This is a requel of sorts it bounces from pre-B5 years to "current day" during B5 years, like say season 4. I have been working on this for sometime and decided it was time to show it out the door. It's Done enough, I might add more to it later (much).
We never knew much about Marcus, book nine touched on his life before the rangers, but not much. I wrote this to try to explain a few of the many mystifying aspects of this character.
NOTE: Italic text is in the past.
Marcus plopped down beside her in the small colony's meager media library. "Hey," He said breathlessly, he'd run all the way. "Mum threw some last minute chores at me, I had to finish them before I could cut out."
She smiled sadly at him and leaned over. He kissed her on the lips in greeting, his tongue tangling with hers for a brief moment. He took her hands in his and sat back expectantly.
"Dad got a new XO in to replace the one that went south last month. Want to go out and take it for a spin?" he wagged his eyebrows suggestively.
They were always trying to find a place to be together wherever they could. It was harder than it sounded; finding a private place on the overcrowded residents platform was next to impossible. He was doing his best to find those few opportunities.
They'd not taken that 'final step' yet, had come real close, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Her father had this habit of interrupting them at crucial times, and now they lived in mortal fear of him popping out of nowhere at any instant. Well, she did; he was more the 'let's go someplace where he won't think to look for us' school of thought.
Marcus had the means, and as any red blooded seventeen year old would, he continually tried to present ideal opportunities for 'aloneness' to remedying this, but was not having any luck convincing her after the last 'incident' a few weeks ago. She was always too gun shy to disobey her dad too much. Which was driving Marcus crazy after so long.
To make matters worse, her father didn't approve of her dating the boss's son, and seemed like he spent every spare moment trying to track them down. Which only made them try harder to not be found, and made her periods of grounding and confinement all the more frustrating.
"I wish I could." She swallowed hard, her dark brown eyes holding his in fear. Her voice was soft and hesitant. " I need to pack. I'm leaving for college in 4 days."
"What? Four days?" Marcus protested, dropping her hand. "Christine! When did this come up?"
He and Christine had grown up together on the small desolate colony. Not counting his younger brother, who only proceeded to be in the way at every instance, they were the only kids on the colony.
He, Willie and Chris were best friends from the day she arrived. She was seven years old, Marcus eight, and Willie was six then. They were like the three musketeers growing up, and had gotten more skinned knees together than he could count running along platform corridors and down ladders.
She'd always been a bit of tomboy. But things had changed over the years. Well mainly Christine had changed from a gangly girl to a woman with long blonde hair, soft brown eyes, and a curvy figure overnight it seemed.
Marcus, now a tall, lanky seventeen year old, eventually stopped asking the younger Cole to come along and luckily the younger boy got the clue. But not without making his own biting ribs at his older brother's abandonment of him at every opportunity, of course.
The last few years Marcus and Christine had been more serious, even discussing running off together when her father's overbearing nature got to be too much, but they both knew it was folly. They were both too young and inexperienced in life to make it practical. He knew enough about mining to get a job anywhere, but he didn't want to just move to another mine. He didn't want to be a miner, and without a degree to back it up, he'd be down in the tunnels, and that was a death sentence.
But they still talked like it was a possibility. These grand plans of running away and working their way through the sector in the casinos until they had built enough to go to school full-time. Just to go anywhere easy from low browed, greasy teamsters who smelled like dirt and try to build a life of their own out of her father's grasp.
"Dad gave me the crystals last night. I only have a few days to get there before they start."
"This is about me isn't it. He's sending you away to get you away from me."
She nodded, wiping a tear away. "He only means the best, you have to know that."
"Where?" he asked grinding his teeth. "Where is he sending you off to?"
"MUSI." She said softly. Mars University of Science and Industry was the Martian Equivalent of MIT on Earth. Very prestigious, and a degree from it almost guaranteed a job out of the chute. He was jealous for just a second, then the rage set in.
"Mars! He couldn't have picked any place further away could he?" Marcus growled.
"I picked it," she said softly looking up. "It was that or Jenkins on Performa VIII. He managed to get acceptances to both with his professor friends pulling some strings."
"So YOU picked the one farthest away?" Marcus accused angrily.
"NO! I picked the best one for the both of us."
"Both of us? With you half a zillion light years away at college, there is no US anymore, Chris."
