Archive of Our Own

1.

It wasn't so long ago that she had told Delenn her secret, simple and honest and bare and still grieving, leaving behind the uniform that had meant so much to her. What she hadn't said was that the wound had never healed, had never been allowed to, ached as fiercely as it had in those first moments when she understood that Talia was gone.

Now John is dead just the same as Talia is, in a way that feels unfinished. Talia's body is still out there walking around somewhere- unless Bester's little "slip" about a dissection is to be believed, but Susan hasn't allowed herself to consider it. And John, well, they don't know, do they? But he is dead, or as good as, if there's no way to ever get him back. So she knows, a bit, what Delenn might feel like now, to have been right on the edge of something with someone only to have them taken away by a powerful, terrible enemy.

She thought nothing could be as painful as the loss of her mother, and maybe this isn't, but it is now and it is the wolf at her door, always, howling.

Delenn is refusing to eat. It's a Minbari custom, Susan knows, one among many that she does not understand, but what she does understand is that Delenn's now half-human body cannot stand up to the expectations of alien rituals. And if John is dead, and Garibaldi isn't found, she will not lose the three of them at once. She can only take so many wolves.

"You'll starve to death," Susan says. They are in Delenn's quarters, sitting together. The unfiltered grief in Delenn's face is almost too much for Susan to bear. She looks away, for a moment, to collect herself.

"But my customs, my rituals, are what give me strength in times of suffering," Delenn says.

"But if those rituals only cause more suffering, what then? You'll hurt yourself, Delenn."

Delenn's voice is low, raspy with pain. "Then it is what I deserve. It is my fault that he's gone."

"I don't believe that, and neither would he," Susan says.

"Whether or not you believe something doesn't stop it from being true," Delenn tells her.

"Or false," Susan argues, and Delenn nods.

"Or false," She agrees. "But what is true, absolutely true, is that I did know that Anna Sheridan could still be alive on Z'Ha'Dum, and I did not tell him because I was afraid of what would happen if he knew. What he would do. And now I've lost him."

Susan is quiet for a moment, thinking of her captain, her friend, how much she hates the idea of never seeing him again. "What is absolutely true," she says, "is that he wouldn't want you doing this to yourself."

"Susan," she says, and for a moment all her certainty, all her faith seems to fall away. "I don't know what else to do, but this."

"Come get something to eat with me," Susan says. "Please." She remembers her mother telling her one more bite, Susatchka, when she didn't want to finish her dinner.

One more bite, Delenn, she thinks, to keep your wolves away.

Delenn hesitates, closes her eyes for a moment, but finally answers, "All right."

*

They go to Z'Ha'Dum after him: Susan and Delenn, and Lyta Alexander. There is nothing--no signal to receive, and no presence or essence or whatever the hell it was Lyta thought she could pick up on. They only make it out because Lennier is always one step ahead in every situation, a skill for which Susan thinks he probably doesn't get enough credit.

Susan would not blame Delenn if she chose then to shut herself away, on the trip home and beyond. Instead, she takes a drained and pale Lyta by the arm, leading her away to rest, and after a while comes back to the bridge for Susan.

"You should sleep, Commander," she says, quite firmly, and Susan shakes her head.

"I can't."

"There is time, before we return to Babylon 5, and you need to rest. You haven't been."

"Delenn, I can't, I-"

"Susan," Delenn interrupts her. She takes Susan's hand in both of her own. "I ate, because you were concerned for me. Now, will you sleep, because I am concerned for you?"

Well, that's not playing fair. Susan is exhausted, it's true--has been hanging on by her last fraying threads for days. She has slept only in fitful spurts, jolting awake to quiet her brain with more vodka. There is no vodka on the White Star, nothing to dull the roar of her nightmares, but there is Delenn, her friend. "I can try," she concedes. What is there to stay awake for now? They are headed home empty-handed.

Delenn takes her by the arm with the same care she had shown Lyta, and walks with her to sleeping quarters with a row of those godforsaken Minbari excuses for beds. Lyta is, somehow, asleep on one of them, and Susan feels a genuine spark of gratefulness for her. She had done her best.

"I don't know how you sleep on these things," Susan says, not for the first time, grumbling enough that it makes Delenn smile at her, just a little, ever-patient. For a second, those stupid angled slabs are all that's wrong in the galaxy.

"Just lie down," Delenn instructs her, and Susan, despite herself, does as she's told. "Close your eyes."

