SquidgeWorld Archive

TITLE: "Dust and Ashes"

AUTHOR: Aiobheann

RATING: PG

PAIRING: John/D'Argo

SUMMARY: Alternate Universe, Crossover:

Farscape/The Sandman. John encounters the Endless, and has a difficult choice to make. Set during the Season One cliffhanger -- spoilers for "Family Ties."

NOTES: This story is a crossover with a comic book by Neil Gaiman called The Sandman, which deals with beings who are not quite gods, known as the Endless. Dream and his siblings Death, Delirium, Despair, Destruction, Destiny, and Desire are the embodiment of the "man behind the curtain", to borrow a metaphor Nessa reminded me of, and each of them has a specific duty to the mortals of our world, and to worlds we only imagine.

DISCLAIMER: All things concerning Farscape are the property of The Jim Henson Company. All things concerning Dream and the Endless are the property of Neil Gaiman and DC/Vertigo Comics. No copyright infringement is intended. Only the words are mine.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please. diva@sonoratx.net

Italics are indicated by /

Dust and Ashes
by Aiobheann

"Things need not have happened to be true.
Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that
will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes,
and forgot."
-- Dream Country, by Neil Gaiman.
------------------------------------------------

Running out of oxygen. And cold, so cold. Aeryn kept talking as if she could keep him alive with her voice, and he just wanted her to shut up. To be quiet so he could sleep.

"John, don't do that. Don't let go, talk to me, say something. Just hang on and keep talking to me, I'll be able to get to you, I swear -- "

Eyes slipping closed. He wasn't going to let go of D'Argo's hand, but he needed to sleep, just needed to close his eyes for a little while. Knowing it was probably all over with, except for Aeryn yammering over the comm to him after he could no longer hear her, John closed his eyes.

"Okey dokey. Open your eyes. I bet you have pretty colored eyes. But if you don't, I can always make them pretty. I like purple eyes. Have you ever met anyone withpurple-colored eyes? I have, but she wasn't real, so I guess that doesn't count does it?"

John sat up. He was in his cell, on board Moya, and the most peculiar girl was sitting perched on the table, looking at him out of mismatched, one-blue-one-green eyes from under a thatch of rainbow-hued hair. Seeing him sit up, she clapped her hands gaily and sang out, "Ooooh, you do have pretty eyes! I remember you now! You came close to me before, when you were in the comfy chair. You were funny. I like funny people. Not everyone who meets me is funny, though. A lot of them just cry. Or drool. You don't drool, do you?"

"Not usually," John answered carefully. He looked around. The last thing he remembered was D'Argo, and being out in space, and dying. "I was dying, wasn't I?" he asked the girl, and she scrunched up her face in concentration. Some of the brightly-colored tie-dyed butterflies circling round her head stilled their wings and dropped to the floor, turning into scraps from the Classifieds section of the New York Times' Sunday Edition as they went.

"Um. That's not my job. You can ask my sister about that. She does that kind of thing. I think." The girl smiled again, and hopped off the table. The newspaper scraps became little cerulean worms burrowing into Moya's deck, and the surviving butterflies followed her, dipping and swirling in complex, drunken patterns. She straightened her jacket sleeves, shooting ragged tuxedo-shirt cuffs out from the hems, and skipped toward John, barely missing crushing the wriggling worms under her bare feet. Her wispy, gauzy skirt whispered nonsense nursery-rhymes at him as she stopped before him, holding out one net-gloved hand.

"Come go with me. I was supposed to do something else with you, but I don't remember what, so it must not have been that important. When you think about it, nothing really is, but I try not to think about it at all. I get all...I can't remember now. Come with me and I'll show you how to make telephone ice cream, which is really good, compared to the green mouse ice cream I made that time."

"It's okay, Del. He needs to come with me," said a woman who was just walking into the cell. She was pale, paler than Chiana, and had long dark hair and dark eyes, and John felt comfortable with her at once. /I know her from somewhere/, he thought. She leaned hipshot against the doorway, in black jeans and a black tank top, and a large silver ankh dangled between her small breasts.

"Oh, I remember now! Sometimes things go all squiggly and I have a hard time knowing what's not and what is. Well, what wasn't and what was before it went all squiggly. I was just supposed to see you for a bit, while you passed through my realm, and then my sister was coming to see you. Anyway, 'bye!" The girl twiddled her fingers at him playfully and then walked straight into nothing.

