Warning: psychobabbling, spoilers for s2, s3, and s4 in the portions that involve Stark, or the lack of him. language--ie: our bad words, not theirs.
Note: Takes place between the ending scenes of BT, many refs to the events of JQ and TC with some others here and there. Probably not for the biggest Stark/Zhaan fans. (I love Zhaan because she's a hypocrite, not because she's Protector of Moya...)
Summary: Shortly after the events of Katrazi, a shattered Stark confronts John about a certain game blob and its contents.
Stark lingered like a whipped puppy outside of John's doorway, one shivering, boney hand grasped around the lattice tightly as if to prevent himself from running away. As John glanced at him over his shoulder, Stark quickly averted his eyes, biting his lower lip.
The banik hadn't been staring at John; he'd been staring at the game blob sitting very purposefully on John's makeshift desk, knowing full-well what it was and hating himself for it. When John grabbed the blob and stood up, crossing the space between them, Stark tried to veer away, but the human's hand darted through and grabbed his too-thin wrist, yanking him back again. It was surprisingly easy despite the fact that Stark wasn't nearly as weak as he pretended to be--as an enslaved race, only the strongest of baniks ever survived--but under scarran torture and heaven only knew what else since his parting at Valldon, Stark had lost a lot of weight even though he'd been thin to begin with. There was an undeniable gauntness to his skin, and no one seemed to have noticed just yet that the banik was far more ill than he let on. His palm in John's grip was clammy and chilled, constantly shivering even though Moya's temperature wasn't cold at all.
When John stared at him without anger or accusation, Stark refused to meet his eyes. He lingered on the gameblob before avoiding that too, and tried to pull away again, rather uselessly. John didn't seem angry about the blob, but then there were other things on his mind. Given a day or two to mull it over, the human's mood in Stark's presence would probably change very quickly. And it should.
Stark had broken the code of Stykera. He had done something that shamed him far worse than any failure, any lie, any torture, any hate he had ever felt. He'd sold a dead man's memory--a friend's memory--to Yoti the game master in the hopes that the vile creature would just let him go.
Stark shook then, hard, and John's voice brought him back again.
"...not angry."
He blinked. "W-what?"
"I'm not angry," John said. He slid around the half-open door and held out the gameblob warily, wormhole blue eyes searching the banik's face for the man that Zhaan had fallen in love with.
He didn't find it.
Ever since the Plokavians, Stark had never been the same, but ever since Zhaan's death, Valldon, Yoti and the scarrans, he had only gotten that much worse--sometimes, he couldn't remember who he was anymore. Not that he ever knew to begin with...
Stark reached to take the blob, but his hand shook too hard and he had to put it down again, nervously fisting his sleeve. His single eye watered with some strange, horrifying emotion, and he shook his head yet again in that erratic, convulsing madness, the dead and the living and the inbetween all coming back to hate him.
Not angry, John said.
But Stark was, because this Stark didn't know the meaning of forgiveness.
"Why?"
John shrugged something limp, something faded, something like Talyn's John had done just before he'd went away too, just before Stark took his memories and promised to honor them.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, said the Human to the Banik Slave once upon a time ago.
He remembered a terrible day at the shadow depository when John had told Stark that he could do anything, anything at all, but don't you ever lie, Astro.
"M'tired," the human said, softly. "Real tired."
John took Stark's hand, and set the blob in his palm without comment. Stark nearly dropped it, but the human just shook his head and kept it there.
Eye contact, two to one.
Pants on fire.
He didn't know what to say.
"I--" blame you for everything.
"I--" wish Aeryn stayed dead the first time.
"I--" really frelling hate you, John Crichton.
"I'm--" not sorry at all.
"I'm tired." Of all the pain you have caused me.
"I'm really tired too." Really, really tired of you.
Stark made to turn back the way he'd come, knowing that his control was slipping, but John's struggling voice called back to him, half-broken with grief. It stilled him like nothing else ever did.
Even now, even after everything, the human's soul still wreaked of Zhaan's love.
And he hated it.
"Zh--She... she asked me if I wasted her death." When Stark met his eyes, they were wet with unshed tears. "I didn't, did I?" Silent tears.
For all the hate he had ever felt in his life.
He couldn't lie to John Crichton again.
So he said nothing.
John backed into his room awkwardly with Stark's silence, rubbing furiously at his eyes to quell the emotions raging through his mind. Stark watched him go and shook his head, nearly in denial.
In a soft whisper, so sane, he asked, "When she asked you, what did you tell her?"
John stopped his retreat just as Stark had done only a moment before, but didn't turn around. His voice was more controlled now, more detatched.
Stark understood better than most.
"I told her I didn't know," John whispered.
"And what did she say to that?"
"She said... that I should find out. Before anyone else dies."
Stark gripped the gameblob carefully in his hands, trying to remember what Zhaan would do for him now. She loved John, she trusted John's actions. She loved John. John.
When Stark stayed behind on Valldon to find her, he had confronted her spirit during Yoti's imprisonment--she had been angry with him for the betrayal of John's memories, despite his own agony at the time.
What had Rygel called her? Big beautiful blue bitch?
Oh, Stark liked Rygel. Rygel understood him.
Zhaan did not not, because he had apologized, and she wouldn't let him die.
Not your time, she'd said. You should know better.
And he did, but that never amounted to anything.
Don't you want me? he'd asked. Don't you want me to be with you?
Not yet.
He'd laughed so hard that Yoti's mate came to beat him.
Not yet, she said.
Laughed, laughed, laughed.
Not yet.
Stark said never again when Zhaan faded away as she always frelling did, and then Avatar Stark laughed with the real Stark and said that if you couldn't have her, you could make her; they could make her and have her and be with her forever.
And they would kill John Crichton for taking her away in the first place.
You should know better.
Stark had been lying for so long in order to survive that he didn't know truth from fiction anymore. He didn't know what he should have known better than to do, he just knew that he knew it, knew it like he knew that Earth's Hummingbird Feed gave the scarrans brainpower to breed things like Scorpy who grew up to hate the scarrans so much that they tortured poor innocent Stark the Stykeran who knew Everything There Was To Know About Scarrans even if nobody ever cared to ask except for the chair, the chair, chair, chair, two hundred plus lovely frelling rounds of the chair, all for frelling NOTHING because the scarrans made a biloid of him before he'd ever got the chance to torture Scorpy, and then Johnny figured it alllllll out, because everyone always listens to Johnny, the frelling, fucking--
He knew what Zhaan would have done.
But Zhaan, as John's colorful language provided, was a hypocrite.
NotyetnotyetnotyetnotYET--
I stayed on my side, but I should have gone to your side
--not yet.
you stayed on your side, but you should have gone to my side
Fucking Zhaan.
my side
Fucking John.
mine
Fucking Aeryn.
mysidemysidemy--
Fucking Scorpy.
NOT FUCKING YOURS
Fucking scarrans.
fucking mine
Fucking this side and that side and the underside of Staleek's fucking loomas.
Oh, he liked that word. John had such interesting words, interesting memories, interesting--
Tell me about The Human, Yoti said, over and over and over again.
So frelling interesting.
"I think you already know the answer, Crichton."
How did his voice get so calm? What were they speaking of, again?
Let me tell you about the Horrid Human And His Band.
"Yeah," John said quietly from his room, shuffling to his bed. He collapsed in it and said nothing else.