Previously: Aeryn had lots of secrets, like how she was pregnant and how Scorpius was under her asylum. John also had lots of secrets, like he was on the smack so he could get over Aeryn. The universe loves secrets. Today, Scorpius is walking through Moya with a herd of DRDs, demanding to know why there's a trading vessel still aboard. "The negotiation is proving difficult," Pilot explains: they're gouging our kids on star charts because they know Moya has to get through Tormented Space. Um, how come Scorpius is not doing the negotiating? Knowing them, it's probably like Rygel and...who else is a crackhead? Noranti. I know Rygel has this diplomatic ability and whatever, but they've got Scorpius now. He could sell ice cubes to Alaskans and still end up drilling for oil.
Scorpius joins John, Aeryn, and D'Argo at the rear of the hangar bay, where they're watching Noranti and Rygel negotiate with the armed traders. Chiana's watching too. There's that symmetry where the big kids have equal guns on the other side as the game goes on. The traders are gross, with sores on their faces like the horrors of crystal meth. Aeryn's watching, tapping her fingers on her pistol with her teeth clenched, pretty much disgusted by John's presence. John watches her, but she won't talk to him or tell him what's wrong. "Musta been something I said." Noranti gets the traders over a barrel and she and Rygel retire; on their way out of the room Scorpius points out they look more than usually smug: "Your deal, it was successful?" Do Scorpius and Noranti ever directly address each other? Rygel giggles that Scorpius has no idea how successful, and the traders bring out one last piece of merchandise.
A young woman, held by her hair, bent over, hand in her hair where it's being pulled. Gasping. Chiana crouches now, up on her feet. This episode is stupid in many ways, but the balancing act itself is pretty much half the job, and they've been doing it all season. It's easier to swallow if you pretend Talikaa, the girl, doesn't actually exist. Like on Nip/Tuck, where nobody's real except those three people. She's not a plot device, the show's too smart to leave it at that. Call her a mirror. Call her Beloved.
"We enjoyed her," says the trader. "Plenty of good pleasure left." The girl stares at Noranti, lip quivering; Noranti signals nothing. "No value to an old woman, but..." Noranti turns away, leaves him talking. He puts his hands on the girl, one on a breast, the other rubbing her abdomen, and lower: "...But to men?" She grabs at his hands as he laughs; Chiana shrieks like a beast. She pulls a pistol on him: "Touch her again, fekik, and you die!" Everyone draws; D'Argo yanks out his Qualta once again. The trader stands behind the girl, now released, with arms crossed. John's got Winona trained on them, and he and D'Argo try to calm her down. Chiana's horrified: "Have you forgotten what it's like to be a prisoner?" But that's not what she's asking. What she's really asking is something only John knows. D'Argo closes his eyes, because he knows this look of Chiana's. Chiana asks impossible questions. The trader offers the girl for $800; Chiana begs the crew at large, asking them all: "We can't just leave her!" Finally, she nods to herself, after everyone's avoided her eyes. Only Rygel can say it's not his problem, everyone else has to be silent. "Okay. I'll buy her myself if I have to." Rygel reminds her about the Vorc; she almost smiles.
"What's your name?" To strange clicks, hums, a sound like harpsichord: Talikaa. She lowers her gun arm and stands near the girl; she points the gun at her head. "Here's the deal. We take her, or I take her head off." A choice she would have appreciated; a choice she's nearly taken before, on her stupid Nebari planet. If it were just about Chiana's rape trauma, that would be one thing, but we're looking at all of her now: a girl whose fire was dampened before the season began, who's been dark and fractured and burnt all season, never speaking or telling. Rygel tells them all to go hell, but D'Argo sees the desperation in Chiana. "Rygel, pay them." Rygel stalls, D'Argo screams. John catches on: "Sparky! Cough it up." It's not about money, it's about Chiana. Impossible questions. John grabs some cash from Rygel and -- Winona skyward -- hands it over. "A smart purchase," grins the trader. "You'll have fun with her." Chiana screams again, pain and rage. Scorpius watches, concerned. He knows where he came from. D'Argo and John agree it's a bad idea, but they know they can just drop her off on the first "nice planet" they find.
None of them have ever been chattel, except Chiana. None bought and sold like this. Chiana promises Talikaa she's a friend; Talikaa whimpers. Monstervision close-up on Chiana as Talikaa looks at her. She touches the bare skin of Chiana's chest and pushes away, gasping. She bounces from Moyan to Moyan, in a complicated choreography, less chaos than total coverage: from Aeryn to John, from Rygel to Scorpius, who -- of course -- finally catches the terrified girl. Each of them in monstervision, each of them touched by the mirror. She reaches up to touch the skin of his cheek, near his eye, but he pushes her hand away. D'Argo grabs her and hands her off to Chiana: "Take her to your room. She is your responsibility." Chiana leans in: "Hey, Talikaa. Come on. I'll get you some food and some better clothes." They leave, Scorpius follows. Noranti watches everything, as Pilot informs the crew that the traders' vessel has left the bay. How much does she know? Ever? She spends so much time being mysterious.
John breathes in, quickly. Turns to Aeryn, who slowly looks back. He stands, thumbs in belt loops, and walks to meet her face to face. "So you're angry with me? Let's talk." We've heard this one before: "I don't want to talk." He starts to try again, but she clubs hell out of the side of his head, and he staggers. Aeryn leaves with a swish of duster and long fake hair. Credits.
John follows Aeryn down the corridor as she's telling him they've nothing to talk about. "The hell there's not. You hit me!" Aeryn looks at him sidelong: "You lied to me." And this is rhetorically maybe not so smart, because he points out that she lied too, when she said nothing was bothering her. So, I guess he's Homer Simpson in this episode. Fabulous. At least this week there's a plot reason. "Okay, so I didn't tell you about the poppers, you didn't tell me about the baby. Does that mean I get to hit you now?" She looks him right between the eyes. "I would not advise that." He climbs up onto a workbench and looks her in the face: "Oh, you...do not scare me, missy." She gives him a very fucking scary look and he backs off. "Okay, you scare me a little." She resumes working. "You want the truth? I was taking that crap from Noranti...to forget you. But you gotta admit..." Don't say it! You're too cute to die! "...It's kinda romantic." I fully expected her to shoot him at that point. What are they teaching boys these days? "I'm just crazy about you," he says, training the full power of those baby blues on her. "So it's my fault," she says, gone cold. Deaf to his protests. "You should have been stronger."
