Surprisingly, the light sleeper was awoken by rough voices and and a hand rattling his shoulder.

"What yeh think you're doing back here, eh? Out!" The hand picked him up and he simultaneously found himself waking and walking, which was a very strange and slightly uncomfortable combination.

Marcus blinked rapidly and tried to thread his way through the crowded market. He decided the best course of action was to try to talk to Susan again. Once she stopped thinking he was playing a game, she might even think he was telling the truth. Or maybe she would haul him down to Medlab, where Stephen would be able to torture him.

It was pretty even odds.

As he wended through the people around him, he tried to get some perspective. Delenn- head of the Grey Council? John as EA President...Lennier, Ambassador? Lennier had told him he had not endured the Grey Council's trials with Delenn. Perhaps, in the reality he knew, Lennier had helped her achieve some sort of crucial understanding, or set her soul down the path she needed to follow.

So this Delenn was absent from John Sheridan's life. He knew Sheridan was a good man, but even he needed someone who was a voice of wisdom instead of a voice of complete action, without direction. Had he truly seized the control of Earth singlehandedly?

Was this a world of alternate decisions? Was his world really so very close to being like the one he seemed to be living now?

OOO

He opened the door to the Captain's office and forced himself to stride down the hall. It wasn't that he was afraid of her. He wouldn't have been afraid of Susan if she was a grizzled old General; it was confronting the oddity of his situation that frightened him.

He rounded the corner and stepped into the office.

At the desk sat John Sheridan. Next to John Sheridan sat his nameplate. On John Sheridan's shoulder perched his Captain's bar. Marcus wanted to laugh in relief. He grinned. "John! Nice to see you! Thank God."

"Marcus?" Sheridan replied in his usual husky voice. He looked surprised, but he leaned forward and clasped his hands together warmly anyway. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The Ranger pointed at him. "You already did it. Thank you!"

He turned around and walked away, feeling much lighter.

Perhaps it was a dream he'd had. He didn't think people in dreams usually wondered, while dreaming, if they were dreaming or not, but he was firmly convinced he was not to worry about these sorts of things when he had just been handed amazing luck.

Marcus decided he would stop by to see Susan first, and then go back to his quarters. Her office was not far from the Captain's. He walked in, but she was not in the room. A petite brunette sat at her desk; he felt his heart skip a beat. Was she gone?

"Susan?" he managed to choke out.

The brunette smiled. "She's taken the morning off for herself. I can leave her a message- I'm her secretary, Ms. Reynolds. And your name is...?"

"Cole," he said abruptly. "Marcus Cole."

The smile widened on the woman's face. She leaned back in her chair, obviously looking delighted. "You should have said so to begin with! It's a pleasure to meet you, of course. She's in her quarters. I think she did mention to me she was wondering where you were."

He managed to remember to say 'thank you' before he disappeared down the hall again.

OOO

"Susan?" Marcus called through the comm in her door. To his surprise, there was no sharp reply or hesitation. The door swung open.

He walked inside her quarters a little hesitantly. He expected her to jump out at him like some hideously sharp-toothed monster and demand what he was doing, wandering in her room without permission. He wasn't afraid of her- no. But he knew she could knock a man out cold. Seen her do it, he had. And he wouldn't be able to stop her, because he was chivalrous and she was a woman, and it was such a burden to be nice.

"Susan?" He called again, nervously wetting his lips.

He heard her muffled reply. "In the bedroom, Marcus."

Okay. He'd never been in her bedroom. She'd never let him in her bedroom. But okay.

He slid open the frosted glass door. Susan was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Marcus stopped in the doorway, hesitantly. Susan was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Susan was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Susan was...

Something was terribly wrong in that picture. It was ten in the morning, and Susan was... In her nightgown. Reading. A book. And she didn't look deathly ill. In fact, she looked wonderful, he thought. She had put on a little weight, and it suited her quite well.

Her chuckle tore him from his nightmare. "Geeze. When you said you were going to be putting in a long night, I guess you really meant it. Come here, you zombie."

His feet betrayed his mind and moved forward. He sat began to sit down beside her, but she caught his arm.

