TITLE : I Cant Make You Love Me Author : Cecilia Long Part 1 of 2; This is one Complete Story but due to popular demand, I am planning a sequel PAIRING (if any) Marcus and Susan Genre, ie: Sad romance with angst RATING: Ill give it a Pg-13 JUST in case DATE POSTED: Oh so long ago i cant remember

DISCLAIMERS: This is a Song Fic. This story popped into my head when I heard the Reba Song "I cant make up You Love me". That belongs to her, I am just using it for it poingnancy. The Characters do not belong to me. I am just borrowing them. They belong to a variety of other TV muckity mucks.

ARCHIVE INSTRUCTIONS (if any): Roundstation or its eventual replacement, and Wildbadgers.net...any one else please ask first.

AUTHOR NOTES (if any) Well as I said this is a song fic. the sequal will also be a song fic. You MAY want a box of tissues

Everything was dark. No. Not dark. Cloudy. Misty. The words wouldn't come to him. He felt strange. Out of touch. Drifting. There was no color, but things were not grey. There was nothing.

He didn't know where he was, or why he was. All he knew was that this was not the right place for him to be. He strove to see in the nothing. He strove to reach out, and had nothing to reach out with. Yet he felt something. This was all so confusing. A wave of fear and panic washed over him

Then, there in the nothing he saw light, and turned towards it in his fear, seeking something. He saw what he thought was a small tunnel of light. It attracted him, called to him, and beckoned to him from the emptiness. Something inside him knew instantly that everything he sought was in the light. It was his peace. He started to go towards it when a flurry of sound emanated from behind him.

He heard voices, familiar yet unsure of what they were. He stopped in his quest for the tunnel, and listened. Thru the din, he separated out one deep voice. He knew that voice, and it was chastising him. He heard the sounds of frantic activity behind that voice.

"Dammit Marcus! Don't you do this to me, you bastard! Cole, you aren't done here yet. You hear me? Cole!"

Cole. Marcus Cole. That was he, and he knew that when he heard it. What did the voice mean, he wasn't done yet? Where was this voice coming from?

"Marcus, you damned bloody limey mother fucker. I swear to god that if you give this up..." The voice trailed off, obviously on the verge of tears. Marcus could hear the strain in the man's voice. Yes, that one was a man. There was a faint thump thumping sound that reverberated around him

Where was he, Marcus Cole, that people were cursing him?

Marcus took one look back at the light, a light that promised him everything, and headed back towards those sounds.

The moment he made that decision, Marcus felt like he had dropped off the edge of a building, falling through the nothing. He fell what seemed like eternity. A scream filled his mind, his being as he fell, the terror unlike anything else he had experienced.

Marcus Cole arched his back, trying to scream out, but something was blocking his ability to do so, and he started to gag. His limbs were restrained, limiting his movements. The pain was so intense it overwhelmed him, and the Ranger writhed in agony. He felt as if his skin, his flesh, his bones, were burning. He felt as if someone was beating him.

He forced his eyes open, and saw a myriad of tubes emanating from his body. There was a large monitoring panel over his torso. People stood all around him. One in particular stood directly above him. Marcus recognized him immediately as Dr. Stephen Franklin. The dark eyes were damp, and streaks of moisture glistened on his ebony skin. A relief filled his features, and Stephen set the instruments aside. "Marcus. It's okay. It's okay." The Doctor firmly said to the anxious man beneath him, struggling on the table. "Take it easy. Relax there big boy. You're hooked to a respirator. Don't try to talk, you wont be able to. The more you struggle the worse that gagging will become."

Marcus desperately sought to calm himself, trying to focus on some of the Minbari techniques he had learned in the Rangers. He heard and felt the frantic pounding of his own heart within his chest. Stephens's hand rested consolingly on the raven haired head of the Ranger, gently stroking the tangled, sweaty strands.

Glancing around to try and take more stock of the situation, Marcus forced himself to move despite the excruciating pain. He was laying naked on a medlab table, surrounded by several medical workers. Besides the tube down his throat, taped to his mouth, several IV's, and the torso panel, he had a catheter tube in his privates as well.

Stephen noted the blush that rose to the cheeks of his patient, and grabbed a short sheet from under the table, covering his groin area to give Marcus a bit of privacy. "Don't worry Marcus. You haven't got anything any of us haven't seen before." The doctor could almost hear the smart aleck retort he would have gotten back if the Ranger had been able to speak. All Marcus could do now was glare at him in frustration. "I know it must be difficult for you, but I need to keep the respirator in overnight. We'll try weaning it off you in the morning. I guess I should give you an update of your condition. That might help you understand. Do you remember ANTYHING that happened to you prior to this Marcus?"

