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Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things
So this is apparently the latest installment in an accidental series about gardens. This is based off some bits in ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
hauntinghouses's lovely post-canon fixit Out of the Woods (not necessary to read before this one, but you should read if you like Londo & G'Kar stuff; it's lovely, with some neat Narn worldbuilding), which was in turn inspired by one of my older ones. This is not meant to be in direct continuity with either hauntinghouses' fic or the other fic it was inspired by; it's off happily living its best life in its own AU 'verse.
Green Growing Things (Londo & G'Kar, 2800 wds)
It is post-canon, and there are gardens.
Green Growing Things
G'Kar did not live on Centauri Prime, but he visited often.
He had been Londo's bodyguard once, and in the turbulent years immediately following what was now called the Drakh War, he had been there much more than not. But these were years of peace, and these were also years of something like retirement for Londo. The concept of an emperor-emeritus was completely foreign to the Centauri, and G'Kar was not going to take full credit for whatever partial implementation of it they had now. But he had worn down both Londo and Vir with arguments for the common sense of training one's successor before they had to take over the job of running an empire, and giving them some practice at it while the previous ruler was around to advise.
So G'Kar was off on Narn these days, working with the reconstruction, or visiting friends on Minbar or Mars, or in space wherever his latest urge took him; and Londo was something like retired. In Londo's case, this didn't stop him from being busy; in fact, from all accounts he was busier than ever, throwing himself into dozens of committees and spending large portions of his time harassing the Centaurum about everything from the Adira Tyree Memorial Fund to massively increased aid for the reconstruction on Narn. G'Kar occasionally entertained himself with the amusing thought that the stuffy, hidebound nobles in the Centaurum, who had loathed Londo as Emperor, probably now wished that he would go back to being Emperor and too busy with ceremonial fripperies to bother them on a daily basis.
G'Kar had his own life to live, but there was still a suite of rooms kept in perfect order for him, adjoining Londo's post-imperial quarters in the north wing of the palace, with any items G'Kar had left there kept safe for his return. There were favorite spots he liked to visit when he came back, foods he missed, little pieces of gently nurtured nostalgia for a place that, once, he would have cheered to see in flames.
Now, from the transit train, he observed new construction here and there, enjoying the little notes of change since his last visit. He was no longer the only offworlder at the spaceport transfer hub or on the transit, and in fact, there were times when he was not even the only Narn -- a development that had not ceased to be startling -- although that was not the case this time.
He had arrived in midafternoon, Centauri Capital time, but according to his body clock it was the middle of the night, which left him feeling out of sorts with the brilliant yellow-white Centauri Prime sun. Arriving at the palace with no fanfare, he made his greetings briefly to Vir, who was busy anyway, and had an early dinner with Londo in the emperor-emeritus's suite.
The food was excellent, leaning heavily into G'Kar's favorite dishes, but Londo spent the entire meal practically vibrating out of his skin. There was clearly something he wanted to talk about, but G'Kar's every attempt to find out was met with deflection. Instead, they chatted about books and music, and argued over pop culture. G'Kar wanted to hear what Londo had thought of the most recent play of the famed up-and-coming playwright Ko'Halit, whose recording G'Kar had sent him, and Londo had just discovered a new type of Earth entertainment called "murder mystery" and had prepared a data crystal of favorites for G'Kar to take a look at.
But eventually, when the remains of their demolished repast were cleared away, Londo not very casually suggested a walk in the gardens.
"I don't know how worried to be," G'Kar remarked, amused at how very obviously Londo wanted to show him whatever it was, combined with the world's least convincing casual act. "If you've bulldozed the Maze of Consorts, I hope you built a nice casino, strip club, or something else just as tasteful as the original on the ruins."
"No, that monstrosity is the pet project of Minister Dumar's family, it'll never go away," Londo said with a wave of a jeweled hand. "I was just thinking we could enjoy the cool of the evening. It's more comfortable outside on these late-summer days, you know."
"I know. I did live here for years, Mollari."
