Babylon 5 fic: As Far As You Can Go

[sholio]

Continuing, as in most new fandoms, to write All The Tropes for them ...

As Far As You Can Go (gen, 3000 words)
Also posted on AO3
Summary: Set a little after "No Surrender, No Retreat." Still trying to figure out how to navigate their new truce, G'Kar has the unpleasant experience of having to rescue Londo from a situation of his own making.



It had been less complicated, in a way, when G'Kar was simply ignoring Mollari. Truly astonishing, the number of places the man turned up, even on a station five miles long, but G'Kar merely continued with his business and affected not to notice him.

Now .... now, things had changed, and there were irritating decisions to make. On the inevitable occasions when their paths crossed, should he continue to ignore him? Acknowledge him with a brief, tense nod? Would this result in Mollari, G'Quan forbid, actually talking to him? (The first time he made the mistake of making eye contact in the Zocalo, Mollari immediately changed his course to angle towards him, at which point G'Kar beat an inglorious retreat and decided to have dinner in his quarters instead.)

When he was avoiding Mollari as a matter of principle, it had felt dignified and honorable. He did not change his behavior at all; he simply moved through the station as if Mollari did not exist. His life and his routine did not need to alter in the slightest.

Now that G'Kar was having to make the active decision of whether or not to avoid him every time, it was starting to feel petty and foolish. This annoyed him like an itch he couldn't scratch.

When he walked into the Dark Star and found Mollari already at a corner table with a Centauri girl who was obviously some sort of exotic dancer, G'Kar stopped for a moment and then resolutely continued to the bar. Mollari was paying little enough attention to anyone but his companion anyway. G'Kar ordered a drink. He was going to need one if he had to be subjected to this spectacle.

It was interesting, he thought, sipping a glass of taree and finding his gaze drawn repeatedly to Mollari's corner. Not that G'Kar was paying any particular attention to Mollari these days, but the man hadn't been flaunting his conquests around the station as in the old days. The heavy drinking and gambling were also, at least somewhat, things of the past. Although G'Kar was loath to admit any such thing, it was a more subdued, more mature Mollari who had come out the other side of the war and the Centauri coup.

Which made his behavior now more noticeable, where it wouldn't have been any significant thing a couple of years ago. He was clearly drunk, laughing, half draped on his companion, who wore a feathered headpiece attached to the ornate band around her forehead, and a dress that even by Centauri standards left little to the imagination. Pity; she was very nice-looking, and could certainly do better.

G'Kar shook his head and turned away from the unpleasant sight. He only happened to glance back as a waitress brought them more drinks, just in time to see the feathered young lady deftly drape an arm on Mollari's shoulder, lean close in so that he was distracted by her cheek against his, and then her other hand slipped down and dropped something into the drink.

G'Kar's attention abruptly sharpened. There was only one other set of glasses on the table. He had assumed the two had been drinking together for hours, but ... perhaps not.

Now that he was paying more attention, he noted a pair of Hurr at a nearby table, both of them nursing nearly full drinks and paying an inordinate amount of attention to the two Centauri. G'Kar recognized what he was looking at now. He had seen this kind of game played before, although usually at the disreputable drinking establishments in Downbelow; it was less common for such lowlives to risk the heavier security in Red Sector. But the Centauri Ambassador was apparently too good a prize to resist. Or maybe it was just Mollari's bad luck to be the target. In any case, G'Kar expected that when Mollari finally took his supposed conquest home, he wouldn't make it any farther than the nearest side corridor. Most likely he would wake up with a splitting headache and everything valuable on his person missing. Which Mollari deserved, G'Kar thought, although not without a small guilty twinge, if only to teach him to be more cautious next time. A salutary lesson, really.

There was also a chance of things going badly, of course. A chance the robbers would decide that they were less likely to be caught as murderers than fingered by a live witness, or perhaps they'd miscalculated the dosage of their drug on a Centauri target, or its combination effects with the alcohol. Or they might even have something more sordid in mind for their drugged, compliant victim.

Alternatively, G'Kar thought, should he choose to intervene at all, he could ask the bartender to summon security and point them in that direction, then wash his hands of the entire business. Zack Allen and his Narn security personnel would probably have a field day with it. The social embarrassment that Mollari would suffer could not possibly happen to a more deserving person.

The nightclub had its own security, of course, but if alerted, they were unlikely to do more than eject any troublemakers, leading back to the same options as before: robbed in an alley, or rescued, at the risk of a good deal of social embarrassment, by Allen's security forces.

Both fitting options. Neither one G'Kar's problem in the slightest.

In the corner, the Centauri honeypot giggled loudly, and Mollari leaned into her neck, nuzzling at it with sotted affection that was almost catlike in nature, and visibly genuine for all of its drunken sentimentality.

G'Kar sighed deeply.

He placed a tip on the bar beside his half-finished drink, and got up. As he approached the table in the corner, he made note of the Hurr both tensing and reaching beneath their long leather coats. So they were armed: wonderful.

