give him that one.  A homicidal, deranged back-stabber, maybe.  But not stupid.  "I want to know what happened."

 

Crais sighed.  At least he didn't try to pretend he didn't know what John was talking about.  "I'm not sure I'm the one you should be talking to."

 

"Yeah, well, me neither.  But from the noises comin' out of Rygel's quarters, I sure as hell wasn't interrupting him.  And Aeryn is...." 

 

//Aeryn is what, John?// 

 

Crais nodded.  "So, here you are."

 

"So, here I am."

 

Crais straightened, almost formally.  "What do you want to know?"

 

What did he want to know?  He wanted to know just what the frell had happened without him.  He wanted to know everything the bastard wearing his face had done to his life.  He wanted to know why Aeryn wouldn't even look at him. 

 

None of which he could tell Crais.  "Tell me how Talyn got banged up.  Retrieval squad?"

 

"Talyn took damage from the Scarran dreadnought."

 

"Dreadnought?  That sounds big."

 

"It is quite big."

 

"But you're still here."

 

"Thanks to you."  Crais' face screwed up for a second.  "I mean... him," he added, with a strange new tone in his voice. 

 

Him.  Me.  The other guy.  The copy.  The Xerox.  John didn't even know what he was supposed to call him.  Now, he guessed, it was The Dead Guy.  Dead John.

 

"What did he do?"

 

"He created some kind of device that created a wormhole and used it to destroy the Dreadnought."

 

"Wormhole?  How did he--"

 

"The alien, Jack, apparently helped him. Or created it himself.  I'm not exactly sure."

 

"Jack?"

 

"Jack.  That's what Crichton... the other Crichton... called him."

 

Jack...  The Ancients.  Wormholes stuck in his brain.  The fishy smell of the beach and afternoon rainstorms.  Beer and Aeryn's sweat and deep, fluffy pillows.  Red-hot poker shoved in his ear.

 

"What were The Ancients doing there?"

 

Crais shrugged slightly, looking a little peeved.  "I don't know.  Crichton was... vague about his relationship with this person.  I don't even know how he got on board Talyn."

 

"What happened to him?  To Jack?"

 

"Again, I don't know exactly.  He didn't come back with the others.  Aeryn said he'd been killed."

 

//You made me think you were my father!//  His father's calm, patient face looking down at him, waiting him out until he was done ranting.  It was classic Jack Crichton, and whether the alien had gotten it from John's brain or if it was just a universal way of dealing with pissed-off kids, didn't matter.  Had the same effect.

 

"What about... the other guy -- the copy?"

 

"Crichton," Crais corrected quickly. 

 

'Crichton'.  Not, 'the other Crichton' or 'one of the Crichtons' -- just 'Crichton'.  The Crichton.  Crais had already made up his mind which one was the real one.  How many others had? 

 

"The other me," John finished.

 

"Radiation."

 

God.  Radiation.  Invisible, odorless, undetectable to the naked eye.  Physics getting its ultimate revenge for the hubris of playing with its sacred secrets.  It was a nasty, painful, humiliating way to go.  Took hours, days, weeks, years sometimes to kill you slowly...  "How long did it take?"

 

Crais grimaced.  "Several arns."

 

Hours.  Damn high dose.  The guy... the copy... could probably follow the progression in his own body, at least for as long as he was conscious and aware.  Could feel himself melting from the inside out, and know there was not a blessed thing he could do about it.

 

"He finished the device," Crais was still talking, "and destroyed the Dreadnought and its stolen wormhole data before succumbing to the radiation poisoning.  He saved countless civilizations from being overrun by the Scarrans."

 

John listened to the way Crais talked about the guy.  Crais had never had anything good to say about John Crichton in almost three years.  Until now.  Now, the other guy... the copy... was a dead hero.  A frelling dead hero.  Mythic, legendary, a slayer of fire-breathing dragons.  Even to his enemies. 

 

How much more so to her?  John could take on Aeryn’s Peacekeeper ghosts and all the crap she wanted to fling at him, but how was he supposed to stand up to a dead hero who looked and sounded and tasted just like him?

 

"Aeryn... and him.  Were they...  Did they...?"

