Asystole
Cessation of the functional contraction of the heart. a'systolism [= F. asystolie (Beau)].
Oxford English Dictionary
For the first time, first time ever, he couldn't see a way out. A way to make sense of things, because that's all there was -- chaos. If pain like this had its own logic, he couldn't grasp it. The gross atrocity of it, the primal ignominy, he couldn't put frames around it, couldn't prepare himself for it.
The method -- the method -- it was Me. Tho. Di. Cal.
But between dialectics and heuristics, he would choose heuristics anytime.
A way out of here, a way out of hell. Even so -- even so -- he had needed Stark, to remind him. That he couldn't let the pain ensnare him, that they had to try and open the goddamn door, try to escape. The cracked prism of the Banik's insanity reordered the universe. But it was hard -- oh, so very hard -- to piece a thought together, to hold onto elemental truths: breathing, hoping, praying.
This world was cold and hard, gray first, then black and red, then black and white, black and white, and, and... fucking spinning. Less than human. Less than.
New rules: shaking, choking, begging.
*Segment his mind, as many layers as it takes.*
*No... no... please!*
Terror that made even adrenaline drown, a rush of epinephrine like an anaphylactic shock. Too much. Couldn't cope.
His heart skipped every other beat.
In the Chair, John Crichton screamed.
His heart sputters like the motor of a vintage Plymouth in need of a rehaul. Ten thousand miles, or a million light years, and he forgot to renew his AAA subscription.
The next contraction fumbles a little, but it comes nonetheless. His throat might be constricting, or there isn't enough oxygen in his bloodstream. Either way, something heavy and unwieldy is sitting on his sternum.
Another contraction. It's weird to doubt what he's always relied on -- will there be another one, and another, will his heart keep going?
It beats long enough to carry him to the maintenance bay. It keeps on contracting after that, fluttering in his temples, in his neck, his stomach. He's been here before. Tachycardia, palpitations -- test piloting can be pretty taxing on any number of internal organs. But it was never permanent. There's never been damage.
It's silent here. If he stops breathing, he can almost hear it, the arrhythmia -- that superior ventricle which got thrown for a loop, still trying to catch up to its overworked twin.
It's been two days. Gilina is cold, hands crossed over her heart like some minor saint in one of his mother's illustrated prayer books, boxed up and floating in space. John is cold and boxed up inside Moya, not floating.
Two days. He pulled an Evil Knievel, fucked it up and got rescued by the damsel in distress. Damsels. Maybe he was the damsel in distress. There was a dungeon. Even a rack. He remembers the dragon.
Humpty Dumpty mixed his metaphors.
He wants to sit on the workbench but his ribs still hurt like hell, so he grabs the tools and the components he needs and sits on the floor. A couple of DRDs come to investigate, poking at his knee, his ankle. There's some absentminded petting in between rounds of welding. The drones don't have tails, but they have eyestalks that wriggle just the same.
"Happy?" John asks, begging for an answer. So absurd, but can't be helped.
He takes the squeak as a yes.
"Pass me that wire, pal."
They work as a team for a while. It's taking shape, but it's not easy, building this thing without specs. Has to translate in his head, voltage and amperage. Couple the battery to the power controls, remember to set up reverse polarity protection. He estimates the device's recovery time at about ten seconds. Not ideal, but better than nothing. He scavenges an old storage box from Zhaan's lab and instructs the DRDs to cut out two small rectangles from the highly conductive material.
Gilina could have helped with this. She was a tech like him. Not like Aeryn, who is a warrior, like his father.
It's hard to concentrate on the welding. His vision keeps blurring, he's noticed that, but he can't rest, can't go to sleep yet. He has to finish building the machine, then instruct Zhaan on how to use it, how to monitor his cardiac cycle and apply the depolarizing impulse to reestablish his sinus rhythm.
He stops for a breath. His heart is beating in the hollow of his throat. He wants to throw up. His vision is blurrier than ever, but it's more than fatigue now; it's fear-sweat stinging his eyes.
Zhaan is a plant, but she doesn't know anything about quinine or digitalis. He gave Gilina the Kiss of Death, then Zhaan came back in and insisted on looking him over. She passed the scanner over his chest, and he said "Can't you hear it?", and she said she couldn't. Of course, she couldn't. Zhaan doesn't know what a healthy human heart sounds like. She couldn't tell, even when he tried to explain about arrhythmia, electrolyte imbalance and ventricular fibrillation; she couldn't tell the difference. She looked at him with pity and he almost slapped her.
