Author's Notes: Thank you so much for bothering to read so far! I hope you're enjoying things as they progress. My deep appreciation goes to the sweet people who've sent feedback-- Miss Long, Natters, Night Sky and Sabrina. Chocolate Marcus-es to you all! *wink*
Without further ado
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The Next Voice You Hear 3/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net
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Delenn remained kneeling after Marcus had gone, watching as his distorted shadow slithered behind him silently. Lennier stood in the doorway, poised as though he was torn between going after his friend and staying to comfort the Entil'Zha. Almost seamlessly, the young Minbari moved further into the room, and the door slid shut behind him.
"I am afraid, Lennier," Delenn found it took amzing effort to move her lips, "I try to maintain the old ways-- I... I sometimes forget that humans are wired differently from Minbari. They react differently. I can understand why he is upset." A slight, incredulous breath, "I find that I am upset."
"You can't blame yourself," Lennier knelt by her side, hand hovering just above her velvet-clad shoulder. He never seemed to really touch her. "Marcus is grieving. His grief will pass, with time."
She looked up suddenly, a lock of burnished umber hair falling softly agaist her cheek. In tht moment, her eyes were the color of an ocean in the eye of a storm, deep and penetrating. //Will *your* grief pass?// The words seemed inscribed in the double black moons of her pupils. //WILL it, Lennier?// Raising a hand to her lips as if she had really said the words, Delenn closed her eyes. In that moment, Lennier sensed a shift in himself, from honorary brother to... His hand clenched, nails biting into the flesh of his palm, and with his free hand he brushed the stray lock of hair back behind Delenn's ear. A flash-- her eyes were open, and still he trailed his finger along the delicate line of her jaw.
"Lennier--" she was looking away, off at some distant, dark water image he could not see, "The person y0u love..." Suddenly, she smiled, gentle and... well, there were no words, "Never mind. I am sorry to have burdened you with my troubles."
"I am always happy to help lighten your load, Delenn," Lennier let his hand drop, fingers limp and tingling from touching her. He stood, and for a moment she was in his shadow, and he could see the terrible power held in her lithe girl-child form and it was all he needed to strengthen his resolve never to speak the words. He bowed once and left, trying very hard to tell himself she did not know.
'As long as you don't say it, it isn't real.'
Alone, Delenn cleaned the blood from the seer's crystal.
Unfair, Marcus had said.
[I only have twenty years with Him]
(What did she do to deserve this?)
[And John? He has no wrong on him either!]
(I know what I want!)
"What I want isn't important," the former Satai murmured, "I am happy to take what is alotted to me."
The door-- a shaft of light.
"Delenn?"
She turned slowly, blood on her hands, to smile up at her human huband. "Hello, John."
"Is something wrong?" he glanced quickly at the shattered crystal, curious as always with any unfamiliar object.
"I'm just," Delenn pursed her lips, sweeping the jagged pieces of glass into the little black box, "I'm worried about Marcus. I keep thinking of him-- of what I don't know about him."
"Don't know?" John asked quizically. Delenn rose in one smooth movement and gathered a small towel from the kitchenette. Wetting it, she returned to mop up the small red stain on the floor.
"No one ever really knew much about him," the Entil'Zha confessed, "Even Sinclair only had the bare facts-- that Marcus joined the Rangers at his brother's dying wish." She began to bare down on the crimson splash of color, feeling as if it wouldn't come out, "Marcus was very sullen-- shy. He rarely spoke two words together when he was on Minbar. Then, he comes here and..."
One word, a name-- John had, after all, lost his almost-sister. "Susan."
"Yes," Delenn took up the ruined rag and nearly flung it into the garbage unit, afraid to hold onto it any longer than nessecary. "I worry now... we all place so much of our existence on others. It is the only way to live fully-- by loving-- but it is very dangerous." Something is about to happen, she wanted to say, I looked in Marcus' eyes and I saw a maze even he is lost in.
"It'll be alright. We've made it this far," John's embrace was tight, but somehow unreal. She was million fireflies-- the essence at the center of a star. Something that could not be held. She sunk into his embrace, and then drifted out again.
"I know." The next words were a comfort on her lips, "Faith manages."
