Wanderlustlover: wanderlustlover@satx.rr.comPhoenix Ascendant - Arc Two, Part Three ~*~ "The Herald of Rebirth"
”Achoo!”
The building rumbled and silenced just as fast. The quiet and cantankerous mumbling of the sick woman didn’t though, not even when the door opened to a bright and very awake face.
“Oh, look, you’re awake,” the voice said, it’s own juxtaposition between amusement and sardonic glee in that statement alone confusing.
“Not for long if I have anything to say about it,” Lyta grumbled as she pulled the thick woolly blankets closer around her. It’d only been a few days on the planet, settling back into getting home, and she’d come down with what seemed to be the worst case of no-one-knows-what that she’d had in years. Years on years. Before all the messing with her system by the Vorlons.
Heather let out a sound of annoyance, even though her thoughts betrayed her amusement at Lyta’s comments and actions, very much paralleling inside her thoughts to the children she was watching, too. Taking a chair and pulling it up to the bed, she sat with the back facing Lyta, straddling it and looking at her clipboard resting on the top of the chair back. “Give me about ten or fifteen minutes of your time and I can promise no one will disturb you for at least another six or seven hours.”
Lyta mumbled something unintelligible into the blanket wrapped tight around her, but she didn’t close her eyes or move away. Heather assumed that was her non-committal way of simply agreeing, whether it was helpful and clear or not.
“Your test results came back fine this time. Apparently,” she said, flipping pages on her clipboard. “Your immune system is massively packed to handle almost anything, which is why they’re studying your blood work to create some antigens for our other patients, both adults and children. They think it’s because your system is so specifically worked-up that it’s why you caught and cured yourself of it so fast.”
“If I was cured I wouldn’t be in this bed,” Lyta replied, as though the conversation truly were an inconvenience to her want for sleep. It was rather cute in a way, because while children simply accepted sickness with a slow pout for wanting to play, grown-ups avidly detested that one-day in bed. Or, well, five where it had come to Lyta’s case.
Though Lyta’s was the shortest case involving an adult.
“So says the woman who was only unconscious, barely breathing and definitely not able to eat, for four days while she was sick,” Heather rebuffed her with. “Compared to her now state of simply being cold and sleepy. I’d say you’re pretty close to being cured. Even though I think you’d probably be scheduling these one on one sessions with the other council members even if you were on your death bed.”
Lyta narrowed her eyes and Heather could almost hear the unspoken ‘I don’t like you’. It wasn’t a specific sentiment, it was simply Heather’s nature to usually be able to pick up people temperaments and actions pretty fast just watching them. She’d had almost a dozen other people’s memories to know Lyta through, but getting to see her in action had been completely different, too. Besides it really just meant Lyta was frustrated at being stuck in bed and unable to do anything, and had so few things to take the frustration out on.
Heather almost laughed though when that look made way for a very vague comment from Lyta of, “You’re not a council member. You told me that yourself.”
This time it was Heather’s job to narrow the features of her face and look slightly taken aback. “Yes, well, when the benefactress of my planet makes it very clear that she is refusing to acknowledge the existence of the part of the board she’s created and is part of, while still dictating orders and decisions from her sick bed it means someone somewhere has to be the go between to this little sadistic charade.”
“Fine,” Lyta replied, sinking back into her pillow and looking at the ceiling instead of at her visitor anymore, as though to dismiss her without actually doing it. “Report or comment or whatever away already.”
Heather resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn’t too hard after being Council secretary for so long. There were times harder than this to not just show out right insubordination or disagreement over someone’s actions or even their opinions. Moments like these she wondered why anyone put up with the redhead in front of her, but she clocked it off again –with sweet and very forcefully persistent hopefulness- to the sickness.
“Council meetings hedge slightly on you at present, which I might add, is very unhelpful, because they’d like your input and no one was willing to even consider finishing the discussion on if you didn’t make it. We actually have had two adult casualties to this virus so far. Realistically there should be a protocol or instructions about what is to happen in the case of your death. Should it come about in the future,” Heather said, her voice slightly waspish. “It’d be a smart thing.”
“If I get that choice.”
“To write up your wishes for the people who follow you?”
Lyta sneezed again, many times in succession and the building shook hard each time and stopped just as suddenly, when she did. She frowned; her brow furrowing and then relaxed, with an annoyed distaste underlying her features. Slow, after another pause, she said, “No, I meant dying.”
Without letting her stop to debate mortality on issues Lyta frequently disliked talking about, because there would be no true answer to all the questions, she continued; “Go on.”
“Shipments have all arrived on time, anywhere between three and eight a day. I can have a document of them sent to you if you’d like. The irrigation system is having issues, but they think they found the problem last night. A new school building is being erected near the town square, next to the library. There’s a crop on a new piece of land that seems to be causing an allergic reaction to most of the people who’ve eaten anything delivered from the region. We think we discovered the source of the problem and are working to rectify it already. There’s talk of a college and an apprenticeship building, but no one’s finalized plans yet or figured out who will run it. There’s a worry about some of the outlanders getting snowed in and whether they need to be relocated against some of their own better judgments, since this winter is going to be a harsh one.”
