Celestial
Dusk over Terminal. The fading light gave softness to the drear landscape, though not to the harsh tangle of ruins that had been an underground bunker. The survivors of the Liberator - just four now - were some way away, close to a small fire that was the only source of warmth. Silent, distant from each other, they avoided each other's eyes, their own thoughts, and the coldness inside that had come with a death.
"Vila rescued me?" Finally, one spoke, faintly, almost unbelievingly, and got no answer but a brief nod and a less-than-interested shrug from the thief, who looked away quickly, towards the shattered plexiglass box by his side that none of them could ever repair. The pilot looked around, still dazed - looked at the survivors, and noted the one missing. And remembered the mental scream that had echoed in his mind before …
"Where is Avon?" he asked.
There was no answer from the others and he finally looked across at the slim, shadowed figure by the fire. "Cally," he said softly, willing her to look up, "where is Avon?"
The Auron looked up, with eyes as deep and bottomless - and as alien - as space.
"Avon is dead," she said.
"Are you sure?"
She stared at him for a minute. She had gone in, alone, to the levels crushed and twisted by the explosions. And come out cold and silent, refusing to speak of what she had seen. Now she shook her head, as if clearing it.
"I'm sure."
~oOo~
He was floating on a waterless sea of darkness that was not quite pain but something that reminded him distantly of pain.
He almost thought he remembered Cally, staring at him from beyond the tangled girders, struggling to get through to reach him, her fingers just too far away as his sight faded. He almost thought he'd heard her voice - that echoing sound inside his mind - scream his name. But almost was not quite enough, and he let the thought go.
He wasn't sure how long he was there, caught in the darkness, before there was sound: a scrabbling at the wreckage around him, voices, faint and unfamiliar, the screech of metal being moved and the grating rasp of stone being pushed away. Light flickered in the shadows, bouncing off the girders and pooling around where he was trapped. Torchlight? He couldn't think why it was so hard to think -
But with the light came clarity. He knew where he was and what had happened in those last few minutes. Cally and Dayna had gone to investigate the pathetic craft their nemesis had left for them, and Tarrant and Vila had been trying, rather badly, to start a fire in the clearing. He had needed to be alone and had used the excuse of finding Orac to go back into the bunker. Stupid, stupid! - of course it had been yet another trap, in Servalan's endless series of traps. Stupid to be so blind, so caught up in what she had said and done. Stupid to be thinking only of what she had already robbed him of, and not what she could still take.
So stupid to be mourning for a man long gone and to die for it.
Stop. I am not alone, and I am not - yet - dead.
Avon tried to move, and the not-quite-pain swept over him with startling force. He gasped and heard his own gasp echo among the rubble. The voices were closer now, but he could not make out the words. Friend or enemy though, it could hardly matter now. He was suddenly awake, very awake, and aware that he was lying on his back, pinned down by metal across his chest and arms, while a metal girder held part of the collapsed roof only just above his body. He couldn't move, could barely breathe for the pressure. But there was still no real pain and that - almost - frightened him. He should be hurting. That he wasn't could mean injuries he didn't want to think about.
He tried to speak and choked, dust catching in his throat. Then someone - a small man, with a worried face and the round, wary eyes of a very bright rabbit - was leaning over him, speaking quickly, urgently, in words he couldn't catch for the roaring in his ears.
The little man turned and called to someone else, and then the heaviness on his chest was gone, and a light, kind, hauntingly familiar touch brushed over his throat, as if feeling for a pulse. From a distance, he heard a muffled sound, almost like a cry.
Then his vision skewed and slid away into distance and darkness.
Maybe this is what death feels like -~oOo~
Or not.
He was vaguely surprised to wake again and lay quietly, unwilling to think past the surprise and the feeling of still being - well, just being. There was no heaviness on him, so they, whoever they were, must have dug him from the rubble and brought him -
Brought him where?
He was lying on something softer and warmer than the cold concrete of the bunker. A bed, presumably - oh, that's good, Kerr. Mind still sharp as ever - with something light, warm and formless thrown over him. There was a faint, stale odour, the always recognisable scent of hospital, hospice or medical unit, but no hum of equipment. In fact, dead silence, but for the slight sound of someone moving around the room.
There was still that same not-pain that he couldn't quite place anywhere in himself. But the drained muzziness in his mind and limbs felt enough like heavy medication to account for that. Whoever had brought him out from Servalan's intended tomb seemed to want him to survive, more or less, though who and why he was mildly loath to guess at. There was no one left, after all, that he could expect even calculated kindness from.
