To Come Full Circle
She felt that at last she had been given a reward for her hard work. To have Susan speak to her was such a joy after years of knowing what hate she had for Darya would be taken out on her as she occupied Darya's body. She now felt as if a mirror had been turned on her. She was no longer Darya, but the one person in the world that Susan would pray that she was really with. Caroline knew how much this meant to her. After a lifetime of losses she doubted that Susan would have given any thought to having her mother back. Now, there was no way she would shatter the woman's good fortune with an unnecessary truth. After all, they were the same person on a cosmic scale.
There were some Russian words that she either had never learned or forgotten. It didn't matter though. She knew history after Sophie's suicide even if Sophie wouldn't have known. Other words she could easily guess. She sat there for nearly an hour while Susan talked. She tried to react like it was the first time she had heard that history.
When Susan had finished, they sat in silence for several minutes, taking in the events of the day. Eventually, Caroline unbuckled her straps and floated over to Susan. She couldn't resist. She gave her a big hug. Susan accepted it. Perhaps Zathras was feeling a bit left out, but heck, she didn't really care. She thought she heard Susan still praying for it to be real.
Then Caroline began to worry. What if she became Darya again when they passed through the time anomaly? No, she wasn't thinking logically. She couldn't become Darya again because her mother had stayed her mother for as long as Susan lived.
She chewed her nail. (Sophie's were already ragged and torn, so she didn't think she would be doing something unusual.) Susan wouldn't be living so long. Just past G'Kem's birthday party. Well, at least she knew where Susan would go: she would go to Caroline.
She smiled, remembering wondering if she had a human or Minbari soul; which she would be reborn as. As it turned out, a little of both!
Suddenly she remembered something.
"If I was met by one of your brothers on Earth, how did they know to come? I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything about what I knew," she asked.
"When Jeff went back in time at least he had what Valen had written. We don't have anything," said Susan. "We'll just have to improvise."
"Zathras can contact Epsilon 3. Tell brothers what to do."
"Do that then," Susan agreed.
"Zathras set up communication. Will send it when we get to time anomaly."
"That should be in about a half hour."
Maybe that was how Epsilon 3 had been prepared to assist the T(AOL)eeps with her time jump. Better send the message.
Oh gee! G'Kem found his mother! As much as Caroline had known he would, she was startled at the realization that Darya was out there again, as herself, and that she, Caroline, had changed over once more. She was pretty sure that it was a real deal. She had taken the green data disk out of her pocket for several hours when she was alone, and she had remained Sophie.
She dreaded at looked forward to the party at the same time. Darya was already there when she and Susan arrived. Caroline couldn't keep her eyes off of the woman, while Susan immediately refused to look at her or acknowledge her presence.
The doorbell rang once again. She could feel her heart begin to pound. She stepped over to the far side of the living room.
"Well hello!" she heard G'Kem say as he opened the door. Caroline felt sick. It was her parents. David and Stephanie Infante-Sheridan. Strangers she hadn't seen in decades.
*No, they don't see you as their daughter. They see you as a stranger that G'Kem knows through Susan.* She saw that her mother was pregnant with her. Just three weeks before due date in fact, just two and a half before she was actually born. By that time Susan would have died. A sudden death it was. She looked fine now, and she was. Her body wasn't planning ahead for death; wouldn't realize it was supposed to die soon until the time was on top of it. That was a characteristic of living on someone else's life energy. Like a star that burns too quickly and goes out suddenly.
Caroline slunk around for a while, observing Darya and her parents. Other guests arrived. Some she didn't know, and they must have been other friends of G'Kem's.
*Oh come on Sophie you're breaking up the pattern!* someone said to her telepathically.
She jumped. Laughter followed. G'Kem walked up to her and smiled.
"They mean the telepathic pattern in the room. It's common on Zion to weave a pattern at social gatherings, where each mind interacts with others in a certain way."