Looking up from her clipboard, where she was mostly reading off selected notes, she watched Lyta for any sign of acceptance on any of this. The woman in bed simply seemed to still be staring at the ceiling with that half blank, half distasteful expression still. Which annoyed Heather a bit, as she tended to actually like interaction with the people she was speaking to, not just silent, abject compliance.
“You missed the first snow for Sanctuary, which is amazing. I’m sure you’ll love it once you’re out of bed, which could be any time soon. Everything’s coated in white except for the streets where it’s already become well-waded slush in a sort of brownish beige color due to traffic. They’ve brought in new shipments deliberately for Christmas, to help everyone with cheer during this winter. The holiday goings on are going to be a huge thing this year. The planning took months,” she offered, trying to get something out of her.
“And the other thing?” the red head asked, finally shifting her gaze from the ceiling, back to the woman in the chair.
Heather blinked, confused and surprised all at once. “Excuse me?”
“The other thing,” Lyta said, motioning with her hand even as it was wrapped in the blanket. “The thing that’s rumbling around in your head loud and obnoxious like pennies in a tin can. The thing you desperately want to bring up yet keep avoiding.”
The brunette sat there for a long silent few minutes. Anger spun off of her in an unusual way. She didn’t like being directed to tell things out of her order, even though she loved surprises. She didn’t like being delegated to, without input. She hated being run ramshod over. And she’d done her most respectful to avoid that topic because she actually wanted to care for the sensibilities of the woman in the bed. Who seemed to care nothing at all for these things in her own account?
Letting the clipboard slide into her lap behind the chair back, she let out a very slow breath. Her voice was sterling and steel-like, even though it was a very quiet statement. “I don’t approve of the way you’re treating him.”
“It’s not your place to approve or disapprove of my actions,” Lyta said, looking away once more, only spurring on the woman.
“No, it’s not, but you brought it up and you’re going to listen to it because you asked. I think you acted very childish before you came down ill and I’ve spent a good deal of time not letting that opinion reflect on anyone’s asking how you are, or how your decisions have affected the council’s running status since you arrived. You have butchered in a few days time the very system you put into effect. People vote in the council members aside from a select number you put in place or change. You have completely changed their vote into not having voice, by acting out your childish reaction.”
“Are you done?”
“No, I’m not. Your actions are harmful to this community at the moment, and I see you as a danger to something I’m whole-heartedly involved in. I don’t like that idea because before last week I’d never met you and I’d never been told anything except that you’d do anything for these people and just didn’t want recognition.”
“I would do anything for them. I’d die for them.”
“Sure, dying for them would be easy after all you’ve done already. Wouldn’t it? But you refuse to even deal with their decisions, because you don’t like it now.”
There was a very long silence in the room, before Lyta responded again. Her voice was very hollow and it was the first time Heather heard an emotion that wasn’t anger, hurt or scorn in her words on the topic. It might sound empty and harsh to a casual listener, or even a human, but the emotions that came from the bed as sudden as a raging river were so mixed with love and loss that they almost consumed her. “He’s not supposed to be alive.”
Heather gulped against the torrent surrounding her and turned steel inside of her against the emotions. Her hands tightened a little on the chair, but she meant every word, even as a strange feeling of pity and confusion was filling her against her will. “Neither is Lyta Alexander. You might want to think on that sometime while you’re casting stones.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
The brunette looked at the ceiling for a moment, before answering, because it was a hard thing to answer in any form. “Yes. But not in the way you’re implying. I grew up with Byron. I know him. I know him like I know the scent of my own skin and all of my memories. I know the ways he thinks and the way he moves. And it’s him. I don’t know how, and I can’t give you reasons for why, but it’s him. And no one could imitate him, Lyta. No one, not that perfectly.”
Releasing the grip on her chair, she looked down at her hands, trying to afford her actions logic as she spoke. “He hasn’t come back to the council chambers since the day you two talked. I thought it would be good for him, when it happened, but he won’t talk to the council members now. He stays out in the countryside and sends us messages. I don’t think any of us can make him come back…”
Except you.
The words hung in silence, so massively implied that Lyta actually rolled on to her side to face directly away from Heather this time. There was a massive stillness and the emotions hadn’t ceased at all, now mingled with an even stronger mash of guilt and anger all at once, but when she spoke minutes later, it was quiet and it was too hollow, almost like the will to say them broke the voice speaking them.
“I’m tired. I think…I think I’d like to sleep now.”
Heather closed her eyes, the silence almost a recrimination at herself for saying all she had. She hadn’t a right to place Byron’s emotions and weakness at the feet of the person who’d recently caused them. Even if she’d get down on her knees and beg the woman if it’d make Byron come back into his own mind and life. She couldn’t forget the emptiness in his eyes when she’d gone to see him only two days ago. She couldn’t forget.
But, even worse, at the moment she couldn’t forgive either.
“Of course,” she said, her voice betraying those emotions, as she gathered her clipboard and returned the chair to where it had been. “Oh, I forgot. There’s someone who’s been waiting to see you the last few days?”