He had no regrets about those days; he was perfectly content with his role in the rebuilding of Centauri Prime after the war, in Londo's continued survival, and in the tenuous peace that now existed between their worlds. But one of the things he used to do back then, whenever he began to feel overwhelmed by the hostile Centauri around him, was to find a safe place to leave Londo alone for a while and go walk in the gardens. And he knew that Londo knew that, and knew him well enough to know most of his favorite locations on the grounds.
So he was unsurprised to find their footsteps tracing a familiar, curving path that led to a relatively private corner of the grounds that used to be one of his preferred places to go read, meditate, or simply have an invigorating discussion with the reflecting pool about some infuriating aspect of Centauri behavior that he was not feeling quite petty enough to inflict on Londo. He wondered what Londo had done to it.
"Where are we going? Did you install a G'Kar memorial bench? Maybe with a stylized rendition of my head on each corner?'
"Great Maker. No." Londo folded his hands behind his back and strolled with even less convincing casualness than before. He looked healthy, G'Kar thought, with that little part of his brain that had made worrying about Londo his primary occupation for long enough that he was always going to keep doing it. Retirement was good for both of them, it seemed.
"So first of all you need to know," Londo said suddenly, as if the pent-up words could no longer be contained behind his pointed teeth, "until a couple of years ago, when we, that is, the Centauri started participating in the reforestation project on Narn, I had no idea what Narn gardens -- woods -- wild spaces, whatever you want to call it, what they looked like. I remember that it seemed to me you always used to seek out the most remote corners of the grounds, the .... the half-forgotten places where the gardeners would always miss a few spots with the clippers. I thought you just wanted to get as far away as possible from every Centauri in the Palace, including me."
"Well, that too." G'Kar's amusement was laced with fondness.
Londo gave him a well-practiced sneer, a lift of his lip in a gesture worn smooth and utterly devoid of any ill intent over the years. "Indeed. Well, that may be so, but it also seemed to me that our gardens must not be very much to your taste, having seen now what you were used to."
"What I am used to is rocks and old mining slag. The amount of green here overwhelms the senses. Perhaps I merely wanted a dark corner where I did not have to think too much."
"Yes, well." Londo gave him a sideways glance, visibly nervous now; G'Kar still considered it one of his most pleasing hobbies to tilt Londo off balance. "That being so, if you hate this, I will have it razed immediately."
"If I hate what?" G'Kar asked, and then they turned a corner on a path he considered one of those most familiar to him in the Palace gardens, coming around the end of a low wall that shielded the area from direct view of the Palace, and walked into something strange.
It was evening now, the sky pink and gold with sunset. They had walked to this spot through regiments of shadows, spilling across table-flat lawns, cast by geometric hedges and trees that existed only to be ornaments pruned into baroque shapes. G'Kar knew this particular corner of the garden well; it was, as Londo had said, somewhat neglected by Centauri standards, a little unloved, a little overgrown. To G'Kar's eyes, this had made it less foreign by some small but significant amount, a place that could soothe his bruised spirit, a little, on particularly difficult days.
And Londo wasn't wrong about his tastes, not that G'Kar was going to tell him so. Natural beauty as he knew it was an aesthetic that prized asymmetry and simplicity, natural materials allowed to keep their shapes, and a sense of surprise, all of these preferable to flamboyant overdecoration and the Centauri inability to avoid trimming, ornamenting, embellishing, and otherwise turning everything around them into an extension of themselves.
But during G'Kar's absence, it looked as if the Centauri gardeners had allowed nature to run amuck in this corner, or perhaps had simply lost their minds. Plants sprawled everywhere, and the ground, in the dimming light of the evening shadows, was peculiarly uneven with humps and tussocks in a way he had never seen in any Centauri public space before.
"I had the lawn ripped out," Londo was saying, "and the flagstones pulled up, and the gardeners were given instructions to stop pruning anything. I, er, had no idea how fast things do grow when they're simply allowed to run wild. It's utter chaos, I know. Actually, I should have had someone come around with clippers, at least tidy up the edges a little --"
G'Kar touched his arm, stopping the torrent of words. "No, it's -- I don't want that. I don't want that at all."