"Oh, God!" he groans. "Aeryn, please! Honey, give me a break! I'm weak. I'm human." He falls to his knees in front of the workbench: "I'm a guy." Not the point. Don't ever say that. It's the weakest fucking thing you can say. Don't even think it. Aeryn slams a chest closed and walks away. He follows, grabbing her; she whirls and he drops her arm, hands in the air. The story's already started and they don't know it. She's wheeling out of control, grasping at straws; he's giving into despair and whistling in the dark. Everybody gives this last burst of their lie, everybody retreats into their roles without thinking, because contemplation of what's coming shuts them down. So she's never been so cold, so protected; he's never been more pig-headed or self-consciously oblivious. She glares and he points at her, two-handed: "We're gonna be fine." Her face like a mask, chaos behind it: "No. We're not." So still. She fairly runs. "Aeryn. Do not walk away. Much as I love it when you walk away...Aeryn!" He goes on talking to himself. "We're gonna be fine. She likes me." He nods, stares, heads off the other way. Everything's fine.
Talikaa stands quietly, wearing her new outfit: a dusky peach number with a big metallic belt. Long skirt, silver collar. She's got a face like a bowl of dog food in some light, exotic beauty in others. Is she a supermodel? Too short. "Wow! That's much better," Chiana says, doing her weird crotchy dance she does, all around Talikaa, putting her hands on the girl's hips, laughing. "Fits great! Looks nice." Everything's fine. Talikaa chokes out a laugh, mirroring her savior. "It looks, uh...sexy." Talikaa asks what that word means, "sexy," and Chiana's face falls. "Oh, a girl as beautiful as you shouldn't...shouldn't have to ask that." She stands back, holding Talikaa's hands in hers, taking the girl in all at once. "Sexy is, um..." She takes the long way around, nuzzling her hair. "...Sexy." Talikaa leans into it. "You like sexy?" Chiana circles, smelling, touching her from hip to shoulder, heads close. "...Yeah. It's my...it's my favorite color." She puts her chin on Talikaa's shoulder and closes her eyes: "Makes you feel good, knowing men want you." Talikaa jerks away, and looks back over her shoulder at Chiana, who circles around back in front, in silent response to her fear. This isn't a conversation, it's a monologue.
"Sorry," Chiana says. To herself. "Most men aren't...aren't like those traders. Most men are, uh...are pretty drad." Monstervision again: "You like men for sex?" Chiana, one last burst of her old ego, retreating to a dead shell: "They're good for other things, but they're great for sex." This last said in a kind of mad ecstasy. The fact that we spend most of our days playing out these lies, telling propaganda in service to the person we think we are. They never figure out the MO here, not really, but it's more interesting to talk about it up front. If you made a list of five things about yourself, anything at all: "Woman." "Teacher." "Scaper." "Foodie." "Intellectual." Or if you're Chiana: "Rape activist." "Healthy sexual being." "Ecstatic." And then pick that list up in five minutes, and see how sad and flaky and thin the paper is: how every single thing on that list is really just ego, just identification with something larger, to give yourself context and power, power over your circumstance and pain. A way to make your messy, awful experience into a story. If that list were a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand words long, it would never approach who you actually are. An infinity of words doesn't make you real, or any more real than you already were before you started the list. Chiana loses her sex drive not because it's her "strongest trait," like she thinks. She loses her "sex drive" because that's what she needs most right now: a reason to think she's possible of getting back her innocence, of enjoying sex the way she used to. It's this lack of hope she's talking to, this fear and abyss they're all fighting. Not the strongest trait, but the one they need most this week, in order to head into Act Three of the season. This episode is stupid in many ways, but it's necessary in more.
Chiana gulps as Talikaa steps closer: "Just men?" Chiana stares at Talikaa, thinking, as we all did, I'm sure: "Always kind of assumed not." Talikaa touches Chiana's comm badge, the breast beside it: "You like this?" She caresses Chiana's face; Chiana turns her lips toward her fingers. Talikaa strokes down her cheek, under her jaw, as Chiana gasps at her touch. "Is this sex?" Chiana kisses Talikaa's hand and smiles at the question. "Yeah," she nods, all angles again. "It's...it's getting pretty close." They're wrong. This isn't sex, it's a Peaches song. It's masturbation, it's freshman year, it's a Tori Amos concert. You don't fuck your pain, you don't make sensuous Sapphic love to it: you take it out behind the fucking barn. Aeryn comes across this little scene and watches as Chiana and Talikaa lean in vibing hardcore, kissing. Grinning. "Chiana," Aeryn says, in that voice that you don't ignore. The kiss stops, and Chiana looks at the door; Talikaa looks away, one hand still on Chiana's breast.
Out in the corridor, Aeryn's all ready to take on the big sister role, and Chiana's ready to be the outraged little sister: "Okay, what is your problem?" Aeryn, who even on her best day wouldn't understand this little maneuver -- though she's done it too, on a planet of ghosts -- is like, "So you basically brought this girl onboard to make her your own toy?" Aeryn stands at attention, Chiana leans in: "We were just...talking. Girl stuff." She slaps leather, putting her hand on Aeryn's waist. "Oh, come on. I get feisty. I'm not like you." Chiana pushes Aeryn against the wall, holding her arms, leaning in close. "You don't need it. I do." This isn't a conversation, it's a monologue. Watch her tell herself: "It's not a crime." It's not just the perps that return to the scene of the crime. We know the story, I don't need to tell you the story, but it's all here. The lies she's telling herself. It's horrible. Aeryn pulls back, into the wall, with every inch of herself, looking down at this frightening girl. "This is excessive even for you, Chiana." I really like that line, even in the midst of this awful scene. Chiana plays cute so much of the time that when you're asked to look directly at it, it hurts too much. She smiles and leans closer. "Well, if you're not into it...I could always ask Crichton." She lays one finger along Aeryn's jaw, leans in to kiss her neck. "You mind?" Aeryn fights a three-way battle, held against the wall by a girl, by a child so much smaller than herself. With a need and a fear so much larger than anything. In turmoil she's spent the season holding back, now feeling those waves break upon the shore, holding onto icy control. It's her own thing she's dealing with that makes her the only person capable of dealing with Chiana right now; it's the way our sicknesses fit together like Legos that keeps us from growing. "Do what you want," Aeryn says, pushing past. Chiana watches her leave, and breathes, and summons up the will to continue the lie. Everything's fine.