The brow of the Ranger furrowed in thought as tried to remember back. Everything was quite vague, but when memory began to return, the color all drained from his face. His mind raced back to when he had hooked himself up to the alien healing device in an attempt to save the life of Susan Ivanova. Susan lay dying having been mortally wounded in battle. Marcus could not accept that fact, disobeyed orders and flew back to Babylon 5. He had broken all of Stephen's secret codes to figure out how to work the alien healing device. There was no way he could let Susan die. He loved her too much to let her go that way. If there was only one way to give his love to her, then that was it. He had never expected to live through the process, and the fear of failure engulfed him.

Stephen must have recognized the question in Marcus' emerald eyes, and gently smiled down upon him. "Yes, Marcus. Susan's alive. You saved her life...." Then the Doctor's expression morphed into a quite perturbed visage. "But Cole, when you are better and I can kick your butt across this station. Be prepared. That was a really STUPID thing you did. You know that!" Stephen didn't even wait for a response from his patient.

"You came THIS far," he held up a finger and thumb barely and inch apart," from dying yourself. I had to put you cryo for three weeks till I got the guts to try and revive you. That's one of the reasons you're on the respirator. I almost lost you there. I hazard that you were technically dead for a few minutes. I didn't think I was gonna be able to get your heart kicking again there Cole. One minute there was fading minimal brain activity and no cardiac response, classic death, and the next minute, Whoosh! Its all back full steam."

His anguished tale exhausted, Stephen's tone took back on a more happy flavor. "Susan is fine, Marcus, aside from the emotional baggage she has been carting around because of what you did. She wasn't too happy at first, thinking you were pretty much dead because of her, noble reasons or not. She has been following your progress with much interest. I think she wants HER turn at kicking your butt, too. She's probably on her way down now. Dr. Hobbs was under orders to let her know immediately what happened."

Marcus got a feeling of horror, and a pit formed in his gut. Susan was coming down now? Here he was, naked and confined on a table, wired up like some puppet, and he had nowhere to hide, and no way not to face her.

Just then, that icy familiar voice emanated from the doorway, " Well, Stephen?" Captain Susan Ivanova stood in the doorway, out of Marcus sight initially, her attention focused on Dr. Franklin.

Franklin disappeared from Marcus limited view, but he continued to be able to be heard. "So far, it looks like we got our Station Ranger back. Had a very close call there, but right now, he seems to be doing alright."

"Is he awake?"

"At the moment, yes, I think."

Marcus heard the firm boot steps of his love move closer. He closed his eyes quickly; afraid of what was to come. He never thought he would have to actually come to terms with her over what he had done. He wondered what SHE remembered about the incident. Had she heard his confession as the machine had drained his life force?

"Marcus?" She waited a moment when she got no response. "Marcus Cole! If you're awake, look at me, right now!" The knife-edge to her command struck a nerve, and the Ranger slowly opened his eyes, practically trembling at the thought of what he would find.

Above him appeared the angel of his life, his vision of beauty. She wore her old Earthgov uniform again instead of the Army of Light, but this time she sported Captain's insignia. A few things had happened in his weeks being out of touch it seemed. Her azure eyes flamed with emotion, long curly hair cascading around those sharp, Russian features. Susan's cheek twitched, as if she was fighting back speech.

Ivanova glared at him for a long moment, then blurted out, "You know Cole, this is NOT a good way to try and get my attention. I should shove you right out of an airlock for breaking command orders and coming back here on the account of just me. What in God's name were you thinking there? Thinking. That is the wrong word to use because you disconnected your brain, didn't you?" Her voice rose steadily and she was almost shouting. The Captain heard the systems monitor increase in tempo of beeps and blips as the nervous agitation of the prone man was revealed in his autonomous functions.

"Susan?" Stephen took a precautionary step forward, but stopped with a quick raise of the woman's hand.

The long body of the ranger was now visibly shaking. There was no way for him to respond or explain to her, and Ivanova knew that. She knew why he had done what he did, and it ate her up inside. As she lay healing, and he lay dying, she had her conversation with God in her own illusion of passing beyond the veil. But it wasn't god telling her how much he loved her. It was the Station Ranger, Marcus Cole. Months of speculation came to a swift realization when she awoke, unable to move, and unable to reach over and shut the damn machine off. He had tried to give his life in his utter devotion of her. Until that moment, she had blatantly ignored all the little signs of his infatuation; the conversation on the Whitestar, the organizational chart, his gift of bacon and eggs. Then it became so clear, as if a dense fog had lifted from her brain.

