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kixxa.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
crack_van2004-11-10 01:59 am
kixxa.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2004-11-10 01:59 am
Rite of Passing by Astrogirl (PG)
Fandom: FARSCAPE
Pairing: Stark
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrogirl2
Author Website:
Why this must be read:
There's been a flurry of ficathons in the FS fandom recently as writers champion the characters that often get neglected in the John/Aeryn love. Farscape is blessed with a myriad of rich and vibrant characters and none more compelling than the Banik slave, Stark. Part sage, part seer, part mad - he is a Stykera, and a Stykera's duty is to ease the passing of souls into the afterlife, in the process taking on some of their rage, their fear, their pain.
Astrogirl has written a lovely fic on the dreadful cost of this type of slavery, when a slave's soul is owned and abused far more than the frail body that contains it.
Rite of Passing
He senses the Scarran's soul immediately, a complex tangle of pain and fear, so familiar in the dying. Less familiar is the hard, savage knot of rage, and for a moment Stark is startled into pulling back, withdrawing into himself in search of elusive focus and calm.
He does not get far. The Scarran's dying soul latches firmly onto his. Its time is near, and its will is strong. Stark is dimly aware of his body shaking. He takes a breath, and then another, drawing on meditations he was taught, incompletely, as a child. His own fear recedes -- not gone, but stored away in a private place to be released, at some cost, later -- and concentrates on his duty. He reaches out with compassion, with light, to soothe the fear and the pain. The rage... The rage is more difficult. It fights him, rejects him, until at last he leaves it be. Every soul knows what it must cling to, to take with it into the afterlife, and this one, it seems, must cling to rage.
Pairing: Stark
Author on LJ:
astrogirl2Author Website:
Why this must be read:
There's been a flurry of ficathons in the FS fandom recently as writers champion the characters that often get neglected in the John/Aeryn love. Farscape is blessed with a myriad of rich and vibrant characters and none more compelling than the Banik slave, Stark. Part sage, part seer, part mad - he is a Stykera, and a Stykera's duty is to ease the passing of souls into the afterlife, in the process taking on some of their rage, their fear, their pain.
Astrogirl has written a lovely fic on the dreadful cost of this type of slavery, when a slave's soul is owned and abused far more than the frail body that contains it.
Rite of Passing
He senses the Scarran's soul immediately, a complex tangle of pain and fear, so familiar in the dying. Less familiar is the hard, savage knot of rage, and for a moment Stark is startled into pulling back, withdrawing into himself in search of elusive focus and calm.
He does not get far. The Scarran's dying soul latches firmly onto his. Its time is near, and its will is strong. Stark is dimly aware of his body shaking. He takes a breath, and then another, drawing on meditations he was taught, incompletely, as a child. His own fear recedes -- not gone, but stored away in a private place to be released, at some cost, later -- and concentrates on his duty. He reaches out with compassion, with light, to soothe the fear and the pain. The rage... The rage is more difficult. It fights him, rejects him, until at last he leaves it be. Every soul knows what it must cling to, to take with it into the afterlife, and this one, it seems, must cling to rage.