Then there was a dipping in the bed beside him, as the someone he had sensed in the room sat on the edge of the bed. A shifting of weight beside him stirred echoes of memory. His hand, lying loose by his side, was lifted and the pulse felt by that again familiar touch. As it was laid down, he opened his eyes, and stared straight into the gold-shot brown eyes of a ghost.
"Blake."
The name, barely breathed, hurt as nothing else had seemed to.
"How do you feel, Avon?" The ghost spoke steadily, his voice that rich, burred baritone that had echoed in too many of Avon's nightmares. He ignored the question, still staring. Blake's face was thinner, paler than he remembered, his thick curls were longer and glinted with the odd silver thread, and there were deeper shadows in the eyes. But no beard - not like the dream-figure on Terminal.
Servalan's drug-induced electronic dream.
He felt sick at the thought. Throwing back the blanketing cover in a burst of something like panic, he tried to stand, and Blake had to catch him as he fell. Not again. Never again, Servalan. Never...
But for a dead man, that always detached part of him murmured, he's solid enough.
"She said you were dead," he said dully.
"She?"
"Servalan." He pulled away from Blake's grasp, leaning heavily on the bed and fighting back the weakness. "She said you were dead, you had died on Jevron, that she saw your body, saw it burned." He was vaguely surprised at how hard it was to say.
"And you believed her."
"I - yes, I did. I do. I still do."
"Do you want to, Avon?"
He knew he didn't want to answer that. "What I want..." he said slowly as he sank down onto the bed again, firmly ignoring the fact that the other man had to help him, almost lift him back onto the mattress, "is not something I've had much time for since Star One."
Blake looked down at him, face suddenly creasing in a smile both gentle and mocking. "I thought the Liberator was supposed to solve that for you."
"Well, so did I."
"But -?"
"When you left," Avon said wearily, "you forgot to take your damnable rebellion with you. That made being 'free' of it difficult."
"I see," Blake said. And he did, Avon knew. "Would an apology help?"
"Possibly."
"I'm sor-"
"And possibly not."
Blake gave that sigh Avon also knew all too well, and went on slowly. "As - I - was - saying... I'm sorry I can't give you one. Not the one you seem to want."
"And of course you know what that one is." He stopped. This was all too seductive, the swift and easy slide into games no one else knew how to play so well. He had felt it with the dream Blake, too - Servalan's research had been immaculate - and he couldn't take the chance again.
"That is," he corrected, "on the unlikely chance that you are Blake."
"Why shouldn't I be?"
Avon didn't want to answer that, either - or not yet - and settled for silence.
Blake shook his head. "All right," he said, and there was amusement behind his grave tone. "It can wait." He stood and crossed to the wall unit. Avon stared after him, dazed by his own urge to believe and his fear of doing so. You made it easy because you wanted to believe it. Servalan's voice echoed around him. You wanted to believe that Blake was still alive. And he still did, he knew that now. He had to deny, had to keep control, had to accept that this was also a dream...
Why? that detached voice murmured. He tried to think of an answer, failed, and pushed it away.
Finally tearing his gaze from Blake, he looked around at the dimly lit room. There was nothing much to see: complex equipment, less exotic than the alien medical tools of the Liberator, banked up against walls the colour of storm clouds, instrument trays shrouded in plastic covers, and two other beds draped in white sheeting. On the table nearest him was what might have been a tissue regenerator - or might not, he was really more versed in killing tools than healing ones. It all looked rarely used, but was obviously in working order, or how else had they put him back together after...
If any of it was real. Which he wasn't about to admit. Not yet. Not just because he wanted to believe.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position. "Blake."
"Later, Avon. You need to rest."
"No." He was tired, so tired... but oddly afraid to sleep, afraid to wake again and find this Blake gone as well. If it's another dream, where will I wake next time? And with whom...?
"Not yet," he said finally. "Blake, the Liberator -"
"Yes? Where is it?"
"Lost." He caught his breath. "Destroyed." He waited, but Blake said nothing, was waiting, it seemed. "My mistake, for believing in that call."
"A pity," Blake said. "But I did give it to you. It was yours to do with as you pleased."
"What about the others?"
"We didn't find anyone," Blake answered. "There was the remains of a campfire - oh, and the remains of Orac."
"Orac?" That prodded him to force his half-closed eyes open again.
"Remains only, I'm sorry. Deva took a look - he's good with computers, if not quite number two in the Federated worlds - but he could do nothing with it."