John whistles, hapless and fancy-free, unworried, optimistic as ever, as Talikaa peers around the door of his quarters. He's playing with a slinky, tossing it out and back like a yo-yo. "Hey! Hey, how you doing?" He invites her in, apologizing for the mess. He starts half-heartedly picking things up. "Chocolate? Fresh from Earth." Like I said, I always hate this John; I'm glad the show realizes it's enough of an aberration, this Goofy John persona. Talikaa shakes her head wildly and steps back. "Don't be afraid! Come on in, we're friends!" He sits down, becoming smaller and less imposing. She comes in slowly, hands behind her back, shy and hesitant: "For sex?" He laughs, like that's not a huge red flag, and talks about the chocolate in his mouth: "No, no. That's a different kind of friend. A special friend." They laugh together; it's not really that funny. This is the John that finds everything funny. She finally sits and he nods at her. "A special friend. Like you and Aeryn." He cocks her head at her, taken aback, a little hurt, then retreats to his shell. "Chiana, right?" He grins stupidly. She nods. "But I can see it for myself. Anyone can. You are hers, and she is yours. Or am I wrong?" Monstervision as he keeps the act going, bobbling his head around and smiling: "No, you're right! You're absolutely right." He looks away and their smiles both fall; when he looks back to see her staring, they both burst into laughter verging on the hysterical. Everything's fine.
D'Argo stands at a projected star-chart: "These maps look legitimate. Information about the dangerous sectors is accurate, it should be easy for us to evade them. Looks like the old witch actually did a good job." He turns it off, and of course Rygel's offended: "Don't I get any credit?" For what? Rygel throws him a coin, which he's actually altered to appear twelve times its worth. Which is to say, the reality, the real worth of the coin, has been leveraged against a counterfeited worth that it never had. The coin is pretending to be something it never was. "You cheated the traders?" Rygel laughs. "More for me!" If Rygel were being himself he wouldn't admit it; if D'Argo were being himself, he'd roll his eyes and fix it. Instead, they both get hyperactive: Rygel gives propaganda about how terribly greedy he is, how he's fucked them all once again and gotten away scot-free, and D'Argo simply screeches about how stupid and selfish Rygel is. John watches them play this out, like puppets before a screen; D'Argo attacks the Hynerian and John rushes in to break them up. "Sparky? What'd you wanna do that for? These are not the guys we wanta piss off. We have to be out here for a while and we need to be able to do business." D'Argo bitches further; Rygel tells him the forgeries would fool anyone. Any other week, perhaps. This week it doesn't actually matter. This week, forgery is all they have.
"Ryg, you can't do stuff like this," John sighs. "You're jamming us up." D'Argo screams and offers to give Rygel to the traders for their whore. Whoa! Noranti comes to watch the proceedings as D'Argo goes ever more nutso. John offers them a snack and Rygel immediately Jazzies over to claim the food; D'Argo explodes with rage and knocks it to the floor. Rygel gasps and steps back, D'Argo snarls at him, John steps in once more. "Chill. Chill, bra. It's under control, all right? We're gonna make it right." Noranti slips into the room. "We're gonna phone these guys, we're gonna tell 'em we made a mistake, and we're gonna make it right." Rygel asks if he's fahrbot, and D'Argo goes off on a thing about how he's the Captain. Rygel takes off all, "Keep your hands off my shit," and D'Argo goes after him again. D'Argo's strongest trait isn't rage, it's fear. It's rage he needs. John begs D'Argo not to follow; D'Argo slams past. "Pilot, can you get that trading ship on the phone?" Pilot offers to try, but notes that transmissions are unreliable in this part of Tormented Space. "You can do it, man. You're smart enough. You're good enough. Doggone it, people like you." Obnoxious clichés, now. Everything that bugs about John, this week, is turned around and made awesome. He can't even come up with his own platitudes this week: just his stupid pop culture refs nobody gets. Pilot asks if he's all right. But everything's fine!
Talikaa approaches D'Argo in a corridor and he yells at her. "What are you doing here? I told you to stay in Chiana's quarters." She snits at him, in monstervision. "I don't have to listen to you. No one else does. Nobody listens to you. They listen to Crichton, but not to you." He does not even have time for that shit: "Get back to those quarters or I will throw you off this ship myself." Talikaa smiles and watches him run off, slamming into Sikozu hard as he goes. She and Noranti stare at Talikaa, who looks back for a second before wandering off. Oh man, do I want to see Sikozu and Talikaa face off. Like Sikozu would start telling the truth about shit and be all, "I can start fires with my hands, I can float short distances into the air, I'm some kind of spy for somebody but also somebody else, and my arms and legs come off like a He-Man. My hair is going to look super-shitty in 'The Peacekeeper Wars.' Also, my eyeballs go like this!"
Scorpius's cooling rod brain thing is like a circus ride now, or a spice rack. Lots of rods on a spinning wheel, which contract back into the thing that goes into his brain. This always troubles me on many levels. All the rods in the thing are red, and Sikozu's spinning them. "Noranti seems to think that everyone is acting very strangely," says Sikozu. "HOW CAN YOU TELL?" says everybody. The mechanism stops spinning and Scorpius asks what she thinks about it all. She does...things...with the thing...and says everybody's agitated. "Unusually emotional...everyone except Aeryn." The rods turn blue. "She's colder than usual." The things go back in his head where they belong, as he hisses and acts creepy: "She wills herself against emotions. Like any good soldier." Like any good liar.
Scorpius approaches John's quarters and is privy to a show we've only seen like a hundred times; this time it's ugly. "You. On the table. Right now," says Chiana, straddling John and pushing him down. Chiana's like the strongest person this week because everybody's out of it. Her fake horniness will not be denied! She's like your boyfriend on the way out of Brokeback Mountain. Kind of cute, kind of a scary little surprise party in the middle of the evening. (...And that's how beer was invented. Also fraternities.) "Yo, what's gotten into you?!" John tries to resist! But her gay panic is too powerful! "Nothing, yet." She laughs and pushes him down and leans over him. She moves her head around his face, trying to kiss him. "Oh, okay. I just figured out what you need," John laughs, and boy does she get wriggly at that one, "you need a cold shower." Ding, try again. Chiana leans way back, keeping herself strapped in with just her legs. This is all very confusing, as a viewer. Figures she'd be absolutely the sexiest in the one episode you're not allowed to find her sexy. I think there's something in here about how you must be a good father, or else we'll have more strippers.
"It's okay," Chiana groans. John wigs. "I asked Aeryn, she said she didn't care about you anyway." She arcs herself back up, leans over him again. Pop goes the bubble; John's scaffold effectively falls down in a crash at this point. "Yes she does," he insists, grabbing her arms again. And Chiana just giggles. "No she doesn't." John promises himself -- this isn't a conversation, it's a monologue -- that he and Aeryn are happy. "She loves me." Scorpius watches still. "Oh, come on. You know you want it." She leans over towards his cheek; this is so gross. Scorpius calls John's name, and he turns his head to the door. "Oh, hey Scorp." Heh. I love John. Chiana invites Scorpius to "watch," and John protests there's nothing to see, finally summoning the strength to push her off him. "We're done. You're leaving." Chiana slaps his hand away and stands. "Hezmana to you. What'd she do, cut 'em off?" Well, kinda. John gets up and rearranges his vest as Chiana approaches Scorpius at the door, angling herself in on him. He growls, but his head does move towards hers. He hisses, pulls himself back; Chiana leaves to go molest somebody else.