She made it rain for me, she remembers John telling her, grinning, his mood infectious enough that she had smiled in earnest back at him. He didn't talk much about what went on between him and Delenn- Susan has little taste for discussing matters of the heart, and he was her commanding officer, after all- but he had shared that bit. He was in awe of Delenn, Susan knew that much.

She does close her eyes for a few seconds, but then opens them again. "Delenn, I-" But what can she say? I'm sorry he's dead? They both are sorry, and grieving, and there is so much work left to do.

Delenn seems to understand, anyway. For a moment her eyes fill with tears, but she wills them away, the way they both have done so many times. Once again, she reaches for Susan's hand, and grips it tightly.

"Rest, Susan, and I will do the same. Tomorrow, we continue fighting."

2.

Zack mentions it in a way he means to seem offhand, that they really should stop going to see Lyta only when they want something from her.

"And you're mentioning this to me because...?" Susan asks him.

"Listen, I know you don't like telepaths," he starts, and Susan begins to wish fervently that someone else had shown up to eat breakfast with them. Even Garibaldi, who's been a real pain in the ass ever since he turned out not to be dead.

"That's not exactly true," Susan says, interrupting Zack.

"Well," he says. "You don't like the Corps. I mean who does, right? But anyway, Lyta's not Corps, she doesn't want anything to do with them."

"I know that," Susan tells him, but he keeps going as if she hadn't.

"I mean you saw what her quarters looked like when that other Vorlon was here. He wouldn't let her have anything. I think she kinda feels like nobody cared what he did to her until the Vorlons became part of our problem too."

"You're saying she needs a friend."

"She's got a friend," Zack says, gesturing to himself. "I'm sayin' she needs more than one. Most of us do, right?"

"Most of us," Susan agrees, and rolls her eyes. "Even me, I suppose."

"All right, so it's settled," Zack says, smiling.

"What does that mean?" Susan asks. "You're going to set us up a play date?"

"Nah, Commander, I figure you can handle that on your own," Zack answers, and goes back to his breakfast.

Susan sips her coffee, and wonders what she ever did to make Zack think she was at all suited to making new friends.

She does go, though, after her shift, though she's not entirely sure why. She shows up to Lyta's door and thinks, well, this is stupid. She doesn't know if Lyta will even be here, or if she's busy, or at all in the mood for company. Although, she supposes, they never stop to ask those questions when they show up needing Lyta to do something, either.

But she is there, and she lets Susan in. There is furniture in her quarters again, and lamps and pillows, and an empty mug on the coffee table that hasn't made it into the sink yet. She's holding a large piece of abstract art that Susan hopes she isn't asked her opinion of.

"If whatever it is isn't too urgent, do you think you could help me put this up, first?" Lyta asks. "I need someone else's eye."

"Oh," Susan says. "That's not why I'm here. I just... came by to see how you're doing."

Lyta is polite enough that she manages not to seem as surprised as Susan would in her place. "Oh. Well, come on in, it's a lot more inviting than the last time you were here." She carries the painting over to her couch and then turns around to face Susan, a few steps behind her. "Did Zack send you?"

"Not exactly," Susan says, and Lyta sighs.

"I didn't mean for him to start sending people here to check up on me, that's not... I don't need you all parading into my quarters because you feel guilty. I just meant... it would be nice, to be seen as more than a tool."

"I didn't come here under Zack's orders," Susan tells her. "He did bring it up, and he did have a point. We haven't treated you as well as you deserve, and I came because I do care how you are." She pauses. "Please don't think I let Zack Allan tell me what to do."

Lyta laughs- something Susan hasn't seen before. "Zack is sweet," Lyta says, and then turns around, steps behind the couch, and holds the painting up to the wall behind it. "What do you think? Here?"

Susan tilts her head and considers it. Honestly, she can't tell if it's even right side up, though she supposes it doesn't matter. "Just a little to the left," she says. Lyta inches it over, and Susan nods. "That's good."

Lyta fastens it to the wall, comes around the couch and then sits on it, patting the spot next to her for Susan to join. "I don't know, I might move it later. I think I've worn myself out a little with all the decorating."

Susan sits. "This is all new?" she asks.

Lyta nods. "He had it all destroyed, aside from the bed and some of my clothes."

"I'm sorry," Susan says.

