Ok just to cover my back here this is a fic with no great qualities whatsoever: its brief to the point of curtness, got absolutely no plot and any science is far fetched and unbelievable. It is merely a short story to give Babylon's 5 best characters the ending they deserve. A happily-ever-after epilogue for my own personal satisfaction. The character's are not mine; if they were Marcus never would've died, Susan wouldn't left and this fic wouldn't even exist in the first place.
Chapter One:
The message comes at 2:46am Minbarii time – quite probably the worst possible time any message can arrive, take place, die, go off or blow up. Too late for you still to be around pulling a late nighter but too early for any sane person to be grabbing some snippet of early morning peace. Even Delenn and the sun aren't up for crying out loud! Still if Babylon 5 hasn't taught her the goddamn concept of Murphy's Law then nothing will.
But the message is something else. Probably the only message in the all of time, space and eternity that will willingly get her out of bed – even at 2:46am.
A solution has been found.
Within the hour she's on a ship to Earth leaving nothing but a recording for Delenn and Ranger 2. It's the first time in years – possibly ever – she's abandoned a post. Especially this post. She likes her job (would say loved but Susan Ivanova doesn't let that word out easily). Resigning Earth Force is a decision she's rarely regretted. She could almost say she is happy here. (Yet another word not in her verbal dictionary). But now she has to leave. Oh, she'll be back and probably alone but just this once she has to go.
She has to see him.
There' s another unused word on the lists that's resurfaced. One she fights harder than usual to contain.
Hope.
It will be the death of her.
X –X
On arrival the doctor's greeting consists of shoving a lot medical jargon in her face. Steven would've understood it but Susan doesn't want to call him: Doesn't want to see the pity in his eyes. The gentle understanding of a humouring parent. In everything else she may be valued for being tough and controlled but he of all people knows that on this subject she can get a bit...hazy.
So she struggles through the alien language (more alien than most real alien dialects now) to work out what's going on. If there is actually any hope.
Most of it's still incomprehensible but she works out they want to use the machine to direct – create – some kind of energy pulse to fuel him back to life with newly developed technology from studying the machine. If – if – everything goes according to plan he'll be healed, awake and alive.
But there's a catch.
(Of course there always is).
The shock of the pulse and the power of the machine will put extreme strain on his body – enough strain to instantly age him up to thirty years. In a single moment he'll be middle aged: Losing his youth, the prime of his life and body within seconds.
He doesn't have any close kin or even other friends, both his parents are gone and Susan knows all about his brother's death and the guilt he'd faced: that's something they have in common. So the closest relation is some distant relations still living in England. They're barely connected (or caring) and certainly have no say in this decision. As far as the doctor's are concerned it's all up to her.
Susan has the control.
And for the first time in her life she's not sure if she wants it. Oh, she knows what she'd like to decide: She knows what most people would do in her situation. What most people would tell her to do but she's not sure if she can.
She's not sure if she can choose based only on selfishness; that she'll order the 'cure' to be tried now when if she just waited, (probably from beyond the grave), in years from now a solution would be found that meant he wouldn't lose more of his life.
There's still the unconquerable voice whispering at the back of her mind, grinding out the maths equations. He was thirty three when he... died. Now, even if everything worked, he could be over sixty.
Or he could be within months of her own fifty one year old self.
She wouldn't have to cope with meeting him as a middle aged, practically ancient old woman (though of course he'd try to argue to contrary). They could enjoy the chance she'd always been too afraid to take before: to grow old together.
Except she'd have already made him grow old: old to match her.
Susan groans in the privacy of her room and puts her head in her hands. More than anything she wants to call out the order and damn the consequences. Play god. Play god...
After all that's what he'd done: Hijacked that stupid machine and decided who would live or die. He could take the responsibility. So maybe she should let him.
She swings to her feet and begin to pace the room. Maybe she's going about this the wrong way, looking at it from her perspective but it isn't really her choice – it's his. His life, his youth, his years. And what would he do?
