TITLE: "TURNING THE KEY"

AUTHOR: Alison M. DOBELL

FANDOM: "Farscape"

PAIRING: JOHN/STARK

RATING: NC-17. M/M, F/F, M/F/M

STATUS: New.

ARCHIVE: Yes. Just let me know where.

FEEDBACK: Welcomed

The usual disclaimers apply. No infringement of copyright is intended.

"TURNING THE KEY"
A "Farscape" slash story
Written by Alison M. DOBELL
* * * * *

The body was so cold. Even heaped with every blanket Chiana could lay her hands on she could not raise Crichton's core body temperature by any significant amount. She could only prevent it from dropping even further. There were some times when the little victories were all you had. Zhaan sighed softly. Aeryn looked worried. D'Argo sad and angry in equal measure. Rygel tried not to think about what he was feeling. He was a Hynerian Dominar after all. Well versed in the ability to jettison liabilities like emotions. Not so Chiana. Everything she thought and felt was reflected in the dark shiny pools of her eyes, the white trauma of her grieving face. She might plant a sad smile on her lips but it would never fool anyone.

Aeryn looked at Zhaan. Her reticence fast fading in the light of the only other option left open to them. She would not let Crichton die. No matter what. "If we are going to do this, Zhaan, we must hurry."

Zhaan inclined her head in acknowledgement then gave her last instructions to the others. The little DRDs listened and watched in silence. Not even their lightstalks moving. Somehow their stillness spoke more about their sorrow than any muted sounds of grief would have done. Zhaan was aware of them on the periphery of her senses and blessed Crichton for achieving that. It was as if the biomechanoids' exposure to the human had given them sentience. It had not but it had somehow linked them to the human in ways that suggested a mutual affection and regard that she found moving. Rather like her connection to Moya. Zhaan was also acutely aware of the others' concern. Not just for Crichton but also for herself and Aeryn. It made her feel proud of them. How far they had come. She could not fail them. Kah'leen willing, she would not.

* * * * *
He could not believe what the clone was putting him through. Bad enough to suffer so much at the hands of Scorpius without his clone continuing to frell with him. This time in a madness of the mind mimicking his physical world so accurately that he could actually hear Aeryn's voice, feel her hands on his body, her lips on his, her tongue parting his lips as she teased him with a kiss. His heart was breaking. His body a figment of the clone's warped manipulation, drawing on every memory stolen and bent to his purpose. Granting every wish of his heart with sick abandon. It was not fair. The clone was playing with him and there was not a thing he could do about it. No way he could resist him. Now he could feel Stark touching his mind with such beautiful thoughts, his sensibilities so accurately portrayed that the pain was acute. He felt the false lover becoming more and more intimate, smiling with Aeryn's lips, sparking off sensations in his mind that made him groan low and deep and clench phantom teeth as he prayed for strength. The light trail of Stark's thoughts gave him some respite, though he gasped as Aeryn's phantom hands stirred him and took him down a road that was so intense it burned.

<John? John, can you hear my thoughts?>

<Go away, Scorpy! I'm not coming out to play>

<Shh, my love, it is I>

He chuckled painfully. He could feel a hand stroking him so gently, naked flesh rubbing up against his, remembered scent driving him wild as silken strands stroked his face with rising passion. The heat was building and he had no way to put out the fire.

<John!>

<Just....leave me the frell alone!>

<No John, it is me - Stark>

<Yeah and I'm the Sugar Plum Fairy>

A pause. His breath hitched. Psuedo-Aeryn was whispering in his ear, her tongue now washing its' wet warmth deep inside his ear canal and fragmenting the breath in his lungs. Excitement firing up every cell in his body. How the hell was any of this possible?

<You have to fight the illusion, John>

<Yeah right, like you're real>

<I *am*>

He shuddered, sensations flowing through him fast and furious. Phantom tongues licking him, hands convincing him that this was real flesh plying with him in a seductive dance way beyond his control. His body was rocking now, hips moving in ever erratic thrusts as the hand pumped his erection from solid muscle to hot leaking shaft, the tissued walls throbbing with blood. The kiss deepened, stealing his air and drawing him deeper and deeper into the lie. He started to come, his seed rushing like plasma fire yet somehow being controlled by the hand that milked him, the pressure on his throbbing walls a caress with a grip like iron and will of steel. She would not let him release it all in one glorious ejaculation. She drew it out, slowing down the sensation to an unbelievably painful pitch of self control. He was perspiring heavily, hardly able to breathe, heart thudding like a train speeding to its' own destruction. <Oh God it hurts. Don't stop, Aeryn. For God's sake don't frelling stop!> She varied her hand movements, slowed him down just enough to make him cry out, tears in his eyes, begging for release. Ears deaf to his pleas as she continued to tease and coax him with all her wiles. <Oh God, Aeryn, I want you so much. Need you babe, have to have you>

<It isn't real, John> Came the thought, so like Stark that he almost broke free of it.

