Timeline is the night after “Different Destinations”, hence John’s state of mind and drinking habits … And just to clarify, words between slashes are thoughts, capitalized words are for emphasis. And if anyone’s got a better way to do this, please let me know!

A thank you to Elflore for planting a bug in my brain; to the great Langston Hughes for his genius with words – the snatch of poetry is from “Mother to Son”; to Russell Cook and his magnificent hammered dulcimer for inspirational music; and to Ben and Kent (and peripherally, Wayne and Gigi) for giving us these wonderful toys to play with.

Disclaimer: I don’t own these guys, yada yada yada, you know the drill ….

“Got anything that resembles alcohol around here?”

The figure was still in shadow, but John stiffened at the sound of the voice. Part of his mind was yelling, /No, no, this is soooo wrong!/ The other part shrugged – /hey, it’s the booze, run with it./ “Sure, Dad, have a seat and I’ll grab ya a cold one.”

Jack Crichton hit the door mechanism and came into the light, taking a seat opposite his son. John handed over the bottle and Jack took a swig, nodding in approval. “Not bad, what is it?”

"Fellip nectar – and trust me, Dad, you really don’t wanna know where it comes from.”

“What’s that stuff you’re drinking? And just how much of it have you had?”

“Warm raslak – and don’t start on me, okay?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not starting anything, just asking. Since when is a father not allowed to ask?”

“How much have I had? Prob’ly way too much, but nowhere near enough. Cheers.” John downed what was left in his glass and poured himself another shot.

“That’s what I thought.” The older man leaned back in his chair, taking another sip from his bottle. “So you want to tell me what happened?”

“Isn’t that nice?” another voice chimed in. “Your father is worried about you. Perhaps if mine had taken an interest in me – “ Harvey materialized on a chair in the corner, a glass of something greenish and noxious-smelling in his hand

“Yeah, I know, you wouldn’t be the man you are today,” John said, grinning crookedly. “I think your dumpster is calling you, Harvey.”

“But this is much too good to pass up. I’ve been rattling round inside your head for a while now, and one of the few items of interest in there is your father. A man of honor, a man of integrity. I wonder what he’ll think when you tell him about …. “

“Hey, you …. Harvey, did he call you?” Jack interrupted. “Harvey, this is a private conversation between me and my son; we’d appreciate it if you left.” Harvey made no move to leave, and the Colonel came out, full force: “Take a hike, NOW!”

The neural clone rolled his eyes. “Like father, like son …. “ Harvey set his glass down and sauntered off, muttering something about the manners of humans.

John, his mouth hanging open in shock, watched the neural clone leave. His head snapped back around to gaze at his father, then he laughed. “Well, of COURSE you can see Harvey, why the hell not? Makes just about as much sense as anything else right now. Note to self -- no more mixin’ fellip nectar and raslak – stuff’d give Salvador Dali nightmares …. “ John tipped the rest of the container’s contents into his glass, giggling quietly to himself.

“Now that we’re alone – you want to tell me what happened?”

The grin vanished off the younger man’s face, and his eyes went flat and cold. “Dunno what you’re talking about,” he muttered into his glass.

“I think you do. I’ve seen you drink, and mostly you get just tanked enough to get happy. The only times I’ve ever known you to do flat out, serious, till-you-puke-or-pass-out drinking is when you’re hurting. The night after your mom’s funeral … the day Alex left. So I’ll ask you again: what happened? And I’m not leaving till you tell me, so you might as well spill it.”

John leaned forward in his chair, holding his glass with both hands, staring down into it. Alcohol-induced illusion or not, the eyes that looked at him calmly, waiting for an answer he didn’t know how to give, were his father’s eyes. Harvey was right – how would Dad take it?

“I think it’s more like what hasn’t happened, Dad,” John said quietly, opening up in spite of himself. “I’ve been trying to figure out just where things started going wrong. I had a damn fine life once – a cool job that I loved, a good family, good friends. Even had Alex for a while, and that was great while it lasted. Even after it was over between us, I still had the Farscape project to keep me on track.”

He let out a laugh, short and bitter. “Man, I was so scared that day – I should’ve won an Oscar, the snow job I was laying on everybody. DK was the only one that could really see it. I wanted it to go right so bad – needed for it to go right. I had to prove to the world – and to myself – that I was more than just Jack Crichton’s son.”

“John … “ Jack began, but his son waved him off.

“No, Dad, I’m not blaming you for anything. It was me, the way I saw things. Martin Luther King’s kids probably felt the same way, or Al Capone’s kids. And y’know, I could have chosen to be something other than an astronaut. But from the time they landed on the moon, it was all I could think about growing up to be. Just my luck it happened to be the family business.