"Whoa," John mumbles. "How 'bout that, kids?" He laughs to Scorpius: "Man, she's in overdrive today!" Scorpius looks at him: "She's not alone." John gets out some homework and spreads it on the table. "How are you feeling?" asks Scorpius, in that strange tone where you know it matters. "Good! Never better," John says. His tone is vague and confused, like his brain isn't working right but he hasn't realized it yet. "We got a little thing going on with the traders, but that's not a problem." Scorpius comes closer and addresses him seriously: "We do have a problem. Your crewmates are behaving very oddly." John points out that this is nothing new; this is his lie. Everything is fine. This is the trait that gets them through every awful plan. So much of the books get settled in this episode, I love it. Scorpius tells him Noranti disagrees with this diagnosis, and John -- against all reason -- discounts Noranti's judgment. "We're fine." (There's a twelve-stepper thing that comes up a lot in discussion of this show, w/r/t Aeryn usually and having to do with the shell stuff, that could really just be the title of this episode: "Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional." Yeah, they're all fucking "fine.") Scorpius points out that a whole host of people are acting weird -- John, Chiana, Aeryn, Rygel, and D'Argo; leaving of course himself and the other creeps on board -- and have been doing so since that girl came to Moya. "You think Talikaa is doing a T'raltixx? A mind-frell? Right, let's go talk to her. Come on, she's in Chiana's quarters." John jumps up and starts for the door; Scorpius is annoyed at this continued bravado, as usual ten steps ahead and seeing how this will play: "No, she isn't. She's disappeared. And we cannot find her."
Talikaa ducks out of a doorway, appearing to John and Aeryn, who are searching together. She's only just a mirror. John steps forward and Talikaa pulls back, against the wall. "It's all right, it's all right," says John. It's not a conversation. "Everything's gonna be all right, we're not gonna hurt you. Don't be afraid." Talikaa runs off. "We got her," John comms. "Tier three, maintenance bay." John and Aeryn enter the bay; John softly sing-songing. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." Talikaa watches, monstervision in her bolthole. "Talika," he whispers, as Aeryn cases the ceiling. "It's all right," he whispers to her. "We know she's here." A loud, howling scream rings out in the silence, dropping both John and Aeryn and bathing them in a strange golden light. A giant spider drops from the ceiling and scuttles to them; it puts its nasty feelers on his lovely face. Commercial. What kind of person are you? Are you the kind of person who buys this? Or that? What do our purchases say about us? Nothing. Zhaan goes and gets another Psych degree; Chiana orders up a grip of Girls Gone Wild; somebody makes fun of Rachel Ray; everybody flips to PBS.
Aeryn and John wake up on the floor to each other, stretching their faces and limbs experimentally. Aeryn grimaces and rolls onto her side: "What the frell happened? I heard a scream." They sit up. "Me too. Then the lights went out." Aeryn touches some bumps on John's temple, causing him to jump. "What is that?" She has some too. She touches them and groans. Infection, and now harvest: things very quickly heading down the shitter at this point.
D'Argo follows Chiana, bitching about how this is all her fault; Rygel Jazzies along before them. "In fact, I should have shot her myself!" Chiana tells him, in no uncertain terms, that D'Argo won't be hurting Talikaa; Rygel blathers at length about how everybody owes him and it's high time they paid up. I don't even know what he's talking about. John comms to D'Argo that Talikaa's more dangerous than they thought, and D'Argo is like, "Big surprise," earning a punch on the arm from Chiana. "She's got some kind of scream that knocked us flat," John explains. D'Argo, Chiana, and Rygel continue towards tier three; Talikaa watches them from above. There's a loud screech, and Chiana whirls to look. Over comms, John and Aeryn hear the scream, and a growl, and John calls out for D'Argo. They struggle to get it together and go find the others.
Sikozu meets D'Argo, Chiana, and Rygel's prone bodies on the floor at a junction; Talikaa's touching them with its feelers, harvesting. She notices Sikozu and immediately attacks. Sikozu flees back down the corridor, eventually reaching a dead end. Nice call, Leviathan expert. She jumps into the fan room, negotiating the whirling blades, and then cases the room, terrified. After some long silence with occasional scuttling, the spider drops on her; they scream together. Scorpius hears, in another corridor, and immediately heads toward her, growling.
The fingers of Sikozu's hand operate mechanically, curling and extending. She's on the other side of the room from it. EEE! Yikes! She reaches toward her arm, and we see that one of her legs is also across the floor. We watch Scorpius enter, from our vantage above the blades, and he growls quietly at Sikozu's brutalized form. Noranti follows him in and they make their way to Sikozu; she rolls back and looks up at him. He leans over her beautiful face and hisses. "I will kill your attacker." Sikozu closes her eyes, quiet. "I promise." He begins to gasp and choke; Noranti orders her to collect Sikozu's parts, implying she can still be saved. I don't know if Scorpius knew that. I certainly didn't. The what now? She gets a new power every week. And each is more off-putting than the last!
John staggers behind Aeryn toward Command, Aeryn fretting -- fretting! -- about how it's so mysterious that Talikaa is a horrible spider beast: "I don't understand why she's doing this! I actually felt sorry for her, but she's going to kill us all. We have to do something!" There are registers in Claudia Black's range we never heard before. John begs her to calm down, slow down, give him a second. "I feel like crap. Whatever she did knocked the wind outta my sails." Aeryn keeps talking crazy and long: "Listen, we won't have much time, she could be anywhere and we have to find her." Her face is a like a knot in rope, all twists and nonsense; confusion and urgency. "Damn, woman! Would you give it a rest?" He lowers himself and rests his head. "No. No, please don't be useless," she...begs. "Don't be useless." She hurries towards the door, more like Howard Hughes right now than you might have thought possible. She's like this close to writing on the walls.