“Later maybe. After I’ve slept more.”
~*~*~
( Three or Four hours later )
“What do you mean, ‘you’ve never had a Christmas tree’?”
“Well, mostly, exactly what I just said,” Ember replied, with a sort of glum expression for having to point it out as they walked through the center of town. “I’ve never had a Christmas tree. It’s not like the Minbari celebrate Christmas and I’ve kind of lived there a very long time. Maybe my parents had a tree a long time ago when I was little, but I don’t have a lot of memories from that time.”
“Wow. You’re not kidding?” Melissa asked, looking all aghast at having received this knowledge.
“No,” Ember said, sullenly, tired of having to point out this weakness is her upbringing, which seemed so important to her newfound friend. “I’m not stupid. I know what they’re for and pretty much what you do with them. I just, you know, haven’t.”
“Well, we’ll just have to change that, won’t we?” Melissa said, slinging an arm over her friends shoulder, noticing some of the tension release just like that. “We’ll go pick out our tree with Lennier and then we’ll go home and decorate it, and we’ll open presents on Christmas Eve and morning, or whatever it is they want to call it here. And we’ll give you the bestest Christmas any girl could ask for. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ember replied, sheepishly, even though her gratitude showed in her thoughts. Getting an odd look after a second she piped up with, “Are you sure Lennier’s going to want to be helping us pick out a tree and such?”
“Sure, he will,” Melissa, said with a conspiratorial grin. “He’ll love it. I’m positive. After all, I’m sure he’s done weirder things when Lyta asked anyway. This one’s just getting a tree. And think about it. If we get everything done fast enough, it could even be a surprise for her once she’s well again. This way!”
“What? Why?” Ember asked, as Melissa suddenly whirled her around in a completely different direction. Back toward the Market and the downtown area, that they’d priorly been walking home from.
“Because,” Melissa said, with a singsong quality to her voice now, oblivious and radiant even without the mystical touch the snowflakes falling on her gave her. “Lennier’s just now getting out and we should be able to catch him before he’s halfway out of downtown even. So keep your eyes open.”
They started a light sprint back into town, even though Ember rolled her eyes at her friend’s spontaneous enthusiasm. It never seemed to stop or slow down, especially once it hit new topics. Looking didn’t actually take that long either, before Ember actually spotted Lennier and pointed him out Melissa at him. Melissa who went running full speed toward him.
He smiled bemusedly and actually stopped walking, just watching her patiently, and perhaps amusedly. “To what do I owe this surprising visit?”
“I had the best epiphany all ephinanies,” Melissa said with a jubilant grin, as she tugged at the warm jacket she had on.
“Have you,” he stated simply and Ember tried not to laugh, when part of Lennier’s mouth tugged into a smile. It wasn’t one of those distinctly respectful looks, but it was more like he was accepting her choice of words like it was some sort of play on what she actually meant.
“Yes,” She said, mock sagely, as she moved closer to him. “We need a Christmas tree.”
“A tree?” He asked, curiously. “I think I remember being briefed about this being a human winter tradition during my stay on Babylon 5?”
“It is,” she said, grabbing his hand and turning him back toward town. “And they’re supposed to have trees we can pick from tonight on the other side of town. And we need one. Like really, really, really, really need one. See ‘cause Ember’s never had one and having it all set up and surprising-like for Lyta when she’s finally better would like amazing.” It was probably her enthusiasm that endeared Melissa to everyone. She didn’t lie and she constantly seemed to stretch things a little, but when you looked into her eyes, she frequently always meant what she was saying. There it was written across her face and shining bright from inside her eyes. “Please? Pretty please?”
“I suppose,” Lennier started, gravely, looking at her while inwardly still bemused. “That it couldn’t hurt.”
~*~*~
( Far, Far Away on a Distant, but Very Familiar World )
“How long?”
“I do not think I care for your tone,” she replied without meaning to be evasive, as she turned the spoon slowly in her steaming drink.
“You lied to me,” He replied, pacing back and forth. His movements were fast and unplanned compared to her slow and deliberate being. But it had always been like this between them, for they were a myriad harmony of differences. It was one of the many reasons it worked out so well between them.
“No, John, I did not. Will you please stop pacing? You will…wear a hole into the carpet,” she said, a smile crinkling her lips at the use of the human phrase, before she went back to the true focus of what had brought them here. “The duty of the Rangers is to help those in need and there were -- are very many in need. Does it vex you so that she might be one of them?”
“You shouldn’t be associating with her.” He said it, his voice firm and cruel, and as he watched her eyebrows rise very fast and lightening flash in her eyes, he regretted it instantly. He said quickly after it, “That’s not what I meant.”
“I should hope not.”
“What I meant was,” he stopped, coming closer to her. She was still more beautiful than he could imagine. Pictures and paintings could not touch her beauty because it was not simply just about what she looked like, or how she smiled, it was about how she was in presence and being. “Delenn, I love you. And I’d do anything for you, but she….Lyta *is* dangerous. Not to be trusted. I can’t believe-”
“Have you seen the refugees?” Delenn prompted him gently, patiently, and soothingly as she stood up and nodded for him to join her as she moved to a small couch in the living room.
