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Babylon 5 fanfic: The Drowning Deep
I wrote this for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fan_flashworks "Underwater" challenge back in early May and finally got around to editing it (the first version was pretty rough; this has been cleaned up a lot, tweaked for word choice and clarity).
One thing rolling around in the back of my head when I wrote this is something I've noticed reading fic for this show - there's not really a lot of typical tropey h/c for these characters. It's understandable, because canon is so tightly plotted, and so much of the fic is just fixing and/or dealing with their various canon disasters and tragedies. But sometimes you just want to put someone into a classic h/c situation and make them deal with it, you know?
The Drowning Deep (5500 words, gen)
Takes place between 5x09 and 5x10. An attempt on Londo's life in the palace gardens.
Also posted on AO3.
The royal gardens at the Centauri imperial palace spread for miles. From the reflecting pools in front of the palace towers, a network of greenery, pools, fountains and streams expanded across the grounds, landscaped in geometric symmetry.
To G'Kar's eyes, honed on the red and brown hills of his homeworld, it seemed an extravagant waste of water, time, and labor, even on a world where all of these existed in abundance. But that was the Centauri for you.
At least the gardens were less oppressive than the palace. G'Kar suspected that the outdoors were not that much less infested with listening devices and well-paid informants, but Londo seemed to feel the same about preferring the outside of the palace to the inside; they spent as much time in the gardens as they could, when Londo was not needed for one meeting or another. It also seemed to G'Kar that Londo appreciated being able to be outside, under the sky, which was impossible on Babylon 5. G'Kar could appreciate the urge himself, even though it was not his world or his sky.
"What is this one called?" he asked Londo, plucking a small blue flower from a flowerbed and holding it up.
"I don't know," Londo said distractedly, leafing through a sheaf of papers. "I told you, stop picking those. Are you aware that there are penalties for defacing the imperial gardens? Please do not make me go retrieve you from another cell because you couldn't keep your hands off the imperial foliage."
They were strolling along one of the palace grounds' many canals, while Londo looked over some of the Ministry reports from the outlying provinces and G'Kar lurked behind him to discourage any would-be assassins. So far, there had been no repeats of the incident in the hallway, but that was the second attempt on Londo's life that G'Kar knew about, and anyone who was willing to blow up a shuttle to kill one man was not likely to stop so easily.
He tossed the flower on the surface of the canal, where a current carried it away.
"The imperial foliage? That sounds like a euphemism for --"
"Please shut up," Londo said without looking up from his paperwork.
"You don't even know what I was going to say."
Londo rolled the papers he was holding into a tube and, to G'Kar's surprise and secret delight, smacked him on the arm with it. Getting Londo riled up enough to make him playful or angry -- getting him to shed the Prime Minister game face, to be himself -- was one of the pleasures of G'Kar's current circumstances.
"No good ever comes of letting you finish a sentence like that," Londo grumbled. "Help me work out the movements of these grain shipment. I cannot fathom what the Minister of Trade has managed to do with our usual surplus from the west continent."
"I would rather lie facedown in this canal until I drown."
"So would I," Londo said with such an exaggerated look of dismay that G'Kar had trouble keeping the grin off his face. "But such is not my lot."
"Have you thought about telling them to f--"
"I don't think it would be wise to let you finish that sentence, either."
"--find the problem themselves?"
"That is not what you were going to say."
"You can't prove it," G'Kar said, and he caught the edge of the rolled-up papers, whisking them out of Londo's hands. "Perhaps I will do it for you."
"Stop it! Give those back." As G'Kar unrolled the bundle, Londo asked with heavy sarcasm, "Can you even read written Centauri?"
"Better than you can read written Narn."
"I will have you know, I've been practicing."
G'Kar looked up in genuine surprise. "You have?"
Londo immediately went into that charmingly flustered mode which was far more appealing on him than any of his coolly polished official expressions. "Well, I -- if I'm ever to understand the things you're constantly scribbling down -- I do know that Narns don't like having their words translated, some sort of religious prohibition --"
"You want to read my book?"
"Not now, I don't," Londo said grumpily. "Give me those back." He retrieved the papers from G'Kar's hand while G'Kar was still slightly distracted with the unaccustomed concept of Londo having any interest at all in his memoir, let alone learning written Narn just to read it. "It's impossible anyway," Londo went on, still clearly determined to double down on complaining, "because your letters all look alike and you write backwards."
"You Centauri are the ones who write backwards, but it is a forgivable offense, unlike most of your offenses. No one is perfect, not that you have ever aspired to that." Londo really was learning written Narn, G'Kar thought, however imperfectly. G'Kar couldn't help being touched by the entire concept.
"You've smudged my documents with your sticky fingers," Londo muttered, spreading out the papers and not looking at G'Kar. "This is what comes of picking forbidden flowers."
They had wandered into a courtyard a fair distance from the main palace, where an artificial waterfall some thirty feet high tumbled with a thunder of falling water into a great pool. The pool was quite large, churning with the weight of the water pouring into it, and all around it heavy masses of foliage, barely trimmed at all, cascaded into its edges. G'Kar had seen the waterfall from a distance -- it dominated the surrounding gardens, falling from one of several stepped pyramids scattered about the palace grounds -- but he had never been up close, and he found that he liked it. By Centauri standards, this place was rather wild-seeming, less regimentally ordered than most of the gardens. The air had a cool fresh scent from the spray. Unlike other parts of the gardens, there were no strolling nobles in sight.
"I like this place," G'Kar told Londo.
"You would," Londo said. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the thunder of the falls. "This is Mariel's garden -- no, not my former wife. Ugh. Do not remind me of her. No, Mariel is a common female name in the Republic, and this Mariel was the second wife of Emperor Turhan II -- not the one you are thinking of, it was Turhan III who died on Babylon 5. This was his father. Turhan II hated his wife, but her family was too highly placed to divorce her, so he built this garden for her as a backhanded honor she could not refuse, hoping she would hate it, possibly even fall in and drown. To his dismay, she quite liked it. It is said that she walked here for an hour every morning and evening, plotting his murder."
"Your people continue to invent new ways of being bizarre and terrible, Mollari."
"Thank you, we practice it."
"You certainly do." G'Kar leaned over the stone parapet, slick with spray, that separated them from a bricked-in plunge into the pool's depths. Unlike the shallow canals, the churning water was dark, with no hint of a bottom. "How far down does this go?"
"Very far. In my understanding, it feeds into the duct system that waters the rest of the gardens, and there is a strong undertow. You can see how much water pours into it every minute, and all of it must go somewhere, namely, into the underground aqueducts below us. To fall in is an instant death sentence, they say."
"Try not to fall in, then." G'Kar found that he liked this place less, all of a sudden. Ever since Londo's brush with death shortly after they had arrived, he'd found himself running a continual calculation of the many opportunities for assassination surrounding them at all times, and he did not like the results of the equations.