"They're just things," Lyta says, shrugging, but there is a tiredness in her face, a bone-deep weariness that Susan recognizes. "I didn't have anything sentimental here, anything like that I left behind when I left the Corps."

Susan doesn't have much in the way of sentimental objects either, but if someone came into her quarters to take everything... it was a violation, and they knew it, they knew when they saw Lyta with him that she was scared. And they didn't do a thing about it until it served their own interests.

"Listen," Susan starts, unsure of what to say that wouldn't be meaningless, now. "For what it's worth... maybe nothing, this late... but for what it's worth, I'm sorry. That you didn't have help, when you needed it. That we didn't help you, when we should have."

Lyta looks at her for what feels like a long time, studies her like she's looking for something. She doesn't scan her, Susan knows, but it's an almost similar feeling, Lyta's sharp focus directed at her this way.

"Thank you," Lyta says finally. She smiles at Susan, a small smile, but a real one.

"I'm not all that great at making friends," Susan says. "You may have noticed. But would you like to go get a drink? It feels like we should go get a drink."

Lyta nods gratefully, her smile grows a bit wider. "Yes, please. Let's go."

3.

Susan storms into John's office, fuming, wanting to hit something. "Twenty years?" she almost shouts, incredulous. "That ancient hack brought you back from the dead but only gave you twenty years?"

John, sitting at his desk, winces. "I wanted to tell you myself."

"Well, Stephen thought you already had," Susan says, starting to pace, full of agitated energy.

"You know I was actually dead," John says. "I wouldn't exactly call Lorien a hack for what he gave me." He watches Susan for a few moments. "Would you sit down, please?"

She stops, pivots, and stalks over to the chair in front of his desk, glaring. She drops heavily into the seat. "Why hadn't you told me yet?"

He sighs. "Because I knew how you would take it. And I kept trying to think of a way to tell you that wouldn't end up going exactly like this."

Susan doesn't know what to say. She has been left, and left, and left, in one way or another, and even though twenty years seems far away now, he is her friend- her best friend, really- and he should have more time. She wants him to have more time.

"Twenty years is a long time. It really is a good run," John tells her, sounding very much like he's tried this argument already, without much luck.

Susan frowns, her brow furrows. "Please don't tell me that's what you said to Delenn."

He looks confused. "Well, yes, I-"

"You're an idiot," she says, interrupting him.

For a moment, he just looks at her. "You know, it's usually not a good idea to call your commanding officer an idiot right to his face."

"What if it's true?" she asks.

"Oh, I think I'm at least halfway intelligent," he says, starting to smile, which drives her crazy. It isn't funny, none of this is.

"It's not a good run, John," she says, stubbornly. She feels petulant, childish even, and she doesn't know why she's being this way. It can't be easy for him, having a timer over his head like this. Harder still for Delenn, maybe, who would have outlived him even if he made it to a hundred. It's not him she's mad at, or Lorien, but the Shadows and the damn Vorlons, who are both lucky they're not around anymore. She would find a way to hit them where it hurts.

"None of us are guaranteed even the next twenty minutes, let alone the next twenty years," John tells her, kind and calm despite the way she's acted since barging into his office.

“Well, a guy dies on Z’Ha’Dum and then comes back just fine, you kind of get the idea he’s gonna stick around.”

They don't talk about it, the two of them, what they mean to each other. They don't have to, which suits her fine. She has not felt understood by many people in her life, but John understands her, and she doesn't want to lose that. She survived a trial run of what it will feel like, and she doesn't think she'll be ready even with twenty years to prepare.

"I'll stick around as long as I can," he says.

It will have to be enough; there's no other choice. Delenn believed they could keep going, keep fighting, without him, and Susan has come to trust her enough that she will have to believe it. "You know, you seem bizarrely at peace with all this."

"I knew what I was getting into when I went," John says.

"Still," she answers.

"Maybe I'll feel differently when the time comes," he says, "but I hope I'll be ready. I hope I'll feel that I've made the most of it."

"John," she says softly.

"I know," he says- and he does. She knows he does. And if she holds onto her anger, he'll understand that, too.

"I should get back to work," she says, standing up to leave.

"Susan," he says as she's going, and she turns around in the doorway. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

Susan nods. "I'll forgive you. Just the once."

4.

Lyta comes to Susan’s quarters wearing gloves and a Psi Corps badge, looking like she’s been crying. Susan can only stare at her in the doorway for a moment, quite sure her expression is some unsupportive mix of horrified and disappointed, until Lyta says, simply, “Bester."