Sophie wouldn't have known that, so she nodded. Actually telepaths did it on every human planet. It had become a way of making sure no one felt left out. She didn't bother to worry about what disturbance her parents and Delenn were causing, them not being telepaths at all.
"I didn't know Susan had a daughter." Caroline looked up. It was Darya.
"Oh you didn't?"
Darya shook her head.
"It's a long story," Caroline said. Actually she wasn't sure how it came to pass that Susan had a daughter. They had never actually figured out the details of the explanation of who Sophie was. She couldn't be Susan's mother, after all, being around 30 years younger than Susan. She changed the subject. "That's a nice pin there." She gestured to the flyer wings that Darya wore on her lapel.
"Thanks."
"What is it?"
"Flyer wings. My own."
*Exchange of details.*
"I had heard you were with the Vorlons," Caroline said.
"Seems that G'Kem has told you a lot then."
"Oh, through Susan, that sort of thing."
Darya frowned at the mention of Susan.
"Susan. She hates me."
"A part of her doesn't hate you as much as you might think." (That part is me.)
"I guess we both wish we'd never met. Oh why am I telling you all about this? I hardly know you."
"It's alright," Caroline said. "I know all about it. Would you mind if I showed this to Susan?" she gestured at the flyer pin.
"Oh not at all. Why?"
"Oh I don't know. It might interest her."
"Sure." Darya handed Caroline the pin. She found Susan on the other side of the living room, obsessively clipping her finger nails.
"Susan, I was talking to Darya."
"You were? Great, now you're socializing with her. What a creep."
"I just found out something really fascinating about her." Like you would really be interested.
"Uh-hu," Susan said.
"It's the reason she was with the Vorlons. She was one of the people that they abducted and kept until the 'time was right.' They gave her telepathy and telekinesis. She wasn't with the Vorlons for a couple of years, and she met G'Kem's father on Narn. She ended up getting pregnant but was called back by the Vorlons. When they went beyond the Rim, she was separated from G'Kem. But the interesting thing is this."
Caroline showed her the pin.
"American 20th century flyer wings. Model for the Earthforce shoulder patch. Where'd she get these?"
"They're hers," Caroline replied.
"Amelia Earhart. That's not her name on it."
"No one on Earth had her name on file and she started calling herself Darya Freeman."
"Alright, but what's the big deal with this?" Susan was not getting it, and who would?
"She was a pilot. In 1937, she attempted to fly around the world but somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the Vorlons got her airplane."
"Good for her."
"I just find that really fascinating. A living person from the 20th century," she said. She really should have been an actress.
"If it was anyone else, I'd go up and shake their hand. Her, I don't care."
"Come on, Susan!" She knew it wouldn't do any good.
"She shouldn't be here."
"Don't say that so loud." It really didn't matter. Caroline knew that Darya knew that Susan wanted nothing to do with her.
"I don't care," Susan mumbled. "I want to go ask G'Kem something," she said.
*Hey, go on,* she thought with satisfaction. She ran back over to Darya, dropped the pin in her hand, thanking her.
Susan and G'Kem were now in the kitchen doorway. They talked. They discussed what they had always discussed. At last they stopped and Caroline was able to catch G'Kem's attention.
*I'd like to talk to you G'Kem.*
*Alright.*
*Outside.*
G'Kem followed her into the apartment house hallway, out of the crowd.
*I know you've been remembering your own past lives, G'Kem (flash of Ganya).*
*I know. I've had thoughts about that for a while now, ever since I saw you it was like a memory that I shouldn't have forgotten. You looked so familiar to me.*
*Susan has me now, also, but there's something else I want done.*
*What's that?* G'Kem asked.
She still had the earrings. As Caroline, as Susan, as Darya, and now as Sophie. Whatever magic had allowed her to become all those people had allowed her to keep them.
*If you remember, give this to Susan.* She took out one of the earrings.
G'Kem looked at it for a very long time and then his eyes returned to her.
*I don't quite remember, but I sort of do.*
*Take it and look at it for a while, and you will,* she told him. She knew he would. Then she changed the subject to another important one.