 

Crais shuffled uncomfortably.  He walked several steps away from John and toward the mirror.  "I'm really not the one you should be having this conversation with," he said into the mirror.

 

God.  That was his answer, wasn't it?  Something stung at the back of John's eyes.  It should have been him.  It all should have been him.  He didn't care whose face The Other Guy had been wearing -- he had no right to take that away from John.  To take something John could never get back.

 

"How long?" he asked. 

 

Crais didn't answer.  He stuck his hands behind his back and looked uneasily around the room.  Looked everywhere except where John was standing.  Somewhere nearby, a vent kicked on, blowing air out near John's feet.  But it was cold enough in this room anyway.  He listened to the silence go on, more sure as each second ticked by that Crais wasn't going to give him what he needed.  Goddammit, it was always a game to Crais -- had always been a game.  John wanted something from him, so Crais would want something in return.

 

What did he have that Crais wanted?

 

How about his pride? 

 

"Please." 

 

The room reeked of his begging.  Crais turned around again.  John sucked up the anger and shame and forced Crais’ attention back on him.  If begging was what he had to do, he would.  There had never been a humiliation he hadn't been able to endure for Aeryn.  "I need to know."

 

Not that he 'wanted' to know.  Not that he 'should' know.  Only that he needed to know.  He needed to know what had hurt her, if for no other reason than to simply understand. 

 

Crais stared at him.  "I... can't."

 

"Dammit, Crais, you selfish scum-sucking--  You're probably getting off on this, aren't you?  This workin' for you, Captain Crais?  You havin' a good time at my expense?!"

 

"If I were enjoying this, Crichton, I would be telling you exactly what the Other Crichton did with Aeryn.  In.  Great.  Detail.  But it is simply not my place."

 

"Your place? Your frickin' place?  You got the balls to get self-righteous about knowing your place!?"  He shoved one finger into Crais' padded shirt.  "Where the hell was that two cycles ago when you were forcing yourself on us?  When you were stealing Moya's baby?  When you played on Aeryn's weakness to get her to help you?  When you arranged to go off on Talyn alone with her?  Your 'place' is nowhere within a thousand metras of this ship and my friends!"

 

Crais stepped back.  Took a breath, and looked somewhere over John’s shoulder.  "Perhaps you are right.  But the fact still remains.  The story you wish to hear is not mine to tell."

 

"No!  It's mine!  It's my freakin' story, except that son of a bitch stole it!  He stole my life."

 

"I think, under the circumstances, perhaps you got the better deal."

 

Under the circumstances?  Leave it to the ultimate survivor, Bialar Crais, to think outliving The Other Him was the better portion.  "Because he died?  You think this is better?  Look at me.  Look at what he left me.  He took everything.  My clothes, my stuff, my gun--" he stopped before her name came out of his mouth.  There was no way in hell he was giving that much information to Crais.  "He took my life!  And all I got were his leftovers.  Once again, John Crichton gets the cosmic doggy bag.  He took everything."

 

"Look, Crichton," he dragged out John's name, "if you want commiseration, you've come to the wrong place."

 

Commiseration?  From Crais?  From the sick bastard who'd hunted him for a year, kidnapped Talyn, and coveted Aeryn when he thought no one could see?  "I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm looking for information.  Knowledge is the key to power.  I need knowledge, because I want my life back." 

 

Crais blew out a breath and turned away from John.  "We all want... things we cannot have."

 

There it was again.  That odd sound in his voice.  John placed it now.  It was a familiar, unwelcome mix of emotions.  Anger and regret and sadness and resignation.  God, had they heard it enough around here.  D'Argo talking about his wife.  Or about Chiana.  Or his son.  John's own voice on his tape recorder talking to his dad.  Anyone talking about Zhaan.  It was the sound Crais had had when he'd come to Moya on the run from the Peacekeepers and got locked up down here.  Nowhere to go and nothing to go back to.  It was the sound of all the things John had felt when he'd woken up at the Diagnosian's facility and known Aeryn was still dead.  It was the sound of all the things that had driven him down here on this stupid quest to punish himself.

 

"What the hell happened on board Talyn, Crais?"