“You mean the telepath refugees? No. Of course not,” He replied, his jaw strong and full of purpose, but his eyes were slightly confused. “I’ve been on Minbar all the time the war and clean-up took place. I’ve kept tabs on the situation, but I haven’t been back.”
“Then I will take you next time we have a selection that comes here before they go for their final destination,” she stated, watching him sit down barely a few inches from her, yet not interceding into her personal space. Even though she watched his eyes widen with that being another surprise, she looked into her cup about to take a sip, saying very firmly, “You’d be surprised how many of them are only children.”
“Children? That’s not-” he broke up, his eyes glancing upward before swiveling back to her face, while he let out a deep breath. His face was a shade of light red and his eyes seemed to dart too much across her features as though looking for something that wasn’t there, in a face that hadn’t changed all that much from the moment he’d first seen it. He rubbed his hands over his face, saying, “How long?”
“A few years,” the reply came, without pause and without regret.
“Delenn!” Sheridan barked, both with shock at the admission of it being longer than he thought, and even more so that she’d made her statement evasive and not honestly answered his question in her normal precise matter. “How cou-” his words started but were silenced by a slim and gentle finger against his lips.
“Perhaps, it is time,” Delenn started removing her finger only after she knew he would let her speak, and gathered his hand into hers and squeezing it lightly. She tried to look beyond the flame of fear, and it’s reaction of control, inside his eyes. “That we talked about some of the more important things involving Lyta in your life that you have never talked about before. Perhaps never even admitted to yourself.”
She watched his expression, years of married living, like seeing all the answers in the smallest of planes and shadows. The skin at the edges of his eye bunched because he was tense and rebellious due to her words. The tight muscle in his jaw that showed his patience with her, and love, that would have seemed unbridled anger to anyone else. If he were asked he would say that he would tell her that he’d answer any question of his past. But that was not the same as turning lights into the places in a mind where only irrational emotions and shadows grew.
“Do you fear water because you know it can drown you? Or fire because you know it can burn you?” She asked gently, wishing that some of their conversations could be far more soothing than this one would be. She knew this haunted him and that it could for a long time, if ever it did end.
“No. You use it with a healthy respect to its more dangerous elements and avoid using it in dangerous ways that might harm anything or anyone,” John replied.
“While acknowledging that the water can also save you from dehydration, or that fire can save you from freezing or prepare food for eating to keep from starvation?” Delenn said, hoping he was already understanding what she meant. Not what she said, but what she meant.
“Of course, Delenn,” he stated blankly, nodding, though his expression had not the patience of hers.
She waited a minute longer, waiting for him to say more, waiting for him to understand the knowledge she had just handed him, and a very small frown turned the direction of her lips. So she tried again, and this time, she tried to be something the Minbari were often not; blunt. “Who are the people you know of that the Vorlon’s changed?”
“Lyta, of course, and if we’re to believe her statements before leaving Babylon 5, all the telepaths of all the races. It was the Vorlon’s messing with the races that created the telepaths at all,” he stated out, wondering with annoyance where this was going and why she was staring at him so patiently, still waiting. He thought for longer before he also added, his expression becoming clearer. “The Inquisitor who came to test us. Sebastian or Jack or whatever they were calling him then.”
“And you,” Delenn said softly, almost sadly, as though repeating something known and unadressed.
Specifically unadressed.
~*~*~
( Two Days Later )
The door opened, and she turned her head more to look toward the noise out of instinct than the need to do it, still sleepy as she had not so much heard it but felt it, but the moment she figured out what it was, she was awake. Stone cold, wide aware, awake. In her doorway, holding a tray of steaming lunch foods, face looking completely embarrassed, confused and concerned was Zack.
Zack Allan.
The man who was supposed to be on the station as Chief of Security.
Not on Haven…not on her planet…and not…serving her lunch?
“Zack?”
“I…uh…think they got annoyed with me sitting in the hallway so they decided if they sent me in with food that you’d realize I was here,” he said, with this smile that seemed so very boyish.
Lyta stared at him long and hard, thinking none of this made sense at all. Zack was dedicated to Babylon 5. Massively and intrinsically dedicated to Babylon 5. He wouldn’t leave that place, he loved it too much. Other people left, but never him. It was just so where he has always belonged. And then there was all the stuff that didn’t make sense in her head that she hadn’t though about since Byron’s letter.
She pushed herself up and rubbed her eyes as she murmured. “And now the delusions start. Someone get me a nurse. Oh, wait, you people can’t even diagnose me because of my unknown alien make-up.”
“I’m real.” Zack said, his voice filtering through with amusement as he came to the side of her bed finally and set down the tray. “Really, real. I was thinking about a trip and thought why not somewhere new?” He flushed under the expression she looked up at him with, her face completely gaunt and pallid, and her eyes little brands of copper burning into his soul without touching him. “Well, uh, and Ivanova sent me.”
