The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

MISCELLANEOUS : PARALLEL COUPLES

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John and Aeryn

Couple: John Crichton and Aeryn Sun
From: Farscape
Site: JohnAeryn.com
Hardly love at first sight - the first time the Peacekeeper soldier saw the marooned Earth astronaut, she beat him up. But an attraction became evident quickly, and it became as powerful and difficult to deny as what drew Anakin and Padmé together. And John and Aeryn certainly give them a run for their money in the angst department. They were not expressly forbidden from being together - but there were many obstacles. He's human; she's not. He wants to return home; she has no home to return to. Aeryn, like Padmé, has only known a life where she was reliant largely on herself, though Aeryn's was far more brutal. In this relationship, she is the one who has always been forbidden from developing an emotional connection with a partner, and that lifestyle is hard for her to break; when she did form an emotional tie to a past lover, he was killed shortly after.

John is the one that makes the first steps in pursuing her, accepting his love for her far more easily than she can for him. Like Padmé, she slowly warms to him, but almost any time a step forward is made in her accepting her feelings and reciprocating his, almost immediately she backsteps in fear, much to John's frustration. Her (albeit enforced) career as a soldier has been her whole life, and she's never known being dependent on anyone but herself. She's never known a life where she was able to be truly impulsive and trust someone with her heart, and John gradually manages to make her realize her life can be more than what she has. But even when she does at last freely return his love, she puts the brakes on a relationship, fearing the consequences from an emotional attachment aboard a ship where their lives were always in danger. Of course, their feelings continue to grow regardless.
Like any classic romance, obstacles external as well as internal hinder hope of a future together. Through most of the series, John is relentlessly pursued by a military commander who is obsessed with obtaining the powerful wormhole technology an alien race placed in his brain. When Aeryn is coming to accept that she has feelings for him, John is briefly forced into a marriage with a princess to ensure the future of her dynasty, much to the agony of both Aeryn and John. Then after another cautious forward in their relationship, John accidentally kills Aeryn when the neural clone in his brain - a copy of his pursuer's persona placed there to obtain the wormhole data - briefly takes over his own personality. Aeryn is later resurrected, but at the cost of another crew member's life. When John is later "duplicated" by an alien experiment, she ends up going off with one of the Johns and having a happy relationship with him - to the point where she even agrees that she'll return to Earth with him. But then that John is killed and she returns to the other John, she is cold to him, her heart broken. When they've managed to reconcile after this, Aeryn is abducted by another alien race as blackmail to get the wormhole technology from in his brain.
In his darkest hours (and there are many) when he has no hope of anything - returning to Earth, being free of the psychopath who continued to pursue him, ever seeing Aeryn again - one thing that remains steady is his love for her. At one point, John is even prepared to give up the wormhole technology to his pursuer, knowing he is the only one who can help John find Aeryn. The balance of power in this part of the galaxy, what this warlord would undoubtedly do with the technology: none of that matters. He cares about only one thing - getting back the woman he loves.
During Aeryn's captivity, her captors discover she is pregnant, and (correctly believing the child to be John's) are prepared to use the unborn child as part of an experiment they believe will give them the information they want from John's brain. Aeryn is prepared to die rather than give her child up as a pawn of cruel experimentation and death, fighting her captors every step she can. We already know Padmé or Anakin would make a similar sacrifice for either of their children.
Even when Aeryn is rescued, and the pair become engaged and are celebrating their impending parenthood, the obstacles continue. Almost immediately upon engagement, they are suddenly hit with an alien beam which disintegrates them to piles of tiny crystal. It is many weeks before they are made whole again, and immediately thrust back into war.
Like the dilemma Anakin faces in Revenge of the Sith, at one point John must come to terms with exactly how much he is willing to do for the sake of protecting his love and unborn child: how high a price he is willing to pay, how much power he is willing to use, how many he is willing to sacrifice to raise his family in peace instead of war. In a final desperate act, he uses the wormhole information in his brain to create a weapon that if unchecked could eventually destroy the galaxy, using it to force the two main warring factions in their area of the galaxy to negotiate a peace settlement. Though it works, the process almost kills him, and it is only when Aeryn places their infant son in his arms that he is revived from his catatonia.
In the end, it does seem to work out for John and Aeryn, though - they are married, have their son, and finally seem to have come to a moment of peace.

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