Title: To Galen with Love part 1 of 1
Author/pseudonym:
The Lab Rat
Fandom:
Crusade
Paring:
Lt. John Matheson /Galen
Rating: R
Status:
new.
Archive: If
you want to archive this story that would be really cool just tell me first.
E-mail
address for feedback: ladymay99@hotmail.com
Send feedback PLEASE
Series/Sequel:
There will be a part two
Other
websites: http://www.geocities.com/ladymay99_99
Disclaimers:
They don't belong to me (sob) they belong to JMS and whom ever else. It's not like I'm making money or anything
Notes:
Ok this isn't my usual type of stuff. I
was watching "path of sorrows" the only one I have on tape, I was felling
depressed and spiritual at the same time. (Always a dangerous combination). It stands fairly well on its own. It was suppose to be a two-part story but
that just isn't going to happen. If
some one else wants to write part two go right ahead. Thanks to Iocane for the
edit and support.
Summary:
John Matheson sets out to heal a soul in pain.
Spoilers: A few light spoilers for "The Path of Sorrows" and "The Well of Forever"
To
Galen with Love
John
Matheson heard the crumple of paper and the sound of that paper hit the
floor. The heavy yet somehow silent
footfalls sounded off in the other direction. John let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.
The
Lieutenant ducked from behind the corner where he'd been hiding. Before anyone could see it he scurried out,
grabbing the crumpled paper from the floor. He thanked the gods no one else was in the halls to see him drop the
paper almost immediately. He shook his
hand as though it had been burned.
The
pure emotional residue on that piece of paper had come at him like an
attack. He picked it up again,
shielding himself as best as he could. Slipping into a storage closet he dropped his shields. Pain, grief, guilt came screaming to the
forefront of his mind. Under that,
denial, doubt, confusion. Faces,
images, sites, sounds swarmed around his head. Smoothing out the paper he read
the words again.
"Galen,
Love" surrounded in a sea of gibberish. Matheson knew that a slightly annoyed
Technomage could be a dangerous thing. A Technomage possibly on the verge of emotional collapse was something
akin to a star going nova in your living room.
Matheson
hit the ground running. Telepaths were
trained to deal with the emotional problems of other telepaths. This kept the general public out of danger. Galen wasn't a telepath but he did have
power and John was hoping that his minimal Corps training would be enough.
Matheson was genuinely fond of the man. While other people feared the Mage John liked him. He recognized pain and a warped sense of
humor when he saw it.
'Fess
up you've had a crush on him since day one.'
'Shut
up.' Matheson sometimes wished that the little voice inside his head would get
a day job, but he knew were Galen would be. Going nowhere at one hundred and
twenty miles an hour.
~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
John
let his mind wander over the bullet cars. He wasn't scanning for thoughts, just presence's. Like a blip on a radar screen. A blip could be an inter-atmosphere Narn
warship or a really big flock of birds. A bullet car came to a halt in front of him containing a large
blip. Walking into the car he took a
quick glance to the side to confirm that Galen was there in his usual spot to
the right of the door. John took three
steps and sat down across from the door.
The
two men rode in silence for quite a while. John let his shields down and simply let the raging tide of Galen's
emotions flood over him. It was like
standing on the shore facing an oncoming pacific hurricane. Finally Galen stirred his thoughts into some
coherent order.
"Don't
you have some were to be, Lieutenant?" Galen's voice was like a razor edge.
"No,
as a mater of fact, I don't." He had turned off his link after leaving orders
not to be disturbed for several hours.
"So
you are just going to sit here and ride in circles with me?"
"Something like that." Matheson felt the piece of paper clenched in his hands "By the way you dropped this." John got up and stood in front of the Technomage holding out the piece of paper in his hand. Galen didn't move didn't even seem to breathe. To Matheson's surprise even his emotional state went to neutral. It was like trying to get something from a computer.
"Galen?" There was no answer it was like talking to a
corps. "Galen?" John was starting to panic a little. Finally the Mage blinked slowly and let out a sigh. The emotions
had solidified into a nice balance of anger and grief. He slowly took the paper held out in front
of him.
"Lieutenant
do you know what the mathematical probability of the existence of god is?" He said it in the voice of a man who was
dying alone.
"A
lot, but it doesn't mean it's impossible." The look he got could have frozen
the oceans. John sat down next to the Technomage.
"If
a god does exist that means that good people die for a reason."
"No,
it means that when good people die they have someone waiting." Galen looked at
John the way he might look on a child insisting that there is a Santa. "Galen
have you ever done a death bed scan?"
"I'm
a Mage not a telepath"
"I
know the question was rhetorical." John had lost any sense of fear he might
have had for this man and Galen could tell. "When I was in training I was
volunteering in the Corps main medical unit. They brought in this man who had
suffer a spinal injury. It wasn't
murder or assassination, just a stupid accident but they didn't know that. Time
being what the were they needed to know what had happened so they asked me to
go into his head as he was dying." Galen's face twitched slightly at this but
not long enough for John to guess what the expression might have become "Being
a good little telepath I did. We
talked, he told be about the spilled drink, the wet floor, the fall, and as we
talked I realized we were waking down a path in a forest, ahead were some
stairs. He paused at the bottom afraid, he asked me to follow him. We went up the stairs, into a tunnel of
light, the one you read about in books and such. I can't begin to describe, a
star going supper nova doesn't produce light like that, light and heat like
standing on the surface of a sun. We then
came to a ... a" he paused to find the words. "A cathedral of light and a
wall. We walked into that wall and for
a moment I touched the creator." John paused with the memory. Even after the scan he hadn't told anyone
this part. "I was snapped back to my body and he died in that same
instant. Galen, when I open my eyes I
had managed to develop a second degree sunburn all over my body, and I realized
I had left a part of me behind."