*I'm staying here for several days, and I know Susan is too. We both know she's going to die very soon. I don't want to be on another planet when she does.*
*That would be a good idea to stay as close to her as possible for a time.*
Despite G'Kem's suggestions, she didn't stay with him for the next days. She left him and Susan to be alone and figure out where their spirits stood in the whole scope of things. G'Kem had once told her when she was Caroline that Susan died four days after the party. Those four days seemed endless to her now, as she expected and yet dreaded G'Kem calling her to say that she was dying. She had given him the ID of the comm terminal at the motel.
On the fourth day she was paged from the front desk. She ran down there and took the call on an earphone only.
"Sophie. I guess you expected it but... well Susan is dying. I think someone picked up on my thoughts and called a doctor, but there really isn't anything that can be done... I mean it might get into the record books as 'first death by old age alone'... but nothing can be done except for you to get over here." She heard him sniffle slightly.
"I'm coming over!"
She pulled the earphone out of her ear and told the person at the desk that she really had to go. Then she ran out the door. G'Kem's building was only a couple of blocks away, so she arrived on foot. There were a couple of neighbors standing near his apartment. One thing telepaths could be noted for was their sense of family, even when it was among strangers.
Her heart was pounding as she pushed the cracked front door open and let herself in. G'Kem met her and grabbed both of her hands.
"I'm glad you got here as quickly as you did... Susan wants to see you."
G'Kem pulled her into the bedroom.
"Momma!" she heard Susan say. Caroline ran over to her. She dropped to her knees at Susan's deathbed. With her right hand she held Susan's left. She put her other arm across and put her hand on Susan's shoulder. G'Kem knelt next to her.
*If this had happened thirty years ago, I wouldn't have either of you. We wouldn't even have saved Ganya together.*
*I know Susotchka.*
*I guess Marcus did more than he was trying to do.*
Caroline smiled.
*Momma, it's strange. I don't feel like I'm dying. I feel more... alive... than I have in a long time.*
*Maybe you're being reborn.*
She knew the instant Susan died. She had been in the mind of the Time Tracker when he had died, and now she was in Susan's. But unlike the Tracker's mind, she didn't feel a bit of herself leaving as well. She felt all of it grow distant. She felt almost as if her and Susan's mind were merging, and they were both being reborn. She could feel herself lying where Susan was, and she could feel Susan kneeling in her place. Once again she was lying in bed, but it was not daytime. Susan died in the daytime. Now it was night. Moonlight was coming through the window. She sat up in bed and pulled herself up to the window sill.
Outside lay many miles of city, tall buildings. And before her eyes, she saw the buildings change from Zion to the crystal towers of Minbar.
She turned from the window and saw a child's room. A room that she hadn't seen in so long. She climbed off of the bed and felt the floor beneath her. Like there always had been, there was nothing on it, no clutter. She turned on the light. She saw the drawings she had done as a child, and all her books and toys, long forgotten. She saw a crib in the corner near the closet. She walked over to it. In it lay sleeping her baby brother Jason. She had forgotten about him as well.
She looked in the mirror and saw herself with her light brown hair, and her half Minbari head crest. She wasn't full human anymore. G'Kem knew her, but as a relative. He knew they were soul mates, but she could feel the connection was gone now that she was once again Caroline. This wouldn't do.
She spent the whole night writing out what she remembered. She described Susan, Gari, and Feodor. She described Darya and Sophie. She described her life. What she had become. And she knew she could never grow up again. She could never learn to be fourteen again. She wouldn't try because she had already lived a full life.
"Make your parents proud, Jason," she whispered.
Just as morning was lighting the sky, she looked out the window once more. The mornings were dazzling on Minbar as the crystal buildings created rainbows through the sky. She took a deep breath and held the image in her mind and she lay down on her bed.
She went into a deep Minbari meditation. It wasn't something she was supposed to know how to do yet. Something a fourteen year old would not have been told. It was so deep that she couldn't have come out of it--even had she wanted to.
