These Blue Remembered Hills

Part XIV

She doesn't know who he is, and thinks that maybe she should. No-one's mentioned him before, but she can tell – she knows – just from looking from him that's he's important. To her. Sarah wonders if she should feel more, but there's no recognition, no flare of knowledge, not like she felt with John.

"Of course I came," said the man – Marcus, his eyes never leaving Sarah. He brushed past Delenn, and advanced, eager and hesitant at the same time. "Are you… it's you, isn't it?"

Sarah shrugged, unsure what to say. She wasn't convinced that she was Susan Ivanova. That is, she was convinced, sort of, but somehow not enough to say it to Marcus. And then, suddenly, magically, she was sure, because this was Marcus, who was crazy, and probably deserved shoving out of the nearest available airlock, but still unmistakably himself, and she smiled out of relief, watching as he smiled back. Anything they might want to say had to wait, however, because that moment Louisa Hammond came storming in, holding the thin sheet of newspaper that the station's news systems produced.

"Look!" she demanded. "Look at this!" She flung the newspaper down on the long table, and stabbed at a headline with a finger that shook with the curious combination of fear and anger that had encompassed her since arriving on Babylon 5. "They're saying we're criminals! Fugitives! Sarah, how could you do this to us?" And she began to weep, while Sarah watched, aghast, still unused to the older woman's rampant emotionalism. She had never seen Louisa cry in Calloway, not once, not even close. Louisa Hammond wasn't the kind of woman who gave into emotion like that. On Babylon 5, it seemed, the old rules didn't apply.

Garibaldi, meanwhile, had swiped the newspaper, and was reading the article. He snorted derisively, and passed it to John.

"Someone's getting desperate," he said blandly.

"And stupid," agreed John, dropping the paper back on the table. "They must know she's here, and there's nothing they can do about it." Torn between Louisa Hammond's tears, and whatever was in the paper, Sarah abandoned Louisa as a losing battle, and read an account of how she had murdered her lover and fled to Babylon 5, her accomplices with her.

"Well," she said, deliberately calm, though she couldn't hide how much her hands were shaking, "for me, personally, this adds a note of urgency to the proceedings." John patted her on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, you're safe here," he said reassuringly. "But if someone's willing to go this far to attempt a cover-up, Michael, maybe you'd better…"

"Already on it," said Garibaldi, tapping his link and ordering increased security for Sarah, but Marcus raised his hand, his gaze never having left Sarah.

"I'll do it," he said softly, and Sarah could tell, right there and then, that he had been… no, he was in love with Susan Ivanova. With her. Probably. Huh. Tricky.

"OK," she said, mainly because it didn't seem fair to deprive him of his task, not when he standing there, eyes burning into hers, looking like some sort of latter-day Rasputin, only hopefully not, y'know, evil.

"Nothing's OK!" wailed Louisa, and Sarah, distracted from Marcus, patted her helplessly on her back, wondering once again how the mere act of being in space (it seemed) had turned the woman who was the moving force behind the PTA and the scourge of the council's attempts to reduce funding for the elementary school, into a hysterical idiot.

"Call Tony," she said when her patting failed to produce any result.

"Already done it," said Garibaldi, and Tony appeared a minute later, drawing aside his wife, and grimacing apologetically at the collected company. "The man's a saint," he added as the Hammonds departed. "Anyway, doesn't look like there's much more we can do now." He cocked an eyebrow at John, who shook his head.

"Not really. We need to get Lyta back here. Marcus, you'll keep an eye on Sarah? And Michael, you got anyone who'd know who started the story about Sarah killing Grey? Might give us a lead on who's behind this."

"Give you ten guesses," said Garibaldi, but he nodded agreeably all the same.

"OK, then. Now, I suggest everyone get some rest. And Marcus – don't let her out of your sight."

Ten minutes later, as they neared her quarters, Sarah was uncomfortably aware that Marcus had every intention of doing just that – literally. The warm flush of recognition had died down, and now she was slightly freaked out by the intense regard of someone who was, as far as she was concerned, pretty much a stranger.

"So," she began brightly, in the voice generally reserved for defusing small children about to launch into some sort of tantrum, "what can you do around…"

And then there was noise and confusion, and a hard jarring as she was flung to the ground, followed by the unsettling sensation of being stifled in Marcus's all-encompassing black cloak (a cloak? Who wore a cloak these days?), and Sarah realised, almost without surprise, that someone had just tried to shoot her.

Hehe – look at that. An update in less than two years. Go me. More to come soon…