Disclaimer: And now, as an adept of the obvious: Farscape is owned by the grand high Mucky Mucks and the Jim Henson Company, I'm just mangling the characters a bit :) I'm making no money off this. No copyright infringement is intended. Any similarity to any other story is coincidence.(and there is similarity to "Long December")

Title: The Harvest
Genre: Farscape ficlit; Chiana character piece; spiritual/melodrama
Rating: PG for Farscape swears.
Timeline: Two years after the Peacekeeper Wars
Summary: Chiana is on Hyneria with a small farm that she's built. She's still not really over D'Argo's death, but someone has just arrived to help her heal.
Author's Notes: Story breaks are indicated by boldface and an ellipsis. Dreams are indicated by purple text.

Harvesting the Hatha



Chiana placed the last dish of food on the simple wood dining table and sat across from Yael. She noticed that even though he must have been quite hungry, he still waited for her to be settled. Once she was, he waited for her to nod quietly before reaching for the dishes of food and filling up his plate.

Chiana spent a moment just watching the young Delvian. It had been a long time, almost two cycles, since she had shared a meal with anyone else, let along cooked for them. Not since John, Aeryn, and little D had left her here on Hyneria, had she had the opportunity.

They had stayed a short while, concerned for her. And they had only left when Rygel had promised that he would keep an eye on her. Chiana wasn’t meant to know that of course, but she supposed that she was grateful all the same.

Now the young Nebari sat across from Yael, and thought back to her days on board Moya. Quietly, she realized that she missed cooking for someone else; eating with them. On board Moya, she had learned that others could love her for herself, and not just for what they could get from her. Cooking had been her way of showing how much she loved her family on board Moya. And she had enjoyed sharing meal time with everyone that she loved, it had always made her feel so safe. After being so long alone, it had been good to feel safe and loved.

“Chiana, Chiana? Are you all right?” The deep male voice brought her back to awareness of her surroundings. She realized that she had been silent for several moments as she had lost herself in her memories. Yale had a worried look on his face as he waited anxiously for the young Nebari to respond.

Chiana shook herself slightly, as if trying to shrug off her quiet musings. “I’m fine,” she replied, “just fine.”

Yael nodded quickly and turned back to his food. After a few moments spent quietly eating, Yael asked, “So, why are you here on Hyneria? It seems a strange place to find a Nebari.”

“The same could be said of you,” Chiana replied.

Yael smiled slightly and shrugged, “I suppose so. Fair enough. How about I’ll tell you, if you tell me?”

The young man waited for Chiana’s response. At her slight nod, he began.

“It’s simple enough I suppose. My father was a Peacekeeper and my mother was a highly placed diplomat. A long time ago, before I was even born, they did a favor for the Hynerian royal family. In return, they were promised a favor in return. When my father decided to marry my mother, he had to leave the Peacekeepers. They sought sanctuary on Hyneria. The royal family hid my family and worked to make sure that the Peacekeepers never found us. Now, I don’t think that they even know I exist anymore.”

Yael shrugged slightly and sighed. He waited patiently for Chiana to speak. After several moments, she finally did. Her voice was quiet, but Yael didn’t ask her to speak up, apparently sensing that to do so, would dry up her words as easily as a drought dried up the river.

“It was D’Argo’s dream; to have a farm, a quiet life away from war and death. Before he…before he died, he asked me to come to Hyneria with him, to live this life. I didn’t want to, not really, but for him, I would have done anything. So…so I said yes. After he died, I had to do it. So I came here to Hyneria and started this farm.”

“Besides,” she shrugged lightly, “I couldn’t keep reminding our friends of…it wasn’t fair to…they deserve to be happy,” Chiana stumbled over the words. “And I just knew that if I was gone, Aeryn, and John, and Little D could be much happier. After everything that they had done for me, it was the least I could do, even if they would never have asked it of me.”

Chiana shrugged again lightly. They finished the rest of the meal in silence until Yael rose.

“Well, it’s late and we should get up early to get the rest of the hatha root harvested before we start on your field of w’taeh grain.”