In a moment of crystal clear clarity, a rising sun in her ever darkened mind of graveyard secrets and withering emotions Susan knows.
Of course she knew what he'd decide; he's already proved it to her – her white knight riding to the rescue , except he had a dark cloak instead of shining armour, that stupid Denn'bok instead of a sword and she was far more likely to throw something at him than swoon into his arms. But he'd choose to be with her. Never mind that she isn't good enough or that he deserved better. He'd come back in any form just to see her (and everyone else admittedly) again.
Closing her eyes and exhaling deeply Susan strides the infirmary, calling for the doctors; they scuttle up with nervous faces. "Yes?"
"Summon your chief surgeon immediately. I've made my decision."
Never has honest vanity smelt so sweet.
X-X
Susan isn't in the room for the procedure: Not by her own choice but the chief surgeon's orders. She'd tried to...persuade him otherwise but that man wasn't easily intimidated. Even her offer to dislocate his neck hadn't done it.
So she waits in the hallway, hands clasped between her knees the way she'd sat when she'd been a girl: still playing with dolls. She's finally caved and contacted Steven, Michael and Delenn; they were already on their way. (Despite her warnings of likely failure but they were three of the most stubborn people in the galaxy so what could you do?) Vir and Zach should've got the news as well though of course it has to get through the endless maze of the Centuri court; that place is like a ten tiered wedding cake. You had to eat all the top before you could even start on the bottom layer. Poor Vir is the base, crushed under the pressuring weight of intensely decorated icing (i.e. his 'advisers').
Susan's never liked icing; too sweet and sickly; cake is cake – you eat it and move on, who needs embellishments? Its just food.
She's goes off track, avoiding the thought of him lying motionless in the room through the wall. He claims he doesn't believe in embellishments. Emphasise on the claimed. She can remember his first words to her, "I prefer only to speak if I have something to say." She'd likes that admitted they had it in common. Ha! Speak only if there's something to say? He speaks when there was nothing to say, beyond nothing. If they were the only two survivors on an abandoned planet for years on end when they'd exhausted every possible topic of conversations for human kind, still would he be speaking.
Or singing.
She shudders. She'd never been so unfortunate to hear that but Stephen had told her: in detail. Yes, additional words were embellishments and he can never get enough of those. The endless metaphors, the poems, the quotes. He likes food too; sent her bacon and eggs as a surprise once – that had been creative she has to hand it to him.
He believes, he claims, he speaks, he likes – all present tense: Like he's still among the living. Is she really so naive to think this would work?
A whirring noise omits from the med lab: Sounds like one of the old helicopters taking off – she'd seen one in action at a museum exhibition once. Susan wonders if the White Stars will be there some day, alongside aeroplanes and motor bikes.
A light flashes from within the room, showing in the crack under the door. Once – twice – a third time. She abandons her seat and stands in front of the smooth rectangle of metal. On the third flash the light becomes steady, like the sun itself was hovering on the other side of the door, ready to rise for a new day. It gleams, rich, warm and golden casting long shadows on the corridor, the dark shades contrasting with the pale beige on beige colour scheme.
The noise increases; steaming like a dragon through the narrow walls and rooms, consuming everything in its roaring cloud. Susan's ear drums shake; sound fogging her consciousness as if the dragon (helicopter no longer) has infested her mind itself. Shrunk to miniature lizard size and stormed in through her ear, eating away at her brain.
Susan grits her teeth and arches her back as if preparing for battle. Well this is really; this was a harder, greater battle than any fought by ship or sword. But enough of this – this – nonsense: she's going to see what's happening.
Nonsense; something he'd say.
She strides forward and shoves open the door, it swings apart with a smooth hiss. Inside he's lying in the centre of the room. Hooked up to enough wires to have sustained the Titanic and surrounded by enough doctors and scientists to sink it again with their weight alone. The light's blinding now: Not just watching a sunrise – you're in the sun itself. And if her ear drums were bouncy before now they're on a kangaroo like sugar high. The lights coming from the machine he's lying on: Like a bed but with a horizontal screen hovering above his body. A thick white beam omits from the centre sending reflections of light all over the room. Bouncing off the walls and back into her eyes.
