Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 642 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Daring Aeryn To Love You
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 18 | Aired on 2003.02.21
This is the Chiana that Aeryn could be: everything on the surface. Nowhere to hide when things go south. If you're a basket case all the time, it's a strength: there's nowhere else to go. No way to hide your love, your desire. Nowhere for your pride to stash your joy. She is open, and she is beautiful. And she is terrified. "Hey, Crichton, untie me? You know...I know, I...always tie up people I like," she says, cracking a joke. Looking down at her shaking hands. Stark shakes her head, quivering all over, close to breaking. "If you kill her, I won't help you. I won't cross her over." John crouches and looks into their strange, lovely faces. "Yes you will." Chiana's confused. "What is he talking about? What is he talking about?" Stark or John. What is he talking about? What are they talking about. Stark looks at Chiana, then at the floor. John tries reason: "Look, I know this doesn't make any sense, but...you're gonna die in half an arn, and there's nothing I can do to stop that." (He takes something glorious, this blended, ascended beauty, and makes of it a broken mockery. He takes pain and he adds pain and fear, and all the while he's saying, "This is necessary. This is necessary for me." Not even the fucking Peacekeepers.) Chiana jerks: "What? What do you mean?" Stark stares at him; Chiana declares she's not going to die. "Yes, you are," he says, and stands up, leaving them there on the floor. His capacity for love and his capacity for innocence, even after being broken and used: the truth of the holy body, that Innocence and Experience aren't just a binary, they're a road. From Innocence to Experience, and on into Grace. The place you can't remember heading when you think you've lost everything. Redemption. Chiana stares at the place where he was, crouched. But John's already gone.
"Listen, Crichton," she says, her gamine grin perfection. "Are you in some kind of trouble? Who is this feck, is he making you do this? If you untie me, I can help you." She trembles. "I always do." She always does. They always do. They pull him back across when he's forgotten how far he's already gone. He pulls Winona on her. This is perversion. She gasps; Stark stares; Scorpius "helps." "It is not Aeryn," he whispers, almost comfortingly. "Looks a lot like her," John bites out. Chiana smiles, beautifully innocent, scared to death. "Okay, the joke's over. Okay? I...I was stupid to take it this seriously, because...it's a joke. Right? You have to stop. Because you can't kill me. You...you can't." He already did. John stares down his pistol into her face. Lover. Sister. Soulmate. Aeryn with purity; Chiana with maturity. Something precious. She shakes her head, lost control, and sniffs loudly. In the silence and the staring, his voice finally breaks. "No. No, I can't." The wall he always hits. He lowers the pistol, Chiana sighs.