She felt that at last she had been given a reward for her hard work. To have Susan speak to her was such a joy after years of knowing what hate she had for Darya would be taken out on her as she occupied Darya's body. She now felt as if a mirror had been turned on her. She was no longer Darya, but the one person in the world that Susan would pray that she was really with. Caroline knew how much this meant to her. After a lifetime of losses she doubted that Susan would have given any thought to having her mother back. Now, there was no way she would shatter the woman's good fortune with an unnecessary truth. After all, they were the same person on a cosmic scale.
There were some Russian words that she either had never learned or forgotten. It didn't matter though. She knew history after Sophie's suicide even if Sophie wouldn't have known. Other words she could easily guess. She sat there for nearly an hour while Susan talked. She tried to react like it was the first time she had heard that history.
When Susan had finished, they sat in silence for several minutes, taking in the events of the day. Eventually, Caroline unbuckled her straps and floated over to Susan. She couldn't resist. She gave her a big hug. Susan accepted it. Perhaps Zathras was feeling a bit left out, but heck, she didn't really care. She thought she heard Susan still praying for it to be real.
Then Caroline began to worry. What if she became Darya again when they passed through the time anomaly? No, she wasn't thinking logically. She couldn't become Darya again because her mother had stayed her mother for as long as Susan lived.
She chewed her nail. (Sophie's were already ragged and torn, so she didn't think she would be doing something unusual.) Susan wouldn't be living so long. Just past G'Kem's birthday party. Well, at least she knew where Susan would go: she would go to Caroline.
She smiled, remembering wondering if she had a human or Minbari soul; which she would be reborn as. As it turned out, a little of both!
Suddenly she remembered something.
"If I was met by one of your brothers on Earth, how did they know to come? I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to do anything about what I knew," she asked.
"When Jeff went back in time at least he had what Valen had written. We don't have anything," said Susan. "We'll just have to improvise."
"Zathras can contact Epsilon 3. Tell brothers what to do."
"Do that then," Susan agreed.
"Zathras set up communication. Will send it when we get to time anomaly."
"That should be in about a half hour."
Maybe that was how Epsilon 3 had been prepared to assist the T(AOL)eeps with her time jump. Better send the message.
Oh gee! G'Kem found his mother! As much as Caroline had known he would, she was startled at the realization that Darya was out there again, as herself, and that she, Caroline, had changed over once more. She was pretty sure that it was a real deal. She had taken the green data disk out of her pocket for several hours when she was alone, and she had remained Sophie.
She dreaded at looked forward to the party at the same time. Darya was already there when she and Susan arrived. Caroline couldn't keep her eyes off of the woman, while Susan immediately refused to look at her or acknowledge her presence.
The doorbell rang once again. She could feel her heart begin to pound. She stepped over to the far side of the living room.
"Well hello!" she heard G'Kem say as he opened the door. Caroline felt sick. It was her parents. David and Stephanie Infante-Sheridan. Strangers she hadn't seen in decades.
*No, they don't see you as their daughter. They see you as a stranger that G'Kem knows through Susan.* She saw that her mother was pregnant with her. Just three weeks before due date in fact, just two and a half before she was actually born. By that time Susan would have died. A sudden death it was. She looked fine now, and she was. Her body wasn't planning ahead for death; wouldn't realize it was supposed to die soon until the time was on top of it. That was a characteristic of living on someone else's life energy. Like a star that burns too quickly and goes out suddenly.
Caroline slunk around for a while, observing Darya and her parents. Other guests arrived. Some she didn't know, and they must have been other friends of G'Kem's.
*Oh come on Sophie you're breaking up the pattern!* someone said to her telepathically.
She jumped. Laughter followed. G'Kem walked up to her and smiled.
"They mean the telepathic pattern in the room. It's common on Zion to weave a pattern at social gatherings, where each mind interacts with others in a certain way."