“You do realize she’ll kill you for actually telling me that, right?” Lyta said, she attempted a smile even though only an edge of her lips lifting on one side. But it faded just as fast, as she looked down at the wooly blanket on her bed and played with it in her fingertips. “Usually when she’s trying to be sneaky, she likes those things to be a secret. Not that I really approve of this intrusion into my personal affairs, but I’m sure that wasn’t a priority in her planning. So what’s her reason this time, since you’ve already spilled most of the beans ungracefully?”
“She didn’t really say. Just that you needed a friend to be near you for the next while,” Zack offered, still standing next to her bed, looking a little uncomfortable himself. He’d look at her and then look away, and she only realized it was because of her nightgown after the fifth or sixth time he did it. He really was sort of old fashioned in that way, she decided as she pulled the light sheet up around her. It seemed to make things a little better the next time he cast a slightly glance at her.
“Go back home, Zack,” Lyta said, desolately. She had not called him friend in a long time, and she didn’t feel an amazing sureness in him. Even after the saving of TEEP. After all, he’d only been there for it’s fall out because Lockley had ordered him. Same as he was now here because Susan sent him. Hollow friendship was no friendship at all and she had no use for the pity of strangers.
“I can’t, well, no really. Well, I could go back to Earth, but I could just as well stay here.” He said, using his hands to explain things, as per usual when he seemed to get nervous around her. “I…retired.”
“Wow,” the red head laughed, though too cruelly. “She convinced you up good to have gotten that out of you.”
“I’d been thinking about it for a while anyway.”
“And what do you get out this, Zack?” Lyta asked, steel filling her voice.
He wanted to say, he got to be near her, but that was too foolish and too honest, and he couldn’t bring himself to say things he knew she didn’t want hear, no matter how badly he wanted to say it or how honest it was. So he folded his arms loosely behind his back and said, “I get to see the creation of a new society, help out and keep an eye on a good friend I lost track of too many years ago.”
Her eyes were dark and her lips were pursed as she stared at him, openly disbelieving. “Did you really sit out in the hallway for days?”
“Yes.” Zack answered quickly, though his cheeks reddened very fast. “Well, most of it. Actually fell asleep in the chair waiting a few times. And during the points when I needed to get up and do something out of sheer need to move more, I helped out around here a little. Gave Lennier’s class some pointers, and helped with some of the construction a few days ago when you still hadn’t even woken up and I was too under-”
“Lennier’s teaching a class?” Lyta asked, stumbling straight over his sentence.
“Yep. A self-defense class. Apparently a group of people saw him practicing one morning and started trying to emulate him. He told them they weren’t doing it right. That it involved the mind and the body, some kind of meditation. And it broke into a class somehow. They usually having mid morning or early afternoon meets. Some times it’s actual fighting, but a lot of the time it’s meditation and discussion. He’s mellowed a bit, hasn’t he?”
Lyta’s lips actually quirked back into a slight smile at that comment. “The more things change, the more they never seem the same.”
Zack furrowed his brows, but didn’t ask, even thought his expression said enough. He was too completely clear with his emotions in his face, but he turned it on something else as he nudged the tray toward her. “I’ve been told to make you eat. Apparently everyone seems to think this is a great and hard task. Prove them wrong and eat your lunch for me, so I don’t have to scold you or make you?”
Her brows rose at the teasing tone, where he very obviously tilted the conversation suddenly away. “Make me what?”
“I’ll have to make you eat.” Zack said, menacingly, though his eyes were bright and teasing as he was leaning in toward the bed. “It can’t be much harder than holding you down on the bed and prying your mouth open right?”
Lyta sputtered suddenly and her mouth opened in surprise.
Half because of his statement, and half because she was sudden thrown for a shock when her body reacted strongly to the idea and mental picture of Zack being on top of her. It made her suddenly feel much too warm, and far too undressed, and very embarrassed; even wrapped under the thick blanket. And, yet, this was Zack after all. Zack who was harmless and friendly, and tended to be too much like a daily teeter-totter in her world.
Dear god, what was she going to do with him here? On her planet? Not leaving?
Her cheeks flushed while she tried to banish what her imagination had suddenly created and she grabbed a spoon and the bowl at the top of the tray, anything to not suddenly be looking at him. “Fine. I’ll eat the stupid food.”
“Don’t look away from her,” A booming, laughing voice came from behind them both. “She’ll find some way to hide it under the bed or make it disappear so you never know she didn’t eat.”
They both looked over suddenly to find Jason in the doorway. He was dressed still in warm winter clothing. His pants were a dark beige color with smaller lines of cream running in them length wise, over that was a large, thick, dark red jacket hung open to reveal a cream shirt that matched the pants stripes. His shoes were black and they still had snow edged all around the edges.
“So says the man who does it about as well,” Lyta threw back a barb, but her voice had grown marginally sweeter.
“Ahh, but my body does not require a physical sustenance as yours still does,” He said walking inside as he pulled two or three manila folders out of inside his jacket. Her eyes, copper and bright, hardened looking at them, which made him smile a little more. “I know, back to the books is not something you want to be doing, but I promised I’d drop them off to you this afternoon.”