"I can swim," Londo said dismissively. He glanced at G'Kar, and it seemed there was some kind of calculation running in his head, too. "Can you swim?"
"From what you say, it doesn't matter in particular for these waters, so I say again -- don't fall in." At Londo's continued stare, G'Kar sighed. "Narns in general are not much for swimming. We tend to sink. And I never particularly had time to learn the techniques anyhow. I was too busy learning more useful things," he added pointedly, "such as weaponry, and ambush, and piloting, for fighting your soldiers when we freed our world."
"Yes, fine," Londo said, turning away sharply, but the flare of guilt-laced temper faded almost immediately into a slightly edged but still friendly barb. "So I should be telling you not to fall in, then."
"Let us both attempt not to fall in."
The close-pressing, untrimmed vegetation and the shadow of the pyramid contributed to the ominous air of the place; anyone could approach from any direction, and G'Kar was relieved when Londo moved away from the pool's edge and mounted a set of sunlit steps winding towards the first tier (of three) of the stepped pyramid. This was also graced with rich and beautiful cascades of foliage, probably wild and unlovely to Centauri eyes, but once again G'Kar found it pleasing, more so now that he had a better angle of sight on anyone who might attempt to approach.
In fact, the pyramid gave them a scenic overview of the surrounding gardens, including a hedge maze that Londo had, at one point, attempted to drag G'Kar into, claiming it was "fun." (G'Kar had threatened to cut his way through the hedges to freedom if Londo tried.) Seeing it from above, he scanned it and committed the broader twists and turns to memory, just in case he ever ended up stuck there, probably on account of something or other Londo had gotten him into.
"According to legend," Londo remarked, glancing behind them down the stairs, "there is a trick step somewhere on that staircase, designed to dump Lady Mariel fatally to the bottom of the steps."
"And you're just mentioning this now, after we climbed the stairs."
Londo waved a dismissive hand. "I never believed it. Far too many people have come up here over the years, and I think we'd have heard if this staircase had a significant body count."
"I am starting to see why you need a bodyguard."
"Pfah."
The thunder of the waterfall was muted from up here. The waters that fed it, rather than a single cataract, took the form of a multitude of slender silver snakes, twisting in wild profusion across the face of the pyramid's second tier. Once again, G'Kar had the strange sensation of seeing the world doubled, the way that he could imagine how the Centauri perceived this structure (uncontrolled, chaotic, displeasingly random) and his own Narnish impressions of it, finding aesthetic pleasure in its unpredictable variation.
His hands itched for his pen, to record this new revelation. He resisted only briefly before he gave in to temptation and dug it out, along with the small notebook that he always carried on him.
"I can see we're going to be here for a while," Londo said as G'Kar braced the notebook on the railing and began to scribble. But his tone was fond. "Are you writing down the story of Lady Mariel?"
"What? No, of course not." In truth, he'd halfway forgotten it already, aside from the lingering emotional impressions. "I am having an epiphany."
"Of course you are."
It was pleasant up here, so much so that G'Kar could nearly forget he was on Centauri Prime. The sun was warm on his shoulders, if overly bright in the way of the white- and yellow-star planets. The water spoke with a thousand voices, and he wrote down that observation too, recording his impressions of this world's lovelier side. His people deserved to know that there was beauty on Centauri Prime, as there was beauty everywhere in the galaxy. Flowers grew in forests and pavement cracks alike. Oh, that was good, he needed to record it.
Next to him, Londo moved away a little bit, papers rustling as he went back to his study of grain shipment records.
"Don't go far," G'Kar said without looking up.
"I am not. Hoverer," Londo complained petulantly, obviously not all that entranced with his pages of trade accounts. "A person almost gets assassinated once, never hears the end of it --"
"Twice," G'Kar said absently. .... No, that was the wrong word he'd written there -- he'd actually lapsed into English for a minute in his hasty scribbling. He and Londo normally spoke the Earth language between themselves here, since most people on Centauri Prime couldn't understand it, meanwhile slipping in and out of Centauri and Interlac when in groups of Centauri. (Well, G'Kar refused to speak anything other than Interlac or English on Centauri Prime if he could help it. But he understood Centauri.) Really, he ought to get an award for being able to mentally switch between four different languages on the fly. Even if it meant that his Narnish took a hit sometimes. He crossed out the wrong word and struggled, for a minute, to find the more precise Narn equivalent that he wanted. It didn't help that Londo was still talking.
"-- keeping score, as if at a vohlo match, it's only my life we're talking about here --"
"Still complaining, I see." New thoughts flew into his head as fast as he could write them down, and he found that he was scribbling random reminders of thoughts he would need to expand on later. Still, there was some part of his brain keeping a sheepdog-like lookout on his charge, who was -- contrary to request -- wandering further away. G'Kar roused himself from his notes enough to add, "If you are assassinated, I am not to blame. I gave you clear instructions."
"You will complain at my graveside, no doubt."
"You assume that I will bother to visit it. Oh, perhaps I will visit yearly, for an annual celebration."
"Hnf. You will grieve. Daily weeping."
"As the humans say, 'citation needed.'"
"Perhaps some wailing is not too much to hope for. Just an occasional wail, now and then."
"I would rather drown in the canal."
The response was a soft sound -- not amusement, something unexpected, a strange huff of breath -- and G'Kar looked up sharply, not sure what he was responding to.
He saw Londo stagger -- and an instant later, realized it was because something had struck him, a tiny fletched thing, embedded in his neck, the trajectory indicating that it came from the tier above their own. Even as G'Kar sprang into motion, Londo tumbled backward over the too-low stone railing.
He fell -- utterly limp, plunging down, into the waterfall-fed whirlpool below them; and he hit badly -- for a non-Narn, a blow like that could break his neck -- and vanished beneath the surface of the churning water.
G'Kar leaped after him without hesitation.
He had time to take a breath, hold it, and recall some of what he knew about falling. He hit with his feet, body braced, and plunged into startlingly cold water.
Below, it was a maelstrom. For all that Narns could not swim, his Narnish density and his ability to see in low light were both an asset here. He sank, he felt the currents that Londo had warned him of catching him, but he flung himself towards the dark shape he glimpsed before him. He grabbed hold of an imperial jacket, clawed his way onto the shape that must be Londo, felt it clutch frantically at him -- and then they were both sucked below, into the aqueducts.
***
It was all darkness and currents tossing him around, whirling him and spinning him, beating on him. His only thought was to hold onto what he had caught hold of, even though Londo had stopped moving, was deadweight as the current bounced them off obstacles in the horrible, lightless, airless dark.