"No! I thought it all out! Listen!" she pleaded, and he snapped his mouth shut, nostrils flaring. "I'll go now, and you can come for the next semester, Marcus. Then we can be together and Dad can't stop us."
"Mars," he breathed. "It's so far away. And it's not a cheap school either."
"It's not that expensive. Your dad owns this place, he shouldn't have a problem-"
"My dad makes less than yours, Chris. What money we make pour back into equipment and salaries. The profits belongs to the business, the investors, or to tax collectors - not to us. With that last mining strike for wage increases and all, we're probably the POOREST family on the platform. We just don't have to pay rent, that's the only thing keeping us above water. Last year, he was thinking of selling it just to cut his losses. "
She looked genuinely shocked. "I didn't know."
"And you didn't ask. No one cares if the boss can't make ends meet as long as they get paid two credits more an hour." He frowned, wiping an invisible tear from his eye. "And now With Dad's heart problems, I think I'm stuck here till I die."
"Don't say that!" She cried out, gripping his shoulders, "You deserve a chance to get out of here, too. You're way smarter than I am; you could get in on a scholarship easy. Please. Tell me you'll try. Come with me."
"Ok, I'll ask Mum. I might have more luck with her," he acquiesced. "I can't promise anything, this is a bad year, but maybe…"
She threw her arms around him and kissed him hard, letting her tongue cross over his, her hands smoothing over his cheeks. She rested her forehead to his and opened her eyes, looking deeply into his. "I love you." Christine said unwaveringly.
"I love you too," He murmured back kissing her once more, and pulling her into a hug, nuzzling her neck.
"We've been together too long to let anything come between us now. We'll make this work," he said into his shoulder. "We will."
He held her close. He would've liked to agree with her, but sometimes he hated that she was so optimistic all the time. He hated the thought of trying to tell her to be practical, because it would break her heart. So he didn't.
He stopped dead in his tracks upon sight of her, watching in stunned silence as she checked her bags past security. Her hair was tinted with red now, and was shorter than even the last time he saw it. But it was her, dressed in a comfortable yet shapely blue business suit that only accentuated her peaches and cream skin, and curvy body. She'd barely aged in all these years. Christine.
She turned to look at the station map kiosk and after a few minutes made through the crowd not noticing the bearded dark stranger watching her intently across the hall. But someone had.
"Ahhh, you have good taste my boy," the richly accented and thoroughly unmistakable voice of the Centauri Ambassador interrupted. "I have always had a thing for redheads myself, but they always end up being trouble."
The Ambassador was well known to him, followed him more times than he could count, but he was not known by the Ambassador. It could be very dangerous for him if the Ambassador knew about him.
"My fourth wife is one such example. Tried to kill me, on my own ascension day! Of all the nerve. But, I do miss her on rare occasion." He wagged his bushy eyebrows suggestively. "If you know what I mean."
Instead of answering, Marcus watched her well-shaped form leave, "I thought it was someone I knew, that's all."
"By the look on your face I would say you were pretty sure of it. You never forget a redhead, trust me."
"It was along time ago," Marcus said, "and she used to be Blonde… it ended badly."
"They always ends badly. Once a redhead, always a redhead – trouble all of them. Still, the years never 'take the bite out of it' as your people say, do they?" The hefty man slapped Marcus's back "Come! I will buy you a drink!" He closed his hand around Marcus's lower arm.
"I can't really, I have-" the Ranger attempted to beg off.
"Nonsense! One drink! Maybe two…to lost loves, ah? So simple a request."
"Aren't you waiting for someone?" Marcus asked, him trying to fathom an excuse.
"My Aide, who if you ask me is old enough to get off a ship by himself, but here I am. He will live if he has to walk himself home."
Marcus shook his head; he really couldn't be socializing with the Ambassador, no matter how friendly he seemed to be. He knew Londo Mollari 'on paper', and he was more than met the eye.
"I'm sorry, some other time?" Marcus pointed his thumb after Chris' form. "I should at least say hello."
"Suit yourself!" The Ambassador waved his hand dispassionately. "GO, go! Maybe your redhead will be less trouble than mine have been."
As Marcus followed her down the hall, he heard the Ambassador cry out most aggrivated, "Vir! Over here you melon head!"