D'Argo staggers in with Chiana, bearing the marks of Talikaa's harvest. "She must have snuck up from behind us," Chiana figures; Aeryn looks at them, all akimbo and migraine-y. Just a pile of broken glass. Chiana whines that she feels "not so right," Rygel agrees. Aeryn begs them not to be weak, still speaking the language of OCD and lots of crazy. "We have to pull ourselves together and we have to fight back." John asks how they can do that: "She kicked our asses! Just give it up!" Aeryn screams some nonsense and runs hysterically from the room. Chiana asks about the damage there, and John just head-desks like he's going to take a wee nap. D'Argo suggests they have a chat with Talikaa and ask her why she'd attack them. Pilot tells him the DRDs haven't found her yet. John's like, "She can probably turn invisible!" Which is funny, but also: hark at Debbie Downer all of a sudden. Pilot mentions that also, the traders are on their way back, and he can't seem to establish communications with them. "Well, their intentions could be hostile," says D'Argo thoughtfully. "Oh course they're hostile!" John whines. "Rygel screwed them, they're coming back to screw us." Rygel hums contentedly: "Then let the traders come. We'll give them everything they want. All the currency we have. It's only brought us conflict anyway."
Chiana, who was about to wander off, turns around at this, and offers some obnoxious exposition about what's going on, like the altruism anvil just now weren't doing her job for her. "Aeryn is...falling apart," she says, noting everybody else's weirdness, and then there's a stupid beat where D'Argo acts all pacifist -- "I have no reason to be angry...with dialogue and compromise..." -- and Chiana stomps his foot a couple of times and grabs his mivonks and proves that something weird is going on, which Scorpius and Noranti have been saying since the episode started. I hate this kind of crap. If you honestly feel like you haven't shown us, the step isn't to tell us, it's to try harder. So I won't recap. Chiana puts D'Argo's hands on her breasts and he gets goofy about how he can't make out with her in front of John -- and we'll save the whole dissertation on that for right around never -- and she pronounces that the "tralk" has stolen her sex drive.
"I'm the indomitable one! I whistle stupid songs and make dumb plans but somehow I muddle through! America! Fuck yeah!" "I'm the horny one! I'm a sexy girl with no brain or thoughts or feelings! Dress like me at your convention!" "I'm the anal-retentive! I have a gun! If I ever stopped clenching I'd turn inside out! Women are stupid crying babies! So I'm not a woman!" "I like stuff! Having it, taking it, whatever! I'm just thumbs up on stuff!" "RRRRR! I'm so angry all the time! My oppression and wrongful imprisonment are whatever! Without my rage, I am just a pussy joke about the sensitive New Age male!" I like the show and I like the characters too much, so we're going to say that this is auto-critique, done on purpose, to show the holes and gaps and persona-caulk they're all going to have to shed to get this season over with. I can admit that it reads just as likely the other way, but: love means never having to say, "You're retarded."
Lots of queasy angles -- the camera work is very subtly off-kilter the whole episode, but this scene in particular adds a grotty tinge to the unbalanced whole -- as Noranti and Scorpius squish Sikozu's severed limbs back into place. She's the objective correlative, and that's the reason she doesn't need to come up against Talikaa like the rest: she's not an arm, or a hand, or a leg, or a foot. Take them away, she's still Sikozu. The thing about this show is the ease with which they take the abstract and shove it, nastily concrete, down your throat. It's like Buffy to the infinite power, but with a serious (and unsettling!) biological focus. And since Sikozu is the only one that can literally have a new physiological trait every week, the burden falls to her: Remove an arm, a leg, a hand, a foot. Remove the lie of sexual wholeness, the lie of rage -- how could D'Argo, of all people, how could Lo'Laan's husband, ever think rage was his strongest trait? -- take the lie of bravado, the lie of consumption without strategy. She's still Sikozu. You're still you.
Pilot comms John that the signal isn't getting to the traders' ship, but that the ship in question seems to be drifting. D'Argo figures that they're powered down to give a no-aggression signal, since they can't communicate, and orders Pilot to bring them into the bay. Chiana yells at Pilot about locating "that frelling Talikaa," and Pilot can only say that her movements are "extraordinary": "The moment a DRD locates her, she's gone again." Aeryn chooses this moment to run in and attack Chiana out of nowhere, acting like a total freak. John grabs her; D'Argo does a hilarious talking-stick kind of move where he lowers the floor with his hands and goes, "Whooooa. Whooooa. Settle." Aeryn chills out and apologizes. The hanger door opens; the trader ship's door has lowered its steps. One of the bastards come staggering out and falls, choking quietly. D'Argo -- to the accompaniment of Rygel's charitable horror -- rushes over to check him out. His face is covered in sores and he dies. Talikaa watches, unseen, from beneath the ship, as John realizes that's the end of this particular story, for them.
Commercial, and then a DRD checking out the dead trader. D'Argo heads into the trader ship with Aeryn and Rygel, and Chiana, whose facial sores have gotten much worse during the commercial. Inside, there are dead traders all over the place. Chiana looks close at one while D'Argo checks everything out: "This is what we got to look forward to?" She turns his head with the muzzle of her gun -- the sores have eaten away the bottom side of his face and neck. It's so gross. Rygel thinks they won't have to wait all that long, which of course sets Aeryn off: "Don't say that, we're gonna be fine." Her sores have gotten darker and begun latticing down her cheek. "We're gonna be fine, we're gonna find something, we're gonna figure it all out and we are going to be fine." She climbs up the ladder to the ship's second tier, breathing harder than usual.
D'Argo, up there with her, gets his arm grabbed by the head trader, who's looking nasty. Aeryn can't even deal with it; D'Argo asks him what's up and he just chokes and looks awful. Chiana heads into another room, where Rygel has found a hologram running: A Diagnosian, trilling and squeaking, as a man speaks translation, breaking sporadically into static. "I now have information on the symptoms you've described. They're caused by the Wolaxan Arachnid. This creature's touch infects its victims and stimulates exaggerated neural functioning." Chiana: "[Duh.]" D'Argo joins them. "The creature then transforms, harvests that energy from its host, stores it in membrane orbs, and hides those orbs in an external nest for later consumption. Finding that nest and opening the orbs in proximity to the victims will allow reassimilation of the energy, and complete recovery..." The hologram disappears, finished. The complicated biological cycles of the creatures in this show, I will never understand it. Just the hoops they have to jump through to get to the emotional part, I guess, but the whole -- speaking of Diagnosians -- the whole nose-and-mouth-at-the-same-time thing? What is that about? I still don't know.
Aeryn freaks out that the hologram is over and starts screaming about how they need to know how to kill it, which means she hasn't been paying attention at all, since that's the point of the episode. Not killing the spider, but getting your shit back. The spider's propaganda, just another living thing -- the orbs are the reality, what they need. And of course it's orbs, because it always is. What you call a man's mojo; what Chiana accused John of having lost. Biology, I said. D'Argo -- who's in a curious place qua "orbs" today -- explains that killing Talikaa isn't the problem, and Aeryn gets right in his face: "You think she's not going to try and defend her nest?" He just sighs, put out, prompting her to ask, "What?" Aeryn On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown is equal parts hilarious and disturbing. He just tells her to relax and walks off; Chiana watches her, thinking.