Avon waved that away weakly, along with the strange rush of emotion at the teasing echo from the past. "Did you bring it?"
"It's where we can find it."
"You didn't bring it."
"We weremore concerned with you than with Orac," Blake pointed out mildly. "Go to sleep, Avon. You're safe, and no one can touch you now."
"Safe is hardly your style, Blake. But -" Avon shook his head slightly, trying to clear it, trying not to give in. "The others," he said again, the words slurring. He felt drained, almost worn out.
"Later, Avon," Blake said, and Avon recognised that implacable note, remembered that he had never found a way around it. "You need time to recover, you'll be tired for some time yet."
"And will you be gone again, when I wake?" That was not at all what he meant to say. "And Servalan - oh, I forgot." A last hopeless shake of the head. "She's dead too. Only plus to the whole debacle..." He sank back against the bed and closed his eyes.
"Not quite. Go to sleep. I'll still be here when you wake, you have my word."
He reached out muzzily and grabbed an arm. "Can I hold you to that?"
"You always did before," Blake's voice sounded further away, "even when I'd have preferred you not to. Part of your job, remember?"
"You needed someone..." but sleep pulled him under before he could finish.
~oOo~
He woke suddenly, sharply, to darkness and silence. Mind cloudy, filled with the remnants of that - dream? it had to be yet another dream about Blake, and of the earlier explosion, of being alone in that place - he felt a sudden shard of panic. So it had been another dream, another delusion.
Several hazy figures, almost wraithlike in the darkness, separated from the shadows. "Cally?" he whispered, at the same moment rejecting the thought. Totally unlike her, or Vila, or...
"Sorry," Blake said softly.
"You're still here." He was too tired to think about dreams or deceptions any more, but not quite ready to believe just yet.
"I told you I would be. But I wasn't so sure that you were coming back this time."
"Why not?" He turned over, half-asleep again. "Better than the alternative... even with you..." Blake's laugh was the last thing he heard.
~oOo~
It was about the fourth time it happened - that he woke and Blake was there - that he finally began to accept. And of course, decided that he wanted Blake to leave him alone.
~oOo~
The next time, the little man with the rabbity eyes was there instead. He looked up, pushing floppy auburn hair back from his forehead. "About time," he said. "We were beginning to wonder if you would sleep for most of eternity."
"We -?" Avon started to sit up, this time determined not to give way. It was the same room, the same bed, the same austere feeling of a very old, underused ship, but with his returning strength and energy came the impulse to suspicion again. He dimly recalled this man being there one of the times he woke, along with a huge dark man with gentle features and gentler hands, a blurred, grey memory of an old woman, and of course -
"Blake is still here," the man said cheerfully, saving him the trouble of asking, "but the last time you woke, you told him to stop smothering you. Or mothering you." He frowned. "It was hard to tell. Are you usually that gracious when you're ill?"
"No more than usual, but Blake is more inspirational than most people." It was actually good to feel irritable, Something of the weight he'd been carrying for too long seemed to have lightened.
Not because of him.
He noticed his teleport bracelet on the side-table beside him. Picking it up, he ran light, considering fingers over the mostly shattered panels, pausing on the communicator controls. Even though the teleport function was - well, no longer an issue - if the others had kept theirs, there might be a way to repair it and to reach them.
"My name is Deva, by the way. Lon Deva. I'm from Gauda Prime."
"I don't know the place."
"And you don't want to, believe me. I've been with Blake since he left Jevron."
"Well, that's nice," Avon said absently, "but where is 'with Blake'? Who owns this ship?"
"Blake, of course, as much as anyone does."
That makes sense. Wherever he is, he ends up in possession.
"We call it the Celestial," Deva went on. "I believe it's nowhere near as impressive as the Liberator, but it does for the purpose."
"And that purpose is -? No," with a warming flash of malice, "let me guess. Meddling in the galaxy's affairs, as always."
"Well," Blake said from the door, "trying to. Here." Coming to the side of the bed, he slid an arm under Avon's shoulder and lifted him to sit up. Avon caught his breath as everything blurred and spun, hands clenching automatically on Blake's other wrist.
Dying is one talent we all share... except Blake. He found it inexplicably amusing.
"We're in free orbit, aren't we?" Finally he understood the significance of the total silence, the lack of that sub-audible hum that had always been present on both the London and the Liberator, so familiar that the lack felt strange. "Drifting around Terminal?"
"Yes." Blake relaxed into the nearby chair, legs stretched out and ankles propped up in the edge of the bed. "You've been more or less unconscious for sixteen days, Avon."