He glanced to Zack, though his expression wasn’t lacking in kindness, when he said, “If you’d excuse-”
“No problem,” the late security chief replied, with the faintest traces of the smirk still on his face as he turned and started walking for the door, after a lingering look at Lyta, which seemed to contain more than the silence of the moment he’d looked at her. “Just make sure she eats the lunch or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Jason watched him go, as did Lyta quietly, till he was gone and moved to close the door behind him. It clicked, softly; a thundering noise in the room for the silent bubble that had formed. He broke it quietly as he walked toward the woman on the bed. “A good man, your friend there.”
“If he is that,” Lyta replied, furrowing her brow and holding her hand out for the folders he still held.
He held them firm even when her hand grasped them, making sure to look her full in the face when he said very surely, “He is a good man.” Her response was a sound from her throat and non-committal because once he released the folder because her attention began to focus on the papers she was shifting in her hand. Jason frowned slightly, noting her unspoken annoyance and confusion on the topic. “Has no one told you yet that he was the one who spent the most time at your bedside?”
“Did he?” she replied, very distractedly without impression; as she flipped through more of the papers, lunch already forgotten on the bedside between them. Sewage lines, autumns last crops, two weeks worth of new arrivals, apprenticeships building…gala party.
“Has he done something I should know about? As I haven’t seen him be anything but studious and jovial toward anyone, even if a bit skittish in adjusting to being the minority in our world,” Jason broached, his voice dropping slightly and shifting to a more serious tone. He watched her very closely, his eyes seeming to shiver slightly as though he was peering into her almost. “I’m prone to thinking if you didn’t want him on Haven, he wouldn’t even know about her existence even. Do I need to remove him?”
“No, that won’t be needed,” she commented, finally looking up at him, as though this was a trial to discuss. She looked back down, shifting the first folder over near the lunch tray and closer to the end of the bed. Leaving the other two on her lap, she turned halfway and started bunching her pillow so she could sit up and lean against them. “In that aspect he’s harmless. Well, not harmless. He was the Security Chief of Babylon 5 till very recently. He actually knows very much, but he is not a threat to us or to the planets.”
Once she finished fluffing the pillows and putting them in place, she looked back up to find the most interesting expression residing on his face. It was somewhere between confusion and curiosity, and yet his eyes seemed to still contain that magical laughing shine to them. She liked those eyes, even though she knew they could turn black as death fast as anything, too. It was almost comforting to her to know that. It was strange, but she’d at least begun embracing that in herself.
Lyta let a small huff out of her chest through her nose, as she contemplated her blanket before continuing. She laced her fingers together and started calmly, “I’m not sure where I stand on Zack, though he is not a danger, I’m not sure whether he wishes to be a friend or not. We’ve all too often been caught on the very opposite sides of the law and it’s damaged pretty much all interaction we’ve ever had between us. Once long ago, back when I’d first come to Babylon 5 I thought it would be different…but back then I thought a lot of things would be different.”
It was true and false all at once. She trusted Zack. She knew he’d die for a cause. She knew him as honest and open and dedicated to his causes. But there were other things she couldn’t state that simply, especially about this last trip to Babylon 5. He’d been attentive, he’d taken her out, then he’d thrown her in jail, and then when the leaper had taken over his body he’d made reference to that body loving her enough to die for her. But none of those really matched up and it all confused and hurt her head now to think about it.
“I do not think that he is here out of friendship to me or to our people, but more out of the kindness to a request made by Susan. As I have said I would not count him as a danger, or an exact Ally, I also do not like the idea of him being allowed to leave with the knowledge of Haven and no way to protect that knowledge,” she added reluctantly, looking back up and getting confused at seeing this slap-stick grin on his face. “What?”
“You like him.” Jason stated, and smiled even more at Lyta’s outraged expression of denial, and then spoke over her begun protesting attempts. “So much so that you want to write him off completely already.”
“No, let me speak,” he said, waving her off as her mouth open, her eyes still flashing. Walking around her bed as he said it, to sit on the bed opposite side the piles, he took one of her hands, his dark eyes were calm and soothing now. Which was the same with the ocean of his being around her room that he was much more free with around her.
Jason reached out a hand and stroked her cheek; the darkest brown against the palest white and fiercest red. “If you trust him and you do want for his friendship and alliance here, which I think you do, then do not push him away because the rest of the universe and your mixed pasts were a terribly hard and confusing place. I know that you are not a terrible and hard person at heart, no matter how much unrest and tragedy they would mount on your shoulders, Lyta, or how cold or distant you would become in appearance as a result. Don’t become that person, because then I would sorely be missing my friend.”
She gave him a tired and frustrated smile, very thin lipped, which conveyed many different things from sickness to travel to the pertinent conversation. And in her head suddenly very much in parallel she heard a woman’s voice in echo asking for her grace, forgiveness, and wisdom in another matter. She closed her eyes and leaned against his hand, feeling him inside her and herself in him. There was a wash of compassion, acceptance and love, without reserved opinion or fear.
All of which was a rarity she hardly had time to let herself have.
~*~*~
(The Next Afternoon)
“Are you sure?” Sara asked, her shrewd eyes drilling into the man across the table and to her left.