"Who," John asked slowly, "Was that?"

"My little sis, Delirium," the woman answered, sighing.

"Uh huh. That explains a lot. Look, who are you and what happened to me?"

The woman came over and cocked an eyebrow at the bed beside him, and John scooted over to make room for her. She sat down and said, "I'm Death."

She waited, crossing one leg and resting her foot on the opposite knee, looking at him.

"Death? But where's your, you know -- ?" John mimicked a slicing blade cutting through the air before him.

"I don't have a scythe. I'm just me. Death. And to answer your question, your time is up, John. You need to take a walk with me."

"I'm dying?"

"Yeah. It happens."

John stared off in front of him for a bit, digesting this news. He looked up at her again. "I thought it -- you -- would be...I don't know, different."

Death stood and clasped her hands behind her back, regarding him with a tiny smile on her lips. "If you like, I can call Delirium back and she can come up with something a bit more, oh, phantasmagoric for you."

"No, no, this is cool," John said quickly, waving his hands. "I don't think I could handle much more of that, if it's all the same to you. It was like having acid flashbacks without ever having done acid. Can I ask you something, though?"

"Go for it. It's your death. By the way, you're taking this very well, John. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, I guess. Did you already see D'Argo? I mean, my...my lover. Is he dead already? Will I...ever see him again?"

"D'Argo?" Death said, puzzled.

"Yeah. Tall, Luxan...has these tentacles, and...you don't know anything about him?" John trailed off, beginning to feel the faint beginnings of alarm at the confused look on Death's face.

"I don't know anyone like that, John. I know everyone, you see. I know you -- I saw you when you were born, although you don't remember. Why do you think everyone cries when they're born? I have to tell them about life, and that I'll come back for them at the end of life. It's scary when you're a little one, to hear things like that, but it's part of my job. If I don't know him, then he never was."

"Never was? What are you talking about? He was here, right here, on board -- " John stopped, looking around them. He and Death were no longer in his cell on Moya -- they stood in a sterile, still hospital corridor, nurses passing by like silent ghosts, paying them no heed.

"John, it's time." Death put out her hand to him, and John shrank back, frightened of her for the first time.

"Wait, sister," a man's voice called, and John turned to look behind him. A swath of night shaped like a man flowed down the corridor, half-born wishes and terrors screaming and laughing in the folds of his robe, stars in the pits of his eyes, and then the world /shifted/ half a turn and a tall, lanky man with a shock of black unruly hair and Death's pale skin stood before him, in a trenchcoat and jeans. He looked as if the dust of all possible worlds clung to his boots and the stars were still in his eyes, but other than that, he was just a man.

"This one still belongs in my realm, for now," the man said, and John flinched helplessly when those fathomless eyes lit on him. "He has business with me before he can pass into yours."

"Suit yourself. Call me if you need me, Dream." She turned back to John, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll see you later, sweetie." Death wandered off down the ward hallway, studying the numbers on the door of each hospital room as she passed them. Nodding to herself, she slipped into one of them, and shut it behind her.

"You're...Dream?" John asked, discomfited by having this creature's full attention thrust on him, and oddly enough wishing that Death hadn't gone. She was somehow less frightening than this one.

"The King of Dreams," the man corrected, and then indicated a high, narrow door that had not been there a quarter-second before. "After you," Dream said with a courtly nod. John hesitated before going through, but a glance back at the man's impassive face told him there was no bargaining allowed.

On the far side of the impossible door was a great road lying sprawled under a sky boiling with clouds. Before them were huge gates, made of dully shining gold and horn, curving together at the center like two stooped old women conferring and trading gossip. Guarding these gates were two huge statues of gryphons, wings folded neatly on their backs, beaks tipped down, John felt, toward his heart.

Dream passed in front of him, striding up to the gates. One of the statues moved, slowly, nodding its head at the Dream King. "Lord Morpheus," came a grinding, booming voice. "I see you have brought him."

The gates beyond swung open, and John could see that the road they stood on wound up toward a castle that seemed to shimmer in a wave of heat. No -- looking closer, John realized that the air between himself and the towers of that place was not moving; the place itself twisted and moved, shrank and grew as he looked at it. It made him slightly sick to see it, and he glanced away, hurrying to follow Dream through the gates and into the land beyond.

"What is this place?" John asked.