"Sixteen -?"
"We've searched the surface of Terminal as best we can. If those who were with you are still there, they're well hidden."
"Or dead." He put the bracelet down suddenly, too hard, and heard another crack.
Blake's bowed head was answer enough to that.
"Cally must have believed that I was killed by the explosion," Avon said with difficulty. "She at least would not have left otherwise. How did you know where to find me?"
"I was called by - a friend," Blake answered. "A sort of friend, anyway. Since I knew those signals did not come from me, it was far too obviously a trap, and for you. I'm sorry, had we arrived earlier -"
"The Liberator would have been destroyed in any case. I ensured... never mind." Telling about that fiasco could wait. "We had to be answer, had to be certain. It was a mistake."
"The others were with you?"
"Vila and Cally, yes." That they hadn't known could also wait. "Plus two others, new people. A necessary evil, as neither you nor Jenna chose to return after the battle."
"Be fair, Avon," Blake said softly. "You didn't want me to."
"I promised to take you to Earth," a caught breath at the thought, a twist of smile, "didn't I?"
"You did," Blake allowed, fingering his lips uncertainly.
"So why didn't you contact us?" Avon knew his voice was weak, too weak, and tried to harshen it, determined to keep control, to keep the distance he might need more than ever. "At least to let us know you didn't want to be found."
Blake winced a little. "Is that what you thought?"
"What else was there to think?"
"It was not like that. Leave it, Avon, it doesn't matter."
Avon opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. Not now, not even after Terminal, could he say that it did. He tried again, taking the offensive so easily that it almost startled him. "To you, perhaps not. To the others, your two remaining followers," he saw that that hurt, and pressed further, the stirring of familiar anger like a balm, "it appeared to matter. Vila spent most of the months after Star One inventing more and more elaborate reasons why you could still be alive and need our help, though we never heard from you." The odd, startled look in Blake's eyes made him pause. "Did you expect otherwise?"
"I would have thought after that horror, Vila had had enough of revolutionaries, good or bad."
"It appeared not." Avon sighed. "If it is any consolation, he surprised me too. I expected it from Cally - and yes, she was just as insistent as Vila."
"That must have been - disconcerting."
He ignored the satiric interruption. "You could have at least let us know you were all right."
"I wasn't," Blake said. "My shoulder wound re-opened, and I was too ill to even give my name to the people who found me."
"Really?" Avon said politely. "For a whole year?"
"For long enough. I said leave it - yes, Broeli?" Blake turned his head sharply, to look at the stranger in the doorway: a small, thin girl, even younger than Dayna, with dun-coloured hair and an oddly pretty scarecrow face.
"Deva wants you," she said. "It's about his -" with a jerk of her head towards Avon, "- plastic box."
Avon sat up. "Orac."
"Obviously."
"They've brought it back. Well, all of it that they could find."
Avon was bewildered by the flicker of - pain? no, that was ridiculous - he felt, and covered it by asking, "And the crew?"
"Still nothing. They're not there. We can't contact them anyway. When do we leave, Blake?"
"Not you as well." Blake sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I told you I'm not ready yet, not to risk leaving them stranded."
"Why not?" she snapped. "They left you."
"Broeli."
She shared her pale-eyed glare between the two of them, but said nothing.
"Tell Jak I'm coming to look. No, Avon," before he could move, "you stay here. Orac can wait till you are fit to work on him."
"I appear to have recovered quite -"
"Not yet."
"Blake, you gave up right of command over me when you left your - my ship." Avon threw back the formless cover and swung his legs around, sitting on the edge of the bed to catch his breath before standing. This time, Blake didn't move to stop or help him, but this time, it wasn't quite so bad. "If I'm to retrieve anything for you in this, it will be Orac. Now -"
He took a step, and stumbled; a wave of faintness swept through him and Blake was there to catch him again.
"You were saying?" Blake said blandly, while pushing him gently back onto the bed.
"Very well," through gritted teeth, "you can bring the pieces here."
"You should be all right to get up tomorrow, Avon, and neither Orac nor the Celestial are going anywhere. Broeli, tell Jak to leave it and go back to monitoring for company."
She scowled, partly at him, mostly at Avon, but left.
"Your new crew don't seem too eager to help your old one," Avon said finally.
"That's just Broeli. Deva and Jak, and my pilot Romanel, all understand, and the rest obey."
"Really. How unusual."
"Thank you, Avon." Blake smiled. "I'm glad to have you back as well."