Very carefully, she began to blow out all the candles.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
The summer Marcus turned thirteen, he learned something about death. The defuse, yellow light of Arisia poured through the windows and pooled on the floor. He was wading in the sunlight, bare feet on the old-fashioned wooden boards, and Hasina had been holding his hand so tightly he thought her fingers might have become needles. Down the steps, one, two, three at a time, with his shoes clutched in his free hand. Hasina turned, just once, and pressed a long, thin brown finger to her lips; there was something in her warm dark eyes. Not glee, but the thrill prey gets when it looses the hunter, the excitement when you fall or choke or cut yourself and live. Laughing when death comes knocking, rolling on the floor with giggles.
"I figured it out," Hasina's voice was the sound of dry leaves on stone as they huddled in the cold corner of her basement. "I'm cried and cried until Mama was thinking of sending for the medic, but then... it suddenly all made sense." Her eyes were rimmed red in testament to her tears, but she was smiling. God, was it a strange smile.
Dreaming this dream that was a memory, Marcus thought perhaps he finally understood the strange calm and purpose that had over-taken Hasina then.
Hasina leaned close, with the slant of sunlight from the window falling right over her eyes like a reverse mask.
"Priscilla doesn't have to be dead," breathless with wonder. A secret. Marcus, thirteen and a runt who stood just at his friend's height, shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think. He would wait until Hasina made sense-- he would *not* think of Priscilla, the fourth member of their little band; he would not think of her blue-black hair turning purple with the stain of red blood, or how strange and wide her eyes were when the rocks came tumbling down. He did not want to think that she would not be coming back, and that someday, the same thing would happen to Will and to Hasina and to...
"Death happens, Hasina," Marcus parrotted the words hs mother had been repeating for the past few days. She seemed to think if she said it enough, it would somehow cleanse her two boys. "You can't stop it."
"I can't," Hasina murmured, stepped backwards away from him. In the cold, dusty cellar, she looked small and mouse-like; a child dressed in her older brother's shirt and rough work pants. She held out her small hand, the palm of which was lighter than the rest of her skin, "But you can." Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her hand, perhaps intending to pull his friend away from the dangerous edge on which she stood. There was a steel in Hasina that hadn't been there before; her grip was stronger and she led him with her through the wide stone threshold.
Hasina's mother was the town coroner, the keeper of the bodies eaten up by disease and harsh working conditions of mining q-40 from deep under the surface. "Someone has to take care of the dead," Hasina said often. She carried with her gruesome tales of the measures needed to put bodies back together for the veiwing, of sleeping at night knowing a husk filled with death is really and truly in your basement. She knew death better, more intimately than Marcus; he thought, quite suddenly, that she was purposely keeping her eyes closed.
The boy stressed, "What can *I* do?"
Priscilla was laid out on a long metal table-- hair a dull black-sapphire in the poor lighting. Eyes closed and hands at her heart, she looked strange-- someone had chosen a black dress with little red print to bury her in, so much more formal than Marcus had ever seen her. A doll, dressed up, waiting for her owner to take her to the tea party.
"You've always said you're a knight," Hasina's voice was hard and insistant, "Remember? Will is the dragon, I'm your squire and you're the knight." Much more quietly, as she reached out to touch the cheek of her dead best friend, "Priscilla was the princess. It should work, Marcus. You can wake her up."
"Hasina!" it was loud, much louder than he'd ever meant, but filled with understanding. He could almost feel the weight of the armor on his shoulders, the sword sheathed a his side. Later, much later, Hasina would lay limp and half-burnt in the rubble of the colony; later, Marcus would see her corpse and run the other way, unable to even bury her properly. Right now she was only twelve, and her hands were clasped in prayer as she bent her head, short ebony locks brushing her cheek. She was his friend, his squire, the person he was trying to teach to be brave and honorable while figuring it out for himself. Hasina's wisdom was the perfect, insane logic of a child.
('Insanity-- as they say, is animalistic. It's getting what you want-- placing that as most important')
He said in half protest, "It's my first kiss."