Susan steps aside to let her in. “Take those off,” she says. It comes out a little rougher than she means, so she adds, more gently, “You can take them off in here.”

Lyta rips off the gloves and the badge and slams them down on Susan’s counter. "I could kill him," she says, her voice sharp and strained. "I really could, Susan, I could kill him and I wouldn't feel bad about it."

"What happened?" Susan asks.

"Money," Lyta says. "Without the Vorlons I have to go back to commercial work, and he made fucking sure I couldn't do it without the Corps."

"Damn," Susan says. "Damn him."

"Yeah," Lyta says, and her voice catches. Her eyes fill with tears and she looks away, swiping under them with both hands.

"Come sit down," Susan says. "I'll pour you a drink." She pours a glass for each of them and brings them to the couch where Lyta is still wiping tears from her cheeks. Susan doesn't much know what to do with someone who's crying, but she figures the least she can do is provide Lyta with alcohol. They are friends now, after all. "All I have is vodka," she says, offering one of the glasses to Lyta. "I'm very stereotypically Russian that way."

"I'll take it," Lyta says. "I'll take anything right now." She takes a sip and shudders a little as she swallows it.

"There has to be something. Something you can do to get out of this," Susan says.

Lyta shakes her head. "Not unless some other powerful, mysterious race shows up and wants to put me on their payroll. The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father," she recites. "They don't like it when we say we'd rather be orphans."

Susan thinks of Talia, taking off her badge and her gloves, and how the Corps was inside her anyway, buried. Of her mother and the drugs and how she left them, piece by piece and then all at once. She doesn't want to think of these things but they are always there, never dealt with, ready to bubble up when she least expects it and least wants it.

She is quiet for too long, and it makes Lyta look at her carefully, steadily, the way she'd done before.

“You apologized to me, for not helping me when I needed it." Lyta says. "It was late, and this is late, but I’m sorry, too. That it had to be me, to send the password to Talia. And I’m sorry it was her."

Susan's whole body freezes, as still as a statue, but Lyta's face is open and kind. "Sometimes you hurt so much, Susan, it comes off of you like... like a landslide."

Susan, trying to let herself relax, takes a long drink, and then another, emptying her glass. "I can't," she says. "I can't talk about this now."

Lyta nods. "I know. I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It's not your fault," Susan says, getting up to pour herself another drink. "Clearly, if I- if it's that loud."

"It's loud," Lyta says. "It's not your fault either, you know. You can't help but feel what you feel."

Sitting back down, Susan looks down into her glass. "I don't like to talk about my feelings. I don't like to admit to having them, if you want me to be perfectly honest."

Lyta snickers, and when Susan raises her eyebrows, she apologizes again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's just such a ridiculous understatement."

Susan frowns. "Well, I'm happy to provide you with so much entertainment."

"It does help," Lyta says gratefully, smiling, and then Susan can hardly be annoyed.

Which is annoying, all on its own. She hmphs, and Lyta laughs again. Susan starts to smile, and then takes a drink to hide it.

Lyta is quiet for a little while after that. She takes sips of her vodka, looking thoughtful, and Susan leaves her be until she says, finally, "I don't know if I can bear it. Being under Psi Corps' control for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think there has to be a way to stop them, I just don't know what it is, yet."

"Well, when you figure it out," Susan says, "you let me know."

Lyta falls asleep on Susan's couch after a couple more drinks. Susan puts a blanket over her and feels a little silly doing it, but she doesn't have the heart to wake Lyta up and send her home. She realizes, the last person to spend the night in her quarters, other than herself, was Talia.

Ivanova's Home for Wayward Telepaths.

Her gaze travels to the gloves and badge on her counter top. She could kill him too, she thinks.

Maybe someday.

5.

Dying is a curious thing. It takes much longer than Susan had always assumed her own death would, but there is not much pain, and she drifts in and out, in a hazy loop. She is mostly out, she thinks.

Marcus is almost always there. Even when she cannot open her eyes and see him there, she can feel the warmth of his hand holding hers. He is mostly quiet. Distantly, she thinks of how she is sorry to leave him. She is sorry, to hurt him this way.

John comes to see her again, before he leaves to turn himself over to Earthgov. She hears him ask Marcus if he can have a moment alone, and she opens her eyes with great effort as Marcus nods and leaves the room, and the warmth of his hand around hers is replaced by John's.