That was before she took her lips away from his and dropped down to take him in her mouth. He jerked as she engulfed him, hips thrust up at the contact. Her suction dragging every conscious thought out of his head and burning them. He groaned. Vaguely aware that Stark seemed to be on the verge of tears. Funny. How could a dead man cry? He lost himself in orgasm, his body exploding as he came. Losing all sensation as the utter dark swallowed him whole and revealed to him the face of his enemy. Scorpius. Leering. Triumphant. Obscene. Slowly, joyfully, making a show of licking his come off his hideous smiling lips...

* * * * *

Aeryn bit back her feelings of panic. The stakes were too high to have misgivings now. They had to reach Crichton before it was too late. Before he shared whatever fate had befallen Stark. His cold unresponsive body told her that speed was of the essence, yet Zhaan would not let her plunge headlong into Unity. Would not allow her to bypass the preparation for deep consciousness. It irritated her but she knew Zhaan was right. There could be no other way. She felt Zhaan's fingers splayed either side of her face, her own mimicking the contact. Zhaan did not instruct her how to breathe but trusted her to follow her as she had done before. Aeryn closed her eyes against the formation of tears. She needed to be strong. For her focus to be unwavering. Love. Zhaan had told her this was the key. She felt a swirl of emotions coalesce around her thoughts like a breeze. Zhaan's thoughts reached out to her and touched her, gave the breeze direction with such love, such calm depths that she was falling into her before she realised she had even let go.

<Trust me, Aeryn>

<I do>

<Love me>

<I...I will try>

Impossibly she felt humour touch her. It made her think of Crichton.

<That's right, Aeryn, concentrate on John, on your love for him then open up to me>

Like a tight flower bud her outer petals slowly relaxed.

<Open, Aeryn. Open. Love is inside>

She was not sure she could do this. Then she thought of Crichton, could almost hear his voice gently encouraging her to experience full Unity with Zhaan to deepen her ability to love and expand that loving consciousness as they approached the box. It was crucial. She almost heard Crichton telling her to remember the last time they made love and use that as her template. The first petals flowed back, Zhaan gently savoured them and washed herself through Aeryn's mental perceptions, blowing away the cobwebs of her inhibitions, making her tremble with revelations she did not want to face. She felt more petals open, a waft of sensual fingers touching, probing, encouraging and embracing her sex with something she had no words to describe. Titilated into feeding the waters of that slow arousing passion, she filled her thoughts with Crichton, all the things she felt for him, the love unspoken but endless. Tried to bring it all into a form of expression that she could give to Zhaan. Felt Zhaan doing the same for her but on such depths and heights that her mind spun with the beauty and splendour that filled her with colours too vibrant for the eye to take in. A wealth of sensations and emotions bound together in a free flowing exploration that lifted her vibrations slowly higher and higher.

<Good Aeryn, now concentrate on what we are doing together. When I engulf you with my lips you will feel the sensation rock you completely. Surrender to it, open out to it, arch into it as if turning your very self inside out, leaving no part of you physically or mentally untouched, unloved, unmoved>

<For the love of Cholok, Zhaan> Hissed Aeryn with difficulty, the formation of thoughts becoming ragged as she felt the heat pool between her legs and light a fire in her that was swamping her with moisture. It was so intense. She clung to thoughts of Crichton, his hands on her skin, his fingers probing gently, stroking her clitoris and rubbing back and forth to excite and ready her for him to enter. She arched her back and rocked slowly up against his patient hand, trying to urge the pace to quicken so she could release her juices but he would not be hurried. Now Zhaan was enforcing the same kind of patience, an excuciatingly beautiful control that was driving her over the edge. <Oh Zhaan....>

The Delvian priestess flooded her thoughts with so many images, sensations and sounds that Aeryn did not know if she was feeling, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling or imagining it all. She came with a rush, a rush that went on and on and on and on, her mental capacity stretched to the limit in an effort to keep up with Zhaan as she increased her vibratory rate and insisted on more and more so she could take Aeryn with her. They needed to raise their vibrations, to fine tune their mental sensitivities so that they could break through the barrier that imprisoned Crichton. Anything less and they would fail. Thus Zhaan tapped into the most formidable of expansions. Coitus. The greatest creative force in the Universe. The act that birthed stars.