With that, the young Delvian made his way out of the room and down the hallway to the small room that Chiana had provided for his use…


Chiana paused the swing of her scythe to stand still a moment and watch Yael at work. Like herself, he was dressed in loose clothing meant to help the flow of air and thus keep him cool in the warm Hynerian summer breezes. It was also as blue as the Hynerian suns, thus reflecting the heat. And before she could stop the thought, Chiana noted that the clothing was also very attractive on the Delvian’s lithe form.

She watched as Yael moved his scythe with smooth practiced strokes so much more effective than her own clumsy attempts. His biceps worked gracefully beneath his skin and his wrists moved the harvesting tool in an elegant dance as he worked his way through the waist high grain stalks.

"Let’s take a break,” she called over to him.

Yael stopped the graceful swing of his scythe and walked over to where Chiana stood. Once he had reached her, she gestured over to a tall orange tree beneath which a small lunch waited in a banta basket, “Let’s have an early lunch.”


Yael nodded and followed her into the shade of the orange Mallorean tree. He slid his hat from his head and shrugged out of his loose blue shirt as he settled on the brightly woven blanket that Chiana had laid on the ground.

Chiana absently noted that he had a very nice chest, but quickly thrust the thought aside, feeling a sense of profound guilt for having even thought it, no matter how briefly. An image of D’Argo’s beaten and broken body filled her mind’s eye and she choked back a deep sob.

Any hope that Yael hadn’t noticed was dashed when he asked quietly, “How long?”

Chiana was silent for a moment as she continued to lay out their meal, but Yael’s quiet and sympathetic silence finally forced her to answer, “Almost two cycles.”

“It’s been five cycles for me,” he replied.

Chiana looked up and met his brown eyes with her own cat like ones. He nodded. “Yes, I loved her. Her name was Jeska. She was an Interion, here to study the ancient scrolls found in Beju the XVI’s Grand Academy. When she got sick, even the best Diagnosans couldn’t heal her. She died in my arms, and it took me a long time to even breath again.”

Chiana nodded.

“All I can say, is that it gets better. It really does. And for me, knowing that Jeska would want me to be happy and to live on, helps me to enjoy each day. I think, probably, your D’Argo would want that for you too.”

“I miss him so much,” Chiana whispered. “I never thought that I would miss anyone this much, except maybe Neri, my brother.”

Suddenly, she shook her head, trying to loose the melancholy that had settled over her. “Let’s eat,” she said with a forced brightness.

For a moment, Yael seemed to want to say something more, but for reasons of his own, he held back and they ate their meal with only simple small talk. After they were finished, they went back to work and had almost the whole field of w’taeh harvested by the time that the two suns set in the south and the five moons had begun to rise slowly in the north…

John was dragging her away from D’Argo. She fought, but the human was too strong, even with grief lending her its strength. Aeryn was beside them, cradling her newborn son and running for the rendezvous. John was dragging her away from the sounds of D’Argo as he covered their escape. They were approaching the balcony when the scene shifted…

Chiana was struggling with a hatha root and Yale came up behind her, wrapping his arms
around her and helping her lift the root from the ground. Only, the root turned into D’Argo’s bloody qualta blade and he stood before her in death, asking her how she could even consider betraying him again…

Chiana woke screaming and sweating in the warm Hynerian night. The light of the rainbow moons streamed in through the thin curtains of her bedroom windows that moved gently in the sluggish breeze. Despite the heat of the night, the young Nebari was shivering. And she was so dazed, that it took several moments for her to realize that two strong arms were tenderly cradling her and rocking her gently. A deep male voice was whispering soft soothing words in an attempt to ease her distress.

It had been so long since she had been held and comforted, that at first, Chiana let herself be rocked. She allowed herself the sensation of being safe and cared for. And for a moment, she pushed aside that small guilty voice that said that with D’Argo dead, there should be no peace for her. But it was only a moment, and before she could sink too far into the sense of warm comfort, Chiana shoved Yael away gently, but firmly.

“I’m fine now. It was just a bad dream, that’s all.”

If Yael had a protest, he didn’t say anything, simply nodded and left Chiana to head back to his own room. Once he had left, she allowed herself to sob wet bitter tears into her pillow until she fell back into a dreamless slumber…