John knows all about quinine and digitalis, quinidine injections or nitroglycerine pills. He's had to fetch one or the other for his grandfather many times. And here he is now, John Crichton, thirty-seven and the heart of an old man. No one on this ship would know how to save him, get his heart started again if it should stop. CPR isn't going to cut it; he has to save himself.
"I need something to isolate the pads. Any ideas?"
The DRDs whir softly. There are five of them now, maybe six, at his beck and call. His own little army, galvanized by his urgency and his rough breathing. They understand, even if the others don't, or don't want to.
It's all in the small things. Breakfast alone this morning. Hauling around crates afterwards, his neck hurting so much from the needles and the hard cell floor that he could barely hold his head upright. His crewmates look at him like they expect the human to just pick himself up, dust himself off and move on. Who would've thought? Calvinists in space.
The pain in his spine got so bad that John had to sit on one of the crates, his heart some wild pinball trapped in his ribcage. He watched D'Argo carry his own crates and the Luxan glared at him -- as if John had spent the last few days playing You sunk my battleship! with dear ole Scorpy.
John pictured D'Argo in the Chair. Bet the Luxan would have screamed and writhed too. Trying to run, body going nowhere, heart laboring in fright.
John felt stupid and mean.
Squeak.
He accepts a roll of some polymeric material from a DRD. Crude, but it'll do. He coats one side of the pads, as well as the handles, grabs a couple of leads and tests the isolation.
Satisfied, he gets to work on connecting the pads to the main battery via the motherboard. Some of the components are biomechanoid, but he's gotten used to the medley. Earth technology, and U.T. technology, and --
-- there's wormhole technology in his brain. He hasn't stopped to think about that too much, except when he finds his nails scratching his scalp until the skin is raw. There is something in his head that doesn't belong. There are two peacekeepers out there who think John Crichton belongs to them. And John thinks of Stark, because what made him a prisoner now keeps him alive. Sort of. The command carrier didn't fire on Moya when it could have.
Given no other option, John has decided, he'll surrender to Crais. The peacekeeper will kill him with his bare hands. John can't take methodical, unemotional, technological anymore. Can't take scientific. If it had been garden-variety torture, he could have done better, held out longer, he's sure of that. Fists and knives and whips. But not against the Chair. Not the Chair. He wants to yell at D'Argo to understand, but there are rings welded to the Luxan's collarbones.
John's pain isn't unique on this ship, isn't remarkable, and that hurts more.
Sharp jab against his thigh (no, not needles, a DRD) -- rips him away from the memory of helplessness with a gasp. He drops the welder and wraps his arms around his middle, leaning over his handiwork, rocking.
Gotta slow his breathing, his pulse so noisy the dull banging drowns out the hum of the DRDs. He scrubs roughly at his eyes, the manic elan of activity receding, exhaustion and powerlessness hoarding tears forward.
He contemplates his creation sans casing. Stupid, stupid to think he can alter the course of things, fix the damage and repair what's been broken. Pathetic to presume that he can believe in nothing, yet subsist on faith.
The DRD is still poking his thigh, gentler now. It still feels like a blade searching through skin for a bone.
"I'm fine, I'm fine."
The DRD cheeps.
"I'm fine!"
John sends the yellow drone flying with a punch. He manages to scrape his knuckles and scare his little helpers into hiding.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. His hands fall, palms up and useless between his spread legs. His joints squeak like the mechanism of a badly oiled grandfather clock. His knees hurt for no reason. No bruises there, Crais didn't kick him there. "Come back."
"Crichton."
He flinches. Surprises aren't good for him. He doesn't turn around, but waits until Aeryn comes to stand in front of him. Barefoot. Black boxers and black tank top. Although it's the middle of the sleep cycle, she doesn't look mussed from sleep.
John smiles. That's what he's supposed to do. "Hey, Aeryn."
He can't read her, can't remember how he did it before.
BC
Before the Chair.
John snickers.
"What are you doing, John?"
He surveys the disaster area in that corner of the maintenance bay -- components, tools and bits of wire strewn all over the floor. An odd mismatched lump of parts in front of him. The DRDs are still missing in action.
"I'm -- building -- something."
Aeryn crouches in front of him and he tries not to stare at her legs. "It's late."