"Hey there," John says, and he tries to hide it but his voice is rough with sadness.

"Hi," she says, feeling more awake, happy to see him.

"I have to leave soon, and I wanted to see you-" He stops, not wanting to say it.

"One last time," Susan finishes. How strange, to see someone for the last time and know it is the last.

He squeezes her hand. "One last time," he repeats.

She wants to tell him that it's okay. That she's accepted it and they can't stop it and that it will be okay, for her to go. To die. She isn't scared and she isn't angry.

But it's too much, to say all that. She is foggy and floating and can't form the words.

"Susan," he says. "I'm so proud of you. I want to make sure you know that, before I go."

"You're just saying that because I'm dying," she says, wanting to make him laugh, and he does, just a little.

"No," he tells her. His eyes are wet. "I've been so lucky to have you as my second in command, and I've been even luckier to have you as my friend. I'm gonna miss the hell out of you, Susan."

With all her strength, she holds tightly to his hand. "John. Remember what I said."

"I know," he says. "No guilt. I'm gonna try my best."

There are footsteps in the room, and then Delenn is beside him. She places one hand on his arm, and with the other she reaches for Susan, stroking her hair back from her forehead. She does nothing to mask the emotion in her face.

"How are you feeling?" she asks. "Are you in pain?"

"No," Susan says. "I'm all right. I'm just tired." It's the truth, mostly. The drugs keep most everything at bay, but she does feel it, sometimes.

"This will be over soon," Delenn says. "You will be at peace, soon."

John closes his eyes at that, and turns his head away, but Delenn's gaze is steady, even as her eyes fill with tears. "You have been so brave," she says, "and so strong. And you have been so very dear to me."

They must not think she'll wake up again, if Delenn is saying goodbye, too.

"It's okay," Susan says. "It's going to be okay."

Delenn nods. "Yes. It will." She leans over Susan to kiss her forehead.

Susan feels herself drifting away again, so tired. Her eyelids seem to pull themselves closed.

"Goodbye, Susan," John says quietly, and Delenn tells her something in Minbari that she is too far gone to translate, but it comforts her all the same.

In her heart, she feels warm.

6.

John and Delenn get back in time to see her off, and she almost wishes they hadn't. It will only make it harder on all of them. Part of her does want to stay, part of her knows she is trying to run from her own grief, that she's running from the people who could help her if she could only manage to let them. But it's done, and she's going.

They're married now, and that is something good, at least. They look happy. She hopes they are.

"Captain Ivanova," John says proudly, wrapping his arms around her, and he is such a strong tether to this place that her resolve wears a little. She'll tell them it was a mistake, that she's staying here, where she belongs.

"Mr. President," she says into his shoulder, holding on tight for as long as she dares, which isn't very long at all.

She doesn't start crying until she hugs Delenn, and something inside her breaks open. "Susan," Delenn murmurs gently, and when they part she cups Susan's face with both hands. Delenn looks at her with such gentle understanding, as if she knows everything that Susan is feeling- the gaping, roaring emptiness that has taken her over.

"I don't know why I'm crying," Susan says. "It's not as if I'll never see you again."

"Of course we will see you again," Delenn says.

"We damn well better," adds John.

Susan nods, wiping tears from her cheeks, trying to blink away the new ones. She can't think about Marcus, she has already begun to lock all of that away, but she can think of this, the living people who love her most. When it all gets to be too much, she can try to think of this. "I'll talk to you soon," she tells them.

"You stay out of trouble out there," John says, smiling at her, though she knows he would rather try and convince her to stay.

"I'll try," she tells him, and then, "I have to go."

"Be well, Susan," Delenn says.

Susan nods again. "I'll try that, too." When she walks away, to board the transport that will take her to her new ship, she knows she can't look back.

7.

The first time Susan sees John and Delenn after leaving- on a screen, in her new office on her new ship- John has shaved his facial hair into an unfortunate goatee.

"What's on your face, John?" she asks him.

"What?" he asks, putting his hand absently to his chin. "I had the beard, the last time you saw me."

"The beard, yes, not..." she gestures indistinctly at the screen. "That."

He laughs. "I think it looks good. Delenn likes it."

Delenn, just behind him, shakes her head. Susan tries to hide a smirk and fails, and John turns around as Delenn deftly switches to a nod, smiling innocently.