"This is my realm, the Dreaming. Have you never wondered where dreams come from? This is where all dreams are born, and where they come to die when they are worn beyond repair. Stay on the path, at my side," he cautioned John, who was wandering to the verge of the road, his attention caught by a beautiful girl slipping through the trees beside them, moving from one patch
of shadow to the next like a stone skipping on still water.

"Why?" John asked, glancing at Dream and then back at the girl. She darted into a spill of sunlight and grinned at John, and he saw now that half of her face was gone, and teeth, many teeth, gleamed in the ruin of her cheek.

"Not all the dreams here are tame, or even known to me. The nightmares always breed faster than even I can count," Dream remarked.

Shuddering, John turned away, keeping his eyes fixed to the pebbled path passing below their feet...but even that was no better. In the bellies of the shining stones, John saw faces and scenes and fantasies. Newborn dreams being crushed under their feet. Sickened, he was almost relieved when they came to the doors of the shapeshifting castle. The doors swung open, and Dream led him through.

Cool, echoing marble floors and gilded pillars graced the entry way, and Dream stopped before an open arch that led to a long corridor fitted with thousands of doors that stretched off into the distance. He held up his arm, and a screeching raven flapped down out of the dim recesses of the ceiling and lit on it.

"Matthew, please have Merv make sure the chamber is prepared."

"Sure, boss," the raven answered, cocking his head at John and studying him with clever black eyes. "I'm outta here." He flapped away, and Dream went into the hall, motioning to John that he should follow.

John did so, studying the closed doors fearfully as they passed them -- from inside each room, faint noises could be heard. Screams, from some rooms. Laughter or disjointed sobbing from others. Doors appeared and reappeared at random intervals, making John's perception of the hall and how long they had walked down it uncertain. From behind a door that came into being as they passed it issued the sound of many wings, beating furiously, accompanied by sweet voices calling in an arcane language. John's translator microbes stayed curiously silent on the subject of the strange, lilting song.

"A dream of archangels," Lord Morpheus said cryptically. "More dangerous than any of the
nightmares housed here. I'd really rather not have them here -- angels are violent creatures, always running about on mad errands for their God...but they never stay long. He likes to keep His choir close." Dream continued on as he spoke, never slowing.

"What is in these rooms?" John asked, glad to be away from the door, although he feared the sound of great wings churning the air would stay locked in his head forever.

"Why, these are dreams, of course. Each room holds the dreaming of a sleeper who is passing through my realm. We'll come to yours in just a moment."

John followed him, staying as close as he could to the center of the hall, away from the blank, featureless doors that shifted and winked in and out of sight. He looked up and saw that they were now perhaps halfway to the end of the corridor. Dream stopped abruptly, and spoke to a being leaning against the wall next to a door that was more solid-seeming and ornate than the others. This portal was gold and mellow amber, with a lintel that was a segmented shell of brass, each piece fitting into the next. On the door itself was carved the shape of an airplane or flying craft of some sort, with a blunt nose and stubby wings.

The creature loitering by the door harrumphed in response to something Dream had said to him. "Yeah, Boss, it's all ready. Man, I ain't never seen a dream need so much upkeep, so many props and doohickeys...all of 'em made custom." The creature nodded its huge round head, which John saw, with not much amazement, was a large carved jack-o-lantern. Apparently, whatever this place was, nothing was beyond the realm of possibility here.

Digging into the pocket of his coveralls, Merv pulled out a disreputable-looking bandanna, wiping his domed, orange forehead with it. "It's all there, with the additions you asked for. If you need me, I'll be in the South Garden -- the nymphs and the satyrs tore up the grass back there playing field hockey." Merv clomped away on his stiltlike legs, muttering crossly under his breath about disrespectful mythological buttheads.

Dream gestured at the door, and it swung open. John walked inside.

"Wait -- I'm back on Moya! What do you mean, this is my dream?" He stared around at his cell. Everything was just as he had left it when he had seen it last...minus the wriggling worms and butterflies that Delirium had brought with her. Dream stood by the wall, where no door was to be seen, as if it had never existed.

"Yes. You have lived in my realm for nearly a year now, John Crichton."

"A year? What are you talking about? I was on an experimental mission, and I got sucked through a wormhole. I've been here for almost a full cycle, on board Moya."