“Positive. I think we should take this issue before Miss Alexander as soon as she well enough,” he replied, brushing a hand through his light hair, even as it was still ruffled by the winter wind and speckled with the snow that must have been still falling outside. “I just went through a very large recount of everything.”
“Everything?” Berkley, their young and Centari, new representation asked. A slightly more obvious glow in his eyes at the audacity of the idea alone.
“Well not personally,” the man replied, a little sheepishly. “I’ve got a handful of people helping. And you said you wanted it by this morning. I know I’m a little late, but I needed to check on some things after the third warehouse had a minor accident today.” Quickly, after seeing their expression change to concern he added. “No one was grievously injured, though one of our men will be on leave for a few days rest.”
“What is your opinion then?”
He wiped his hand nervously on his coat, feeling those eyes all drilling at him though without malice any of them. “I think if we don’t start exporting some of it, that we’re going to need to build another warehouse just to store some of the surplus we’ve got going.”
“Would you be willing to leave a copy of your paper work? And if need be, would you be willing to give this report again in presence of the full council?” Brinna asked from the very end of the table, her high tight on the back of her head and her clothes still immaculately pressed after hours of them meeting. Her eyes though shined; as though they were the key to her soul and that fact this was all very amazingly good news.
“Of course, ma’am. Of course.”
~*~*~
(Early Evening)
The sky was a tawny beautiful color, even with the world hidden and snow covered. The wonder that was Haven and its beauty. Her breath was stolen by that evening sky. It was snowing behind her and the most beautiful sunset, that came every night, and was different each time stole next her heart, too. It was a bleeding crimson color with soft and brighter pinks at the edges. Behind that as it faded were slashes and flashes of bright and rich orange, heralded by other shades that came softer as the light seeped away. First soft yellow, slight green if you strained to see it, then purple from the pinks and then slowly into soft blue.
Night would be upon them soon and they still had not said a word to each other.
He knew she was there. And she knew that he knew. But neither of them seemed to want to make a move and so they simply faced the same direction staring at the same time, listening at the same time to an odd, yet beautiful music that was created by some miracle of the world around them.
“It’s the tree, you know,” he said softly, and suddenly it felt, because the silence had encompassed them for what seemed like hours as they watched the sun lowering and set the sky with fire and fade. “I found it, or it found me, the very first time I set foot on this land. This amazing world. They let me name it, but I doubt they told you that, because it’s a rare breed on this planet and a breed that’s dying I suspect. I told them it should be a Willow. That it was very like one.”
Her eyes shifted only very slowly to the man on the ground near her. He was less than ten feet from where she stood under the bounty of the tree over her head, the one he sat at the foot of the tree, his back leaning against it. With the pain in her heart at the reference though she made herself look at the tree and not the gesture that it’s naming was. The bark was a very, very dark color of brownish-black, laced with streaks of what looked almost to be white under where the bark had chipped. The branches spread over forever and the leaves were in colors almost a mirad as the sky, yet they clung tenaciously to their branches and thrived even in mid-winter. It was nothing like a-
“I told them it was strong, rooted deeply to the place it loved, regardless that it was being eradicated. I told them to watch and see, that it would bend and it would shake, but it wouldn’t break. Not in the worst storms even. And that if you listen, if you sit and listen to her closely, she sings the song of life, of survival, of eternity.”
Letting out a soft sigh, she looked back to him again, sitting huddled to the tree on the ground. He was surrounded by the fallen snow on the ground and on himself, though it didn’t covered his outfit completely. The normal black sort of suit he always took a liking to, with warmer things to cover over it even. The pain inside her chest was not something she truly wished to face. “It can’t be the same, Byron. Too much is changed. Too much.”
His face turned very slowly, as if he feared she might burn him again, just simply by looking at her. His face was an impassive pale, very like her own, though it was ruddy in places from the warmth his body supplied against the colder winds that shouted against their bodies. His eyes were cold and removed with a such sadness that it pierced, and yet such a strong flame of hope flicker in the center she almost stepped back, because his words didn’t not address that hope when he said simply, “I know. But-”
“Friends, Byron,” Lyta said very suddenly, and much too strongly. Even the music of the tree seemed cacophonic for a moment when she snapped it. She was much too cold inside. In ways that had nothing, nothing to do what-so-ever with the cold that swirled around her even as she wore a loose shift and pants to cover her body only. “It’s all I can offer. And even that still feels like it will be too much.”
She watched the light in his eyes flicker and almost go out at her words, and yet it seemed to stay focused on her. She did not need a lover. And especially not this man before her. Because this man before her would definitely be the death of her, if he’d not already been the forward to death of so much inside of her already.
And yet she found her eyes tracing the soft curl at the edge of his hair, the part she wrapped her fingers in to play with when he slept. Or the depth of the color of his eyes, where his words seems to make them shine brighter and truer as though he could look right into your soul and play for your mystical enjoyment what he saw there. The length of his face and his body, not marred by the scarring but added to by the differences. For a moment she wondered what it would feel like to touch that scarring compared to the clear, clean skin next to it. The softness of his hair… or his lips.