“So I took my module up and kept everything crossed that it would work out. And it did – everything was five by five, couldn’t have been smoother. Then Alice got dumped head first down the rabbit hole. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

John sipped at the raslak, now gone lukewarm, as Jack asked, “Has it been so bad, son?”

“Yeah … well, no, not all of it. Things were actually going all right – I was learning, I was getting along okay. I’ve seen some amazing stuff, and met some amazing – people. Funny how you can think of folks with tentacles and blue skin and – hell, even living ships – as people after you’ve been around ‘em for a while. I lost one family and got another one. Like I told Zhaan one day, it’s a Jerry Springer kind of family, but somehow we hang together.”

John’s eyes clouded. “Zhaan. I’m still having trouble thinking of her in the past tense. In a lot of ways she was like Mom, the glue that held all of us together. You know how, even when things were at their worst, Mom always found a way to make them better, if only by being there to talk to? Well, that’s what Zhaan does … did. It all feels like it’s been falling apart since we lost her.”

“I hear you on that,” Jack said softly. “Tell me about the rest of the ‘family’.”

“Jool’s the new kid on the block. We found her in a cryo unit and thawed her out – a couple decades after she went in, as it turned out. Think sorority babe with a scream that can melt steel – literally.”

Jack groaned. “That hurts to even think about.”

“Well, you should be in the same room with it sometime. But that shriek saved my life, and I owe her for that. And she’s as much a fish out of water as I was when I came here. There’s Rygel – he’s an irritating little slug, and he’s got this idea that if it’s not nailed down it’s his, and if he can pry it loose it ain’t nailed down. Damn near lost my recorder the first day. There’s Chiana – she’s got this whole tough chick thing going on, but there’s a scared kid underneath all that. It’s kinda fun being big brother again, even if she doesn’t want me to be. Stark’s got his own problems to deal with, but does what he can to help out the rest of us. Pilot and Moya are like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern – you can’t really talk about one without talking about the other. They pretty much look after all of us, not that we deserve it most of the time.”

John fished out another bottle of fellip nectar, and Jack said, “You’re gonna regret that in the morning, John.”

“Morning, hell – I’ll regret it the minute I throw it back up, which’ll probably be five minutes after I get it down. But what the frell, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?” John took a long pull from the bottle, then continued. “There’s D’Argo. I think you’d like him, Dad – he’s a seat-of-his-flight-suit kinda guy. He can be stubborn as hell, but there’s nobody I’d rather have at my back. He’s like the big brother I never had – even when he doesn’t understand me, he’s there for me. He was there for me today, for all the good it did.” A pause, then, very quietly, “And then there’s Aeryn.”

A long silence followed. When it was obvious that John was not going to say anything further about Aeryn, Jack said, “You said D’Argo backed you up today ‘for all the good it did’. Just what did happen today?”

John felt tears sting the back of his eyelids and took a deep breath to steady himself. “Today’s just the most recent thing that’s happened, but it seems like the worst. I … we accidentally opened a time portal and went back about five hundred years. We landed in the middle of a battle at a monastery. History says – well, history used to say -- that a Peacekeeper officer named Dacon managed to save the whole bunch of nurses and kids living there from these soldiers that looked like the guy from Beauty and the Beast on a bad hair day.”

The bitterness was palpable as John continued. “Just our showing up screwed the time line, and the Venek general got captured. And you know me, I’ve gotta be Mr. Hotshot, I had to be the one in charge. If you’d been there, Dad … but I’m glad you weren’t. I’m glad you couldn’t see what a hatchet job I made of the whole thing. It was like being Midas’ frelled-up twin – everything I touched turned to crap.”

John struggled to keep his voice steady. “I tried to smuggle the General out to his people to reason with them, and the head nurse shot him. Would that have happened if I’d clued them into my plan? And I had this bright idea of trying to disguise him as one of the nurses, so maybe he wouldn’t get shot, and his soldiers got mad because they thought I was trying to insult him.

“And Dacon, the officer who was supposed to be the big hero? He turned out to be a scared kid, a cook, who didn’t know any more about being a soldier than I do about being a ballet dancer. I convinced the others that he had to die, like he had in the original timeline. Yeah, I know – who died and made me God, right? “ He glanced up to gauge his father’s reaction, but Jack’s face betrayed nothing. “Would it have made a difference if he had lived? Or would he have died no matter what I did? If I’d left the pulse pistols behind like the head nurse asked me to, would the Veneks have left the women and children alone? And if I’d left the weapons, what would that have done to the future?”