He turns back to face Susan. "What's going on?"

Oh, it's good to see them, despite the ache it puts in her chest.

"Enough of that," Delenn says. "How are you, Susan?"

Susan ducks her head. She knew they would ask, of course they would ask, but she doesn't have a very good answer. She gets up every morning and does her job well, she eats three meals and tries not to drink too much and tries not to give herself too much time to think. But she doesn't know when she will feel like herself again. "I'm all right," she tells them. "I'm fine, really."

"You do not have to be fine, you know," Delenn says.

"I do," Susan says. "If I don't just decide to be fine then I might never be."

"I believe they call that 'fake it till you make it,'" John says.

Delenn frowns. "Well, the rhyme is very charming, but I don't know if I agree with it in this case. You do not have to fake anything with your friends. If they are true friends."

Susan sighs. "I'm just... I'm tired of being sad. I'm tired of talking about being sad. Tell me about something normal. How are things on the station, how is Captain Lochley settling in?"

"Well," John says, chuckling, "she's butting heads with Garibaldi rather spectacularly."

"Somehow that's not a surprise," Susan says.

"Oh, it's a little beyond what you're probably imagining. She punched him in the face yesterday."

"No!" Susan exclaims.

"Yes," he confirms.

Susan laughs. She's not sure, but it might be the first time since not dying. The first real laugh, anyway. "Did he deserve it?"

John is laughing too. "Well, it's hard to say. I don't know the exact circumstances, but you know how he can be."

"I do," Susan says, and she misses it. She misses Michael, she misses the rhythms of the station, and the quarters that were her home. She misses many things.

"Anyway," John says. "I think she'll do fine, the station is in good hands. She's no Susan Ivanova, though."

"John," says Delenn, warning him gently.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I have to trust that you're doing what's right for you. I don't begrudge you that. That doesn't mean I don't still wish I could have you by my side, though."

"I know." She is lonely, out here in space, in a way she hasn't felt in a long time. Seeing them makes it better and worse at once.

For a while they talk about safe things: Susan's new ship and crew, John and Delenn's new responsibilities, and the strange state of household limbo they're in until their new home on Minbar is ready.

"I hope you come to visit us there," Delenn says, and something inside of Susan latches onto the idea so tightly. Something to look forward to. Some small light beyond the walls of this dark place she's lost in.

"Of course," she says. "Of course I will."

8.

Susan gets a message from Zack, which surprises her until its full contents turn out to be, “You should probably talk to Lyta.” She learns why from Stephen, who tells her about the telepath colony in down below, and Lyta joining them, and its disastrous end.

She hasn’t spoken much to Lyta since leaving- to anyone, really, aside from John and Delenn, who don’t let her get away with not keeping in touch. She is busy, yes, and she could tell herself that’s the reason, but she knows it's just her own damn self-destructive tendency to hide herself behind a wall. She feels distant, and disconnected, and even as the fog she's been trapped in finally starts to clear, she still doesn't know what to say to people.

She doesn't feel slighted that Lyta hasn't tried to contact her either- just guilty, whenever she thinks of her, that Lyta might feel just as cast aside by Susan as so many others before her. She doesn't think she'll have much luck with a direct call- or maybe she is too afraid to try- so she records a message for her.

"Hi, Lyta," she begins. "I heard about... well, I'm sure you know what I heard about. And I wanted to tell you I'm sorry for what happened and I wanted to know... if you're all right. Though I don't know if you'll believe me, this time.

"I’m sorry I was gone before you got back and that I didn’t say goodbye to you and that I haven’t… been a friend to you, lately. I was in a bad place. I still am, I guess, but I was… really in it, then. I may not have handled myself in the best way, but I did what I felt like I had to do. I couldn't be on Babylon 5 anymore. Wherever I turned, I couldn't see past what happened. I couldn't stay there and feel like I deserved to be there more than Marcus did. Leaving helped a little, but I still don't know how to come to terms with the fact that I'm alive because he gave up his own life for me.

"I know you've just lost someone you loved, and I'm so sorry for that. And I wanted you to know there is still someone out here who cares about you. I know what it's like, to lose someone, how isolating it can feel. But I'm still your friend, if you'll have me. And I hope I hear from you soon."

She sends the message on its way, a little mortified at how honest she'd been about her feelings. A little sad, thinking there's a good chance she won't get anything back. Lyta writes to her though, a few days later, and Susan reads it first thing in the morning as she drinks her first cup of coffee.