Sophie wouldn't have known that, so she nodded. Actually telepaths did it on every human planet. It had become a way of making sure no one felt left out. She didn't bother to worry about what disturbance her parents and Delenn were causing, them not being telepaths at all.
"I didn't know Susan had a daughter." Caroline looked up. It was Darya.
"Oh you didn't?"
Darya shook her head.
"It's a long story," Caroline said. Actually she wasn't sure how it came to pass that Susan had a daughter. They had never actually figured out the details of the explanation of who Sophie was. She couldn't be Susan's mother, after all, being around 30 years younger than Susan. She changed the subject. "That's a nice pin there." She gestured to the flyer wings that Darya wore on her lapel.
"Thanks."
"What is it?"
"Flyer wings. My own."
*Exchange of details.*
"I had heard you were with the Vorlons," Caroline said.
"Seems that G'Kem has told you a lot then."
"Oh, through Susan, that sort of thing."
Darya frowned at the mention of Susan.
"Susan. She hates me."
"A part of her doesn't hate you as much as you might think." (That part is me.)
"I guess we both wish we'd never met. Oh why am I telling you all about this? I hardly know you."
"It's alright," Caroline said. "I know all about it. Would you mind if I showed this to Susan?" she gestured at the flyer pin.
"Oh not at all. Why?"
"Oh I don't know. It might interest her."
"Sure." Darya handed Caroline the pin. She found Susan on the other side of the living room, obsessively clipping her finger nails.
"Susan, I was talking to Darya."
"You were? Great, now you're socializing with her. What a creep."
"I just found out something really fascinating about her." Like you would really be interested.
"Uh-hu," Susan said.
"It's the reason she was with the Vorlons. She was one of the people that they abducted and kept until the 'time was right.' They gave her telepathy and telekinesis. She wasn't with the Vorlons for a couple of years, and she met G'Kem's father on Narn. She ended up getting pregnant but was called back by the Vorlons. When they went beyond the Rim, she was separated from G'Kem. But the interesting thing is this."
Caroline showed her the pin.
"American 20th century flyer wings. Model for the Earthforce shoulder patch. Where'd she get these?"
"They're hers," Caroline replied.
"Amelia Earhart. That's not her name on it."
"No one on Earth had her name on file and she started calling herself Darya Freeman."
"Alright, but what's the big deal with this?" Susan was not getting it, and who would?
"She was a pilot. In 1937, she attempted to fly around the world but somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the Vorlons got her airplane."
"Good for her."
"I just find that really fascinating. A living person from the 20th century," she said. She really should have been an actress.
"If it was anyone else, I'd go up and shake their hand. Her, I don't care."
"Come on, Susan!" She knew it wouldn't do any good.
"She shouldn't be here."
"Don't say that so loud." It really didn't matter. Caroline knew that Darya knew that Susan wanted nothing to do with her.
"I don't care," Susan mumbled. "I want to go ask G'Kem something," she said.
*Hey, go on,* she thought with satisfaction. She ran back over to Darya, dropped the pin in her hand, thanking her.
Susan and G'Kem were now in the kitchen doorway. They talked. They discussed what they had always discussed. At last they stopped and Caroline was able to catch G'Kem's attention.
*I'd like to talk to you G'Kem.*
*Alright.*
*Outside.*
G'Kem followed her into the apartment house hallway, out of the crowd.
*I know you've been remembering your own past lives, G'Kem (flash of Ganya).*
*I know. I've had thoughts about that for a while now, ever since I saw you it was like a memory that I shouldn't have forgotten. You looked so familiar to me.*
*Susan has me now, also, but there's something else I want done.*
*What's that?* G'Kem asked.
She still had the earrings. As Caroline, as Susan, as Darya, and now as Sophie. Whatever magic had allowed her to become all those people had allowed her to keep them.
*If you remember, give this to Susan.* She took out one of the earrings.
G'Kem looked at it for a very long time and then his eyes returned to her.
*I don't quite remember, but I sort of do.*
*Take it and look at it for a while, and you will,* she told him. She knew he would. Then she changed the subject to another important one.