John sighed shakily. “Oh, frell … I could go round and round for the next ten cycles – years -- and it’d still come back to the fact that I screwed the pooch today, big time. The end result was a lot of people dying that weren’t supposed to, and it’s my fault. All caught live and in color for permanent instant replay. What was it Harvey said about the innocents paying for the ambition of others? I’m getting a little tired of other people picking up the tab for me. Those women and kids today, Gilina, Zhaan, Aeryn …. Oh frell …. “ John’s voice cracked, and another silence descended. After a moment, he took a sip from his bottle and went on.

“The head nurse, Kelsa -- she was calling my name on that recording, Dad. Five hundred years later, and there she was, begging me to help her. Just like Aeryn did. Just like Mom … “ A sharp intake of breath, and his eyes squeezed shut for a moment. When he went on, he was in control again. “You know, Dad, you never asked me … we never talked about … why I left that day.”

“Guess I always figured if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”

"I didn’t want you to know – didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t go in because I didn’t want to remember her that way. I couldn’t make myself go in. I felt like such a coward, but I couldn’t do it. I know the girls never forgave me for it, and I was too ashamed to ask you if you ever did. It was the one time she really needed me, and I let her down. I’m getting a real track record for letting folks down that need me.” John swallowed back the bitterness and washed it down with the last of the fellip nectar.

“I remember Gramma saying that the Lord never gives anyone more to carry than he can handle, even if he doesn’t think he can do it. But I’m tired, Dad, and I don’t know how much more I can take. I’ve been tortured, mind raped, driven crazy, and I’ve got more blood on my hands than I can ever wash off.”

John picked up the pulse pistol lying on the table next to his hand. “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine, Dad. This is Wynonna.”

Jack’s eyebrows went up. “You named the thing? I’m sure there’s something Freudian in that, but we’ll let it pass this time.”

John’s voice was matter of fact as he spoke, but there was a world of pain in the blue eyes. “You’ve never seen a pulse pistol in action, Dad. It’s pretty impressive. It’s not a big weapon, but it can really kick ass. Those little yellow bolts of light do a fantastic job – clean, quick, over and out. It wouldn’t take any effort at all – just put it up to my head, close my eyes and squeeze. Yeah, Harvey’d probably try to stop me, but I can just toss him back in his dumpster, no problem. One shot, and it’d be all over. No more nightmares, no more pain, just … peace. At least I hope so. The way my luck’s been running lately, I’m not so sure.”

“So what’s stopping you? I know you, John – if you really wanted to end it, you wouldn’t still be sitting here. What’s holding you back?”

John looked into Jack’s eyes for the first time, a sad smile on his face. “Believe it or not – you are.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. The idea of someday meeting you on the other side and having you blister my ass for taking the easy way out. ‘A Crichton doesn’t quit.’ That’s what you’d tell me. And I’d get to spend the rest of eternity listening to it.”

“Well, it’s nice to think I’ve got that much influence over you still, but the one I’d really be worried about is your mother. She’s the one that’d peel your paint.”

“Oh, lord, yeah, she would, up one side and down the other. She didn’t know how to quit, either – fought Old Man Death right down to the wire, wasn’t gonna give him an inch. Stubborn as they come, and she was only a Crichton by marriage.”

Jack laughed. “You forget -- she was a MacDougall first. Her family was at Culloden. They’ve got one long history of bucking the odds. Then there was our family in the Civil War. And in ‘Nam.”

“Uncle Dan,” John said, nodding. “Six years in a Viet Cong prison, and came home to tell about it. Guts on both sides of the family.”

Jack smiled. “And it shows – your sister’s no slouch, either. The day Laurie lost her baby, Hank was so scared – I know he thought he was going to lose her, too. He just sat there with her, hour after hour, talking to her, letting her cry, bringing her back. She didn’t want to, but she did it, for him. And for herself.”

“And now they’ve got Jeremiah. Y’know, I don’t think there’s a more loved or wanted kid in the entire universe. Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to run into any of ‘em on the other side ….” A hardness crept into John’s eyes, and into his voice. “But that’s always assuming there IS an ‘other side’. What if there isn’t? What if I’m worrying for nothing? What if this is all there is?”

“What if it is? You said killing yourself would be the easy way out. Something – or someone – is keeping you from taking it. You’ve still got ties here, reasons to stick it out. What are they?”