"Careful! Watch where you're sitting." Her tone was chiding, but she spoke gently.

Marcus blinked. He was about to sit on a pillow... perhaps it was a special pillow? But she pulled the cover back and caressed a tiny head.

'Dear God,' rang a voice in his head for at least the tenth time in twenty-four hours. But this time, he was too shocked to even voice it; he could feel that shock reverberating in his entire body. A baby, dressed in pink. He looked from it to Susan, and found he could not look away: her baby.

He reached out and touched its tiny head, suddenly finding his hand seemed large and awkward, and the feeling of the silky hair under his fingers cemented an idea in his mind he had not even considered before. This child was real.

He could see it, feel it, hold its little hand. Wherever he was, well, he didn't care anymore. He wasn't in a place he knew, but this was a baby, this was her baby.

"She's... beautiful," he whispered. He cleared his throat. "Isn't she."

He could hear Susan humming in agreement. Her elegant hand covered his and laced between his fingers. She gently ruffled the fine hairs on the little one's head.

"You know, I hated babies for years. I couldn't stand them as a teenager, they made me so uncomfortable. My aunts... they'd come and bring some little cousin and say, 'here, you hold her.'" Marcus looked at her eyes as she spoke to him. "I was afraid I was going to break them." She smiled, shaking her head slightly. "But you can't break something that's made out of a love like this."

She was running her thumb down his hand. Marcus had another of his 'dear God' moments. His baby. His baby, his baby. He wanted to laugh and hug Susan to him because it was all so impossible, but he never wanted to leave it behind.

The Ranger was suddenly grave as he reached down and lifted the child in his arms. The blanket that wrapped her little pink suit had a name embroidered in the corner. Anna, he said to himself. He propped her face against his shoulder and felt a sigh against his neck, and little hands curl around the brown lapel.

And then she sniffled, and started to cry.

"Now you've done it," Susan said with obvious amusement. "You've awakened the cranky monster."

The cranky monster's voice rose. Susan took her from him and went into the living room, where a cradle sat, and laid her on her back.

Marcus stayed in her room. He stared at the wall. The soft sound of Susan humming something to the baby was in the background of his mind, and white noise filled the foreground; he was simply too stunned to move. Baby. He felt like an idiot, for several reasons. Mono-syllable words kept invading his mind- Baby, Anna, Susan, His- and they were driving out all intelligent thought. That was one reason.

And the other was that he was a father, and yet he had somehow managed to miss the conception. That took real talent.

Gentle warm hands slipped around his neck and began to pull him backwards. Susan kissed his neck, murmured in his ear.

"You're quiet today," she said.

He felt a smile spread on his face. Oh, if she only knew how much he'd found in just the last hour, she'd be speechless too. Marcus had always known the Commander was a different woman than the facade she portrayed at work- and sometimes he had caught a glimpse of a sweet, stern gentleness. But this was almost frightening. She was a mother.

He wondered if she had intended to be. He wondered if they were married. And he felt a huge pang of longing to hold the past he had never had.

"I'm happy," he said at last.

A genuine smile transformed her face, and he realised with delight that it made her look like a little girl. "Me too. You changed everything. You..."

She shook her head. She couldn't express anything. She kissed him instead.

Dear God.

Sometime in the future, in between a world, a sea of feeling and longing and desire, and a world he remembered to be his own (with his own Susan), a wretched attempt at conscience reared in his mind.

"I'm not who you think I am," he whispered against her shoulder. He mentally arrested his hands from her back, from the strap of her bra.

He felt her grin against his skin. "Honey, I learn that every day."

Marcus sighed a sigh of surrender.

OOO

Sometime in the night, he awoke with a start, and he felt like his heart was being ripped out- he looked to his side and she was still there. She was asleep.

He stole from the bed as quietly as he could, unconsciously holding his breath. He turned the corner and looked in the cradle where a little baby slept.

He touched her face. Swallowing, he prayed for the first time in twenty years: God do not take me away, God do not make me wake up without them, God don't let it change in the morning. Dear God.

He went back to Susan's side. Dear God.

OOO