In the three weeks Marcus had been in cryo, she had come down everyday after her own release, to sit with him. She would use that time to question everything that had happened. She would yell at the frozen Ranger, beating on the tube at times. Sometimes she would cry, thankful that very few people ever went to that section of medlab. Other times she would remember the times the obnoxious Ranger made her laugh and smile, a very difficult task in itself.

She had not figured that Marcus would have survived, and had prepared herself for that fact. It came as a surprise when she received the frantic call from Dr. Hobbs that Stephen had taken a chance and decided to try and revive him. She had immediately left C&C and ran down to the Infirmary, unsure of the reasons behind her momentary panic. The medical team had just started working on the Ranger when she stumbled in.

Ivanova pulled up a chair, and intently watched the whole proceedings on a monitor in the other room. When the cryo tube had defrosted Marcus enough, his body was removed, and a respirator, IV and several other tubes were inserted into his body. Stephen was keeping a very close eye on the brain activity. She watched as they repeatedly used the resuscitation shocks on the equpiment to try and shock his heart into beating and restoring life. Again, for a long time, Susan was convinced that Marcus was not going to make it through the procedure, especially when after Stephen thought he had everything under control, the Ranger simply crashed. They injected him with a myriad of drugs, used a numerous amount of stimulus, and even had Stephen pounding on his chest with a closed fist, screaming at the prone figure.

Just as Susan was convinced the flatline was permanent, and rose to leave, Stephen in his utter desperation to save his friend, had used the electrical stimulus one more time, and this time a heartbeat remained on the EKG, and the EEG levels shot up to rapid activity. A moment later, Marcus had started to thrash on the table. Then she knew she had to face him. It was something she had to do.

Now she had taken that first step, and the easiest one. He couldn't go anywhere, couldn't even talk back to her, and she knew it must be practically killing him again. His lambasting was over for the moment. Ivanova didn't want to send him back into cardiac arrest. She forced herself to meet his apprehensive stare. Biting her upper lip, Ivanova inhaled deeply, and said softly, "But what I really needed to do today was thank you. I...I know why you did it, or at least why you think you did it. I heard what you said to me as you were...fading."

Marcus flushed a deep crimson and his eyes rolled up like the guilty child. The Captain could tell that he never figured that his confession in the last moments of what he thought was his life would come back to haunt him. Susan leaned over him, placing a hand on either side of his head, and leaning in close. "Tell me the truth, Cole. Is what you said...true? Do you mean what you said?" She bent her head so that her words met with his ears only. "Do you love me, Marcus?"

He didn't even have to answer her. Ivanova saw it in his eyes, deep and burning, unlike anything she had ever seen before. The closest Susan could imagine was the passion she had felt once for the telepath traitor, Talia, but the Ranger's was something else altogether. It was more pure, more adoring, something he would have had much difficulty coming forth with on his own.

Ivanova didn't know what to say at that moment. What did you say to a man who just admitted that he was incredibly, madly in love with you? Soldiers had died for Ivanova before, either by her order or in her service. This was different. The soldiers did as their duty, not out of some incredible feeling for her. IN fact she felt that most people probably didn't even like her very much. She was cold, distant and exacting. Marcus was not expected to die for her. She had not asked this of him, but he was, raised from the dead, and all for her.

Uncertainty still coursing through her body, Ivanova gently placed her lips on the warm skin of his forehead, the odor of cryo preservative still strong on him. She felt him shiver under her tender action. Butterflies flew through her stomach, and her own panic set in. "I'll see how you're doing later, Cole." She mumbled, and turned swiftly on her heel, leaving the befuddled man staring after her as far as he could manage to twist his head.

With the exit of the Captain, the medical personnel resumed their activities on Marcus, who just closed his eyes to try and distance himself from this moment, unsure of the meaning of what had just transpired.

A week had passed now, and Dr. Franklin had finally deigned to remove the last offending piece of equipment from Marcus' body, even if the good physician would not release him. Marcus made sure to make his dissension well known in the medlab every instant he could.

As Stephen slapped a band-aid on the small puncture holes from the intravenous, the Ranger let out a wail. "Careful there, Stephen. You only let your medical professionals here bruise me up one side and down the other, and now you beat on me."

With a sigh, Franklin gave his patient a frustrated glance. He knew this confinement was like an itch Marcus couldn't scratch, although even Stephen's patience was wearing thin at this point. He had been able to remove the respirator after a day, but the rest of the bodily functions took a little longer to kick back in, so the pernicious Anla'shok was kept in the hands of the Med lab staff. Franklin still was amazed at how fast the Ranger was improving though. The medical officer had always been taken a bit aback at the speed of Marcus' recoveries, empowered mainly by the sheer will and inner strength of his Minbari trained friend.