There was still plenty of light to see by, though the shadows were deepening beneath the low branches of the ornamental trees that had been allowed to sprawl in new vine-draped shapes. Now that G'Kar's first startled look had given way to a more thoughtful appraisal, he could see that Londo had left some things alone. G'Kar had always liked the benches here, old time-worn stone ones with a deep sense of age to them, and those were still in the same places, though now half buried beneath sprawling vines. The reflecting pool in front of the benches was still there too, although what it reflected was leaf-dappled sunset sky rather than a carefully curated view between tree trunks. Rather than a neat curving line faced in flagstones, the pool's edge was rocky and uneven, and there were plants growing among the rocks.
G'Kar went down to one knee beside the water. Most of the plants were unfamiliar, or at least he didn't know their names; they were the same Centauri plants he was used to seeing in the gardens, except growing in a more erratic style than he had witnessed before. But there were among them small orange flowers dangling from thin floral stems, bobbing and nodding on a plant with serrated yellow-green leaves. Before he thought twice about what he was doing, he took off one of his gloves to touch the edge of the leaf and feel its sharpness and the slightly rough texture of the flat side. It seemed so out of place here that he couldn't believe what he was seeing; he thought at first it must be a case of convergent evolution.
"Is this ...?"
"It's -- kowrit? Am I saying that right?" Londo was absolutely mangling the pronunciation of kharou'it, but G'Kar knew one when he saw it. It was one of the hardiest of the plants they were using in the rewilding efforts on Narn. The last time he was back, he had seen entire fields of it, the seemingly fragile orange flowers nodding and rippling in glorious profusion across acre upon acre of once-barren plains, covering the bulldozed remains of old factories.
G'Kar swallowed and ran his fingers through the flowers, then lifted his fingertips to sniff at the faint tang that remained, a little like Earth mint but completely its own scent. "Where did you get it?" he asked hoarsely.
"You know of course that some of our geneticists and botanists are working on developing hardier varieties for the reforestation project ... Well ... I wouldn't divert seedlings meant for Narn, of course, but I asked them for anything they had laying about, you know, damaged plants, or situations where they had too many plants for the transports, anything they could spare, of any sort. There are some other ones too -- oh, there." Londo pointed, and yes, there among some cascading purple Centauri flowers were the spiderlike white blooms of a ma'nuri, its delicate flowers folding up at their tips in the dusk.
When G'Kar didn't say anything, Londo went on, filling the silence with words in the way he had when he grew nervous. "There are meant to be a couple of G'Quan Eth back there too, on the other side of the pool, but apparently they don't grow very well with all the shade, they need more light. We're going to try again on the edge of the lawn by the path. The landscapers said it would be a better location, more suited to its needs. You know, if you absolutely hate it, we took pictures before the whole process started, we can put it back just like it was --"
"Don't," G'Kar said. His voice came out thick. Londo fell silent. G'Kar stood up, pulling on his glove. He took a deep breath, with some shakiness on the end of it. "Londo," he said finally.
Londo let out his own breath on a long sigh of relief. "Oh good. You know, I wasn't -- well -- for all I know, if the entire space isn't oriented at a precise angle to the sun, it would have been a terrible insult, or, ah, something."
"No," G'Kar said. "It is not." He swallowed again and took another steadying breath, and now he could detect the subtle mintiness of the kharou'it on the evening air, and a faint sweet scent that lingered almost cloyingly on the back of the tongue; could there be silverbells in this tiny self-contained jungle as well? "But half a degree to the west would have been a mortal affront, of course," he added as offhandedly as he was capable of at the moment.
"Of course," Londo said, bouncing on his toes and looking a decade younger. "So, ah -- there is no need to feel any obligation to stay longer, of course, but I -- I was planning to go over some treaties with our outer colonies with Vir, show him a few of the traps they like to set in these sorts of documents, and I could do it now if you wouldn't be too terribly bored out here. You can come in whenever you want, there's no need to worry about interrupting us."