Sikozu lies on her back, eyes closed, limbs attached, as Noranti gives her smelling salts and whispers her name. She shakes her head and wakes, groaning, and then has a total freaking panic attack. Noranti tells Scorpius to hold onto her, and he straddles her while they try to calm her down. Noranti explains about the Wolaxian arachnid and tells her she's safe. "Lie still." Sikozu starts crying about her arm and leg, and it's actually kind of touching, but Noranti assures her the limbs should be fine. Noranti asks why Talikaa would attack her -- its MO being to "harvest neural energy" -- and surmises that Sikozu's immune to the spider. Scorpius, inches from her face, begins to choke as she agrees she's immune (and no more). Scorpius gags and thrashes, worrying Sikozu. It's always so weird to see him out of sorts. Aeryn's the control freak, but seeing Scorpius without total control is so much more frightening. Like that shit at the beginning of the season, with Leather Daddy Braca and Mistress Grayza? How fucked was that?
"Yes, he's infected but not harvested," Noranti explains, fully patting Scorpius on the shoulder and saying loudly, "She's doing well, Scorpius. You may leave her now," and then shoving him off Sikozu. He rolls over across the floor to her and finally stands up. Noranti is the 900-year-old Grandmother Without Fear. "The Scarran in him is growing stronger," she explains, "overcoming his Sebacean personality." So that explains why you'd be so cavalier with him. I mean, Scorpius is already the scariest thing in the entire universe, I don't know why you wouldn't find his complete loss of rationality and sense draining away to be totally cuddly and fun. Scorpius starts to freak out, all spitting (so much saliva in this scene!) and growling and doing weird Wolfman movements. Sikozu assures Noranti loudly that he won't hurt them -- "I know him" -- and Scorpius flounders around some more. Noranti explains that Sikozu's talking only about his Sebacean side. I think Noranti is being kind, not to say naïve, about their sex life. Scorpius uses the Scarran growly voice in some crazy talk and then says, "Kill it now." Noranti approaches, explaining about how they need to find the orbs -- they couldn't just say "eggs," no, because it's all about bluster this week -- and Scorpius insists: "Kill it now." She looks up at him, flopping and drooling, and there's great respect in her voice: "Forgive me, Scorpius." She blows a handful of Granny Blow in his face, earning herself a backhand, and goes down. Scorpius starts towards her, frothin' all on the mouth, and Sikozu screams, but the powder hits him, and he finally drops.
Aeryn and the others come back out of the trader ship; she joins John on the floor. Pilot informs them that the DRDs last spotted Talikaa in the Neural Cluster, but of course she's on the go, and they can't find her orbs anywhere. John pronounces them "screwed" and Chiana tells him to cut it out -- nice of her to resent it, considering he keeps her going a lot of the time -- and Aeryn goes haywire some more: "Well we can't be like this, we have to focus, all right, I say we team up, we start in the Neural Cluster and we search every tier ourselves." Talikaa watches as Chiana vows either to find their mojo or kill her, and D'Argo mealy-mouthing that maybe they could persuade her to return them, and Rygel considering the persuasive benefits of shooting her ass in the eye.
Aeryn reaches down to help John up; he's dizzy and falls back down. Right into a k-hole, in fact. He reaches up to touch her hair, and looks at her beautiful face from the depth of all emo. "You know what the worst part of this is? You and me. We never could get it together." He swallows. "Now we never will." Wait, you mean dropping the bullshit that you keep around you like rags in order to keep your self-destructive pride intact is a great way to get what you actually want, because people actually respond to reality? Thanks, Talikaa! "Strongest trait" or not, the thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck. Aeryn tells him quickly and loudly, from her benzo fog, never to say anything of the sort again, and then drags him out of the room. Oh, shit! I just remembered the end of this episode and it is so awesome! Talikaa runs into the trader ship after everybody's gone and starts flipping switches. Spider people, I tell you. They do like their mischief.
D'Argo follows some DRDs down a corridor; his breathing is obviously compromised. Pilot informs him about the trader ship's engines firing up and he realizes it's Talikaa; Pilot can't get the bay doors closed in time, and even as D'Argo's running back to the bay, Pilot tells him she's gone. D'Argo comms to everybody to get onboard Lo'La, "and fast," and Aeryn -- still hauling John bodily -- starts over that way. John hurls himself at a wall and begs her to leave him behind. She reaches out and touches his ravaged face; he leans into it sweetly and then steels himself: "No. Forget about me and go." (Like, what help could he possibly be, if Talikaa were actually on the trader ship, which she's obviously not? He's going to hold down the "sweating and whining" role on Lo'La while everybody else takes care of business? Come to think of it, why the hell are they even taking Rygel? And meanwhile Scorpius and Sikozu and Noranti, all of whom are really good at like a billion things, don't even exist.) I guess since they're all dying from some horrible spiderbite plague they want to be together, so it's the whole family. And also, they are all crazy right now. For whatever reason, she takes a second to think about it before leaving John to piss and moan on the floor.
Aeryn sits in Lo'La's jump seat, suggesting that they not fuck around: "We should probably get this done quite quickly." Rygel passes helium loudly, and everybody looks sad. Now for like ten reasons plus one.
John stares at himself in a mirror shard: "Damn it, boy. Make yourself useful. Come on." That's one of my favorite parts of the episode, because we've all done it. I give myself those pep talks like twice a day. It all started with Cruel Intentions. But also, because of the whole Talikaa mirror thing, like, all they've ever done is give themselves these pep talks and call it reality. But sometimes that's what it takes, and it's a very specific kind of soldier grace that allows you to pull that extra piece of spark out and cowboy up, and I love John Crichton, so...
D'Argo sighs some more -- if instead of Jool, in "Unrealized Realities," he'd been Zhaan, I think he would have acted a lot like he does in this episode -- and closes in on the trader ship: "Their weapons aren't charged up and they're not taking any evasive action. Should be easy to board." Rygel points out that they're maybe walking into a trap, and D'Argo agrees. "Rygel, you stay here and watch that scanner. If it senses any movement, comm us." Chiana starts to apologize all about bringing Talikaa onboard and once more promises to kill "that tramp" herself. That's twice; twice she's called her a whore. "Trelk" and the like are sparingly used, on this show, always with a reason more than the fact that hatred of women is America's pastime. There's always a reason. What's the name of the episode again? She thought it was as simple as dancing with her breakage; as simple as reaching out and saving somebody, instead of doing the hardest work and saving herself. She got her hand bit. She learned her lesson. Calling Talikaa a whore is, for lack of a better word, therapeutic: my side, your side. There's nothing therapeutic in seeing those men's faces eaten and melting, but she needed this episode to tell her that. She's not Talikaa and she never was, because Talikaa wasn't innocent, and she had nothing taken from her: what they did to her (what she was willing to do with Chiana) was commerce, and those assholes paid right up. What seemed like a mirror was just another enemy.
