AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks so much for all the positive feedback! And to Natters, especially, for the cute little verse. ^_^ I am planning on continuing this story a great deal-- I'm so glad people are interested!
"Let's say, that I'm all alone,
Not being able to see anything at all,
Let's say, that even still,
Desperately trying to move forward through it all,
Please, onto this hand..."
- Hamasaki Ayumi, 'Endless Sorrow'
===========================
The Next Voice You Hear 2/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net/
===========================
Mr. Morden asked, "What do you want, Marcus Cole?"
"I want..." Marcus bit down hard on his lip, horrified at his almost-answer.
"Come now, Mr. Cole," the shadow man soothed, "Let's be candid. You've tried to be noble, you've played by their rules and they still stopped you. You were right-- Sheridan, Delenn, the others, they've all had their miracle, their," Morden scoffed, mocking the Vorlons, "'one moment of perfect beauty'. They found loopholes. Nobody stopped them, but they stopped you. Why is that?"
"I don't know," Marcus said miserably.
"Mr. Cole," a pause, "Marcus-- can I call you Marcus?"
Suddenly, swift and sharp, Marcus laughed, "I've gone mad."
"Of course, Marcus," Morden was unimpressed, "if you weren't mad, you wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. Mad people have nothing to loose-- do you know what constitutes as 'crazy'?"
"This isn't happening," Marcus shielded his face behind his hand, "Fine, enlighten me."
"Insanity-- as they say, is animalistic. It's getting what you want-- placing that as most important," Morden's tone was cordial, as if explaining something to an equal. "Do you think Sheridan was sane when he was resurrected from Za'ha'dum, or that Delenn was in her right mind when she attempted to rescue him? Sheridan was dead-- he wanted Delenn, who was alive. So he became alive. Your Entil'Za wanted Sheridan, who was dead, so she did everything in her power to end her own life without dishonoring herself. They got what they wanted. What do *you* want?"
"The Shadows are gone," the Ranger protested, fighting down the strange ache growing in his heart, "I watched them leave." Susan had been there, too, holding onto the command chair with knuckles blossoming white, and when he'd asked if they'd won, she'd been so obviously glad to hear another human voice that her own shook when she scolded him.
"The Vorlons are gone, too," Morden pointed out, a flicker of frustration in his eyes, "the Minbari served the Vorlons, and they're still around. In the same way, the servants of the Shadows also remain here. The Minbari find God in their endless order. But..." Morden's smile was a mirthless show of teeth, "Deus Ex Machina. God is in the Machine."
The telepaths, implanted with Shadow Tech, one with the Machine... Susan, hooked up the Machine, her body slowly coming alive. He'd felt his affection flowing into her, along with his life energy.
The machine. //"God sent me."//
Morden leaned forward, his gaze penetrating, "What do you want?"
His arms ached-- everything ached, Marcus realized. The rest of his life wanted out of his body, it wanted to be free. "I want..." He gripped his temples, dizzy and sick with himself.
"Her?" Morden's voice was oddly compassionate, "That my associates can do. Very easily. Just say the words."
An image, so full of sensation and sharp he was sure for one insane moment that it was real. Susan, face relaxed in sleep, hands folded over her heart; the lines of her body were feline, though she rested the world seemed to wait for her to move. Then, her smile as he said something ridiculous-- sudden and unguarded.
"There's a price," Marcus grasped sanity, held on until he thought his fingers would break.
Morden shrugged, "There's always a price."
"Can you take my life and revive her?"
"I'm afraid not."
A gritting of teeth. "Why?"
"Because," the dead man laughed, just a little, "That's not what you really want. Nobility does you credit, Marcus, but not much else. Killing yourself for her would have been easy-- she wakes up, lives, and you never have deal with it."
"She fought against you," the Ranger managed, remembering the quicksilver-blue steel in Susan's eyes, "She would hate me. She had no feelings for me-- she wouldn't understand."
"Then what was that on the White Star, just before the battle?" Morden shot the question out, "And when she was injured?"
A hiss, "Get out of my head!"
And yet... she had smiled, had thanked him as she gripped her hands little uncertainly, looking up at him through the curtain of her ebony lashes. It was him she reached for near death. She had watched him crying. She had whispered through her dry lips, so quietly, "I'm sorry", and he told her more harshly than he intended that she had nothing to be sorry for. It must have hurt her to smile, but she did, and she moved her lips to form sounds but fatigue had faded whatever she'd meant to say.
"You're manipulating me," the words sounded pitiful in Marcus' own ears.
"No," Morden said truthfully, "I don't make things that aren't there." Studying Marcus for a moment, the shadow man stood, "Think about it, Mr. Cole. When you come to a decision, I'll find you."