Now that's unfair, Blake. He waited until Blake seemed to relax, then opened fire. "You still have not explained. Why you let us - them - search without any word."
Blake didn't move a muscle. His face remained blank, his gaze still calm and mild. "I said, it doesn't matter."
"And I disagree," Avon snapped.
"I must have forgotten how difficult you can be."
"Really? I hadn't forgotten how deceptive you can be."
"Avon... all right," Blake said finally. "All right. But remember, you wanted this... I did send word."
"No. With Orac and Zen -"
"I did send word," Blake repeated. "Not at first. I was ill, very ill, barely remembered who I was, let alone what that broken bracelet was actually for. When I did remember, I sent word the best way I could, long range transceiver. You're right," with a slight smile, "I didn't think you'd begrudge me that last trip, even if it was late."
Avon caught his breath. "We received nothing, Blake."
"No, Avon. You received nothing. But someone on the Liberator did." He stood and turned away so that Avon could not see his face, but something very near to agony was obvious in his tense shoulders and crossed arms. "It wasn't much, just enough for any of you to identify but with safeguards, information that only someone on the ship would recognise. I had to be careful. There were the people taking care of me to consider. I couldn't risk telling where I was until I was sure no one else could hear it." He stopped and drew a deep breath. "I sent it to Zen, and it was received. The reply was brief, again with safeguards -"
"What safeguards?"
"It doesn't matter. What matters is that I trusted it."
"And?"
"I sent my location. Which was immediately passed on to the nearest Federation fleet."
There was a hideous silence.
"No." Half-breathed.
"I am sorry, Avon."
"They would not... no."
"Someone sent it on to them," Blake said quietly, "with enough information to ensure that they would recognise me. One of the people on the Liberator... and I don't know who."
Avon closed his eyes, feeling cold inside. "But you escaped."
"More or less."
"And you have no idea who it was." Avon paused, then forced the words out. "If it is worth anything, I give you my word, I did not know."
"It's worth a lot." Blake spoke softly, the hurt easing a fraction. "Though not necessary, I never thought of you."
Dayna, Tarrant -? Had to be... "They had no reason, no earthly reason," he said, half to himself. "I would have called them honest - well, within the limited meaning of the word on the Liberator."
"You mean your new people."
"Well, of course. It had to be either Dayna or Tarrant, a dead rebel's daughter or a deserter-turned-mercenary. You don't think Cally or Vila could have -" He stopped, staring at Blake's face. "You don't think it, Blake," he whispered.
"I don't want to." The uncertainty was raw in Blake's quiet, deep voice. "I've tried not to."
The coldness was growing. He opened his mouth to deny that it was possible, and found he couldn't. Not even for Vila, always reluctant to get killed for anyone's good cause, and who could have feigned that eagerness to have Blake back. Not even for Cally, whose harsh judgement over Star One had never been - vocally - taken back. And certainly not for Dayna, devoted and narrow-minded and callous towards outsiders, or Tarrant, who had literally stabbed a man in the back the day they met.
"In trust I have found treason..." Blake murmured, and in those words, Avon was back for a moment in a cellar on Earth, facing his own private level of hell. In the silence, he found himself rocking slightly, as if to ward off something.
He closed his eyes. "But you escaped," he repeated dully, holding on to the words like a talisman against that hell.
"As I said, more or less. Others did not."
Avon shook his head impatiently, uninterested in 'others'. "And yet you are still looking on Terminal."
Blake shrugged.
"That bleeding heart of yours. I told Vila once it would get us all killed."
"Well," Blake said with a smile, "not quite, Avon." He stood up, gazing down with a hint of - what, apology? - in his eyes. "If it makes any difference, I wish every day that it had been different. Stay where you are. Deva will be working on Orac - I'll have him report to you when he knows enough."
He turned and left. Avon stared after him, mind curiously blank with the shock.
In trust I have found treason.
His hand had clenched on the nebulous softness of the cover. With a start, he felt his nails digging into his palm and looked down. At some point he must have let go; his fist, white-knuckled with tension, lay on top. He raised it slowly, pressing against his lips as he had once or twice seen Blake do. To hold back the fury, the pain, the flood...
No more. Coolly, deliberately, he banished the Liberator crew from his mind, sending them to the mental void where a blond smuggler, a phlegmatic murderer and a woman who had never been real waited. Lying back, he closed his eyes and began to reconstruct in his mind Orac's wiring, Zen's systems, the teleport, all the things he could now give Blake, and to make plans for a different future.
~oOo~