"Yeah," he says. "D'Argo's in command." As if one explained the other.
"What are you building?"
Her voice is low. He didn't know it could be lower. "It's a -- it's--" John coughs in his fist. "Medical equipment."
She frowns and her hand closes over his knee. "Are you ill? Did the Chair--"
Yes, he wants to say. Yes, absolutely, to all of her unvoiced questions. The Chair chewed him up and spit him out, and nothing feels right.
"I--" He closes his eyes against the words that won't come.
Her cool palm on his cheek makes him cry out -- grating, sharp, unwanted. His eyes fly open. No one but Zhaan has touched him since his return, since the shock wore off. The pelt of water in the shower, the harshness of the leather is about as much contact as he can stand.
Aeryn doesn't pull away. This close, her eyes shine gray. Her skin is healthy again, toned and almost flushed around the cheekbones. She smells of Moya, of chakan oil and PK uniforms.
He reaches up tentatively, his hand wrapping loosely around Aeryn's throat. She blinks, and it's there again, this thing he can't read, but it doesn't matter. Her pulse is slow and steady under his fingers, and he misses the peace, misses the rhythm, oh God, he misses it.
"What does it do?"
"Uh?"
"That thing you're building. What does it do?"
He doesn't remove his hand. There's this tough soldier, this humbling woman, the strongest creature he's ever met, and she lets him wrap his fingers around her throat.
"It -- It's called a defibrillator. It's a device that sends an electrical shock through the body."
Aeryn arches an eyebrow at that.
"Humans use it to restart the heart when it stops."
"Like that human resuscitation technique you taught me?"
John smiles a little. "Yeah, sort off. A little more high-tech." He glances at the unfinished defibrillator. "Or it's supposed to be."
"Are you afraid your heart will stop?"
She's asking about damage, long-term. Battle-triage, always the soldier. Maybe not. Maybe he's judging her harshly.
"It's also used -- sometimes the heart beats irregularly," he says, "loses its rhythm, and a shock, it -- it can reset it, make it contract normally again."
Then it's her ear against his cotton-covered chest, and no time to recoil. At first, she is too close, too warm, too caring, too many things, and it makes him halfway sick. Then he remembers that on this big ship she is the only one who knows what his heartbeat sounds like at rest, and not at rest. She slept on his chest that night. Aeryn's the one who can tell the difference.
She sighs. His heart skitters like a badminton birdie caught in gale force winds.
"Can you -- can you hear it?"
Because he can feel it, if not hear it. Somewhere in the periphery of his stomach. That inelegant, syncopated stutter that comes with unnatural tightness in his torso.
Aeryn straightens, kneeling between his legs. Her hand is still on his cheek, his hand is still on her throat, and when she answers, he believes her because a lie would have teased his fingertips.
"Yes, Crichton. I hear it."
"I have to fix it," he says.
She nods. "Yes."
"I have to finish the--"
Her eyes narrow. "You are going to administer an electrical shock to yourself?"
"I can show Zhaan how to do it."
"How dangerous?"
She doesn't understand. It doesn't matter how dangerous it is. He can't go on like this. "Not very. The voltage is low. The shock has to come at a precise phase of the cardiac cycle, or it could stop my heart, but--"
She's staring at him now. "Can you tell?"
"T--Tell what?"
"The right phase in the cycle."
He could, with an EKG. Or using Zhaan's scanner. Mostly, he thinks, he just knows. Just has to sink into himself and taste the wrongness there.
"Yes."
Aeryn cocks her head subtly, the soft skin of her throat smoothing over his thumb. "Good."
She sits back on her heels. "What's the matter?" he says, because he wants to go back to work, but he wants to help her too.
Aeryn doesn't beat around the bush. She reaches for his waistband and it's all John can do not to get up and run; he backs away on his hands, pushing with his feet against the floor, stopping when his back hits a wall. "Aeryn -- What--"
Beware of the -- beware--
She advances lithely on all fours until she's kneeling between his legs again, but she doesn't try to touch him. "Let's try it this way, before you use that -- defrellator thing."
Laughter bubbles up, but it's on the haldol side of hysterical, so he tramples it. She wears that look, that look he used to see on his own face after a test flight. Remnant of fear, and tension, and a coil in his stomach which often led to one-night stands after Alex dumped him.
