This was nothing *nothing* compared to the ice. She lay beside him, his body growing colder every monen, despite how much she willed him back to life.

**Zhaan, where are you, now?**

Any hope for comfort, for someone putting their arms around her while she cried, was gone with John. No one else cared as much for her as he had. She sobbed into his still shoulder one more time, her thoughts frighteningly disorganized to the point of mutation.

**You shouldn’t have. You didn’t have to. We could have died together.**

He had given his life for them. For her. She choked on her tears before being able to swallow those that ran back down her throat.

**Could we have found Earth if we’d tried harder? You would be alive…**

She slid a hand from under the blanket and cradled his cheek. Still soft, but cooling rapidly. She would rather have been under the ice, gasping for those last precious breaths of air, sucking those mouthfuls of liquid death into her lungs. She would rather have that for eternity, than to feel the pain she was now.

**I’ll go insane without you, John. You helped to create what I am now, and you leave me to it? I don’t know what to do with what you made in me.**

A wave of new sobs racked her body, shaking both of them as well as the bed. Distantly, she heard Talyn’s soft sequence of tones and beeps. Could he be… No. She was mourning. She wouldn’t let anyone else have it. John was hers to mourn. He loved her. She loved him. She would never *never* let anything take from that.

**I could find someone…a Delvian…to bring you back. Zhaan brought me back.**

In the back of her mind, she knew it impossible. Zhaan had Stark, with their love, and Stark wasn’t going to give himself to another person, just as she wouldn’t give herself to anyone else but John. Zhaan had given her life for her because she loved her. John was gone, now, and he was the last to love her. Her heart wrapped around this and shattered into pieces too diminutive to put back together.

She remembered the feelings she had as she’d headed through the atmosphere and toward the ice. Adrenaline rushed through her body, knowing she was going to need the extra energy. She struggled with the safety harness. When it refused to give way, fear set in. She broke through the ice. Panic. Every thought from then was of John. It wasn’t really him. Scorpius had done this. She remembered even that last inhalation of icy water before her world disappeared. There was only darkness until Zhaan.

**Everything is Scorpius’ fault. If he hadn’t been chasing us… If he hadn’t been so frelling desperate to get to that wormhole information… You wouldn’t be dead. I wouldn’t have gone through the ice in the first place.**

He was almost cold to the touch, now. Her sobs had turned to uncontrollable spasms of her chest and lungs. He still smelled like John. She buried her face in his chest and took a deep breath, making the spasms inside her worse.

**But then, I would never have known you like I have. I would never have loved you completely. You loved me into my grave. I’ll love you past yours. I will never stop, John. You’re part of me.**

Slowly…slowly…her breathing evened out again. Exhaustion, the only thing that made her close her eyes. She felt herself grow lighter…drifting off into the temporary darkness that was sleep for the near mortally wounded.

**I would rather be drowning than feeling this…**