He angled towards Mollari's table, where the con had already moved into phase 2. The woman was urging Mollari up, one arm around him. "Oh, sweetheart, you've had too much to drink. Come on, let me help you lie down somewhere."

"Lie down? What a love- loverly idea. I'll lie down with you, my beautiful one ..."

G'Kar slapped a hand on the table. The woman glared, and Mollari looked up blearily. His grin faltered for an instant as he focused on G'Kar and recognized him, slipping sideways into a look that was strangely open and vulnerable, and then bounced back.

"G'Kar! My dear, most exc-- excel-- very esteemed Narn colleague, please stay, have a drink with us. I appear to have overindulged, but my friend Kalia here --"

"We were just leaving," said Kalia, or whatever her real name was, without a trace of friendliness.

"She's not your friend," G'Kar said. "And you're not drunk, at least no more than a little. She drugged you, and she and her friends plan to rob you."

"What?" Mollari said, blinking at G'Kar with a dazed expression.

"What?" said Kalia, in a very different tone.

The pair of Hurr rose to their feet as one, shoving back their chairs.

G'Kar moved first, a quick step back and a hard chop of his gauntleted hand to the first Hurr's wrist, so the knife that he had been in the process of drawing clattered to the floor instead, and the man gave a startled yell of pain.

Kalia cursed fluently in Centauri and made an abrupt withdrawal from the table. This left Mollari, who had been leaning drunkenly on her, without any means of support. He staggered sideways, and grabbed for the nearest thing, which happened to be G'Kar.

He missed, and G'Kar had the split-second option of letting him fall facefirst to the floor, or catching him.

It was instinct that responded, in the main. G'Kar caught him, and now he had his own armful of sloppy-drunk Mollari, grasping clumsily at G'Kar's coat and trying to get his feet under him.

The Hurr who had just lost his knife was clutching his wrist. The other had a knife out now, held low. Kalia had disappeared completely. Across the room, a couple of very large bouncers bristling with spikes -- G'Kar wasn't even sure what species they were -- had started moving in their direction.

"If you're thinking about meeting us outside, I'd like you to consider everything you've ever heard about angry Narns, and think again," G'Kar said. He adjusted his grip on Mollari, getting a tight fistful of the back of his coat to keep the man more or less in an upright position without his face pressed against G'Kar's chest.

The Hurr pair decided to exit quietly. The bouncers loomed. G'Kar's vague plan had been to deposit Mollari back in his chair and leave, maybe call Mollari's aide from somewhere outside, but the bouncers were looking unsympathetic and it was clear that if G'Kar left, Mollari would be out on his stupid Centauri hair a minute later.

G'Kar sighed again.

His life.

"Let's go," he said, guiding Mollari's stumbling steps firmly and briskly toward the exit. Mollari was clearly trying to keep up but kept getting his feet tangled with each other, and occasionally with G'Kar's feet, which made it easier to simply half-drag him. He was also trying to say something, but fortunately, between the pounding club music and the fact that he was slurring it into G'Kar's armpit, it was impossible to understand him.

Outside the club, it was abruptly cooler and quieter. G'Kar looked around sharply, but it seemed that the Hurr duo had taken his warning at face value and disappeared. He adjusted his grip on Mollari, trying to get him to stop clinging.

He became aware that one of Mollari's hands had ended up on his shoulder, and then it migrated up to clumsily pat the back of his head. "You saved me," Mollari said indistinctly.

"I did not. Don't be vulgar." Where to put him, G'Kar thought. It ought to be possible to deposit him on a bench and leave him to recover enough to get home on his own. Unfortunately that left him wide open to options a) and b) from before -- his intended robbers/molesters returning to finish what they had in mind, or discovery by security and consequently sleeping it off in the station drunk tank.

G'Kar heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the bottoms of his boots, and started manhandling Mollari towards the transit tubes. Mollari rubbed his face on G'Kar's chest and seemed to be trying to pet his head. G'Kar considered trying to take him home like this, had another thought, and turned their awkward three-legged shuffle towards the restrooms instead.

"Now wait a minute," Mollari began blurrily, as G'Kar shoved him into a private, lockable cubicle and locked the door behind them.

Most of the Red Sector bathrooms had sinks with water in addition to, or instead of, sonic cleaners, as offworld visitors were used to planetary-style facilities, and some of them required water for personal functions best left unexplored. G'Kar turned on the sink full blast, as cold as it would go, and shoved Mollari's face in it.

After he had done it a few times, pulling him out swiftly each time to make sure not to drown him (not that it wasn't tempting), Mollari was cursing him somewhat more coherently and having less trouble keeping his feet under him, if only out of rage.

G'Kar gave him one more dousing to shut him up. The cursing turned into coughing because his mouth was open, and G'Kar pulled him out quickly and gave him a handful of disposable towels to mop his face. Mollari clumsily swiped at himself, muttering indistinct insults, and G'Kar propped him against the wall, took the towels back and stuffed them into the recycler, then caught him as Mollari showed every inclination of crumpling away from the wall and falling headlong to the floor.

"Are you going to be sick?" he asked matter-of-factly. Mollari had gone sweaty and pale.