Susan,

I understand why you left. I'm not mad at you for it. I would have liked to be there for you though, when I got back to the station. Like is the wrong word for the situation, but you know what I mean. I would have wanted to help you, if I could have. And I think you would want to help me, if you were here now, so I wish that you were. I think I feel more alone now than I ever did. Even Zack is a little afraid of me now, or at least afraid to talk to me. Maybe you would feel the same if you had been here, I don't know. I hope not. But I still think of you as my friend, and since I didn't get the chance to say it before, I'm glad that you're still alive. You may not want to hear that, considering the reason for it, and I wish it hadn't happened the way it did, but I can't be anything but grateful that you lived.

I don’t know which lines of communication I trust to be truly private anymore, so I won’t say what I want to do to a certain person, but I’m sure you can guess what and to whom. I’ve said it to you before but now I really, really mean it.

I’m starting to understand what I am. What they did to me, what I can do, and what that means. I can help my people, I know that now. I have to. I think it's the only way I can keep going. I hope we both can.

I miss you.

Lyta

9.

When the telepath war ends, when Susan sees Lyta again for the first time in years, Lyta’s hand flies to her mouth, holding back a sob, and she rushes at Susan and into her arms. “It’s all right,” Susan tells her, softly, one hand coming to rest at the back of Lyta’s hair. “It’s over now.”

10.

Susan has never learned to like mornings. She is old enough now to know that this will never change, that she will never greet the day with a spring in her step, but even so, on Minbar, two months after saying goodbye to John, she pulls herself out of bed early enough to watch the sunrise with Delenn.

Susan has never lived in such a beautiful place. Oh, St. Petersburg had its fair share of beauty, but the glittering crystal cities of Minbar are something else entirely. Even all these years later, it seems impossible that such a place exists, even stranger still that it would be her home. But it is home, she can feel that already, that this is where she should be. She is happier here, leading the Rangers, than she ever was as an Earthforce general. Even despite the reason for coming. She suspects he would like that.

"Susan," Delenn says. "I am surprised to see you this early."

"I decided to see what this sunrise thing was all about," Susan says, sitting down beside her.

"Well, you are just in time," Delenn tells her. There is light in the distance, peeking between far away buildings.

It's peaceful, Susan has to admit. She likes the early morning quiet, the stillness. She would just like it more if it happened later in the day.

"How is David?" she asks. "Have you heard from him lately?"

Delenn nods. "He is doing well in his training. I think he enjoys it very much." She pauses, knowing that the training isn't the only thing Susan is asking after. "And he grieves for his father. But he is healing." She turns to look at Susan. "And when he returns here, you are not to give him any special treatment."

"Of course not," Susan says.

"I seem to remember you being very indulgent with him whenever you visited," Delenn says, smiling.

"Well, I wanted him to like his Aunt Susan."

Delenn laughs. "He adores you. Just like... just like his father did." She manages to say it with a steady voice, because that is who she is. Always steady, always there for them to rely on. Susan has not had a living blood relative in many years, but she's been lucky to have still had family in all that time. Lucky to have it now.

For a while, they watch the climbing sun light up the city around them, and the soft, warm colors of the sky.

"What about you?" Susan finally asks. "How are you doing, Delenn?"

"That," Delenn says, "is a difficult question to answer. Some days are better than others. Some days all I can see or feel is his absence. And some days I feel such overwhelming peace."

"Which is it today?" Susan asks.

"I am not sure yet. But I think," Delenn says, taking Susan's hand, "that I am going to be all right. That we both will be."

Something about that puts a familiar lump in Susan's throat, and she tilts her head back to look at the sky. The bright Minbari sun is above them now, and all told, it was even lovelier than an Earth sunrise, not that she's seen many. Still, she's sleeping in tomorrow. When the tightness in her throat passes, she looks back at Delenn. "I think you're right."

They are not the only early risers in the Anla'Shok compound, but in that moment, it feels to Susan that they are alone, anyway. Maybe they are, in a way, alone together, survivors of a time and place that few others could ever understand. Soon, the rest of the city will come to life around them, and this strange quiet will be over.

"Come on," Susan says, standing, tugging Delenn by their still-joined hands. "Come get something to eat with me."

Delenn closes her eyes for just a moment, breathing in deeply, and then rises. "Yes," she tells Susan. "All right."