When next the cell door opened, there was only light, bright and pure, coming from the hallway. Lennier came, insisted Marcus eat, and really the conversation with Mr. Morden couldn't have happened. It couldn't have.
The frightening thing was that Marcus found himself hoping the offer *had* been real.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
They gathered for the funeral, leaning on one another as if to stretch their grief between them. Lennier led Marcus to a chair and left the Ranger to sit, an empty eat on either side. Delenn sat just a ways away, Sheridan by her side, and when she tried to touch Marcus' shoulder he gazed at her with eyes that made the invisible barrier around him all too real. They rose, one by one, to stand at the fore of the observation deck. Just outside, her coffin floated anchored to a Star Fury. They would send her into the sun.
Garibaldi stood with his head down just a little, embarrassed, out of sorts. He said Ivanova ran a tight ship, that she held everything together. She went down fighting, like she would have wanted to (and no one looked at Marcus, they were all carefully looking away). She was a soldier. He would miss her.
Sheridan had gotten used to addressing people; he was mechanical and flawless. He said that she was like his sister, that he always trusted her. That he was so grateful she'd been stationed with them when Babylon 5 broke away from Earth.
Delenn said Ivanova was brave and kind, Lennier said she had honor, Zak said he had always respected her, Stephen said she was strong, Lyta said, Corwin said, G'kar said...
With all eyes on his form, Marcus took the few strides from his chair to the main floor. He stood without facing them, looking out at the sleek chrome coffin. He drew a breath, turned and saw that none of them understood. Shaking his head, he returned to his seat without saying anything.
The Star Furies flew in the Missing Man formation.
Missing soldier, Marcus thought, missing person. I miss you.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
"You must do this, Marcus," Delenn's voice was firm, authority veiled in pleading. "You mustn't allow this to drown you, to tarnish your soul."
"And what am I supposed to do? Just forget?" Marcus asked, unable to feel even his lips as they formed the words. He sat cross-legged before a small altar in the main of Delenn's quarters; in the dim ceremonial candle-light, there were so many shadows. "When Willy and Hasina died, I lost the people I loved. Everyone else just.. was. I could scream and scream and no one would hear me. Susan-- she could hear me. She knew, because she was also screaming. I'm not real anymore."
"You *are* real," Lennier said, coming to kneel at Marcus' side, "You're holding onto her too tightly. If she is to be reborn, if you are to see her again, then you *must* let her go."
Impatiently, "What if I want to see her *now*?"
The candles seemed to flicker in an impossible breeze, and Delenn shivered, drawing her body closer in her satin robes. Lennier's hazel eyes seemed to widen with sudden understanding.
"We don't always get what we want," he said softly.
"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Marcus lashed out, "Don't sit here and preach to me, don't tell me what I'm doing wrong! *She* might as well be dead to you, for all the chance you have. Do you like having scraps from her table?"
Lennier tightened his grip on Marcus' shoulder, but the Minbari's eyes were on Delenn. She sat back on her heels, hands fluttering in the air like fleshy butterflies.
"She..?" Delenn began, as if she was a delicate fey in a glass jar, ready to break. For the first time, Marcus wondered if perhaps even Delenn ignored certain things.
"I am happy if the person I love is happy," Lennier's hand was a painful iron, a claw around Marcus' collar bone. The Ranger bore it without complaint. "I keep my feelings to myself so as not to alter her vision of the universe, much the same way you did. You would not have wanted someone to inform Susan of your feelings." Lowly, something that was a command and not a request, "Please have that same respect for me." Delenn released a long, low breath and Lennier refused to meet her gaze.
"Yes, well," Marcus scoffed, "I tried to see that Susan would be happy, that she would live, but you seemed to think she didn't deserve it!"
"That is not what motivated us, Marcus," the Entil'Za's touch was gentle, motherly, easing Lennier's hand away, "You must know that." Delenn's eyes were emerald fire, molten and filled with knowledge; for a moment, Marcus wanted to tell her, to say he had been tempted (was being tempted, still very tempted), but he somehow couldn't fit the words together.
Delenn reached into the silver folds of her robe, removing a small onyx box that looked for all the world like a miniature coffin resting in her hand. "We will go ahead with the Koibito no Hitsugi," she set the box on the low altar, setting the lid aside with an audible 'click'. "You loved her, Marcus-- you honor her by doing this."
"Love. I love her," the Ranger corrected, clinging to the present tense. "Very well," he surrendered, laying his hands palm-up on the glass surface before him. His left wrist still bore the twin kiss of the machine, deep and with every chance of scaring. Delenn lifted the injured hand and studied it, before removing a small, smoky topaz crystal from the box.