D'Argo, Aeryn, and Chiana check the vessel carefully, with flashlights; Rygel confirms there's no movement beyond theirs. Bodies everywhere. Chiana can't figure it out (too angry), but D'Argo does (not angry). "Frell. The guidance system's been activated. This ship's set to fly itself." Aeryn spells it out: "She never left Moya."
John lies around, having taken to his bed. D'Argo comms him the whole story. "We're heading back now, but we're very weak. You have to find those energy orbs." Which was exactly what he was saying in the last scene! To himself!
Commercial, I think, and then John's still in bed. Depression is the inability to think your way around a dead engine. The opposite of optimism. Complete lack of motivation and the inability to find a compelling way around the issue. The systemic inability to remember any of the tools in your toolbox or how to use them. It's not about being sad, it's about being nothing much of anything, and not remembering how you used to get yourself out of the hole; how you've done it every time before. Has there been an episode where John's clinical depression wasn't obvious to the naked eye? It's not that it didn't exist; it's that now he can't compensate. Maybe that's all Talikaa's really about.
Noranti comes upon him and yanks him out of bed. He fully tries to crawl back in! She grabs him and asks if he's ready to die. If he's ready to watch Aeryn die. He finally sits up, on the edge of the bed. Noranti tells him Plan A. Plan A won't work: "She could've hid them anywhere. Moya's huge. We'll never find 'em." He begins to slump; she grabs him again. Plan B: "That's it! Talikaa is the only one who knows where they are." Plan B won't work: "Yeah, so we're dead. She's never gonna tell us." This is depression in action; they should show this at workshops. Plan C: "But maybe we can get her to show us where they are." Before he can pooh-pooh Plan C, she sparks his interest again with the news that Scorpius is infected, but not harvested. Interesting that the only way she can get a rise out of him is with Aeryn and Scorpius. She explains that he's knocked out, so maybe Talikaa just can't sense him, "even though he is ripe and ready for her." John clears his head: Wake him up, use him as bait, and "let her harvest his mojo." Noranti nods. "What about Sikozu?" John asks. Noranti fudges: "Well, she's strong enough to help, I'm sure." He looks into her eyes(es) and comms: "D. We may not be dead...yet." Aeryn swallows and makes a face; D'Argo kindly replies that it sounds like John's maybe getting back to his old self. "We should be back to you within an arn."
So all of a sudden the episode's about John, even though it started out being pretty memorably about Chiana? Nope. When did the laka start? Right around the time John got raped. And now he's gone off the drugs, and all of a sudden he's depressed. It's got story logic and a spider lady behind it, but it's not the weirdest story ever told in space. It was always about both of them: facing up. This is John and Aeryn we're talking about; easy or hard: there's someone else in the room, and it's Grayza. Why on earth would he let her go again, coin toss or not? She pulled back, Harvey's Lovely Daughter, but she's been trying her damnedest all season long to get him back, and he's been standing behind a laka curtain, quietly drowning. Grayza took something from him, even adjusting for the difference in gender experience, and it was power. Did wonders for his wormhole abilities; wreaked havoc on his life. (For extra credit, compare Scorpius with Talikaa in this instance: the things he willingly traded to Grayza for what he wanted are the same things she took from John by force. John and Chiana are innocent; Scorpius and Talikaa are whores.) John laughed off Chiana's scary advances; he could only do it, without seeing the shattering beneath it, because it was too close to his own shit. "She likes me," he said. "Things are gonna be fine," he said.
Sikozu holds something up to Scorpius's mouth, and makes him swallow. His jaws close on her finger and he's very Scarran right now; Sikozu gasps but it could be a sex thing for all we know. "Wake up, Scorpius," she whispers. "We need you." I do believe they care about each other. It's nice to imagine that he's 100% like he is, but that doesn't fit this show at all. That's a square peg for such a wonderful character. We'll never know if he or Talikaa suffered in their own way for what they gave up, for what was lost: maybe it was just a transaction, maybe not, but we'll never know, and that's how it goes with bug people. Scorpius jerks and snarls and flops and comes around; he grabs Sikozu by the throat. "You don't want to hurt me, Scorpius," she chokes out. "I'm an ally." "Si...ko...zu?" he growls, in a whisper. "Yes, Scorpius." He growls and sits up; she gasps and whimpers quietly. "Arachnid?...Kill it." And Sikozu nods, and she is beautiful: "Yes, Scorpius. It's time to kill it." She smiles, he clambers to his feet. He picks her up in his arms like Frankenstein's Monster. At her small cry, he looks down at her: "Help." And with that, he carries her out of the fan room. I don't get those two.
John loads a gun; elsewhere, Noranti comes upon Talikaa as though by accident in a corridor. "What's your hurry, old one?" asks Talikaa; Noranti backs away. "Keep away from me," she says. The smartest thing Noranti ever taught them was to pretend weakness when strength wasn't a possibility; it's one of the things she inherited from Zhaan. "I don't want you," Talikaa smiles. "You're old and bitter. You know who I do want. Where is he?" Noranti shakes and shivers and gasps, oh so afraid: "I don't know anything." Talikaa calls her a liar. "You know where he is. Scorpius. Tell me or die." Noranti gets very sassy. "If I don't tell you, you die." She gestures to the creature and heads off down a corridor; Talikaa senses him. What does Scorpius smell like? I bet he doesn't smell terrible, like you might think at first. I prefer to think that Scorpius smells like Tabasco sauce and pipe tobacco. Just like my dear old grandfather, if you add Old Spice and whiskey. I think Zhaan smelled like sage and amber, because she is a vegetable but also a lifestyle liberal, and I think Aeryn smells like vanilla pods and the inside of a DVD player. I think my cold is going away but I'm still a little wuzzy, but I realize that, so let's move on.
So much spittle is coming out of Scorpius right now that he is like Old Yeller on ten TVs at once. Sikozu watches him get tagged by Talikaa, who somehow fights her way through the spitstorm he is sending out in all directions, and then they make animal noises and fight; she finally hits him with the golden glowy scream and does the whole harvest thing. Sikozu comms to John that she's harvesting him; John finally finishes with his gun.
Talikaa climbs up something with the Scorpius blob and hangs it with the others. They're hanging in these, um... they're hanging from the ceiling. And they glow bright green, which is why you should not use steroids, only they are the size of footballs. Sikozu's new-old leg is not entirely helpful and she's gasping trying to follow Talikaa, half on her knees. "Found it. Tier seven, the cargo bay." John, with a nod to getting it together: "I'm never gonna make it." But still he tries, and leaves his chamber for tier seven. Sikozu drags her leg -- she is not her leg; John's dragging something you can't see but is just as damaged -- into the room.