He wants to say two things, why does it always have to be a matter of life and death? and a thank you card would have done it. But he says neither. Some people are of the opinion that John Crichton doesn't belong to himself any longer; he might as well belong to Aeryn Sun.
"Okay."
How's that for romance?
She is gentler than he expected. The pressure of her fingers against his waist is light and cool; he allows her to guide him against the bulkhead. He leans against the wall, legs spread on either side of Aeryn. Her hair spills like molten opal over her shoulders. The golden light softens the sharp angles of her nose, her cheekbones. Deft fingers pull his shirt out of his waistband. He winces and doesn't make excuses.
I'm not going to hurt you, her eyes say, because it's not the kind of promise Aeryn Sun would make out loud.
He stifles a groan when she pulls the shirt over his shoulders and arms. Even that small movement strains overtaxed muscles. The bulkhead is cold against his back. Aeryn pauses briefly when she discovers the bruises that disfigure his chest and stomach -- or maybe he imagines it -- then sets out to remove the rest of his clothing until he half-reclines there, exposed.
His fists clench. He's been exposed enough for a lifetime.
It's déjà vu all over again.
He's already half-hard, but she ignores that, perhaps because he's shivering now, and her palms are warm on his waist, but he bites his lower lip anyway. His heart is doing wild, wild things.
I got my mind right, boss. Be nice.
"Do you not do that?"
He jumps, pulling himself back. He's been slipping a lot. He's naked with an almost naked Aeryn Sun on the floor of the maintenance bay, and he's slipping.
"Do what?"
"After a battle," she says, bending to lick a bruise the size of Crais's fist. "Don't humans relieve tension this way?"
This is a little more than tension, babe.
"Some -- some do. Soldiers. People in high risk -- occupations."
Aeryn nods to herself. She traces his collarbone with the pads of her fingers, ignoring each small flinch. He can't tell if she doesn't care, or if she's being polite. "Not so different then."
"A--Aeryn. Why are you talking?"
"Because you're not," she says. "You were, last time. Talking."
It doesn't sound like a rebuke. It sounds, improbably, like Aeryn soothing him.
Aeryn's lips have always been sweeter than Gilina's, but not as soft as Luanne's, more forceful than Karen's, but not as dry as Alex's, and if that means anything, he doesn't know what. She doesn't hold onto his shoulders the way Christina used to, or maybe Joanne. Scorpy skimmed quickly over Joanne, because she didn't know anything about wormholes. None of them knew anything about wormholes. Scorpius just speeded through them -- didn't see Gilina there, didn't -- lips and hands and female softness around his body, John going hard and soft and hard again in the Chair, until being loved felt like being seasick.
Scorpy didn't have to rape him. The freak just watched John's old lovers do it by proxy.
"John. John. Crichton."
His untrimmed fingernails cut into his palms.
"Huh."
He focuses on a point above Aeryn's shoulder.
"You're shaking."
"Can't help it." He doesn't apologize. Guilt is for things he can control.
Lids at half-mast and eyes full of nothing, Aeryn pulls away from sweat and skin. He can't tell what she's thinking; it's starting to bother him. "I understand," she says.
He doesn't think she does. Things became easier once he accepted that she would never understand. He doesn't give voice to the doubts. He doesn't need her empathy right now, maybe later. He needs her willfulness.
"John."
Her tongue coaxes his mouth open and John breathes through his nose. He moans, but it's not a moan, it's a sob. His throat closes up and he pushes at Aeryn, fighting to scramble to his feet.
"No -- I -- no--"
He's pinned to the bulkhead by the weight of Aeryn pressed hard against him. Her fingers twist in his hair.
"Crichton. Crichton! Stop."
His eyes are shut tight, but the world is gray, damp and tilted behind his lids. He latches onto the anger in Aeryn's glare. Anger at him or for him -- he's trapped either way. Naked and paralyzed beneath her: his heart has completely lost the plot.
She pulls back, startling him so badly that he forgets to flee. She tugs her shirt over her head. The seams give way around the neckline.
John whimpers.
She drags his attention away from the heady fullness of her breasts, pointing at her stomach. The scar is red and angry, but not as red or as angry as he pictured it.
"We fixed this," she says. "You fixed this."
Drop the martyr routine, Aeryn. I'm not gonna let you die.
She remembers too, John can tell. It's not his fault; he wasn't broken for nothing. His heart wasn't crippled for nothing.
Just then, that's enough.