<Open up, Aeryn>

<I am, I am......By all the Gods Zhaan, you are splitting me in two>

<More, Aeryn, I need...more>

Aeryn flung herself as wide open mentally as she could, every atom of her being excited and exploding like mini supernovas as liquid fire set off a range of pyrotechnics that completely blew her breath away. And still she continued to mentally ogasm over and over, each time she came the sensations were more instense, now she was feeling Zhaan, her sensuality rocking her with knowlege that made her crave more and more. More petals folded back, the flower revealed as a lotus blossom of infinite possibilities. Aeryn felt as if she were on fire. So frelling beautiful, so utterly consuming in a passion she had no words for. Zhaan was burning her with need, filling her and fulfilling her then asking for more. Aeryn gave everything she had, her mind a pool of emotional precepts that took on a declicious form more intoxicating than sex alone. Her memory fashioned Crichton in the centre of her passion, his touch blinding her to any other thoughts. His hands guiding her to hold him, to do with him what she willed. She loved the feel of him, the way he responded to her touch, her lips teasing his, her tongue painting the inside of his mouth as he massaged her with his fingers, drawing the wet warmth in erotic little arcs over her nub as she raised up to increase the contact. Her hands delighting in caressing him, feeling him pulse hard and hot in her hands, the head beginning to leak and run down the throbbing shaft. She came against him but he did not stop, did not slow, did not let her fall from the peak of desire he had raised her too. Again and again she opened to him, again and again he rewarded her, then she guided him into her entrance and all the foreplay disolved in shattering sparks as they rode the dragon fire together and lit up every nerve in their bodies with the flowering of a love nurtured in fragments now joined in a completion so utter it could not be denied.

At the very peak, the very microt Aeryn was beyond all conscious ability to do anything but feel and respond, Zhaan took her to the box. Mental coitus reverberated against the hidden membrane. Zhaan urged her to orgasm again, lifting her, petting her, embracing her with fire, joining her in the painful rush of heightened sensitivity, the level to the point of excruciation but they could not stop. The membrane shook beneath them, the luminosity of their mental imagery brighter than the flash of steel culled to the arc of bloody night. The knives shattered as the box exploded, tearing pieces from them in its' volatile passage. Cries and howls of demonic anger rent them, ghosts of images knocking at the door of their saturated perceptions and leaving them numb and bloody and in disarray. A darkness spun out of the lesser dark of the mind's calling.

* * * * *

Chiana was alarmed. Crichton was shaking. Colour slowly flooding back to him but it was not a gentle change. Not a relief to see him in the throes of something that gripped him so hard and held him so firmly she wept with fear for him. D'Argo put a hand on her arm but she felt it not. Her eyes wide, her lips trembling as she watched him shudder and shake. He was covered in perspiration, his colour now reddening his face as if the struggle caused him great effort and pain. His mouth opened and he groaned. A groan so deep, so agonised that Chiana could not prevent tears from falling.

D'Argo put a hand on Crichton's shoulder, hoping his touch would anchor him, not knowing what else to do. Zhaan and Aeryn were both lying quietly, breathing normally, temperatures stable even though their heartbeats were racing. The little DRDs were both close to Crichton. Blue waving his light stalks anxiously, the other DRD a little more restrained, remembering perhaps that Moya and Pilot needed a steady image in order to follow what was happening. Blue beeped softly, the sound mournful but tinged with an odd kind of desire. As if the little DRD was daring, in a rudimentary fashion, to hope. Did biomechanoids have feelings? Did they believe in Gods and if so did they pray to them? D'Argo did not know but he knew the DRDs were worried about Crichton. A notion that was seriously at odds with everything he had come to believe as a warrior. How could machines feel? Ah, but then there was Moya. Moya. A living ship. Biomechanoid. The DRDs were fashioned from her body and he knew *she* could feel. It made his head spin. He looked back at Crichton and now lay both hands on his shoulders to hold him steady while reaction wracked through his body.

* * * * *
Crichton was in pain. Such deep heart stopping pain. The death's head grinned at him, finished licking its' lips then sneered. <You will never be free of me>

He shuddered, for once saying nothing. What did it matter? Scorpius had won. He saw the clone grin widely, exposing an image of rotting teeth. Just then, when he was at the limit of his endurance, a wonderful thing happened. Light - beautiful, intense and golden - sifted through him and began to heal his hurt. His pain became a child's mask, easily ignored and discarded. He felt before he heard the voices fill him, not just his auditory senses but through every cell of his body and his mind. The voices soothed, dripped love with such abandon that it made him weep with joy. These were Stark's people, he recognised their gentle touch. They were pleased to be recognised. One touch in particular flooded his memory with joy. Lenith.

<We could not reach you>

<Why? What the frell happened?>

He felt her pause, even as her gentle spirit flowed through him in a cooling balm. Other thoughts hovered on the periphery as if determined to speak but not wanting to butt in. Their courtesy touched him, their love remade him. Whole again and healing. <The dark one shut us out>

<Dark one?> He paused a microt. Realisation dawned. <Oh you mean Scorpy? It wasn't actually Scorpius but a clone of him>

<We know> Her thought touched him so gently. Such love. Such wonderful understanding.

