Chapter 2
This is my winter song to you,
The storm is comin soon,
It rolls in from the sea…
That night, Susan Ivanova dreamed of the things she tried to forget in the light of day. Delenn's words to her had stayed in her head all evening, no matter how hard she tried to tune them out. Believe that she loved you. Susan didn't want to believe that; because if what they had was real, didn't that make the loss so much worse? And yet… some part of her had soared at the certainty and reassurance in the Minbari's voice. Believe that she loved you, and don't give up hope. That was the message that sparked her dreams of the past.
"There's only one person on this station I can trust implicitly… You." Susan looked down at Talia's words, embarrassed by the faith Talia put in her when she was still hiding something so big. A moment later Talia was beside her again, and Susan noticed that her towel was now hanging in the bathroom; she smiled to observe how comfortable in her quarters her lover had already become. Her lover. She turned the words over in her mind, a slight flush darkening her cheeks, when she realized Talia was staring at her.
"What are you thinking about?" Talia asked curiously.
"You," Susan admitted huskily. Talia came to her then and kissed her deeply. When they finally pulled apart, she asked if Talia was tired.
"No."
"Good. Let's go to bed," she suggested with a twinkle in her eye.
"You are the most- incorrigible—"
"Are you complaining?" Susan asked with a smirk.
"Never," Talia admitted with a matching smile.
Their lovemaking was slower that time as they explored each other's bodies, each woman entranced by the beauty of the other. Their kisses lingered, their hands caressed, their bodies expressed all the love they could not yet put into words. When Talia's orgasm hit, Susan could feel it wash over her, and suddenly they were coming together, moaning together, bodies moving as one, hands stroking, each sensation felt twice over, as if in every caress Susan was both the toucher and the touched—
Susan Ivanova bolted out of bed, breath ragged and heart racing. It was 2260 and Talia Winters was long gone. The touches were only a memory, but that memory…
Her whole body shaking, Susan walked to the kitchen and poured herself a large glass of vodka. She drank half of it in one gulp, then headed to the couch and sank into it, cradling the glass in her trembling hands.
In the 7 months since Talia had been taken from her, Susan had done her best not to think about their one and only night together. When she did remember, it was their heated sex of earlier in the evening that she reluctantly allowed herself to recall. Their first fevered coupling had been filled with passion, but it had only been sex—hot, steamy, mind-blowing sex, but purely physical. The mating of bodies, not of hearts—and certainly not of minds. When they had joined again that night, there was a tenderness Susan had never allowed with anyone else. They hadn't merely had sex, they had made love, and that simple fact, the knowledge that Talia Winters had been her first true lover, was more painful than all the rest.
Susan had shut out the memory until now. She had learned long ago to shut off her feelings, but even she was impressed that she had been so successful as to never even realize what all she'd felt. Talia's orgasms ripping through her own body, the taste of her own skin on Talia's tongue, her mouth suckling Talia's breasts and feeling her own nipples harden… She'd heard before that all the walls fell away when telepaths made love, that their minds and bodies melded into one, that the lines where one person ended and the other began disappeared, but she'd never appreciated what that meant—even when she'd experienced it for herself.
Was it possible Talia hadn't felt it? That the connection had been one-sided? The idea was at once too much to hope for and unbearably cruel.
Susan was forced to face a new reality: Talia Winters had known she was a telepath. But Talia was dead and Control stood in her place, knowing all that Talia knew. If Control knew Susan was a telepath, why hadn't the Psi Corps come for her? Were they biding their time, devising some sinister plan? Or—Susan's heart skipped a beat at the thought—was it possible she hadn't told the Corps, that something was holding her back?
Despite all her years of Russian cynicism, all her years of pain and loss and swearing that she would never again believe in anything but herself, a tiny spark of hope was lit inside the Commander. As she tried desperately to drown it with drink, the flames were fed by the words that refused to leave her mind. Believe that she loved you.
Author's Note: Sorry it's taken so long to get the second chapter up! I've been distracted by another story, and I'm finding this one harder to write than I expected. I'm hoping from now on to get at least one chapter out per month, but with Uni and my general distractability I can't promise anything.