An assistant of some sort patters up to her. "Um, General Ivanova you really aren't supposed to be in here, if you could just wait outside –"
"Shut that tongue pipsqueak before I have it removed and stuck on the wall as a trophy. I need some more decoration."
"I – I..."
"Don't!" She snapped, eyes flashing with wrath.
"Well –"
"Do you value your speech?"
"But –"
"Do you?"
Her eyebrows almost fly off the top of her head and he shrinks away. "I'll just go and check the..." He totters off in the wrong direction, protests disintegrating into incoherent mumbles. She smiles just as little smugly; it's been a while since she go to do that – the Minbarii are all so damn dignified the whole time – it feels satisfying.
The brief euphoria vanishes as quickly as it came. Slipping away and dissolving into the air like mist, like salt in water as she catches sight of his face.
The light's pressing down harder and firmer. Beaming into his chest and the thought briefly runs through Susan's mind that it isn't healing him but killing. He will die over and over again. The dates repeating themselves down the years, papers inscrolling endlessly, a road leading to the horizon that never ends and this awful sound pounding through all of that, the sound of the fires of hell crackling away because that's where she'll go for allowing this...
She rips her minds eyes from those cheery fires-of-hell image and directs her real eyes back to his face. The skin is pale. Pale and white as an angel – she will not say her angel though no label could be more true: Her guardian, her saviour...her sacrifice. She diverts from that image as well. It's just his freckly English complexion – god knows she hates the English. Did she ever tell him that? Of her loathing of his prissy people, with their toffee accents and endless cups of milky tea. Milky like their skin complexions obviously.
There are faint wrinkles bracketing his eyes and mouth. Lines counting the years that he's actually endured – the machine continues its work and the seconds slip on by. The wrinkles deepen and spread, skin wasting away so his cheekbones protrude prominently and his lips tighten making them look thin and brittle.
Susan's heart is pounding in time with the transformation. In his hair too she can detect the changes –not just detect: watch. The deep brown speckled with faint grey at the temples, as if a tiny snow storm had passed over, settling upon his head for a short while. A lump rises in her throat.
Yet at the same time other changes are taking place: Colour returning to his thin cheeks. His chest is no longer downtrodden by the beam – rising and falling with it. The sound that no longer sounds like the screaming of a dying beast but singing of some god of the underworld.
The singing rises higher, soaring upwards as his narrow fingers slowly unclench. Susan's own fists flex in reaction, slowly drifting towards him. The song calling to her from her own hell as it calls to his.
Everything's more obvious now. Steady shifting of the chest and shoulders. Legs stretching under the heavy covers. (Why the hell does is he still covered with blankets?). Arms tensing by his sides. Even his eyes twitching underneath still shut lids. Susan's trembling as well; fists locked together, tears brimming like raindrops. The music soars to its ultimate finale: letting out one final boom, like a light switch the beam vanishes. The room falls silent.
Everything stops.
In that moment, as everlastingly bright as the tear that falls from Susan's cheek; his eyes slide open. The tear splashes to the ground.
Blue. She gazes into a whirlpool of blue.
Her breath hitches and dammit no matter how hard she tries she cannot move. A smile drifts across his face. "And then as dark doors opened and I saw a vision approach, a maiden calling to me from beyond the abyss..."
"What?" Shock overtakes joy and from the look of it the doctors they're as clueless as she is.
His gaze rolls back to the ceiling. "It's a poem. Does no one here read anymore?" His voice is barely a whisper but still holds the same lilting edge as before. No amount of wrinkles and grey can exterminate that.
And even as the scientists hustle her relenting form from the room and the tears streak down her cheeks Susan smiles; eyes never leaving his. It's him. It must be him. Only he, only he would ever say that.
He's back.
Marcus is back.