She leans in for another kiss, her breasts smashed against his chest. Her hands frame his sides, warming him up, and he forgets that his ribs can't take the gentle abuse. He almost feels whole, like his skin is his again, except that it's really hers right now. Sharp teeth nibble on his nipples and he melts into the wall, sliding downwards, flushed. Her hands wander down, down, hook under his knees, pulling. It's bonelessness and heaviness, the memory of muscles uncoiling. He should be reciprocating, he wants to remember safety and bury his face between her breasts, but there's still too much fear, he's too exposed, a little too naked, his thighs are spread a little too wide. Her touch is a little too sharp.
Still it's better than agonizing alone inside his body. Better than trying this with his own hand, because his hand doesn't feel like it belongs to him anymore, and he might fuck it up or not remember how.
Lithe fingers creep up his inner thighs and he's vibrating. A ragged, hoarse cry at the back of his throat, building.
"Please, Aeryn -- please."
She frowns but doesn't pause, looking contrite for making him beg. She takes his cock in her hand, bends at the waist like some PK geisha. She's applying herself, that's what it is, and a tear stumbles over his cheekbone. He doesn't mind; he's never minded salt in the water.
He strains, corded muscles racing. No restraints but the knots of bruises around his wrists. It's nothing like the Chair: when he arches into her mouth, when his spine locks in anticipation and his lips part on a moan, PK Barbie isn't manning the controls.
Aeryn's deft tongue is rough and moist around his cock. This exercise is going to kill him or it's going to set things right. Up and down, in and out, systole and diastole.
"Are you -- almost?"
Aeryn sounds hungry, and he's trying not to look. Long-limbed, supple and unselfconscious, beautiful Aeryn. He worships the way her inner strength always seems to make love to her body. The tightness in his groin and the warmth pooling in his belly are almost more than he can bear. His face is wet. It's like -- reaching for Stark's secret place again. Something good and something his own, something deliberate.
If Crais found them now, if they all perished right this instant in a pandemonium of vacuum and fire, John wouldn't really care.
He grunts and Aeryn lets go of him, but not for long. He's gonna have to share his Calvins again, because she rips out her underwear trying to get it off. Fuck, he'll go commando for the rest of his life if it means--
She straddles him. The coarseness of her dark curls teases the sensitive head of his erection. He's wet and she's wet; from there, it's pretty uncomplicated.
Aeryn glides lazily downwards. Her inner walls climb overly irritable, rigid flesh. Kneeling astride him, she doesn't need more than the power of her own muscles for leverage, and John is mesmerized -- a bent knee, a glistening thigh, the roundness of her hips. She leans over to snatch a kiss. Her hard nipples poke his chest; her tongue tastes like dentics and the sea. She inhales sharply in his mouth, and each breath flutters around his cock.
She's strong everywhere. She guides his palms to her waist when he makes an attempt at putting his fingers to good use, giving something back, and he's fucking grateful, because there's really nothing to give, for now.
"Tell me," she grits between her teeth. "Tell me when--"
He wants to tell her. He tries to sink in there, to a place where he can hear it, but all he feels is the pull, something barren and bigger than he expected, something almost like an illness, almost frightening.
"Tell me."
It swells, and it's too much like pain, and he can't possibly hear anything over the roar-- He's never, ever going to be free of it -- oh, God -- dying must be better than this, gentler than this, not like something savage and panicked inside his chest, clawing, pleading--
"Crichton, tell me!"
He can't tell, he can't hear, and it doesn't fucking matter, because he's dead either way. So he gambles.
"Now."
Aeryn reaches around herself. Her fingers clamp around his balls and squeeze.
It crashes, crashes, burns.
His world narrows down to the agony of empty lungs (systole), and he gasps (diastole), and he--
-- comes --
and he throws his head back (systole) --
and he cries out (diastole).
And falls again.
--
There is time after that.
There is life after that.
"John."
Aeryn is holding him.
He doesn't know if she came; maybe she took care of it herself. Her skin smells like sex and he burrows. He's still inside of her. Still naked on the floor, but she found a coverlet somewhere and dragged it over them both.
Talk about freaking out the DRDs.
Aeryn wriggles down. She pillows her left cheek gently on his chest. He can't see her face, but he can tell what she's thinking.
"I can hear it," she says. She sounds very serious, like a schoolgirl.
He drowns his face in her hair, sleepily. Almost lost.
"I hear it too."