They must be rushing towards something, G'Kar thought, as his pulse beat in his ears. Londo seemed to think there was nothing down here except airless tunnels, and perhaps he was right. But in G'Kar's experience, such places tended to be not wholly untenanted. They had to have maintenance, unclogging, repair. And water could not flow through them in perfectly anaerobic conditions; at the very least, there must be some air exchange to prevent suction-locking and other ills.
Or perhaps they would both drown down here in the dark. Londo had been convinced -- a conviction that had come through from his mind, even if most of the details were fuzzy -- that they were destined to die together. G'Kar recalled strangulation, but what was this if not that, even if the details were different? He tightened his cold-numbed grip on Londo's court attire, unsure if he was clinging to a corpse yet. Narns could hold their breath for a long time. Londo might already be dead.
And then G'Kar's head broke the surface.
He dragged in a breath, gasping before he went under again. His innate density dragged him down, but this time his feet touched bottom, bounced and lurched. He glanced off the side of the -- tunnel, canal, whatever he was in, keeping a tight grasp on Londo with his other arm. Then his hand struck something else, jutting out from the slick surface of the underwater wall. He grabbed at it, felt it arrest his forward momentum. Once he had a firm grip, he got a foot on it as well. Some kind of submerged ladder, maybe. Whatever it was, it provided him a route to the surface. Lungs bursting, he clawed his way up it one-armed, clinging to Londo in a death grip because if he lost him down here, he would never find him again.
His face broke the surface, and after the first instant's relieved gasping, he realized with a different kind of relief that there was some light. There must be maintenance workers who came down here, he was right; and he climbed, weak and cold and battered, onto a maintenance platform that thrust out into the water. He flung Londo's limp body ahead of him, and pulled himself up after.
The light was very dim and blue, coming from a bulb in a cage above them. By that faint cold glow, Londo's face was the face of a corpse, slack and gray. G'Kar was not sure how long Londo had been without air, but it was much too long. Still, one thing he knew about Centauri physiology (hard-learned, mostly in the context of how to kill them) was that their muscular second heart could remain beating for a while in the absence of breath, continuing to push blood throughout their circulatory system. Londo felt like a corpse, limp and cold, but it might not be too late yet.
G'Kar hauled him around, not bothering to be gentle. Every moment counted. He doubled Londo over the edge of the platform, fiercely pressed the water out of him, then flopped him over onto his back and felt at his neck for a pulse. There was something, he thought; a faint flutter, so weak that G'Kar had trouble telling if it was doubled or if Londo's other heart had stopped beating already -- or perhaps if he was only feeling the single heartbeat in his own fingertips.
G'Kar leaned over Londo's limp form, sealed his lips over Londo's, breathed his own breath into Londo's lungs. Then he rolled him over again, hit him hard between the shoulder blades. Trying, just trying to get him to breathe for himself. He didn't know what else to do. Muddy water trickled out between Londo's slack lips.
It took a few iterations of this, but with a suddenness that G'Kar was not expecting, Londo came abruptly to life, sucking in air, and then he coughed and rolled over and vomited a quantity of water across the platform. For a little while he heaved and coughed and tried to breathe, and G'Kar tried to hold him in a position where he could do it most expediently.
Londo was still extremely out of it, but he grasped at G'Kar and tried to sit up and clung to him, coughing and retching and slowly, it seemed, coming back to himself.
"Where ...." He coughed and retched, doubled up for a minute. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was a ragged thread. "Where are we?"
"Remember those canals underneath the gardens? We're in those."
"Oh." Londo's head dropped back against G'Kar's chest. His crest, the finely maintained hairstyle the Centauri were so proud of, was absolutely wrecked; he would probably complain about it later. Right now he was ice cold and shocky, shivering in violent, wracking waves. G'Kar extricated himself from Londo's clinging hands, half-panicky, holding on to fistfuls of his leather armor, just enough to take off his coat. He wrapped it around Londo, then pulled him against his chest, sitting him up so he could breathe better. Londo's breathing sounded terrible, bubbling and thick.
But he was moving, conscious, stubborn, not exactly resisting G'Kar's attempts to hold him upright, but weakly struggling to have his own way about it. Typical.
And he was trying to speak again, between gasping and coughing.
"What is -- where -- someone tried to -- kill me --"
"Yes," G'Kar said.
"Did you get them?"
"I was a little busy," G'Kar said.
This seemed to sink in. Then:
"I thought you couldn't swim," Londo wheezed.
"I can't."
"But you jumped in after me? Or did you fall?"
"I am your bodyguard. Of course I jumped."
"But ..." Londo began, and then he fell silent, slumping against G'Kar.
Now that the immediate crisis was past, G'Kar abruptly remembered the dart that had struck Londo in the neck, and he tilted Londo forward so he could probe around the close-cropped hairline. He found a slightly reddened welt with no sign of the dart that had made it. Considering that Londo didn't seem to be having any more of a reaction, G'Kar could only conclude that it had not been meant to kill him by itself. Just make him dizzy enough to fall over the edge, perhaps only startle him. When they finally dredged his drowned and battered body out of the canals, no one would be looking for a cause of death other than a drowning caused by a careless fall, and there probably wouldn't be enough of him left intact to detect it anyway. Drowning did not leave a beautiful corpse.
G'Kar leaned back on the slimy brick wall, holding his coat-wrapped burden against his chest. He could feel the rhythmic heaves of Londo's chest as he breathed, the doubled beat of his hearts, now rapid and strong and distinctive.
Too close. Too close.
"Have you considered that it might be a wise idea to leave your world soon," he said casually, and Londo's hitching chest huffed in a soft half-laugh.
***
When Londo could stand on his own -- weak, tottering, but well enough to shake off G'Kar and insist he was perfectly fine -- they tried the ladder up to the surface. G'Kar went below him, just in case, but he was privately impressed at how well Londo managed to navigate the short stretch of ladder leading up to a smooth and better-lit maintenance tunnel. He had a lot of grit, that one, even if it didn't show as often as the complaining, petulant side of him.
The maintenance tunnel let them out into a sunken accessway labeled, in Centauri, AUTHORIZED USE ONLY. By the light of the noonday Centauri sun, Londo looked even worse, bedraggled and grayish. G'Kar supposed he was probably not in much better condition himself. Londo staggered and sat down abruptly at the edge of the maintenance access, leaning his head back against the wall.
"Are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm fine," Londo said, and laughed, which made him cough raggedly. He opened his eyes. Then he frowned. "Am I ... wearing your coat?"
"Badly, and with much less panache than I do." They were both sodden, muddy, and draped in bits of algae and wet leaves. It could not be good for Londo's lungs in the slightest. "Do you wish to have a physician attend to you?"
"Probably a good idea." Londo coughed again, wet and wracking, covering his mouth with his hand. "Morathi ... he was one of the physicians to the Emperor. Turhan, not Cartagia. He has been in disgrace ever since Turhan's death. A good man, honorable. I do not think he would be a poor choice."