John kept his gaze on the pulse pistol, turning it over and over in his hands. “Not too long ago, I would have said the hope that I’d still get home. I’m not sure that matters so much anymore. Not that I don’t want to come home, it’s just that I don’t think I’ll fit in anymore if I do. I’m … I’m not the guy who took that module up, Dad. I’m not sure what I am, or who, or even why right now. And I’ve got half the universe after me, and the other half ready to sell me out to them.” He let out a short, ragged chuckle. “Scarrans, Nebari and Scorpy … oh my. And me without my ruby slippers. I can’t risk bringing them on my tail back to Earth.”

“Those are reasons not to keep going. What’s kept you from swallowing that pulse pistol until now?”

“Man, you don’t give up either, do you?”

“When my son’s life is at stake, you bet your ass I don’t. What’s holding you here?”

John was silent for a long moment. When he finally looked back up at his father, the hardness was gone. “I think maybe … the people here, my friends. They’ve all been through a lot, as much as I have if not more. D’Argo lost his wife, lost his son, got framed for murder, did eight cycles in Peacekeeper prisons. And no one ever broke him. You know his people don’t even have a word for ‘suicide’?”

“They sound like tough customers.”

John nodded and continued. “Stark – Stark’s got this ‘gift’, he can take the pain from other people. He’s carrying around stuff I don’t even want to think about. And he just lost the woman he loved. I don’t know how he keeps going, but he does. Chiana’s life hasn’t been fun and games, but she’s got more life in her than any five people I’ve ever seen. Rygel can be treacherous, and conniving, and self-serving, but from what I know of his past, I wouldn’t wish what he’s been through on anybody. Pilot and Moya have seen it all, and been through it all – enslaved, tortured, forced into doing stuff they didn’t want to do, and this was all before we came around and started dumping our crap on ‘em. I don’t know why they haven’t just spaced the bunch of us and had done with it. Jool – well, the jury’s still out on her, but she’s gotta be wiggin’ pretty bad after twenty two cycles in deep freeze. And Zhaan – Zhaan’s not here anymore, but what she did at the end took more guts than I knew existed. She could have saved herself, and chose to save the rest of us instead.”

“Sounds like quite a family. But there’s still one person you haven’t told me about. Who’s Aeryn?”

The ghost of a smile touched John’s lips. “Aeryn. I remember reading a poem a long time ago, something about ‘life ain’t been no crystal stair’. I figure Aeryn knows more about that than just about anybody. No childhood to speak of, parents she barely knew, born and raised as a fighting machine, then had it all taken away from her. She rebuilt her life from the ground up. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit’, any more than Mom did. She’s amazing …. and she’s frustrating … and … and I love her, Dad,” he finished simply.

Jack smiled with satisfaction. “I knew if I pushed long enough we’d get to it. Have you told her you love her?”

“Yeah, finally. But it took her dying and coming back to make me spit the words out.”

It was Jack’s turn to be confused. “Come again? ‘Dying and coming back’?”

“It’s kind of a long story. There’s this guy named Scorpius – and believe me, I use the term ‘guy’ loosely -- he put a neural chip in my head. It got taken out finally, and Harvey is what’s left over from it – kind of a skid mark. The chip … made me do stuff, pretty much took me over for a while. One of the things it made me do was get into a dogfight with Aeryn, wreck her prowler and drop her on a frozen planet. She should’ve been able to bail out, but her harness got stuck … “ He could feel himself losing it and fought for control. “She went down over a frozen lake, the ice gave, and … I lost her. We lost her ...” John swallowed hard and made himself continue.

“Zhaan was a pa’u, a priest, and she could do some pretty amazing things with her mind. She and Stark got together and pulled Aeryn back, but it took all the life energy Zhaan had. She did it for me as much as for Aeryn. That’s why it hurts so much.”

“Zhaan must’ve been pretty special, I’m sorry for all of you.” John nodded. “Does Aeryn love you?”

“She does … but right now, she’s afraid – one person has already died on her account. If something happened to me, if she got careless because she was too worried about me to pay attention during a fight or something, she says she can’t live with that. So I don’t really know where we stand right now.”

“I can understand that. Your mom was like that – she did not want to marry a pilot, especially not one who wanted to be an astronaut. But I’d’ve been willing to do about anything to hang onto her. She knew that, and I think that’s what made the difference. How do you feel about all this?”

“Confused. There are times when Aeryn makes me so mad I just want to strangle her. Then there are other times I want to wrap my arms around her and make all the bad things go away. She drives me absolutely crazy … but I don’t think I could live without her.”

Jack’s gaze locked onto John’s and held. “Question is: are you willing to live for her?”