"I won't be bored," G'Kar managed. "That would be very agreeable. Mollari ..." With his heart full of words he couldn't seem to say, he reached out and clasped Londo's arm, and Londo's fingers curled back against his armored forearm, and squeezed.
"Yes," Londo said. His eyes were very bright; his earlier nervousness had given way to an effervescent delight. "You will find us in the west solarium whenever you're done. No need at all to rush."
He gave G'Kar's arm another squeeze and pulled away with a grin, turned on the path to the Palace, and vanished behind the half-wall.
G'Kar stood for a moment alone, then took a few steps forward, picking his way over the crushed stone rubble they had used to edge the pond, with small plants growing up through it like the little survivors they were. An accidental Narn embellishment, he thought with wry amusement; most likely, the landscapers had used spoil rock from anywhere they could source it cheaply, but rubble was the major component of Narn architecture and landscaping these days. For all he knew, Londo had seen that on one of his state visits to Narn and gotten the wrong idea.
He brushed some sort of unknown red-purple Centauri vine aside, making a proper space to sit on his old favorite of the benches, and settled in. Slowing his breathing, he inhaled the smells of the place: water, mud, flowers that carried subtle hints of home.
And gradually he could feel himself relaxing. All the little stresses and frustrations of travel eased out of him, along with some of the tension of being back on Centauri Prime. He would not come here if he didn't want to. But it was still ... hard, sometimes. Stressful, certainly. Here, in a place that did not look Centauri or even smell like it, he felt calm.
He stayed until it was completely dark. And then he rose slowly and picked his way back along the lighted path, toward the warm glow of the windows, where he looked forward to finding Londo for a drink and a conversation that would last long into the night, as was their usual habit.
He wondered how difficult it would be to pry Londo away from Centauri Prime for a while. Take him back to Narn. Show him some proper Narnish landscaping. The vacation would be good for him, the education likewise. And for all the times he'd been back to Centauri Prime, G'Kar had never hosted Londo in the little stone house he kept, of late, in the western Tazee'Nin mountains on Narn. That was something to look forward to.
Bonus from Tumblr - two random headcanons about the universe of "Green Growing Things":
1. G'Kar's suite in the palace has a bed which is as comfortable for him as Londo could realistically achieve, with a mattress that is WAY too firm by Centauri standards, also lacking in fluffy bed pillows which G'Kar always claims are going to smother him. However, Londo will wander in and flop down on the bed to chat with him, and brings pillows with him to prop under and around himself, until he's laying there on G'Kar's bed in a nest of overly decorated pillows, and G'Kar is just like "What, are we having a sleepover now?" Then he'll look over and Londo actually will have fallen asleep there - it's extremely late, he's been drinking - and G'Kar will quietly slip over, gently take the half-finished glass of brivari out of his limp hand before it spills on the bed and put it on a table, and then go back to quietly writing in his book until he's stayed up through enough jet lag to be sleepy. At which point he'll just lie down on the bed next to Londo and fall asleep - honestly, after everything, actually having a sleepover on the same bed is the very LEAST of how weird they are about each other.
2. Londo gets to Narn to find that G'Kar's little house in the mountains has a guest bedroom that has the softest bed he was able to source on Narn, piled high with pillows. It's very much like Londo attempting to provide a Narn-friendly space to make G'Kar feel at home (as much as possible) on Centauri Prime - that is, the result is not quite right, but it's very clearly a little space to make it evident that he's welcome and G'Kar wants him to be comfortable there.
(Extra bonus third thing: they have essentially done the equivalent of planting Narn dandelions - dandelions genetically engineered to grow in mining waste, no less - and those things are going to be ALL OVER the imperial lawn in about a year. G'Kar will find it hilarious.)
Green Growing Things (Londo & G'Kar, 2800 wds)
It is post-canon, and there are gardens.
Green Growing Things
G'Kar did not live on Centauri Prime, but he visited often.