"Each generation of souls is born into the next," Delenn chanted, and Marcus shivered because he felt he'd seen her gentle, somehow suspicious smile before. "These souls travel in groups to relive the good relationships and-- if possible-- to fix the bad. Susan Ivanova has passed beyond the veil, and now," she held the crystal just above Marcus' pulse-point, "Marcus will remember a pleasant time from another life, so as to renew his hope of seeing her again in the next." Quite suddenly, the Entil'Za's slim hands were like unyielding marble and she brought the crystal down hard against his wrist like a scythe.
He saw-- he closed his eyes in panic, trying not to see, but it was there anyway. He had not thought of lives before, or of seeing Susan beyond death; it was too insubstantial, and he was lucky he could generate enough belief in himself most days. But it was true-- the Minbari always had nasty tools to show you the truth.
//Earth-- here there was sunlight, warm, and turning the grass and leaves a green of light through peridot. In this life, Susan's hair was darker, more straight, and her face moon-round instead of hard set like the Roman goddesses. It was her, never the less, the essence of Susan shining through the flesh and blood. She was real and alive and for a moment he was utterly breathless with it, as his past self had been. She turned, the wind blowing fine wisps of hair over her face, but she was looking at him. Wrapped in a loose silken robe of blue, she knelt on the ground, reaching up for the low branch of a tree, pulling it down with one hand. A slant of green-glow light graced her bare shoulders, the shadowy slope of her breasts. Drawing the branch down, she lifted her lips to touch a berry, eyes closed and face rapt with wonder. It was the still in the trees before a hurricane, the bright reflection of an earlier nightmare. Mirrors, upon mirror upon mirrors. He wasn't sure if it was his past or present self, but some part of him seemed to hear 'she'll never be any happier than she is right now.'//
The colors had burned into Marcus' eyes so that when he opened them, he saw the vision super-imposed over the world, a strange negative. Delenn's hands pulled away as gracefully as the autumn breeze you just half-catch. Gently, she laid the newly crimson crystal in its coffin, watching Marcus from a swift glance beneath her lashes. He remained where he was, gripping the side of the altar and drawing breath in like a drowning man. He half-expected Susan to form from the shades of half-light, blue-silver robe held about her as she smiled.
"What did you do to me?" he bit down on the words individually, barely restraining himself from reaching out towards where the vision had been-- just a drop of water for the man dying in the desert. His own mind seemed more vast now. What secrets, what sad happy needful memories were locked away in there? Superstitiously, he thought that perhaps if he could distill all of Susan's names into... a word? a phrase?... he might somehow be able to conjure her from the deep.
//"Her? My associates can give her to you... just say the words."//
"Marcus," Delenn began, her hand touching briefly to his back-- her language was as much word as it was deed, she was all meaningful touches and deep glances. "You will see her again where no shadows fall-- you will always have another chance. This was only meant to reaffirm your faith, so you can live out the rest of this left."
"Do you delight in tormenting me?" Marcus cast his gaze from Delenn to Lennier, and back again, "You show me a moment of happiness and then you take it away!" Roughly, he shoved himself up from the altar, sending the little onyx box tumbling to the deck. The sound of the crystal breaking was like the crack of bone-- he was astonished to watch it bleed. "I never even got a chance... we were both all the time screaming... I never got the chance to tell her I heard her, that I wanted to help her make it stop."
"Not this time," Lennier corrected, "There is always next time."
"To hell with next time!" Marcus placed his hands close to his neck, as if to assure himself he was real. He eyed the Minbari with a measure of pity and incomprehension, "You may be content to sit there and wait and hope for your turn, but there's no guarantee! I tried..." he felt fire on his face-- hot tears, "I tried so hard. Why her? What did she do to deserve that?"
Delenn took a deep breath, her arms half-out in he offer of a supportive, motherly embrace. For a moment, Marcus wanted to kneel before the Entil Zha and confess, but the whole of his life stretched out empty before him. A chill day on Arisia, with the naked, twisted trees against the yellow sky. He remembered; the nightmare and the vision, grotesque inversions of one another. At least he could believe Susan was *somewhere*.
The thought came unbidden; 'if she is somewhere, she can be found'.
"I'm can't..." Marcus said, backing away from his friends, fumbling blindly for the door, "Even you wanted to stop me. She deserved to live!" Detecting his frantic motions, the door slid open, spilling in light from the hallway. He thought for a moment that the light was red. There was a type of almost audible crack-- a child flinging himself from a bell tower, laughing at death. "I know what I want." Delenn's eyes were that same color from the vision, the sun coming through the green trees; they were wide as well, with partial understanding and a healthy amount of fear.
Horrified with himself, he cried and began to run, "Valen help me, I'm not even sorry!"
====================
Stay tuned for more
(to "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star")
Uppers, uppers, little thread,
As I haul myself to bed,
As I slumber in the sack,
I hope kind people leave feedback.
So be to my thread be kind,
And leave some feedback behind!