 

Crais spun back toward him quickly.  And in his eyes, John saw all those things. Anger and regret and sadness and resignation.  He’d been wrong about Crais thinking this was a game.  Whatever had happened on Talyn, no one had come back the same. 

 

"More than any of us wanted," was all Crais said.  He shook his head once, short and quick.  Then turned away again, stopping to run one hand across the black bag again.  "You're not the only one who has lost something.  The only difference is that you have the opportunity to get it back.  Some of us will never have that choice."  He stepped forward two feet and looked John deep in the eye.  Unflinching and dead serious.  "You must talk to Aeryn, John."  He shouldered past John.

 

John didn't bother to stop him.  What was the point?

 

//Guess who Aeryn loves right now, John?  He wins.  And you lose.//

 

He'd known the other guy had won the moment they left on Talyn.  He'd been beaten by the one person he'd never stood a chance against.  Himself. 

 

He let the force of Crais' move rebound him away.  He was suddenly so tired.  "He managed," he said to no one in particular, "to do something no one else could.  Not that damn wormhole, not you, not Scorpius, not the Scarrans.  Not half the frellin’ galaxy."

 

"And what is that?"

 

"He took my life."  On the edge of his vision, he could see that Crais had stopped in the threshold.  They had somehow reversed positions.  Like two suns circling each other, he and Crais -- they kept coming back to this same place.  "And the worst part is that he did it intentionally."

 

Crais shook his head dismissively.  "I doubt he meant--"

 

John shook his head.  Crais didn't get it.  None of them was ever really going to get it.  "No.  He knew.  The Other Me, he knew what he was taking, and he did it anyway." 

 

Crais turned slowly.  "We all do what we think is best," he said to no one in particular.

 

"Except I never got to make that choice.  He made it for me.  And he had no right.  It was my life, too."

 

"It is still your life."

 

“No, it’s not.  It’s his shadow.”  He looked up at Crais, once again through the bars of a cell.  He looked up at the ex-Peacekeeper Captain chased off his own ship, and now for some reason chased off of Talyn, stuck on this ship with people who still didn’t want him around.  And he somehow grasped the camaraderie of misery they shared.  “You ever live in another man’s shadow, Bialar?”

Crais was still looking down the hallway, steadily ignoring John’s gaze.  “I have.”  He took one more step away from John.

 

“So tell me the secret,” he asked.  The vent shut off again, dropping them back into silence again.  It was so ironic -- the others were finally back and Moya was still deathly quiet.  Across the cell, his own face was bisected by the two halves of the mirror.  “Tell me,” he asked the guy in the mirror, “how to slay the dragon.”

 

He didn’t expect any answers.  No one had had any answers around here for too long. 

 

“You find… the better part of yourself.”

 

As Crais’ words stopped, John looked up at him.  But Crais had already turned away from him.  He was walking crisply down the hallway, his footsteps echoing in the silence, back toward the others. 

 

His words bounced around John’s head.   The better part…

 

//“I'm very proud of you,” she said.

 

Another time he’d been so tired.  Tired of fighting a losing battle.  Tired of the odds being stacked in someone else’s favor.  Tired of getting shafted by the universe.  “Are you? Why?”

 

She had sat down close in front of him, so close he could smell her again.  He’d missed her smell.  He’d missed her smile.  “Being Crichton. The Crichton I always knew.”

 

“Getting my ass kicked all over the universe.”

 

And she’d smiled for him.  And it had almost… almost… made everything better.  “For getting yourself into a position to get your ass kicked by fighting, resisting, never giving up.”//

 

He’d always loved the way she saw him.  At first, it had been the splash of cold water that kept him grounded.  And then, it had become better than he saw himself.  Even when he didn’t think there was much left of John Crichton, she’d always found more. 

 

//She’d spit on you right now, wouldn’t she, John?  For wallowing in self-pity.  For conceding the fight to a dead guy.  Giving up.//

 

Yeah, she would.

 

“Pilot, where’s Aeryn?”

“Repairing the transport pod.”

He nodded, even though there was no one left to see.  Hit the button to close the door, moving out of the way just as it dropped to cut him off from the cell.

 

Being Crichton may not be enough to qualify as his better part, but it was all he had left.

 

~~finis~~