"Only part of that is true, in the sense of the word as mortals use it. You did fly Farscape 1 -- but that is where reality ends, and your dream begins. There was no wormhole. Your craft suffered a life support malfunction, and you were without oxygen for nearly eight minutes. By the time your body could be brought back to earth, you were as you are now...a dreaming sleeper. Brain damaged, beyond all hope of recovery."

"No. I don't believe you," John said quietly. "I don't believe any of it!" he shouted suddenly, voice rising in panic. "It's all real, I know it is! This is a trick -- you're like Maldis. I want out of here! I don't have to listen to any more of this."

"Come with me then," Dream said, walking past him and out into the corridor. "I'll show you."

After a moment's hesitation, John followed him. Dream led him down Moya's familiar, winding corridors -- but the ship was silent and still, and they encountered no one, nor heard any voices or saw signs that anyone had ever walked these halls but them. Dream halted at the door to the maintenance bay, waiting for John to stop beside him.

"Here we will leave your dream for a moment, but we will not be in reality as you perceive it to be. We will carry a pocket of the Dreaming with us, insulated from the notice of those who are outside your dream." The door opened upon a hospital room -- still and perfumed with the scent of dead flowers and antiseptic, but with the fertile, rich smell of human decay and of still-born dreams beneath it.

John recognized his father, sitting beside the bed, holding the hand of the figure lying there. A pale, wasted wrist jutted out from beneath the sheets, and Jack Crichton stroked the back of the hand tenderly, avoiding the IV line snaking away to a forest of machinery and beeping monitors standing sentry. John shook his head, denying what he saw, even as he recognized the face of the sleeper in the bed as his own.

His eyes were closed, a small Mona-Lisa smile on his face, the cheeks hollowed and the body beneath the covers twisted and frail. John moved closer, aching to reach out to his father, to comfort him. The door opened and a nurse bustled in, checking the monitors and lines, adjusting John's frozen limbs as efficiently and dispassionately as a housewife straightening a stack of magazines on a coffeetable. As she left, DK came in, patting Jack on the shoulder and then dragging over a chair from the corner to sit beside him.

"Why are you showing me this? I didn't have to know. I could have gone on thinking it was all real," John said softly, unable to turn away from the tableau in front of him.

"The lives of the dreamer and the dream are coming together, John. You draw closer and closer to my elder sister's realm by the moment. I consulted my brother, Destiny, on your behalf, but even he could not tell me your fate. The twinned nature of your soul, such as it is now, prevents him from reading clearly what is written of you in his Book."

Dream drew closer, laying one hand on John-the-dream's shoulder, the other on the slim cheek
of John-the-dreamer. The dreamer shifted in his slumber, crying out thinly, and Jack and DK were on their feet at once, leaning over the bed and speaking excitedly to him, hope in their cracking voices.

"I can only offer you a choice, John. Understand, that is more than many ever receive, especially from me. I do not give boons lightly." He lifted his hand from John-the-dreamer's cheek and turned to face the dream standing at his side. "You are dying. Here, in this waking world, where your body is slowly fading, and in the dreamscape you occupy, left in the void holding your lover's hand. Choose which death you wish, and I will grant your request."

"What do you mean?"

"If you choose to wake from the dream completely, and return to this body, you may have weeks or months left, perhaps a few moments of clarity at the end to say your goodbyes to those you leave behind. I cannot promise that, but I have asked that my youngest sibling, Delirium, not attend your death, and she has agreed." Dream leaned closer, a spark of humor lighting the coldness of his eyes. "I was not sure she would agree -- she likes you."

"And if I choose to stay in the Dreaming?"

"You will return to your fate in the void. I cannot predict what may happen then -- dreams are mercurial, fluid things. You could die at once, or be saved. If you remain in the Dreaming and cheat your death from my sister's hands, the strength of your life as John-the-dream would prolong the existence of John-the-dreamer. There are dreamers who have existed in my realm, as you do, for their whole lives, building whole and complex worlds out of the stuff of wishes. The material of a wish is rich, John. You could live on it for years to come."

John hesitated a moment, then sat on the edge of the hospital bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his sleeping breath. "I could come back here, and maybe have a few seconds, or minutes, with my father and DK. You can't guarantee me that, either, right?"

"That's so," Dream agreed.

"Or I could go back to...my dream...and take my chances." John looked down, and then tentatively reached out and touched the hand of his dreaming self. The dreamer murmured softly, the small, vague smile returning to his face. John could not decide how he wanted to feel about the self he saw, lying suspended in a year-long dream, or about the self he perceived himself to be. "Be careful what you wish for," he murmured. "I just wanted to go home, when I first got here, and now I find out I was home, all the time."