But it was not a joy to look at those things now. It was a masochistic and grueling undead want for the past that could not be. And each moment she took him in longer to her memories the pain inside her chest only increased. And perhaps he seemed to sense that pain in her, because his eyes shifted to the ground. “And you came here?”
“Because my council is missing one of it’s members,” She said looking away from him, same as he looked away from her. There was pain and even shame, even when she refused to name why she was feeling that shame inside herself. She wanted to look away. She wanted to forget. She wanted him to be dead. No, that wasn’t true. Or perhaps that it wasn’t and was true was what spurned her heart against herself even, as she made herself look back at him. “And that situation needs to be rectified.”
“I don’t belong there. Your opinion was very obvious,” Byron responded, drearily. And he added. “Besides I’ve much enjoyed my quiet days here away from the hustle and bustle.”
“I’ve been made to recognize, once again, that I am not God,” she interjected into her words, with some irony. “And that I may be able to move mountains, win wars, give or take life, and many, many other things but there were very larger and even more important reasons why even though I founded Haven I left her running and management up to the people of Haven. The people of Haven chose you Byron.”
Just like I did a very long time ago, her thoughts whispered softly and sadly. There was still there what had been. She could lie to herself and tell it wasn’t, but it was. But the issue was not that it was there. It was that while it and he were still there where they had once been. She wasn’t. And she never would be again. She’d grown from that place by leaps and bounds of her own making and of other peoples, including his.
“There’s a Winter Gala tonight where the council members are all suppose to be present, which means though distasteful, we’re both sort of on the schedule to appear there in our finest. Byron…” She said his name softly, softer than any words she’d said yet, and her hand was held out when he look up. Imploring him to take it. “Come with me. Come back to where you belong.”
Byron moved to take her hand and for a moment it felt like little emotional anchors closing into her, but she pushed them all away. If they were going to be interacting again in her lifetime, it would not be from a healthy, respectful interaction. So when he tried to lace his fingers into hers, she didn’t move, and she tightened her grip harshly for one second till he looked at her, pale and fresh against the back drop of a winter night, but with fired eyes as she said very clearly.
“Friends.”
“Yes, of course,” he said after a moment, though he didn’t let go and she allowed him to cling in that very little amount.
So hand in hand she lead him away from the tree in the snow, like a parent holding the hand of child who had perhaps lost their way in the snow and gotten lost out in the darkness that was the world. After a time they walked side by side, but they did so in a varying silence that was periodically broken with her tidbits of information about the city and the planets and what was going on, though other than that they held hands in silence and walked casually toward the flickering lights of the city.
And only then did something finally distract her again. A single figure out by the great tree in the town square. It had been done up as a gift to the community from the council, same as the Gala, to remind them of all their reasons to be joyful in the simplicity of each other. The figure sat on a bench watching the exact area she walked into and even in the relative shadows night, she could tell it was Zack watching –waiting?- where she entered.
She thought to reach out and ask him a question, but realized she was neither close enough for him to hear, nor on good enough terms to just touch his mind and ask him. So she walked slowly in that direction, till Byron stopped at one street.
“This one is mine,” he said softly, as though still unsure of speaking directly to her.
“Do you-?”
“No,” he said, with the first part of a laugh she’d heard from him since…since she’d seen him here. “I can go and dress myself. And if it looks like hell I’m sure Heather will instruct me in high tones on how to dress right for a social party appearance. I’ll be fine.”
He wavered on the truth of his last sentence, but Lyta let him. She knew they’d both be frail and full of half-lies in a ways till they settled out what this relationship between them would eventually factor out as. He needed to retreat from her and the very forceful rule of friendship, to a space away from her. And it hurt, but it hurt in a good way. Because it registered in him.
“Of course,” Lyta said, and even gave him a smile, looking at the Christmas tree lights behind his shoulder and the waiting man, who stood up now, but was still only there.
Byron leaned over to hug her, and though it felt mostly wrong, she let him that liberty take. For at least this night. Tomorrow would be a brand new day with respectful boundaries and sunshine, or snowshine, whichever. And sometimes you needed to be bolstered against that brightness while in your shadows still. Very suddenly she felt a spasm of jealousy and anger. Stronger than she’d been prepared to feel worrying over herself and him, because it definitely hadn’t come from him. As he pulled away his face was reserved, but there was a cold calm behind it. No malice or anger.
Byron nodded her off, but when she turned to walk toward the Christmas tree and her other foundling friendship she found only a deserted road, and a deserted circle of benches where she could feel his lingered presence in echo only now. But where had Zack gone? And why? Could he have been jealous and angry at her? Was that why he’d been waiting? And if so, why? But, boy, wasn’t that a sad symbology she told herself as she stared at the garish and bright twinkling lights of the beacon in the middle of the street. Alone with the symbolic ideal of a winter wonderland.
As she stood there rubbing her fingers that weren’t so cold, she though she was very used to that though.
Alone.
With only an ideal to warm her from the cold.
TBC:
Intermission 2: “A Very Merry Christmas”