He had been Londo's bodyguard once, and in the turbulent years immediately following what was now called the Drakh War, he had been there much more than not. But these were years of peace, and these were also years of something like retirement for Londo. The concept of an emperor-emeritus was completely foreign to the Centauri, and G'Kar was not going to take full credit for whatever partial implementation of it they had now. But he had worn down both Londo and Vir with arguments for the common sense of training one's successor before they had to take over the job of running an empire, and giving them some practice at it while the previous ruler was around to advise.
So G'Kar was off on Narn these days, working with the reconstruction, or visiting friends on Minbar or Mars, or in space wherever his latest urge took him; and Londo was something like retired. In Londo's case, this didn't stop him from being busy; in fact, from all accounts he was busier than ever, throwing himself into dozens of committees and spending large portions of his time harassing the Centaurum about everything from the Adira Tyree Memorial Fund to massively increased aid for the reconstruction on Narn. G'Kar occasionally entertained himself with the amusing thought that the stuffy, hidebound nobles in the Centaurum, who had loathed Londo as Emperor, probably now wished that he would go back to being Emperor and too busy with ceremonial fripperies to bother them on a daily basis.
G'Kar had his own life to live, but there was still a suite of rooms kept in perfect order for him, adjoining Londo's post-imperial quarters in the north wing of the palace, with any items G'Kar had left there kept safe for his return. There were favorite spots he liked to visit when he came back, foods he missed, little pieces of gently nurtured nostalgia for a place that, once, he would have cheered to see in flames.
Now, from the transit train, he observed new construction here and there, enjoying the little notes of change since his last visit. He was no longer the only offworlder at the spaceport transfer hub or on the transit, and in fact, there were times when he was not even the only Narn -- a development that had not ceased to be startling -- although that was not the case this time.
He had arrived in midafternoon, Centauri Capital time, but according to his body clock it was the middle of the night, which left him feeling out of sorts with the brilliant yellow-white Centauri Prime sun. Arriving at the palace with no fanfare, he made his greetings briefly to Vir, who was busy anyway, and had an early dinner with Londo in the emperor-emeritus's suite.
The food was excellent, leaning heavily into G'Kar's favorite dishes, but Londo spent the entire meal practically vibrating out of his skin. There was clearly something he wanted to talk about, but G'Kar's every attempt to find out was met with deflection. Instead, they chatted about books and music, and argued over pop culture. G'Kar wanted to hear what Londo had thought of the most recent play of the famed up-and-coming playwright Ko'Halit, whose recording G'Kar had sent him, and Londo had just discovered a new type of Earth entertainment called "murder mystery" and had prepared a data crystal of favorites for G'Kar to take a look at.
But eventually, when the remains of their demolished repast were cleared away, Londo not very casually suggested a walk in the gardens.
"I don't know how worried to be," G'Kar remarked, amused at how very obviously Londo wanted to show him whatever it was, combined with the world's least convincing casual act. "If you've bulldozed the Maze of Consorts, I hope you built a nice casino, strip club, or something else just as tasteful as the original on the ruins."
"No, that monstrosity is the pet project of Minister Dumar's family, it'll never go away," Londo said with a wave of a jeweled hand. "I was just thinking we could enjoy the cool of the evening. It's more comfortable outside on these late-summer days, you know."
"I know. I did live here for years, Mollari."
He had no regrets about those days; he was perfectly content with his role in the rebuilding of Centauri Prime after the war, in Londo's continued survival, and in the tenuous peace that now existed between their worlds. But one of the things he used to do back then, whenever he began to feel overwhelmed by the hostile Centauri around him, was to find a safe place to leave Londo alone for a while and go walk in the gardens. And he knew that Londo knew that, and knew him well enough to know most of his favorite locations on the grounds.
So he was unsurprised to find their footsteps tracing a familiar, curving path that led to a relatively private corner of the grounds that used to be one of his preferred places to go read, meditate, or simply have an invigorating discussion with the reflecting pool about some infuriating aspect of Centauri behavior that he was not feeling quite petty enough to inflict on Londo. He wondered what Londo had done to it.
"Where are we going? Did you install a G'Kar memorial bench? Maybe with a stylized rendition of my head on each corner?'