After a long moment, John broke the eye contact and looked down at the pulse pistol. Slowly he returned it to its holster. “Guess it’d be kind of ungrateful not to, wouldn’t it?” he asked softly.

“That it would. Now I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I want your word that you won’t try this again. If you give me your word, I know you’ll keep it. Your mother and I taught you better than to go back on a promise.”

John nodded slowly. “Okay, Dad, you’ve got my word. But it won’t be easy.”

“Nothing worth doing ever is, son. Speaking of which – whatever problems you and Aeryn are having, work them out. It sounds like she’s worth fighting for. God willing, she’ll make one helluva Crichton someday.”

John grinned. “I don’t think God’ll have too much to say about it – if He ever gave an order she didn’t like, she’d just tell him to frell off.”

Jack chuckled. “Oh, yeah, one helluva Crichton. I hope I get to meet her someday.” Jack drained the last of the fellip nectar and stood up. “I’d better be heading back, it’s getting late. Will you be all right?”

“I think so, for a while, anyway.”

“You take care of yourself, son, and I’ll see you later.” Jack got to the door and turned. “Oh, one more thing before I go. Did you try your best today to make things right?”

The pain washed over John anew, and his voice was thick as he answered, “Swear to God, Dad, I never tried so hard in my life.”

“That’s about what I figured. Nobody can ask more of a man than his best, John -- not even you. Think about it. Goodnight.” The door swished open, Jack disappeared into the shadows ….

… and John woke with a start, every muscle stiff from falling asleep at the table in his quarters. Fellip nectar bottles flanked an empty raslak container, and an out of tune boogie piano was beating eight to the bar inside his skull. He shook his head to clear it, and immediately wished he hadn’t – a wave of nausea sent him racing for the bathroom. Staggering out ashen-faced a few moments later, he felt back into his chair and massaged his throbbing temples. /Well, at least I kept it down for more than five minutes. But Dad was right, I really shouldn’t have done that … /

That thought brought back the memory of his ‘conversation’ with his father, and posed a philosophical problem: if you made a promise in a dream, did it count? Breathing hurt just now, and thinking was even worse -- /cogito ergo boom -- I think, therefore my head explodes/, but he finally banished the fog and the pain long enough to consider the question. He finally concluded that it didn’t matter who or what you made a promise to, what mattered was that you kept it. At least that’s what Dad would have said.

And maybe, just maybe, there was still a bit of hope inside that Pandora’s box – its wings were crumpled, but it was cussing up a storm and flipping him a bird, telling him to get off his ass. It sounded a lot like his grandfather: “Feelin’ sorry for yourself don’t get the fence mended, boy.” John chuckled and groaned in quick succession – no way could he fight two generations of Crichtons in his head.

He reached blindly toward the table with one hand, still supporting his head with the other. “Okay, Wynonna, back home you go … “ When his hand didn’t find the gun, he turned his head very slowly and carefully and stared blearily at the table top. Bottles – check. Container – check. Glass – check. But no pulse pistol. A weight at his hip made him glance down, and there was the pistol, nestled securely in his holster. He took it out gingerly and stared at it. “How the frell did it … ?”

He knew – he knew– that it had been on the table; he remembered bringing the raslak from the messroom, sitting down, and pulling out the pistol and laying it down on the table. How had it gotten back into his holster if he was passed out? Nobody would have come in and done it – hell, the others didn’t want any part of him right now.

And there was another odd thing. On the table opposite him, at the place where his dad had been sitting in his dream … vision … Twilight Zone episode … whatever it was, there was one empty fellip nectar bottle. John reached for the bottle and looked it over – there were fingerprints on it, and even to his wavering vision they didn’t all look the same.

/Forget the Twilight Zone, where’s Mulder and Scully when you need ‘em?/

“Crichton?” called a tentative voice from the doorway. Chiana stood outside his quarters with a laden tray. The aromas coming from it were delicious, overcoming the roiling of his stomach. He beckoned her in, and she hit the latch, a bright smile on her face. “I was a little worried. You haven’t had anything to eat since … since you came back, so I thought … well, I hope you like it.”

“Looks great and smells even better, Pip. Thank you.”

Her dark eyes took in John’s haggard appearance. “Hey, old man, are you all right? You look like dren … or like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

John glanced up at her, then back at the bottle in his hand. “No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “If it had been a ghost, I think I would’ve known.”

Chiana set the tray down on the table, taking note of the number of bottles on the table. “If I’d had this much to drink on an empty stomach I’d be seeing things, too,” she murmured.

“What’d you say?”

“Oh, nothing. I’ll come back to get the dishes later. Enjoy.” Another quick smile and she was gone.