John stumbles into the bay and spots Sikozu; he puts his gun down and addresses the air. "I know you can see me. The bad guys always see me. 'Cause my plans suck. People die. It's always a mess." Talikaa's like, "Oh, right! Crichton! Hi!" She smiles down at him from behind the girder. "Yeah, that's me. The dumb-ass. I help someone, and they screw me." She explains that there's no room for remorse in this pussy party: "You are food, and I eat." "There's always an excuse, lady." She asks if the others are also going to come to kill her, and he assures her it's just him and her. She starts to climb down. "I was planning on grabbing those nads there, but I guess you're not gonna let me do that, are ya?" She joins him on the floor and gives her regrets. Behind her, Sikozu makes her way toward the orbs.
"I'm tired. Let's...why don't we just end it?" John sighs, and sinks to his knees. "Come on. I'm tired. I'm tired of worrying. I'm tired of fighting. Just bring it on. End it now." Sikozu begins to gather the orbs. "Do you want me to kill you?" Talikaa asks, as though she's heard this a million times before, which of course she has. "Yes, please. Fast, slow... lady's choice." She kneels in front of him -- "I like it slow" -- and chitters at him like a horrible bug. He falls back onto the floor and shouts, "Oh God, I was afraid you were gonna say that. Bring it on." She informs him that it has already been broughten. She makes the noise again and leans down. He's tired. He's not kidding. Things are not fine.
Sikozu yells, arms still all up in the orbs: "Crichton! Don't let her!" Talikaa drops John and heads for Sikozu, who gasps and turns back to the orbs. She tries to hit Sikozu with the scream but it doesn't quite connect; John grabs his machine gun and aims at Talikaa. She turns back and screams, but too late. He shoots at her and she turns into the giant spider. "Whoa. Freaky." That's all we can ask of him right now. He shoots her again. He yells encouragement to Sikozu and continues to shoot at the attacking spider. He finally just shoves the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. I'm saying that of all the ways he could have solved the monster problem this week, he shoves the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. I wasn't fucking around with the depression talk above. She lights up from inside and explodes for awhile, and then John cracks another lame joke ("Along came a spider / Exploded beside her") and passes out.
Later, three excellent scenes for the tag. Noranti is stirring a bubbling pot and Rygel and D'Argo discuss at length how delicious her "roasted spider soup" is, and Rygel acts greedy, and D'Argo cracks a joke about demonstrating for him how angry he can get. It's all very whatever, but there's something very powerful about the fact that they're eating the spider. It's not just a gross joke: it's the necessary ending to this story. It's been there from the beginning of time, from the beginning of stories, this idea of eating the beast, of actually taking it on and accepting that it's just a mirror. The only things that can scare you are the things you haven't realized are a part of you, and then you chow down. Roasted spider soup is the best way of telling yourself, and the universe, that it was never a conversation, just a monologue. The worst thing she could do to you, you were already doing to yourself, while telling yourself you had no idea. Spider soup: Crais comes on board, and Scorpius appears; Scorpius comes on board, and Grayza appears. You Yensch, you get bigger, and somehow you get through it, and you are whole again. Delicious!
Sikozu knows, listen: "What's worse? Having us see that you are half-Scarran, or remembering it yourself?" And so does Scorpius: "I know what I am, Sikozu. This interlude was simply a fortuitous, though troubling, reminder." They sit around being creepy. "If you want my help," she finally says, "the price is inclusion...and honesty." Scorpius breathes in, tight in the chest. "Price" he knows how to spell, but the rest...that's like four things he's never heard of, right there.
Fuck yeah! So Aeryn's sitting in a corridor, against a wall, staring at a bulb of laka distillate. John walks up to her just in time for a faceful: "Do you have any idea what you've done?" He shrugs and walks off, "mojo" back in place: "You won the coin toss," right, with that "your loss" pettiness in it. Aeryn stands very quickly in a Peacekeeper kind of way, but her words..."But we lost. Didn't we?" He stops and turns to her. "Aeryn. It's over." She shakes her head. "So your mind is now so full of this dren that you can't even see straight, is that it?" He can't really look her in the eye. "Move on, Aeryn." She won't. And she won't let him. He's a shapeshifter. "You see, I did everything. Everything I could, to keep us together. I did exactly what you told me to do, and the whole time you have been...cheating." The outrage at the end, like this game has rules. "Yeah, I'm a coward. Move on. It's over." She gets right up in his face, shaking, powerful: "No, I'm gonna tell you how this is gonna go, from now on. You are going to stop sniffing this dren..." She waves the laka at him and he pushes past, cutting her off. "Shut up." She gets physically aggressive: "Don't you tell me to shut up!" He ignores her. "Pilot, my comms are a bit buggy. Can you test the system, please?" Pilot replies that he will, but it'll take comms offline for half a minute. "Thought so. That'll be fine, thank you." The comms beep off.
John points at Aeryn and gets close. "Shut up and listen to me. Scorpius is here, looking for the key to what is inside my head. Neural chips, Aurora Chair, threatening Earth. None of it works, because he does not understand me." She begins to weep. "Stop using him as an excuse!" She gets some fingers in her face. "Please! You're the key. My Achilles. You. If he figures that out, the world, and all that's in it, is nothing. He will use you and the baby, and I will not be able to stop him." Plan B doesn't work: "You think he's been using the comms? Look what it's done to you! You're completely paranoid." He stares at her in the silence for a moment, and then: the crackle of static.
Scorpius: "Pilot? Are we having a problem with the comms?" Pilot apologizes. Aeryn's mouth hangs open. She turns to John, flabbergasted, afraid. They have a whole conversation using only their eyeballs, and it is wonderful. "So," she says, well too loudly, "it's over." He looks up, then away: "It's over." She begins to grin. "There's nothing more between us," she says, looking up at his face. He smiles back, lopsided and lovely. "Nothing," he whispers. Figures they'd do even this ass-backward, warding off the evil eye and saying love is nothing.
Aeryn tears up, joyful and relieved. The happiest among us, for the moment. She bites her lip and looks deeply into his face, into his eyes. Naked, finally. Four years and counting, dead lovers piled up between them, fear and resentment and longing and terror and confusion and pride: gone. A symphony of waiting ends. Finally. John laughs to himself, and grins; they kiss. She silently puts her arms around his neck, her forehead to his; they nuzzle noses and grin, too full of joy to do anything but touch. "I love you," she says silently, and he smiles, and they kiss again.