fic snippet part deux
Mar. 14th, 2003 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliI've got another snippet from the Epic Farscape Fic I'm working on. It's got some problems-- I wrote it before I decided to use present tense, and I've totally changed how I want to write John and Aeryn. But, radically modified, it might do for an opener to the story.
***
Everyone says I have my mother's eyes.
I guess it's true--they're the same shape, though bluer-- but she's not the one I take after. I don't take after either of my parents, really. I'm the in-between one, the girl without a planet. It's a result of my upbringing.
You don't know the story? I though everyone did, on Earth and in the Territories and beyond. Everyone knows our family on sight.
Sometimes, that's nice. We’re celebrities, and that can be fun. Other times, it's really not.
Like when I was four, and the crew of a Marauder-- one of the few who weren't destroyed in that particular battle, and the fewer who didn't surrender-- got the bright idea of kidnapping me from the peace talks. They thought they could reclaim the whole system for the Peacekeepers easy, all with onle helpless little hostage.
In those days, not everyone knew what my parents were really capable of. For that matter, *nobody* knew what I was capable of.
It’s not a long story. The soldiers didn't think to take away my comms. Mom and Dad got a message through-- they told me how to access the ship’s atmospherics, and how to turn up the heat. I was young, but I've always been smart for my age.
By the time Mom and Dad boarded the ship, the soldiers were incapacitated. I hadn't made it hot enough to hurt them permanently, or anything. But after being outwitted by a child, and seeing the temperatures that so damaged them only make me a little sweaty, they were more than willing to surrender. They didn’t even know that I am only half Sebacean.
Funny, to think of that. These days, everyone knows all about us.
Everyone's seen that first recording, fuzzy and jumpy and blurred, the first message Earth ever got from anywhere else. Everyone's seen Dad in his old IASA khakis, beaming brighter than any planet's sun, with six-year-old me on his lap. They all know the sight of Mom behind him, the only one in the cosmos who could match his face for happines in that moment.
But they don't know what it felt like. That's mine, and mine alone. I am the only one who knows how it felt to be there, sitting in that tiny ship, staring into the lens of the little camera Dad sent the message with. I alone know what it felt like to sit and lean against my father’s chest, and feel the vibration of the words everyone knows by heart:
"Canaveral, this is Commander John Crichton with the Farscape One. And, uh, not just me... Dad, you on the line? I got some stories to tell you."
He told everyone. And they listened.
***
Even if I ditch everything else, I want to keep the anecdote about the heat. It's a cool story, and it ties in to something I want to do later. If I get time, I'll blather about the J & A characterizatiosn I'm trying for: scarred as hell, with an awful lot of sharp edges, but not broken. Not completely. Not anymore. And not the best parents to Lyn, but she's got plenty of other role models in her life.
***
Everyone says I have my mother's eyes.
I guess it's true--they're the same shape, though bluer-- but she's not the one I take after. I don't take after either of my parents, really. I'm the in-between one, the girl without a planet. It's a result of my upbringing.
You don't know the story? I though everyone did, on Earth and in the Territories and beyond. Everyone knows our family on sight.
Sometimes, that's nice. We’re celebrities, and that can be fun. Other times, it's really not.
Like when I was four, and the crew of a Marauder-- one of the few who weren't destroyed in that particular battle, and the fewer who didn't surrender-- got the bright idea of kidnapping me from the peace talks. They thought they could reclaim the whole system for the Peacekeepers easy, all with onle helpless little hostage.
In those days, not everyone knew what my parents were really capable of. For that matter, *nobody* knew what I was capable of.
It’s not a long story. The soldiers didn't think to take away my comms. Mom and Dad got a message through-- they told me how to access the ship’s atmospherics, and how to turn up the heat. I was young, but I've always been smart for my age.
By the time Mom and Dad boarded the ship, the soldiers were incapacitated. I hadn't made it hot enough to hurt them permanently, or anything. But after being outwitted by a child, and seeing the temperatures that so damaged them only make me a little sweaty, they were more than willing to surrender. They didn’t even know that I am only half Sebacean.
Funny, to think of that. These days, everyone knows all about us.
Everyone's seen that first recording, fuzzy and jumpy and blurred, the first message Earth ever got from anywhere else. Everyone's seen Dad in his old IASA khakis, beaming brighter than any planet's sun, with six-year-old me on his lap. They all know the sight of Mom behind him, the only one in the cosmos who could match his face for happines in that moment.
But they don't know what it felt like. That's mine, and mine alone. I am the only one who knows how it felt to be there, sitting in that tiny ship, staring into the lens of the little camera Dad sent the message with. I alone know what it felt like to sit and lean against my father’s chest, and feel the vibration of the words everyone knows by heart:
"Canaveral, this is Commander John Crichton with the Farscape One. And, uh, not just me... Dad, you on the line? I got some stories to tell you."
He told everyone. And they listened.
***
Even if I ditch everything else, I want to keep the anecdote about the heat. It's a cool story, and it ties in to something I want to do later. If I get time, I'll blather about the J & A characterizatiosn I'm trying for: scarred as hell, with an awful lot of sharp edges, but not broken. Not completely. Not anymore. And not the best parents to Lyn, but she's got plenty of other role models in her life.