*I'm staying here for several days, and I know Susan is too. We both know she's going to die very soon. I don't want to be on another planet when she does.*
*That would be a good idea to stay as close to her as possible for a time.*
Despite G'Kem's suggestions, she didn't stay with him for the next days. She left him and Susan to be alone and figure out where their spirits stood in the whole scope of things. G'Kem had once told her when she was Caroline that Susan died four days after the party. Those four days seemed endless to her now, as she expected and yet dreaded G'Kem calling her to say that she was dying. She had given him the ID of the comm terminal at the motel.
On the fourth day she was paged from the front desk. She ran down there and took the call on an earphone only.
"Sophie. I guess you expected it but... well Susan is dying. I think someone picked up on my thoughts and called a doctor, but there really isn't anything that can be done... I mean it might get into the record books as 'first death by old age alone'... but nothing can be done except for you to get over here." She heard him sniffle slightly.
"I'm coming over!"
She pulled the earphone out of her ear and told the person at the desk that she really had to go. Then she ran out the door. G'Kem's building was only a couple of blocks away, so she arrived on foot. There were a couple of neighbors standing near his apartment. One thing telepaths could be noted for was their sense of family, even when it was among strangers.
Her heart was pounding as she pushed the cracked front door open and let herself in. G'Kem met her and grabbed both of her hands.
"I'm glad you got here as quickly as you did... Susan wants to see you."
G'Kem pulled her into the bedroom.
"Momma!" she heard Susan say. Caroline ran over to her. She dropped to her knees at Susan's deathbed. With her right hand she held Susan's left. She put her other arm across and put her hand on Susan's shoulder. G'Kem knelt next to her.
*If this had happened thirty years ago, I wouldn't have either of you. We wouldn't even have saved Ganya together.*
*I know Susotchka.*
*I guess Marcus did more than he was trying to do.*
Caroline smiled.
*Momma, it's strange. I don't feel like I'm dying. I feel more... alive... than I have in a long time.*
*Maybe you're being reborn.*
She knew the instant Susan died. She had been in the mind of the Time Tracker when he had died, and now she was in Susan's. But unlike the Tracker's mind, she didn't feel a bit of herself leaving as well. She felt all of it grow distant. She felt almost as if her and Susan's mind were merging, and they were both being reborn. She could feel herself lying where Susan was, and she could feel Susan kneeling in her place. Once again she was lying in bed, but it was not daytime. Susan died in the daytime. Now it was night. Moonlight was coming through the window. She sat up in bed and pulled herself up to the window sill.
Outside lay many miles of city, tall buildings. And before her eyes, she saw the buildings change from Zion to the crystal towers of Minbar.
She turned from the window and saw a child's room. A room that she hadn't seen in so long. She climbed off of the bed and felt the floor beneath her. Like there always had been, there was nothing on it, no clutter. She turned on the light. She saw the drawings she had done as a child, and all her books and toys, long forgotten. She saw a crib in the corner near the closet. She walked over to it. In it lay sleeping her baby brother Jason. She had forgotten about him as well.
She looked in the mirror and saw herself with her light brown hair, and her half Minbari head crest. She wasn't full human anymore. G'Kem knew her, but as a relative. He knew they were soul mates, but she could feel the connection was gone now that she was once again Caroline. This wouldn't do.
She spent the whole night writing out what she remembered. She described Susan, Gari, and Feodor. She described Darya and Sophie. She described her life. What she had become. And she knew she could never grow up again. She could never learn to be fourteen again. She wouldn't try because she had already lived a full life.
"Make your parents proud, Jason," she whispered.
Just as morning was lighting the sky, she looked out the window once more. The mornings were dazzling on Minbar as the crystal buildings created rainbows through the sky. She took a deep breath and held the image in her mind and she lay down on her bed.
She went into a deep Minbari meditation. It wasn't something she was supposed to know how to do yet. Something a fourteen year old would not have been told. It was so deep that she couldn't have come out of it--even had she wanted to.