"Then we shall summon him. In the meantime, do you have any ideas for getting discreetly back to your quarters?"
"What, you don't feel capable of walking?" Londo asked defiantly.
G'Kar gave him a look.
Londo pushed himself off the maintenance access, wobbled sideways, and G'Kar caught him.
"I know a back way," he said reluctantly, clinging to G'Kar's shoulder.
***
Londo's knowledge of back passages in the palace got him to his rooms, and Londo summoned a servant to be dispatched for the physician he had mentioned. After that, G'Kar steered him to crumple, muddy clothes and all, on top of his bedcovers.
G'Kar pulled a chair over and sat beside the bed.
"Ugh, my mouth tastes like a sewer," Londo groaned, lying sprawled on his back with an arm over his eyes. If he was feeling well enough to be dramatic, he was probably going to be okay. "And my neck itches." He rubbed at it, finding the welt. "What is this?"
"You were hit with some kind of dart. I would guess it was not intended to kill you, only to make you fall." Once again he thought of the drowned bodies he had seen, unrecognizable after days in the water. "Had you vanished beneath the gardens as intended, there would have been no way of identifying such a mark."
"No, I suppose not." Londo stopped scratching at his neck, and rolled onto his side, looking at G'Kar with unaccustomed and wholly unfeigned sincerity. "That I am not, is entirely down to you. Thank you."
"It was my responsibility." G'Kar found himself uncomfortable with Londo's visible gratitude. Needing some outlet for these feelings, he found himself reaching for a notebook he no longer carried. It had been in his hand when he'd leaped over the edge. Likely it was making its way down some Centauri river to the sea by now.
"What's wrong?" Londo asked quietly. He lay on his side, one hand fisted under his cheek.
"Nothing."
"Your book," Londo said, frowning. "Where is it?"
So much for avoiding notice. "Lost it, I suppose," G'Kar said, with a carelessness he did not feel.
"When you jumped in after me," Londo said quietly.
"Perhaps I might have fallen in after all."
"Oh, is that how we're playing it?" Then Londo fell abruptly silent as there was a knock at the door. G'Kar sprang to his feet, defensive instincts at full strength, and went to the door to find that it was the physician they had been expecting.
The loss of the notebook did hurt. There had been irreplaceable notes in there, revelations that G'Kar could only imperfectly recreate. Next to his other losses, it was nothing, but it had still dealt a wound.
And yet. He did not regret his choice in the slightest. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watched the aged Centauri physician bend over Londo -- a very alive, complaining, recalcitrant Londo, making a nuisance of himself, arguing with the doctor's every suggestion. Alive, breathing, talking. Absolutely irritating. Unbearable at times.
Not one of those drowned, bloated corpses from the rivers of his youth that surfaced in his thoughts, now and then.
G'Kar's thoughts could be recovered in some form, rewritten, made to live again.
Londo could not.
***
Two days after the incident, Londo -- though still shaky, irritable, and coughing despite the drugs the doctor had given him -- was moving around with more assurance, and insisted on going to the market square adjacent to the palace for some reason. Since they still didn't know who had tried to kill him in the gardens, G'Kar thought this was stupid and had no problem saying so, but Londo was, as usual, impossible to dissuade once he had made his decision.
Once they were in the market, in a display of staggering stupidity even for him, he kept trying to shake off his bodyguard -- insisting that G'Kar should stop to look at a display of knives, or perhaps would be more interested in this book and scroll kiosk over here? G'Kar was not. He stuck to Londo like glue.
Including when Londo stopped, with visible reluctance, at a display of blank books and writing implements.
"Well, choose a new one," he said, waving a hand with one of the most obviously put-on nonchalant airs that G'Kar had ever seen. "Since you will not leave me alone to -- to present it to you as a surprise, then pick out the one you like best. You would probably complain about my choice anyway."
Rather than admit to being touched, G'Kar took as long as possible dithering over the many available blank writing books, until Londo started to look visibly wan and begged a sitting stool off the vendor. In truth, G'Kar did not particularly want a Centauri book, as they were all subtly yet visibly different from the kind he was used to. In the end, he selected one of the most expensive and jewel-encrusted of the lot, something he had no interest in actually writing in, but it looked like it would cost a fortune. Londo side-eyed him, but when G'Kar said "That one," Londo placed it on the vendor's counter without complaint.
"Wrap that up, please. And these as well," Londo said, and he casually placed a small book, leatherbound, beside the other, and then a pen. G'Kar was very startled; he had not even realized that the entire time, Londo had been perusing the wares as well, and he had located perhaps the single most visibly similar offering to what G'Kar had lost, a simple book bound in leather with ragged-edged pages.
It was not the one he had given up.
But it was, actually, something he liked.
G'Kar gave Londo a look as the vendor wrapped up the purchases.
"Actually I think I do not want ..." G'Kar said, placing his hand on the edge of the jewel-bound book. The vendor froze; he was clearly uneasy with the two-edged sword of having a Narn and the Prime Minister lingering in his shop for so long.
"Oh, no, we are definitely buying that one," Londo said, removing G'Kar's hand from the book with his own slightly trembling one. They really did need to get him back to the palace to rest. "Wrap them up, I said ... did I stutter?"
The vendor wrapped them up.
Back in the palace, Londo sprawled limp and complaining on a couch, reviving slowly with some fruit juice and two cups of hot jala brought by a palace functionary. G'Kar slipped off to a nearby table with the new book -- the plain one -- and started getting a feel for the function of the pen, not quite like the one he'd lost, but it felt good in his hand. It was disconcerting to realize Londo had been paying that much attention to both.
"I sent some of the guards to consult with the maintenance staff in the gardens," Londo said. He was sitting up on the couch now, looking a little less flattened. "They checked all the outflow filters. Your book did not turn up. But they have standing orders to contact me if it does."
"It's not that important," G'Kar said. Once again, he wasn't quite sure what to do with the feeling that all of this gave him.
"Yes, it is," Londo said quietly. "And I will try to make it right, if I can. In the meantime ..." He brightened and leaned across the arm of the couch, reaching for the jeweled book. "May I borrow your pen?"
All G'Kar had managed so far were some random lines, stopping and starting, in his new book, so he handed it over. Londo flipped open the jeweled book to the first page, contemplated it, wrote carefully for a minute, and then closed it and handed book and pen to G'Kar.
"I do not want ..."
"I know," Londo said, tired but cheerful. With exhaustion visibly starting to claim him, he slumped back on the couch and reached for his cup of now lukewarm jala. "You may throw it away if you like; it is nothing to me."
With growing dread, G'Kar opened the first page of the book.
There, he found that Londo had written, in childishly scrawled but passable Narn: "Thank you."
G'Kar closed it very carefully.
"I hate you," he said.