"Great Maker. No." Londo folded his hands behind his back and strolled with even less convincing casualness than before. He looked healthy, G'Kar thought, with that little part of his brain that had made worrying about Londo his primary occupation for long enough that he was always going to keep doing it. Retirement was good for both of them, it seemed.
"So first of all you need to know," Londo said suddenly, as if the pent-up words could no longer be contained behind his pointed teeth, "until a couple of years ago, when we, that is, the Centauri started participating in the reforestation project on Narn, I had no idea what Narn gardens -- woods -- wild spaces, whatever you want to call it, what they looked like. I remember that it seemed to me you always used to seek out the most remote corners of the grounds, the .... the half-forgotten places where the gardeners would always miss a few spots with the clippers. I thought you just wanted to get as far away as possible from every Centauri in the Palace, including me."
"Well, that too." G'Kar's amusement was laced with fondness.
Londo gave him a well-practiced sneer, a lift of his lip in a gesture worn smooth and utterly devoid of any ill intent over the years. "Indeed. Well, that may be so, but it also seemed to me that our gardens must not be very much to your taste, having seen now what you were used to."
"What I am used to is rocks and old mining slag. The amount of green here overwhelms the senses. Perhaps I merely wanted a dark corner where I did not have to think too much."
"Yes, well." Londo gave him a sideways glance, visibly nervous now; G'Kar still considered it one of his most pleasing hobbies to tilt Londo off balance. "That being so, if you hate this, I will have it razed immediately."
"If I hate what?" G'Kar asked, and then they turned a corner on a path he considered one of those most familiar to him in the Palace gardens, coming around the end of a low wall that shielded the area from direct view of the Palace, and walked into something strange.
It was evening now, the sky pink and gold with sunset. They had walked to this spot through regiments of shadows, spilling across table-flat lawns, cast by geometric hedges and trees that existed only to be ornaments pruned into baroque shapes. G'Kar knew this particular corner of the garden well; it was, as Londo had said, somewhat neglected by Centauri standards, a little unloved, a little overgrown. To G'Kar's eyes, this had made it less foreign by some small but significant amount, a place that could soothe his bruised spirit, a little, on particularly difficult days.
And Londo wasn't wrong about his tastes, not that G'Kar was going to tell him so. Natural beauty as he knew it was an aesthetic that prized asymmetry and simplicity, natural materials allowed to keep their shapes, and a sense of surprise, all of these preferable to flamboyant overdecoration and the Centauri inability to avoid trimming, ornamenting, embellishing, and otherwise turning everything around them into an extension of themselves.
But during G'Kar's absence, it looked as if the Centauri gardeners had allowed nature to run amuck in this corner, or perhaps had simply lost their minds. Plants sprawled everywhere, and the ground, in the dimming light of the evening shadows, was peculiarly uneven with humps and tussocks in a way he had never seen in any Centauri public space before.
"I had the lawn ripped out," Londo was saying, "and the flagstones pulled up, and the gardeners were given instructions to stop pruning anything. I, er, had no idea how fast things do grow when they're simply allowed to run wild. It's utter chaos, I know. Actually, I should have had someone come around with clippers, at least tidy up the edges a little --"
G'Kar touched his arm, stopping the torrent of words. "No, it's -- I don't want that. I don't want that at all."
There was still plenty of light to see by, though the shadows were deepening beneath the low branches of the ornamental trees that had been allowed to sprawl in new vine-draped shapes. Now that G'Kar's first startled look had given way to a more thoughtful appraisal, he could see that Londo had left some things alone. G'Kar had always liked the benches here, old time-worn stone ones with a deep sense of age to them, and those were still in the same places, though now half buried beneath sprawling vines. The reflecting pool in front of the benches was still there too, although what it reflected was leaf-dappled sunset sky rather than a carefully curated view between tree trunks. Rather than a neat curving line faced in flagstones, the pool's edge was rocky and uneven, and there were plants growing among the rocks.