"Indeed," Dream said. "Wishes can be terrible things, given flesh and life...or they can be a salvation. Have you come to a decision, John?"

John stood, backing away from the bed, his eyes on the fading hope and pain he saw in the faces of his father and friend, holding their vigil. "Yes."

"Ask it and I will grant your request."

John stood, looking for one last moment, at his father, at the friend who had become a brother. "Take me back to my dream."

"Are you sure?" Dream asked, and John had the feeling that he had shocked the Dream King, who was perhaps a being who was usually beyond shock and disbelief at anything he saw or heard.

"I love my dad, and I love Deke. They know that. My dad raised me well...he always told me that a man keeps his promises, no matter what. Didn't you just tell me that dreams can have a life of their own, that they can be real, almost? I love them -- " John pointed at Jack and DK. "-- but I love D'Argo, too. I made a promise to him. I don't care if he isn't real to anyone but me. I want to go back, and do what I promised I would do. I have to. You understand that, don't you? You, more than anyone, have to understand that."

Dream gazed at John silently for a moment. "Yes, I do."

"Then take me back."

"As you wish," Dream said, and raised his hand.

"Can I ask one thing, though?"

Dream lowered his hand. "Yes?"

"I don't want to remember this. Any of it. I don't care what else happens, I don't care if I die as soon as I get back, but please don't let me die knowing it's not really real. Okay?"

"As you wish," Dream said again, softly, and when he raised his hand this time, he did not lower it again until he stood alone in a pocket of Dreaming in a silent hospital room, unseen and unremarked upon.

* * * * *

Running out of oxygen. And cold, so cold. Aeryn kept talking as if she could keep him alive with her voice, and he just wanted her to shut up. To be quiet so he could sleep. John could feel his lungs heaving, searching for more air where none existed, saw black roses blooming and spreading over his vision. His grip on D'Argo's hand tightened convulsively.

* * * * *

Monitors screeched discordantly, nurses and doctors rushed in, bearing a crash cart and the mantle of grave importance as they tried to save the life, such as it was, of the man lying in the bed. Jack and DK hovered at the door, not looking at each other, ashamed for feeling some small measure of relief that it might finally be over, and that they might finally be able to get on with the business of grieving for John properly. That the limbo of his coma might be over, for them and for him.

John's stick-figure hands tightened and loosened convulsively, his body wracked by tremors as his weak lungs fought for air that suddenly did not exist. He fought the hands that held him down, and spoke in a cracked, spitless voice, saying a word that Jack and DK had heard several times before, mixed in with the nonsense he sometimes cried out on the rare occasions he seemed most agitated and closest to consciousness: "D'Argo..."

* * * * *

Aeryn had been silent for sometime, her litany of hopeful words to John had ceased -- but John did not notice. He was almost unconscious, only intermittently seeing past the veil of black falling over his vision, gone beyond hearing anything except the slowing rush of his own blood in his ears. His muscles were spasming, the hand holding D'Argo's seeming far away and vague, no longer under his control, and he focused what was left of his strength on not letting go.

"D'Argo..."

"John! John, I'm coming to get you -- don't let go. I'll be right there."

His last impression, before fading into the black, was of two shapes, seen outlined against the burning moon: a small, birdlike shape, swooping toward him, and a larger, dark silhouette beyond it.

* * * * *

The nurses and doctors stepped away from the bed, the frantic efforts slowing down, just as the monitors around them slowed their screeching call into something that approximated the sounds Jack and DK had become so used to, during their long waits at John's bedside.

"He's breathing on his own now." The doctor said. "I don't know how or why -- it certainly wasn't anything we did. We'll leave him off the vent for now. If he needs it, we can intubate him again." The nurses left the room, following in the doctor's wake. Jack and DK sat down, once again, to watch and wait.

Matthew flapped into the room, lighting on Dream's outstretched arm. The Dream King stood, watching the figure in the bed for a moment longer, then turned toward a door that opened soundlessly and impossibly before him.

"I guess he made it after all, huh, Boss?"

"I suppose he did." Before he stepped through the door, Dream turned to regard the silent figure of the dreamer. "Pleasant dreams, John Crichton. Live in them and be well."

END