He felt emotion sieze his heart. Sorrow hurting him as he remembered. <Stark...>

Lenith smiled in his mind. <He was right about you>

<Right about me?>

The smile became a grin. <Yes. You belong together>

<But...>

Another thought interrupted, flooding him with peace and making him sleepy. How did he do that? <Rest first>

<I want to...>

His thoughts were drifting off. <Think of Stark>

He nodded. Yeah, that was a good idea. He drifted off while they cradled his mind and moved gently thoughout his memories and thoughts, easing the injuries caused by the half-Scarran's clone and strengthening him by giving of themselves. He did not so much wake and become aware of another presence. <Aeryn?>

Her tears were brilliant prisms of light. <John, is it really you?>

<I was about to ask you the same thing, sunshine>

The moment he called her that she knew it was him. Zhaan was relieved. <Thank the Goddess!>

Her reaction amused Crichton. <No, Zhaan, thank *you*>

Aeryn touched him with her thoughts, flooded him with her love. It was so sudden and intense that he initially reeled from the contact. Suspected it was another of Scorpy's tricks.

<It is no trick, John> Said Zhaan.

<I...I'm sorry, Zhaan>

He felt Aeryn's thoughts wrap around him and sighed with a joy his heart could not contain. <Oh, Aeryn...>

<What happened to Stark?>

It took him a while to respond. So distressed that the polite Baniks crowded gently closer to help him. Their voices a song that carried him within it. <He didn't make it, Aeryn>

<Who didn't make it?>

All thoughts stopped. The Baniks that had been crowding round him pulled back, a tremor of excitement and joy running through them like ripples on a stream. Crichton was sure he was going mad. <Who's that?>

The thoughts seemed weak as if they had come over a great distance but he would have recognised them anywhere. <It is I, John. Stark>

<Stark?> Silence. <How?>

He felt the smile in his mind, Stark growing stronger as his people augmented his strength by sacrificing their own. <How could I leave you?>

Crichton was all choked up. Aeryn and Zhaan waited, as eager to know what had happened as Crichton was. Their joy, their love, mingling with his own and sweeter than the delicious ache of hope in his heart.

<I saw you die>

<No John, you saw me *fragment*>

<Stop splitting hairs>

<Exactly>

It took him a microt to realise that Stark was gently teasing him. <Oh God Stark, I love you so much>

<Then stop crying and rejoice>

But he could not stop crying. He was so affected that it took Aeryn and Zhaan to help him adjust. To *dare* to believe. <What happened to Scorpy?>

<It was just a clone, John> Said Zhaan gently.

<It nearly beat me>

Aeryn's thoughts were sober. <It nearly beat us all>

Silence fell. Warm. Companionable and shot through with so much love it fed them with joy unadulterated. At last Stark gently stirred their thoughts into action. <We should surface now. The others will be frantic>

Crichton realised he meant their friends back on Moya. He smiled, the emotion from his heart so full he could not contain it. <Moya>

<D'Argo, Chiana and Rygel are waiting> Said Aeryn.

<Not to mention Pilot and Moya and the DRDs> Smiled Zhaan.

Stark's thoughts paused. <DRDs?>

<Ask John> Chuckled Aeryn.

The feel of such uninhibited warmth from Aeryn made Crichton so happy. <I'll tell you when we get back Stark>

There was no answering affirmation. Crichton's heart missed a beat. <You are coming back with us aren't you Stark?>

<I will never leave you...> His thought trailed off.

Crichton did not like the unfinished nature of the thought as if there was a great big ugly *but* waiting to hang on to its' coat tails and rob him of his newfound joy.

<I will follow> Said Stark simply. His love washing through Crichton with such tenderness it made him weak.

<Follow?>

<Yes> Stark was smiling now. <I want to spend a few microts with my people first>

As understanding dawned, relief coursed through Crichton. Was echoed in Aeryn and Zhaan's thoughts.

<Then let us first join in Unity for one last time> Said Zhaan.

Crichton wanted to refuse. Aeryn was afraid of letting down her walls again. Stark soothed them, his love of such quality that all fears, sorrows, and weakness fell away before it. He strengthened them simply with his presence touching their minds and joining their hearts. <I would like that>

They smiled. And as the four of them joined in Unity a passion of voices sang through their atoms and filled them with their healing light. All thoughts of Scorpius fled. There was only joy. Love. Companionship. An unfolding coitus of bliss. A mental merging that blurred the edges of reality and fashioned their memories until each one was bathed in gold. A treasure house beyond price. A wealth of emotion none could debase let alone steal.

<And then> Thought Stark gently as his thoughts washed Crichton with his unblemished touch. <We need to talk...>

* * * * *
END