A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 5 : The Three–Edged Sword

'John?' She had been wrong earlier. He was not as he had been when she had first known him. He was darker, more hollow, more empty. She had only seen him like this once before, when he had shot and killed Anna. He had been drunk then, and delirious and grieving.

Now he was quiet, and sober, and dead.

'John,' she said again. 'What is it? What is wrong?' An urgency greater than any she had ever known gripped her, a sense of terror she had never felt before, never thought she could feel.

'You don't want to know,' he whispered. 'Delenn, leave me alone.'

Breathing out harshly, she took another step back. She said his name again, almost like a prayer, and then she turned, eyes filled with sparkling tears as she tried to run, to flee from this singular clearing of light.

Her knee gave way and she went down again. This time she did not reach out to save herself and simply fell, her body shaking, her dress torn and ripped. Her hands dashed against hard rocks, and she felt the pain of her wounds re–opening. Struggling to her knees, hardly able to see, blinking away tears, she looked at her hands.

They were covered in blood.

Shaking, trembling, afraid of what was out there almost as much as what was in here, she tried to turn round. Raising her head and blinking through the light, she looked at him. 'John,' she said again.

He looked at her again, raising his head. Once it had been weightless, now it seemed so heavy that very motion was an act of herculean strength. His eyes were empty, almost colourless.

'You knew,' he whispered.

'What? John, I don't....' The pain seemed almost too much to bear. It was absurd. She was only scratched. She had been tortured, seared by electricity. She had been beaten and corrupted by the alien–ness in her own body. She had fled from Shadows beneath Z'ha'dum with her lungs burning. She had even been killed.

But none of those things had ever hurt more than these few simple scratches and bruises.

'You knew. When you went to Z'ha'dum. You chose to go. You weren't captured or abducted. You chose to go. You were pregnant.'

'John,' she whispered, her heart lurching. An echo thudded in her ears.

'When you were there,' he continued, his every word a flat, calm hammer beating at her, 'you were given the chance to return to Kazomi Seven, or anywhere else. You could have left. You could have fled. You chose to remain. You were pregnant.'

'John.' She tried to form more words, but could not give them voice. They simply did not exist in her mind. The technomages had warned her that she would have to make a choice. Vejar had expressed concern about the wisdom of her answer. Lorien had told her that she faced a happy life in a galaxy with a terrible future or a sorrow– filled existence in the knowledge of a brighter world ahead. How else could she choose?

'You went into danger knowing what you were doing. You were willing to die. You were pregnant.'

'John.' She hardly heard herself that time. The echoes of the heartbeat were too loud, the rush of the wind too chill.

'You killed my son.'

Some words, once said, can never be unsaid, never be forgotten, never be undone.

She shook. 'John,' she said again, although she was not sure to whom she was speaking. She did not know the man before her. The man she knew was dead and had been dead for a very long time.

She wished she had chosen differently. She wished she had turned down the Vorlons' bargain. She wished she had let him die there and then with the memory of his greatness and his love still alive. Anything rather than let him become this dead, hollow figure in front of her. The one who could not even give voice to his anger as he accused her of doing something so abominable she could not even comprehend it.

There were no words. There was nothing he could do or say that would heal the wound in her heart - or worsen it.

She was wrong.

He rose to his feet, ignoring her sobbing, her shaking, her wounds, her ragged dress and her bloody hands. He walked towards the fluttering, writhing shadows at the edge of the clearing. He stopped and turned back to look at her. She met his gaze, and through her tears and her shaking and the light and the shadows and the wind she saw one thing clearly.

There was nothing inside him.

'I was going to ask you to marry me.'

Then he was gone, vanished from her sight, just another ghost returned to the world of the dead. She was alone, the last living being surrounded by the dead and their memories and their pain and their echoes.

And their hearts beating.

* * *

We granted you salvation from the Shadow. We granted you peace from the war. We granted you security beneath the shield of our light. We granted you an end to fear, an end to pain, an end to misery, an end to uncertainty.

We have protected you from evils in the galaxy that you cannot even imagine.

But most of all, we have protected you from yourselves.

Chapter 3

We are your saviours and your salvation. We are your Gods, your angels, and your dreams made flesh.

You are weak and imperfect. We understand this. It is your curse, the curse of individuality, the curse of fear, the curse of hope. We understand this. We do not hate you. Not even those of you who defy us. We hate none of you.

You are weak, and imperfect. We are strong, and we are perfect.

All we wish to do is to help you.

* * *

you

* * *

The garden was dark now, and still. The ever–moving plants cast shadows across her face and her soul. She could see them taunting her, mocking her.

There were no words. In any language ever spoken or thought or imagined, there were no words to describe what she felt.

'You killed my son.'

The air spoke those words back to her. They echoed around her, each time in a different tone of voice. Anger and hatred and joy and release and cackling humour and sheer revulsion. None was worse than the first time.

Flat, calm, dispassionate. Not a whisper, not a question, not an accusation. A simple, straightforward statement of fact.

'I was going to ask you to marry me.'

Everything laughed at her, all the faces from her past and her present.

She was alone.

Alone with the thirteen words that had destroyed her. Killed her more simply and more swiftly than any weapon ever could.

Alone.

One....

heart....

beat....

after....

another.

One....

word....

after....