It wasn't the physical damage that had Stephen concerned though, but the emotional damage. Marcus had failed in his quest to end his life for Susan's, and now how they would face each other after this incident was very much in question. Having spoken to Susan shortly after his assumed death, she had admitted that she had started to see the Ranger's feelings towards her in those hours before her terrible accident. Ordinarily that would have given her a choice of whether to pursuer the issue or not, but now, all the tragic events of the past months had put a horrific spin on the whole situation. She knew she hated him and loved him at the same for what Marcus had done for her. Ivanova did not know what she was going to do, and that was a bad thing for the Captain. That was a position that she did not like to be put in.

Susan had been back by a couple of times to check on Marcus, but had refrained from actually seeing him. She resorted to just watching him briefly through the observation glass. She had distanced herself dramatically from everyone since Marcus had returned, having to face her own demons. The act of devotion from the Station Ranger for the Commander had already flew through the station, and made it off world. Now his sudden revival had brought awash a new flurry of gossiping, everyone having their own opinion. Marcus must have noticed Susan's deliberate absence, but had said not a word concerning it.

Cole had met with Delenn a few days after his revival concerning his actions and had taken loving reprimand from his superior. The Minbari had thoroughly chastised her wayward agent for the recklessness in what he did, put him a two-week suspension, assigned him a huge regiment of meditation rituals, and spent a long time just talking and holding his hand. Marcus took everything Delenn threw out with an unusual humbleness that took Stephen quite aback. If only the Doctor could have the same effect on the Rangers as Sheridan's new wife did.

"So Stephen, when in Valen's name are you going to release me from this prison...I mean facility?" The chipper and irritating voice of the Ranger broke Stephen from his reverie of thoughts.

"As soon as I can, Cole," Franklin responded with a sigh. "Believe me, if I could toss your sorry ass out right at this moment I would."

"I knew you cared." Marcus chuckled back.

Both the men froze with a soft, familiar voice behind them. "Yes he does." Stephen turned and moved out of the Rangers way to see Susan Ivanova standing in the doorway. Looking kind of sheepish, she turned her head away for a moment, then back to lock onto the bedridden man. "A lot of people care about you. So do I, Marcus. I'm...glad your feeling better. You look a lot better then the last time we talked."

The corner of Marcus' mouth curled up in a small grin. He cleared his throat and said back, "Well, it more like a you spoke and I listened kind of thing, really, if you want to get technical."

Susan blinked, and shook her head. She smiled a bit, laughing under her breath. "I see, Dr. that you haven't cured that smart mouth of his, yet."

"No, Captain. Believe me, I have worked valiantly for an off switch, but the search has been in vain." Franklin walked over and extended his hand, taking hers in a firm grip.

"Perhaps that respirator could be used more often...? That seemed to work." Susan shot back in amusement.

"Now, wait a minute here..." Marcus started to retort, but was promptly interrupted and ignored.

"Oh, I have thought about it on more then one occasion."

"So when are you going to give him the ol' boot there?" Susan wandered closer to Marcus' bed, and sat down in the chair next to him. She kept her attention on the medical officer though, ignoring the Ranger's grimace.

Sucking in a bit of air, Franklin furrowed his brow. He ran a hand over his face as if in deep thought. "Well, I was going to spring this on him as a surprise, but I was going to let him go in the morning, with restrictions on activities of course."

"Tomorrow?" Marcus brightened visibly, straightening up in his bed. He settled back, a huge grin on his face, when Stephen nodded at him.

"But you are going to have to make me some big promises there, Cole. You understand?"

"Bugger Stephen. I can't think of much worse you can do to me out there then you've done in here..."

"Ho ho ho. Don't try me there, big guy! The mind reels with ideas."

The two had temporarily forgotten the Captain, who waited impatiently for them. Finally she cleared her throat, and they both turned to look at her. "When you are finally paroled there Marcus," she started nervously," Do you want to...go to dinner or something?" She felt a twinge of apprehension in the long moment of eerie silence that followed. Had she overstepped her bounds she wondered?

It took a good minute before Marcus was able to pick his jaw up off the side of the bed. Had Susan really propositioned him? Hoping he wasn't hallucinating, he dumbly nodded, and barely was able to choke out, "I'd be honored. Thank you Susan."

"I owe you a chance after all this, I think." She quietly added, then turned and quickly left the room.

While ecstatic at being given the opportunity to pursue his ultimate dream, something in Ivanova's words left a small mark of concern in the back of the Ranger's mind. He brushed it aside, hoping desperately that it was all in his mind, and not the foreboding sign of the future that his first instinct said it was.