Londo grinned, brilliant and warm and delighted and playful. "I know," he said.
fan_flashworks "Underwater" challenge back in early May and finally got around to editing it (the first version was pretty rough; this has been cleaned up a lot, tweaked for word choice and clarity). One thing rolling around in the back of my head when I wrote this is something I've noticed reading fic for this show - there's not really a lot of typical tropey h/c for these characters. It's understandable, because canon is so tightly plotted, and so much of the fic is just fixing and/or dealing with their various canon disasters and tragedies. But sometimes you just want to put someone into a classic h/c situation and make them deal with it, you know?
The Drowning Deep (5500 words, gen)
Takes place between 5x09 and 5x10. An attempt on Londo's life in the palace gardens.
Also posted on AO3.
The royal gardens at the Centauri imperial palace spread for miles. From the reflecting pools in front of the palace towers, a network of greenery, pools, fountains and streams expanded across the grounds, landscaped in geometric symmetry.
To G'Kar's eyes, honed on the red and brown hills of his homeworld, it seemed an extravagant waste of water, time, and labor, even on a world where all of these existed in abundance. But that was the Centauri for you.
At least the gardens were less oppressive than the palace. G'Kar suspected that the outdoors were not that much less infested with listening devices and well-paid informants, but Londo seemed to feel the same about preferring the outside of the palace to the inside; they spent as much time in the gardens as they could, when Londo was not needed for one meeting or another. It also seemed to G'Kar that Londo appreciated being able to be outside, under the sky, which was impossible on Babylon 5. G'Kar could appreciate the urge himself, even though it was not his world or his sky.
"What is this one called?" he asked Londo, plucking a small blue flower from a flowerbed and holding it up.
"I don't know," Londo said distractedly, leafing through a sheaf of papers. "I told you, stop picking those. Are you aware that there are penalties for defacing the imperial gardens? Please do not make me go retrieve you from another cell because you couldn't keep your hands off the imperial foliage."
They were strolling along one of the palace grounds' many canals, while Londo looked over some of the Ministry reports from the outlying provinces and G'Kar lurked behind him to discourage any would-be assassins. So far, there had been no repeats of the incident in the hallway, but that was the second attempt on Londo's life that G'Kar knew about, and anyone who was willing to blow up a shuttle to kill one man was not likely to stop so easily.
He tossed the flower on the surface of the canal, where a current carried it away.
"The imperial foliage? That sounds like a euphemism for --"
"Please shut up," Londo said without looking up from his paperwork.
"You don't even know what I was going to say."
Londo rolled the papers he was holding into a tube and, to G'Kar's surprise and secret delight, smacked him on the arm with it. Getting Londo riled up enough to make him playful or angry -- getting him to shed the Prime Minister game face, to be himself -- was one of the pleasures of G'Kar's current circumstances.
"No good ever comes of letting you finish a sentence like that," Londo grumbled. "Help me work out the movements of these grain shipment. I cannot fathom what the Minister of Trade has managed to do with our usual surplus from the west continent."
"I would rather lie facedown in this canal until I drown."
"So would I," Londo said with such an exaggerated look of dismay that G'Kar had trouble keeping the grin off his face. "But such is not my lot."
"Have you thought about telling them to f--"
"I don't think it would be wise to let you finish that sentence, either."
"--find the problem themselves?"
"That is not what you were going to say."
"You can't prove it," G'Kar said, and he caught the edge of the rolled-up papers, whisking them out of Londo's hands. "Perhaps I will do it for you."
"Stop it! Give those back." As G'Kar unrolled the bundle, Londo asked with heavy sarcasm, "Can you even read written Centauri?"
"Better than you can read written Narn."
"I will have you know, I've been practicing."
G'Kar looked up in genuine surprise. "You have?"
Londo immediately went into that charmingly flustered mode which was far more appealing on him than any of his coolly polished official expressions. "Well, I -- if I'm ever to understand the things you're constantly scribbling down -- I do know that Narns don't like having their words translated, some sort of religious prohibition --"
"You want to read my book?"
"Not now, I don't," Londo said grumpily. "Give me those back." He retrieved the papers from G'Kar's hand while G'Kar was still slightly distracted with the unaccustomed concept of Londo having any interest at all in his memoir, let alone learning written Narn just to read it. "It's impossible anyway," Londo went on, still clearly determined to double down on complaining, "because your letters all look alike and you write backwards."
"You Centauri are the ones who write backwards, but it is a forgivable offense, unlike most of your offenses. No one is perfect, not that you have ever aspired to that." Londo really was learning written Narn, G'Kar thought, however imperfectly. G'Kar couldn't help being touched by the entire concept.
"You've smudged my documents with your sticky fingers," Londo muttered, spreading out the papers and not looking at G'Kar. "This is what comes of picking forbidden flowers."
They had wandered into a courtyard a fair distance from the main palace, where an artificial waterfall some thirty feet high tumbled with a thunder of falling water into a great pool. The pool was quite large, churning with the weight of the water pouring into it, and all around it heavy masses of foliage, barely trimmed at all, cascaded into its edges. G'Kar had seen the waterfall from a distance -- it dominated the surrounding gardens, falling from one of several stepped pyramids scattered about the palace grounds -- but he had never been up close, and he found that he liked it. By Centauri standards, this place was rather wild-seeming, less regimentally ordered than most of the gardens. The air had a cool fresh scent from the spray. Unlike other parts of the gardens, there were no strolling nobles in sight.
"I like this place," G'Kar told Londo.
"You would," Londo said. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the thunder of the falls. "This is Mariel's garden -- no, not my former wife. Ugh. Do not remind me of her. No, Mariel is a common female name in the Republic, and this Mariel was the second wife of Emperor Turhan II -- not the one you are thinking of, it was Turhan III who died on Babylon 5. This was his father. Turhan II hated his wife, but her family was too highly placed to divorce her, so he built this garden for her as a backhanded honor she could not refuse, hoping she would hate it, possibly even fall in and drown. To his dismay, she quite liked it. It is said that she walked here for an hour every morning and evening, plotting his murder."
"Your people continue to invent new ways of being bizarre and terrible, Mollari."
"Thank you, we practice it."
"You certainly do." G'Kar leaned over the stone parapet, slick with spray, that separated them from a bricked-in plunge into the pool's depths. Unlike the shallow canals, the churning water was dark, with no hint of a bottom. "How far down does this go?"
"Very far. In my understanding, it feeds into the duct system that waters the rest of the gardens, and there is a strong undertow. You can see how much water pours into it every minute, and all of it must go somewhere, namely, into the underground aqueducts below us. To fall in is an instant death sentence, they say."
"Try not to fall in, then." G'Kar found that he liked this place less, all of a sudden. Ever since Londo's brush with death shortly after they had arrived, he'd found himself running a continual calculation of the many opportunities for assassination surrounding them at all times, and he did not like the results of the equations.
