Disclaimer: If I said that I was JMS, I'd be lying. Babylon 5 belongs to him, I'm just a mere mortal playing with his universe.

Telepathy

When Talia was eleven years old, she went to her cousins' cottage in Maine for the summer. Talia had never seen the sea before and it fascinated her. It was a lovely place, isolated from the world by the woods that grew around it, and Talia was happy. She could feel her family's happiness and the knot of tension that had resulted from feeling a thousand other people's thoughts in New York City disappeared.

Every morning, Talia would go for a walk with her favorite cousin, Matt. The cottage was getting closer and Talia could feel the pain, crushing into her mind ruthlessly. She started to run, Matt following close behind her, shouting something. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she was crying. The cottage was on fire. Matt reached for his phone and frantically dialed the emergency number. He shouted at the dispatcher to send the firemen immediately.

The firemen arrived too late. All that remained of the cottage was a charred husk. No one had survived.

The breeze drifted in lazily. The wind's breath smelled of salt, smoke, and strangely, flowers. No one had survived. The memories of their thoughts still drifted around in the air, and ran through her mind. Some were confused, happy, angry, sad, tired...and she could feel them, all overlaid with tones of their final pain and fear. Talia wanted to shut it all out. Her gift. Or curse. It didn't matter which. But she didn't want to be able to hear the thoughts anymore. It was too painful, feeling the echoes still hiding in the ashes that drifted on the breeze.

The sea crashed on the rocks protecting the funeral pyre. Talia wished that the rocks would let the sea to wash it all away.

The thoughts were very painful. They made Talia want to let go and hold on even tighter at the same time...curiosity, calm, temptation.

Then the music came and beckoned her to follow. It came floating on the lazy breeze, like a small ship on the ocean. She walked to the sound, coming in from the sea, and started to float, up, up and towards the blue sky. Following her family.

They greeted her, smiling through tears forever etched onto their faces. She floated into their embrace, straining to reach just over the shimmering barrier into that next world.

"Talia, wake up!" Talia screamed as she was slapped and yanked back into the conscious world, the calmer emotions of death transforming into more painful ones. Her family's last emotions swirled together with hers in a maelstrom of confusion.

His face was drawn with anxiety, "Thank god you're back. It was hard for me to snap you out of it. You were, I don't know, it looked as if your mind was disconnecting from you."

"Make it stop Matt!," Talia cried as she sobbed out the words, "It hurts Matt! I can still hear them die and they're dead and gone and I thought that if I followed the thoughts it would be better, but..." she trailed off, letting her tears and shock take over.

"Hush, Talia, it'll be all right." Matt hugged her close, comforting her even though he felt numb, unable to really believe the recent events. "It's over for them now and they're up there with God, in a better place. I know that this is hard. You just have to hold out for another week and once you get the thoughts back under control, the Psi Corps won't be able to prove a thing."

Talia didn't want to tell him that she couldn't block out the thoughts. It was too hard to forget the thoughts of the dying and she wasn't strong enough. Talia would have given anything to be able to block those feelings out. She couldn't run anymore.

The next day, after Talia and Matt got off the transport to Talia's parents' apartment in the city; she slipped away in the crowd and walked to the Corps Office a couple blocks away. There she met a man called Mr. Bester and beseeched him, "I felt them die. Make it stop."

Within the week, Talia was whisked off to Washington D.C. to begin her life as a registered, Psi-Corps telepath.

Thank you for reading, I hope that you enjoyed it.

Please don't be shy about feedback…this is my first time writing. Go ahead and point out the good, bad, and the ugly.