"And
the reason for this story is?"
"As
we reached the wall that man was no longer afraid and neither was I. You are nowhere near it and you have no
reason to fear it for your self or anyone else. Life's a bitch then you die, but there's something, someone
waiting on the other side of that wall." Galen's face had turned to stone. John himself wasn't really sure why he had told Galen this. It had just seemed like the right thing at
the moment. "Galen there may not have been a reason but she was never alone,
there's no reason why you should be." Galen's face warped, his emotions flashing across too quickly to
follow. He finally put his face in his
hands and wept. Matheson could do nothing but put his arms around the older man
as he cried himself out.
When
the bullet car came to a halt, they were just a few hundred yards from the
lieutenant's quarters and John was not about ready to let the crew see the Mage
in this fragile state. They were lucky
enough that no one had walked in on them. Poking his head out he saw that the hall was clear.
"Come
on Galen."
He half dragged, half-carried the Mage to his quarters. They were sparse; collecting personal items was never really encouraged in the Corps. Matheson could fit a lifetime of possessions in one box. He sat Galen on the couch. Galen having reached that state of light numbness that occurs after a good cry. He had a feeling that he might be seeing that expression on Galen's face a lot over the next few hours. Reaching under the sink he pulled out a bottle of vodka he'd won in a card game with some Russian captain a few years back. He poured a glass and put it into the other mans hands
"What's this?"
"Vodka. It won't ease the pain any but it should make it a bit easier to get out. Lube for the soul." Galen threw back the entire glass.
Galen gasped, his eyes watering. "How long have you had that in storage?"
"Since before the Telepath war. I won it in a game of poker with some Russian Earth Force captain who didn't like telepaths. It was all I could do to keep her from wringing my neck."
"You probably deserved it."
"Probably." John sat down. They had fallen into a silence that was comfortable but had to be broken or it would last forever. "Holding that paper I saw her face, heard her voice, felt just a fraction of the pain."
"I thought I had finished grieving."
"At the Well of Forever."
"Yes. You're a little too perceptive for your own good, you know that?"
John ignored the jab. "She must have been remarkable."
"She had a soul that traversed even time and space." Galen choked on the final word. His heart leaping to lodge in his throat. He desperately wanted to hold back the tears just awhile longer. "She was so alive. She never walked the path of sorrows." The tears came again not in the racking sobs of before but with the soft shutters of old wounds remembered. John held Galen again, he had committed him self and they both knew it. "Sometimes I think I'm the one who died on that rock and this is hell. I'm the one who's dead." John shuddered, he had heard talk like this before, from telepaths who were taking sleepers. 'Maybe I'm dead.' they'd say, and the often wound up that way.
"You're alive Galen whether you like to admit it or not." The tears had stopped but still glistened in the crystal blue eyes.
"Prove it." In a situation like that you can either give someone pain or pleasure. John leaned over and kissed the man before him.
'He's pining over lost lover and you're kissing him, smooth John.'
'Maybe I'll catch the rebound.'
'If he doesn't kill you.'
'Shut up.'
Galen's lips that he had admired so often were soft as they appeared. John broke off the kiss and waited for the holo demons to appear and rip him to shreds. The look on Galen's face could be best described as startled but there was a glimmer in his eyes that hadn't been there a moment ago. John could almost hear the gears turning and the synapses firing.
"Why did you just do that?"
'Cause I'm passionately in love with you.' was what John was thinking what came out was "You wanted proof that you were alive."
"Yes I did, didn't I?" Galen reached up to touch the young lieutenant's face. His fingers brushed across as though he was touching an unknown species of flower. "Thank you." Galen leaned over the distance of a breath and returned the kiss. John's universe exploded. The kiss held depths of passion that he had never felt before. Not knowing what else to do he opened his mouth to a probing tongue and wrapped his arms around the older man and best as he could. They kissed gently for what seemed like an eternity. They were like two old lovers who found each other again after so many years. Galen felt like he could have stayed that way forever in the warmth of another man's embrace. Right now his only distraction was that he suddenly realized that he had a raging erection.
'Now how long has that been there I wonder?' Galen is not usually the type that fails to notice such things. Taking a quick glance downwards he noticed that the Lieutenant seemed to be suffering a similar problem. 'My but those uniforms do show off everything so nicely.' Galen toyed they idea around in his mind for a moment. The result of that toying was the thought 'Well he's the one who started it.' Galen reached around and got one hand between them. Placing it on John's thigh he worked it up until it hit the rock hard mound between the lieutenant's legs. John jumped into the touch practically climbing on to Galen's lap but never breaking the kiss. Galen could have sworn the temperature of the room when up ten degrees in that moment. He pulled away needing air.
"John?"
'He called me John!'
"Yes Galen?"
"I just wanted to see if you were still with me."
"I'll always be with you"
"Don't
say that." He sounded almost panicked. "Don't ever say that. People who say that have a habit of ending
badly."
"Then
what should I say?"
"Don't
say anything. Just kiss me." And so he
did.
The
End