"I can swim," Londo said dismissively. He glanced at G'Kar, and it seemed there was some kind of calculation running in his head, too. "Can you swim?"
"From what you say, it doesn't matter in particular for these waters, so I say again -- don't fall in." At Londo's continued stare, G'Kar sighed. "Narns in general are not much for swimming. We tend to sink. And I never particularly had time to learn the techniques anyhow. I was too busy learning more useful things," he added pointedly, "such as weaponry, and ambush, and piloting, for fighting your soldiers when we freed our world."
"Yes, fine," Londo said, turning away sharply, but the flare of guilt-laced temper faded almost immediately into a slightly edged but still friendly barb. "So I should be telling you not to fall in, then."
"Let us both attempt not to fall in."
The close-pressing, untrimmed vegetation and the shadow of the pyramid contributed to the ominous air of the place; anyone could approach from any direction, and G'Kar was relieved when Londo moved away from the pool's edge and mounted a set of sunlit steps winding towards the first tier (of three) of the stepped pyramid. This was also graced with rich and beautiful cascades of foliage, probably wild and unlovely to Centauri eyes, but once again G'Kar found it pleasing, more so now that he had a better angle of sight on anyone who might attempt to approach.
In fact, the pyramid gave them a scenic overview of the surrounding gardens, including a hedge maze that Londo had, at one point, attempted to drag G'Kar into, claiming it was "fun." (G'Kar had threatened to cut his way through the hedges to freedom if Londo tried.) Seeing it from above, he scanned it and committed the broader twists and turns to memory, just in case he ever ended up stuck there, probably on account of something or other Londo had gotten him into.
"According to legend," Londo remarked, glancing behind them down the stairs, "there is a trick step somewhere on that staircase, designed to dump Lady Mariel fatally to the bottom of the steps."
"And you're just mentioning this now, after we climbed the stairs."
Londo waved a dismissive hand. "I never believed it. Far too many people have come up here over the years, and I think we'd have heard if this staircase had a significant body count."
"I am starting to see why you need a bodyguard."
"Pfah."
The thunder of the waterfall was muted from up here. The waters that fed it, rather than a single cataract, took the form of a multitude of slender silver snakes, twisting in wild profusion across the face of the pyramid's second tier. Once again, G'Kar had the strange sensation of seeing the world doubled, the way that he could imagine how the Centauri perceived this structure (uncontrolled, chaotic, displeasingly random) and his own Narnish impressions of it, finding aesthetic pleasure in its unpredictable variation.
His hands itched for his pen, to record this new revelation. He resisted only briefly before he gave in to temptation and dug it out, along with the small notebook that he always carried on him.
"I can see we're going to be here for a while," Londo said as G'Kar braced the notebook on the railing and began to scribble. But his tone was fond. "Are you writing down the story of Lady Mariel?"
"What? No, of course not." In truth, he'd halfway forgotten it already, aside from the lingering emotional impressions. "I am having an epiphany."
"Of course you are."
It was pleasant up here, so much so that G'Kar could nearly forget he was on Centauri Prime. The sun was warm on his shoulders, if overly bright in the way of the white- and yellow-star planets. The water spoke with a thousand voices, and he wrote down that observation too, recording his impressions of this world's lovelier side. His people deserved to know that there was beauty on Centauri Prime, as there was beauty everywhere in the galaxy. Flowers grew in forests and pavement cracks alike. Oh, that was good, he needed to record it.
Next to him, Londo moved away a little bit, papers rustling as he went back to his study of grain shipment records.
"Don't go far," G'Kar said without looking up.
"I am not. Hoverer," Londo complained petulantly, obviously not all that entranced with his pages of trade accounts. "A person almost gets assassinated once, never hears the end of it --"
"Twice," G'Kar said absently. .... No, that was the wrong word he'd written there -- he'd actually lapsed into English for a minute in his hasty scribbling. He and Londo normally spoke the Earth language between themselves here, since most people on Centauri Prime couldn't understand it, meanwhile slipping in and out of Centauri and Interlac when in groups of Centauri. (Well, G'Kar refused to speak anything other than Interlac or English on Centauri Prime if he could help it. But he understood Centauri.) Really, he ought to get an award for being able to mentally switch between four different languages on the fly. Even if it meant that his Narnish took a hit sometimes. He crossed out the wrong word and struggled, for a minute, to find the more precise Narn equivalent that he wanted. It didn't help that Londo was still talking.
"-- keeping score, as if at a vohlo match, it's only my life we're talking about here --"
"Still complaining, I see." New thoughts flew into his head as fast as he could write them down, and he found that he was scribbling random reminders of thoughts he would need to expand on later. Still, there was some part of his brain keeping a sheepdog-like lookout on his charge, who was -- contrary to request -- wandering further away. G'Kar roused himself from his notes enough to add, "If you are assassinated, I am not to blame. I gave you clear instructions."
"You will complain at my graveside, no doubt."
"You assume that I will bother to visit it. Oh, perhaps I will visit yearly, for an annual celebration."
"Hnf. You will grieve. Daily weeping."
"As the humans say, 'citation needed.'"
"Perhaps some wailing is not too much to hope for. Just an occasional wail, now and then."
"I would rather drown in the canal."
The response was a soft sound -- not amusement, something unexpected, a strange huff of breath -- and G'Kar looked up sharply, not sure what he was responding to.
He saw Londo stagger -- and an instant later, realized it was because something had struck him, a tiny fletched thing, embedded in his neck, the trajectory indicating that it came from the tier above their own. Even as G'Kar sprang into motion, Londo tumbled backward over the too-low stone railing.
He fell -- utterly limp, plunging down, into the waterfall-fed whirlpool below them; and he hit badly -- for a non-Narn, a blow like that could break his neck -- and vanished beneath the surface of the churning water.
G'Kar leaped after him without hesitation.
He had time to take a breath, hold it, and recall some of what he knew about falling. He hit with his feet, body braced, and plunged into startlingly cold water.
Below, it was a maelstrom. For all that Narns could not swim, his Narnish density and his ability to see in low light were both an asset here. He sank, he felt the currents that Londo had warned him of catching him, but he flung himself towards the dark shape he glimpsed before him. He grabbed hold of an imperial jacket, clawed his way onto the shape that must be Londo, felt it clutch frantically at him -- and then they were both sucked below, into the aqueducts.
***
It was all darkness and currents tossing him around, whirling him and spinning him, beating on him. His only thought was to hold onto what he had caught hold of, even though Londo had stopped moving, was deadweight as the current bounced them off obstacles in the horrible, lightless, airless dark.