"I'm sorry," Hasina bit her lip until it bled and she licked it absently, "But I.. I'd do it myself, but Marcus, I *can't*. I'm..." she gestured at her body in despair, "I already tried!" A fear tears now, doting her cheeks like freckles, "You're the knight. Please, Marcus. She was my best friend. I loved her." He would not understand until much later what that meant, "Please, Marcus?" A question, as if she was certain he wasn't real.
Because in the rest of his life he would only love two women more than this one-- one loved because of honor and the other loved because of soul-- Marcus bent gently over Priscilla's corpse and pressed his lips to the chill flesh of her mouth.
In the dream, the body was not Priscilla's, but Susan's.
Waking with his sleeping-thoughts in his throat, Marcus pushed himself out of bed and reached blindly for the bottle of vodka on his small counter. He had taken up Susan's vice as a type of totem, though why he did not know. Silently, his quarters seemed to breathe around him, broken only by the sound of the bottle's mouth clicking against his glass. There seemed to be an inaudiable 'pop' behind him, and Marcus somehow couldn't find himself to be surprised when Mr. Morden pulled up another chair and sat beside him.
"You know what your problem is, Marcus?" Morden asked, glancing significantly at the bottle of alcohol. Pulling forth another glass from the cupboard, Marcus filled it and handed it to the shadow agent.
"Aren't you just a fountain of knowledge, now," Marcus remarked dryly. He took a sip of his vodka and made a face. "I'll never know how she stood this stuff." Morden shifted, one elbow on the counter, looking at his client. "Fine, fine," the ranger said, "I'm breathless with anticipation."
"Your problem," Morden intoned, "Is that you're a good person."
Bitter laughter from the other man.
"You may have killed a few people-- here and there, but it was for the One," Morden sneered, "You may have lied, pulled a few dirty tricks in your time, but essentially, you *are* a good person. You have a hard time being selfish. That's why you kissed a dead girl--"
"Fat lot of good that did," Marcus interupted, "But I... I couldn't have Hasina thinking that maybe Priscilla could have been saved. Maybe for a minute I actually believed it might work." He turned suddenly, looking Morden full in the face, "How do I know this isn't the same kind of thing?"
"You know quite well that my associates can back up any offer they make," the shadow agent pointed out, "You've seen Londo Mollari."
"Londo," Marcus took a large swig, "Now that is a hell of a bad sales pitch."
"You were willing to give your life to save hers," Morden demured, "I'm afraid no one can demand a price much higher than that."
"No sir," the Ranger raised his cup, as if to toast Mr. Morden, "just my morals and my soul." Solemnly, he asked, "Will it hurt her?"
"Being alive? Most certainly not. She will suffer none of the injuries that killed her in the first place."
"You must understand, Mr. Morden," Marcus said honestly, "I can not commit blasphemy against her. I can't make her be a monster-- that would be worse than if I killed her myself."
"Death has not changed me," Morden spread his arms to indicate his body as proof.
"Ah, I see." Marcus drank deeply again, and refilled his glass, "So you've always been a dishonorable, lying bastard."
Morden's smile was filled with mirth, "Yes, Mr. Cole. I have always been a dishonorable, lying bastard." Then, he leaned forward, as if confiding a great secret. "You know, Marcus, you don't have all the time in the world. Life is a dream, and you know how hard it is to sink back into a dream once you've been awakened."
Marcus thought of Susan, eyes bright with the blue at the center of a flame; Susan laughing with him, yelling at him, telling him things he knew she'd never told anyone else. He thought of her as he had seen her in the vision, unguarded and smiling. He thought of her pale, pretty face at the end-- yes, pretty despite all the bruising. Susan, who screamed and no one, not even her precious Sheridan seemed to notice. He had been screaming too, but he'd heard her over his own cry. He was still screaming.
Softly, but firm with determination, "I know what I want."
"That's why I'm here, Mr. Cole." Another chesire smile.
A line in the sand, being blown away by the desert wind.
"Just say the words, Mr. Cole."
"I want..."
A breath in, breath out.
("God sent me.")
"I want Susan back."
================================
TBC.
And now, for your regularly scheduled silly rhyme:
(to the tune of "Hokey Pokey")
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that's what you do,
You press review,
And give old Mere a shout.
Reading the fic
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