"I don't know," Mollari muttered. "Trying to drown me, you --"

"If I wanted to drown you, you'd be drowned. And if you choose to be sick, aim away from me. I like this coat."

With one more wistful thought of just leaving him here for station security to find, and a slightly more serious thought of taking him to the medbay (considered and discarded), he got a grip on the now slightly damp coat and manhandled him towards the nearest transit junction.

Mollari managed not to be sick in the lift, though it was a near thing from the look of him, and seemed to be sobering up somewhat by the time they made it to Green 2. G'Kar held him securely in front of the door until Mollari managed to remember how to let them in.

"My head hurts," Mollari said as G'Kar steered him to the couch. It was the first thing he'd said in a while, after his various attempts to talk to and/or insult G'Kar on the way to the transit tube had been met with annoyed silence.

"They gave you enough tranquilizers to knock out a pak'ma'ra. I'm not surprised." G'Kar deposited him on the couch. "If you feel as if you're going to be ill, tell me and I'll get you a bucket or something. Save your aide the trouble of cleaning it up later."

"I'm not," Mollari said, sounding cranky and a little more like himself. The pasty, claylike color of his face suggested this was wishful thinking more than reality, however. He was sweating, which ought to be more unpleasant than it was -- Narns did not sweat -- but G'Kar found it no worse than dealing with any other bodily fluid -- blood, tears, et cetera. He had never been physically squeamish.

And he would have thought he'd mind dealing with a drugged, sick Mollari more than he did. If he was perfectly honest with himself, he felt slightly sorry for him. That woman had played on his vanity, and on his loneliness. G'Kar had never wanted to know Mollari as well as he did -- but that did not change the fact that he did know him, and he knew that Mollari didn't deal well with being alone.

You earned it, he thought, with a flare of the old bitterness.

"Do you think you're going to need the medbay?" he asked brusquely.

"I don't know." Mollari had slumped on his back on the couch in a position that probably wasn't helping his head much, his arm over his eyes. "I feel like I'm dying."

"If you're hung over, then you're getting over it and you're not dying."

Mollari shifted his arm to look at G'Kar from under it. "Why did you help me?"

He was definitely sobering up. G'Kar should have pushed him in the door and fled. But that, too, was starting to feel like an overreaction. To feel like rank cowardice, even.

It occurred to him how much courage, of a sort, it must have taken Mollari to show up at his quarters. He was not about to let the Centauri ambassador be a better man, a braver man, then him.

"I don't know," he said, and Mollari looked up at him from the couch, wan and ill-looking, but curious. "Perhaps I simply wanted to have a drink in peace and didn't want my evening spoiled by unpleasantness."

The corner of Mollari's mouth twisted in a slight hint of a smile. "And you would consider watching me being robbed and embarrassed .... unpleasant?"

For some reason, G'Kar thought of Mollari's words to him in the cell on Centauri Prime, not too long ago.

"This would please you?" he had asked, of his own torturous death.

"Once, long ago ... no, not even then."

There was a time when Mollari's death would certainly have pleased him. Seeing him humiliated ... probably. But not now.

"Yes, strange to say, I would find it unpleasant," G'Kar said, and Mollari's pallid half-smile turned to an actual grin.

G'Kar looked around swiftly, picked up a cushion, and threw it at his head. Mollari's reactions still weren't tracking well; he tried to bat it away, missed completely, and it bounced off his head. There was a faint, "Ow," and then, "What was that for?"

"Testing your reflexes. You seem to be recovering well." G'Kar hesitated, and then, throwing himself reluctantly on the pyre of being dragged back into a mess he could have been well out of, "If you want to press charges, I'll be a witness."

Mollari stopped fumbling around for the cushion and gave him an odd, sideways look. "I don't," he said. "No ... I don't even know who they were. And she was pleasant company, for a while." His face turned wistful.

It was this stupid sympathetic urge that kept dragging him back in every time he managed to almost make it out of the man's orbit, G'Kar thought grimly. "She's only going to do it to some other victim."

"I don't want to," Mollari said, turning stubborn. "I won't." He touched his head. "Why is my hair wet? Wait -- you tried to drown me."

"I was sobering you up. It seems to have worked."

"You enjoyed it." Mollari finally managed to get a hand on the pillow and made a feeble attempt to throw it back. It missed G'Kar by a wide margin, bounced off a kitchen stool, and flopped to the floor. G'Kar watched it fall without bothering to move, and looked back at him.

"Yes," G'Kar said, and let himself smile this time. "I did. If you are not going to drop dead, as it seems, I have matters to return to."

"Before you go ..." Mollari flopped a hand in the direction of the kitchen. "Painkillers ... there? Edge of counter ..."

G'Kar had finally had enough. "I am not your downtrodden servant, Mollari. Get it yourself. I have already done enough."

He turned on his heel, coat obliging him by flaring dramatically, and strode to the door.

"Yes, you have!" Mollari half-shouted after him, which made him cough, and there was a faint groan of "Ow, my head." And then, quietly, "Thank you."

G'Kar left without bothering to acknowledge that. It was bad enough that they both knew he'd heard it.