Author's note: Years ago I read a story in which Susan was taken by the Corps, and it was so cruel I just had to write her out of it to get that story out of my head. Also, one aspect of the Susan/Talia relationship didn't make sense to me. If they did have a physical relationship in "Divided Loyalties" as JMS has said, Talia would have known about Susan being a telepath. So these are my ideas about why the Corps didn't know about Susan right after Divided Loyalties, and the reason behind Bester's smirk in "Ship of Tears.

Set Season 5 time but no Lochley.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The whole Babylon 5 universe belongs to J. Michael Straczynski, I only play in it from time to time and do not make any money from it.

Chapter One: Traitor

It was cold. That's what John noticed the most. True, temperature was more or less constant on a space station, but ever since that terrible call had come through in his quarters two months ago a cold wind seemed to follow him, curling round his heart andchilling it to the core.

It had been a good day, and he had at first been delighted to see the face of his old friend "Mackie" MacDougan, whom he hadn't seen since Mackie had been given a Military Advisor position soon after the war.

"Mackie! Well I'll be damned! How are things with the Presidential Office?"

But his happy grin had died when he noticed the look on Mackie's normally imperturbably confident face. He couldn't meet John's eyes, and his hands twitched nervously. The bigger man cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Hey, John. Look, I don't really know how to say this…"

John swallowed hard, desperately trying to think what could possibly have happened to affect his old teacher this badly.

"Well whatever it is, Mackie, I think I'd prefer to hear it from you."

This seemed to galvanize Mackie, and he took a deep breath and stood a little straighter.

"The Psi Corps have taken Susan, John. She was called to Geneva for a briefing, and Bester and some cronies were waiting in General Sutton's office. It turns out she was a telepath all this time. She fought like hell John, but they knocked her out from behind. I was there to drop off a report and I saw it all. I'm sorry, John. I don't know how they found out."

But as John Sheridan sank numbly into a chair, he had known. Oh yes, he knew. For a moment all he could see was Susan's face from three years ago, eyes showing an awful mix of disbelief, anger and fear as she asked him,

"You're not going to do this to me, are you?"

But he had done it. He had cajoled and persuaded her, then sent her to face her most deadly enemy all alone, a frightened and untrained barely-P1 against the mercilessly manipulative sheer power of the Psi Cop who embodied the demon of her childhood. And afterwards, when she had confided her fear about Bester's strange smirk after she had slapped him, he had reassured her with a smile, putting it down to a combination of her fears and Bester's twisted sense of humour.

He knew better now, after two months of dreams filled with terrible images of his friend. At first, there would only be the memory of when Susan had divulged her secret, sitting huddled in a corner of his couch like a frightened child hiding from the monsters under the bed. He thought he could hear her whisper, over and over:

"No. Don't do this to me. I'm scared."

Then the scene would change, and she would be manacled to a chair in a dark room, and he would hear her scream as a faceless man injected her. And in the last moment before she lost consciousness, eyes that held a world of confusion and hurt would lock with his, and her voice would echo without sound:

"Why did you let them take me!? I thought you would keep me safe……"

Things got twenty times worse once a contact had somehow found out that Susan had proved to be a P12. After that, night after night the dream ended with Susan, dressed in the raven-black of a Psi Cop, coolly training a PPG on his heart. And her lip would curl as she uttered a single word……and fired.

"Traitor."