They must be rushing towards something, G'Kar thought, as his pulse beat in his ears. Londo seemed to think there was nothing down here except airless tunnels, and perhaps he was right. But in G'Kar's experience, such places tended to be not wholly untenanted. They had to have maintenance, unclogging, repair. And water could not flow through them in perfectly anaerobic conditions; at the very least, there must be some air exchange to prevent suction-locking and other ills.
Or perhaps they would both drown down here in the dark. Londo had been convinced -- a conviction that had come through from his mind, even if most of the details were fuzzy -- that they were destined to die together. G'Kar recalled strangulation, but what was this if not that, even if the details were different? He tightened his cold-numbed grip on Londo's court attire, unsure if he was clinging to a corpse yet. Narns could hold their breath for a long time. Londo might already be dead.
And then G'Kar's head broke the surface.
He dragged in a breath, gasping before he went under again. His innate density dragged him down, but this time his feet touched bottom, bounced and lurched. He glanced off the side of the -- tunnel, canal, whatever he was in, keeping a tight grasp on Londo with his other arm. Then his hand struck something else, jutting out from the slick surface of the underwater wall. He grabbed at it, felt it arrest his forward momentum. Once he had a firm grip, he got a foot on it as well. Some kind of submerged ladder, maybe. Whatever it was, it provided him a route to the surface. Lungs bursting, he clawed his way up it one-armed, clinging to Londo in a death grip because if he lost him down here, he would never find him again.
His face broke the surface, and after the first instant's relieved gasping, he realized with a different kind of relief that there was some light. There must be maintenance workers who came down here, he was right; and he climbed, weak and cold and battered, onto a maintenance platform that thrust out into the water. He flung Londo's limp body ahead of him, and pulled himself up after.
The light was very dim and blue, coming from a bulb in a cage above them. By that faint cold glow, Londo's face was the face of a corpse, slack and gray. G'Kar was not sure how long Londo had been without air, but it was much too long. Still, one thing he knew about Centauri physiology (hard-learned, mostly in the context of how to kill them) was that their muscular second heart could remain beating for a while in the absence of breath, continuing to push blood throughout their circulatory system. Londo felt like a corpse, limp and cold, but it might not be too late yet.
G'Kar hauled him around, not bothering to be gentle. Every moment counted. He doubled Londo over the edge of the platform, fiercely pressed the water out of him, then flopped him over onto his back and felt at his neck for a pulse. There was something, he thought; a faint flutter, so weak that G'Kar had trouble telling if it was doubled or if Londo's other heart had stopped beating already -- or perhaps if he was only feeling the single heartbeat in his own fingertips.
G'Kar leaned over Londo's limp form, sealed his lips over Londo's, breathed his own breath into Londo's lungs. Then he rolled him over again, hit him hard between the shoulder blades. Trying, just trying to get him to breathe for himself. He didn't know what else to do. Muddy water trickled out between Londo's slack lips.
It took a few iterations of this, but with a suddenness that G'Kar was not expecting, Londo came abruptly to life, sucking in air, and then he coughed and rolled over and vomited a quantity of water across the platform. For a little while he heaved and coughed and tried to breathe, and G'Kar tried to hold him in a position where he could do it most expediently.
Londo was still extremely out of it, but he grasped at G'Kar and tried to sit up and clung to him, coughing and retching and slowly, it seemed, coming back to himself.
"Where ...." He coughed and retched, doubled up for a minute. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was a ragged thread. "Where are we?"
"Remember those canals underneath the gardens? We're in those."
"Oh." Londo's head dropped back against G'Kar's chest. His crest, the finely maintained hairstyle the Centauri were so proud of, was absolutely wrecked; he would probably complain about it later. Right now he was ice cold and shocky, shivering in violent, wracking waves. G'Kar extricated himself from Londo's clinging hands, half-panicky, holding on to fistfuls of his leather armor, just enough to take off his coat. He wrapped it around Londo, then pulled him against his chest, sitting him up so he could breathe better. Londo's breathing sounded terrible, bubbling and thick.
But he was moving, conscious, stubborn, not exactly resisting G'Kar's attempts to hold him upright, but weakly struggling to have his own way about it. Typical.
And he was trying to speak again, between gasping and coughing.
"What is -- where -- someone tried to -- kill me --"
"Yes," G'Kar said.
"Did you get them?"
"I was a little busy," G'Kar said.
This seemed to sink in. Then:
"I thought you couldn't swim," Londo wheezed.
"I can't."
"But you jumped in after me? Or did you fall?"
"I am your bodyguard. Of course I jumped."
"But ..." Londo began, and then he fell silent, slumping against G'Kar.
Now that the immediate crisis was past, G'Kar abruptly remembered the dart that had struck Londo in the neck, and he tilted Londo forward so he could probe around the close-cropped hairline. He found a slightly reddened welt with no sign of the dart that had made it. Considering that Londo didn't seem to be having any more of a reaction, G'Kar could only conclude that it had not been meant to kill him by itself. Just make him dizzy enough to fall over the edge, perhaps only startle him. When they finally dredged his drowned and battered body out of the canals, no one would be looking for a cause of death other than a drowning caused by a careless fall, and there probably wouldn't be enough of him left intact to detect it anyway. Drowning did not leave a beautiful corpse.
G'Kar leaned back on the slimy brick wall, holding his coat-wrapped burden against his chest. He could feel the rhythmic heaves of Londo's chest as he breathed, the doubled beat of his hearts, now rapid and strong and distinctive.
Too close. Too close.
"Have you considered that it might be a wise idea to leave your world soon," he said casually, and Londo's hitching chest huffed in a soft half-laugh.
***
When Londo could stand on his own -- weak, tottering, but well enough to shake off G'Kar and insist he was perfectly fine -- they tried the ladder up to the surface. G'Kar went below him, just in case, but he was privately impressed at how well Londo managed to navigate the short stretch of ladder leading up to a smooth and better-lit maintenance tunnel. He had a lot of grit, that one, even if it didn't show as often as the complaining, petulant side of him.
The maintenance tunnel let them out into a sunken accessway labeled, in Centauri, AUTHORIZED USE ONLY. By the light of the noonday Centauri sun, Londo looked even worse, bedraggled and grayish. G'Kar supposed he was probably not in much better condition himself. Londo staggered and sat down abruptly at the edge of the maintenance access, leaning his head back against the wall.
"Are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm fine," Londo said, and laughed, which made him cough raggedly. He opened his eyes. Then he frowned. "Am I ... wearing your coat?"
"Badly, and with much less panache than I do." They were both sodden, muddy, and draped in bits of algae and wet leaves. It could not be good for Londo's lungs in the slightest. "Do you wish to have a physician attend to you?"
"Probably a good idea." Londo coughed again, wet and wracking, covering his mouth with his hand. "Morathi ... he was one of the physicians to the Emperor. Turhan, not Cartagia. He has been in disgrace ever since Turhan's death. A good man, honorable. I do not think he would be a poor choice."
"Then we shall summon him. In the meantime, do you have any ideas for getting discreetly back to your quarters?"
"What, you don't feel capable of walking?" Londo asked defiantly.
G'Kar gave him a look.
Londo pushed himself off the maintenance access, wobbled sideways, and G'Kar caught him.
"I know a back way," he said reluctantly, clinging to G'Kar's shoulder.
***
Londo's knowledge of back passages in the palace got him to his rooms, and Londo summoned a servant to be dispatched for the physician he had mentioned. After that, G'Kar steered him to crumple, muddy clothes and all, on top of his bedcovers.
G'Kar pulled a chair over and sat beside the bed.
"Ugh, my mouth tastes like a sewer," Londo groaned, lying sprawled on his back with an arm over his eyes. If he was feeling well enough to be dramatic, he was probably going to be okay. "And my neck itches." He rubbed at it, finding the welt. "What is this?"
"You were hit with some kind of dart. I would guess it was not intended to kill you, only to make you fall." Once again he thought of the drowned bodies he had seen, unrecognizable after days in the water. "Had you vanished beneath the gardens as intended, there would have been no way of identifying such a mark."
"No, I suppose not." Londo stopped scratching at his neck, and rolled onto his side, looking at G'Kar with unaccustomed and wholly unfeigned sincerity. "That I am not, is entirely down to you. Thank you."
"It was my responsibility." G'Kar found himself uncomfortable with Londo's visible gratitude. Needing some outlet for these feelings, he found himself reaching for a notebook he no longer carried. It had been in his hand when he'd leaped over the edge. Likely it was making its way down some Centauri river to the sea by now.
"What's wrong?" Londo asked quietly. He lay on his side, one hand fisted under his cheek.
"Nothing."
"Your book," Londo said, frowning. "Where is it?"
So much for avoiding notice. "Lost it, I suppose," G'Kar said, with a carelessness he did not feel.
"When you jumped in after me," Londo said quietly.
"Perhaps I might have fallen in after all."
"Oh, is that how we're playing it?" Then Londo fell abruptly silent as there was a knock at the door. G'Kar sprang to his feet, defensive instincts at full strength, and went to the door to find that it was the physician they had been expecting.
The loss of the notebook did hurt. There had been irreplaceable notes in there, revelations that G'Kar could only imperfectly recreate. Next to his other losses, it was nothing, but it had still dealt a wound.
And yet. He did not regret his choice in the slightest. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watched the aged Centauri physician bend over Londo -- a very alive, complaining, recalcitrant Londo, making a nuisance of himself, arguing with the doctor's every suggestion. Alive, breathing, talking. Absolutely irritating. Unbearable at times.
Not one of those drowned, bloated corpses from the rivers of his youth that surfaced in his thoughts, now and then.
G'Kar's thoughts could be recovered in some form, rewritten, made to live again.
Londo could not.
***
Two days after the incident, Londo -- though still shaky, irritable, and coughing despite the drugs the doctor had given him -- was moving around with more assurance, and insisted on going to the market square adjacent to the palace for some reason. Since they still didn't know who had tried to kill him in the gardens, G'Kar thought this was stupid and had no problem saying so, but Londo was, as usual, impossible to dissuade once he had made his decision.
Once they were in the market, in a display of staggering stupidity even for him, he kept trying to shake off his bodyguard -- insisting that G'Kar should stop to look at a display of knives, or perhaps would be more interested in this book and scroll kiosk over here? G'Kar was not. He stuck to Londo like glue.
Including when Londo stopped, with visible reluctance, at a display of blank books and writing implements.
"Well, choose a new one," he said, waving a hand with one of the most obviously put-on nonchalant airs that G'Kar had ever seen. "Since you will not leave me alone to -- to present it to you as a surprise, then pick out the one you like best. You would probably complain about my choice anyway."
Rather than admit to being touched, G'Kar took as long as possible dithering over the many available blank writing books, until Londo started to look visibly wan and begged a sitting stool off the vendor. In truth, G'Kar did not particularly want a Centauri book, as they were all subtly yet visibly different from the kind he was used to. In the end, he selected one of the most expensive and jewel-encrusted of the lot, something he had no interest in actually writing in, but it looked like it would cost a fortune. Londo side-eyed him, but when G'Kar said "That one," Londo placed it on the vendor's counter without complaint.
"Wrap that up, please. And these as well," Londo said, and he casually placed a small book, leatherbound, beside the other, and then a pen. G'Kar was very startled; he had not even realized that the entire time, Londo had been perusing the wares as well, and he had located perhaps the single most visibly similar offering to what G'Kar had lost, a simple book bound in leather with ragged-edged pages.
It was not the one he had given up.
But it was, actually, something he liked.
G'Kar gave Londo a look as the vendor wrapped up the purchases.
"Actually I think I do not want ..." G'Kar said, placing his hand on the edge of the jewel-bound book. The vendor froze; he was clearly uneasy with the two-edged sword of having a Narn and the Prime Minister lingering in his shop for so long.
"Oh, no, we are definitely buying that one," Londo said, removing G'Kar's hand from the book with his own slightly trembling one. They really did need to get him back to the palace to rest. "Wrap them up, I said ... did I stutter?"
The vendor wrapped them up.
Back in the palace, Londo sprawled limp and complaining on a couch, reviving slowly with some fruit juice and two cups of hot jala brought by a palace functionary. G'Kar slipped off to a nearby table with the new book -- the plain one -- and started getting a feel for the function of the pen, not quite like the one he'd lost, but it felt good in his hand. It was disconcerting to realize Londo had been paying that much attention to both.
"I sent some of the guards to consult with the maintenance staff in the gardens," Londo said. He was sitting up on the couch now, looking a little less flattened. "They checked all the outflow filters. Your book did not turn up. But they have standing orders to contact me if it does."
"It's not that important," G'Kar said. Once again, he wasn't quite sure what to do with the feeling that all of this gave him.
"Yes, it is," Londo said quietly. "And I will try to make it right, if I can. In the meantime ..." He brightened and leaned across the arm of the couch, reaching for the jeweled book. "May I borrow your pen?"
All G'Kar had managed so far were some random lines, stopping and starting, in his new book, so he handed it over. Londo flipped open the jeweled book to the first page, contemplated it, wrote carefully for a minute, and then closed it and handed book and pen to G'Kar.
"I do not want ..."
"I know," Londo said, tired but cheerful. With exhaustion visibly starting to claim him, he slumped back on the couch and reached for his cup of now lukewarm jala. "You may throw it away if you like; it is nothing to me."
With growing dread, G'Kar opened the first page of the book.
There, he found that Londo had written, in childishly scrawled but passable Narn: "Thank you."
G'Kar closed it very carefully.
"I hate you," he said.
Londo grinned, brilliant and warm and delighted and playful. "I know," he said.