G'Kar went down to one knee beside the water. Most of the plants were unfamiliar, or at least he didn't know their names; they were the same Centauri plants he was used to seeing in the gardens, except growing in a more erratic style than he had witnessed before. But there were among them small orange flowers dangling from thin floral stems, bobbing and nodding on a plant with serrated yellow-green leaves. Before he thought twice about what he was doing, he took off one of his gloves to touch the edge of the leaf and feel its sharpness and the slightly rough texture of the flat side. It seemed so out of place here that he couldn't believe what he was seeing; he thought at first it must be a case of convergent evolution.
"Is this ...?"
"It's -- kowrit? Am I saying that right?" Londo was absolutely mangling the pronunciation of kharou'it, but G'Kar knew one when he saw it. It was one of the hardiest of the plants they were using in the rewilding efforts on Narn. The last time he was back, he had seen entire fields of it, the seemingly fragile orange flowers nodding and rippling in glorious profusion across acre upon acre of once-barren plains, covering the bulldozed remains of old factories.
G'Kar swallowed and ran his fingers through the flowers, then lifted his fingertips to sniff at the faint tang that remained, a little like Earth mint but completely its own scent. "Where did you get it?" he asked hoarsely.
"You know of course that some of our geneticists and botanists are working on developing hardier varieties for the reforestation project ... Well ... I wouldn't divert seedlings meant for Narn, of course, but I asked them for anything they had laying about, you know, damaged plants, or situations where they had too many plants for the transports, anything they could spare, of any sort. There are some other ones too -- oh, there." Londo pointed, and yes, there among some cascading purple Centauri flowers were the spiderlike white blooms of a ma'nuri, its delicate flowers folding up at their tips in the dusk.
When G'Kar didn't say anything, Londo went on, filling the silence with words in the way he had when he grew nervous. "There are meant to be a couple of G'Quan Eth back there too, on the other side of the pool, but apparently they don't grow very well with all the shade, they need more light. We're going to try again on the edge of the lawn by the path. The landscapers said it would be a better location, more suited to its needs. You know, if you absolutely hate it, we took pictures before the whole process started, we can put it back just like it was --"
"Don't," G'Kar said. His voice came out thick. Londo fell silent. G'Kar stood up, pulling on his glove. He took a deep breath, with some shakiness on the end of it. "Londo," he said finally.
Londo let out his own breath on a long sigh of relief. "Oh good. You know, I wasn't -- well -- for all I know, if the entire space isn't oriented at a precise angle to the sun, it would have been a terrible insult, or, ah, something."
"No," G'Kar said. "It is not." He swallowed again and took another steadying breath, and now he could detect the subtle mintiness of the kharou'it on the evening air, and a faint sweet scent that lingered almost cloyingly on the back of the tongue; could there be silverbells in this tiny self-contained jungle as well? "But half a degree to the west would have been a mortal affront, of course," he added as offhandedly as he was capable of at the moment.
"Of course," Londo said, bouncing on his toes and looking a decade younger. "So, ah -- there is no need to feel any obligation to stay longer, of course, but I -- I was planning to go over some treaties with our outer colonies with Vir, show him a few of the traps they like to set in these sorts of documents, and I could do it now if you wouldn't be too terribly bored out here. You can come in whenever you want, there's no need to worry about interrupting us."
"I won't be bored," G'Kar managed. "That would be very agreeable. Mollari ..." With his heart full of words he couldn't seem to say, he reached out and clasped Londo's arm, and Londo's fingers curled back against his armored forearm, and squeezed.
"Yes," Londo said. His eyes were very bright; his earlier nervousness had given way to an effervescent delight. "You will find us in the west solarium whenever you're done. No need at all to rush."
He gave G'Kar's arm another squeeze and pulled away with a grin, turned on the path to the Palace, and vanished behind the half-wall.
G'Kar stood for a moment alone, then took a few steps forward, picking his way over the crushed stone rubble they had used to edge the pond, with small plants growing up through it like the little survivors they were. An accidental Narn embellishment, he thought with wry amusement; most likely, the landscapers had used spoil rock from anywhere they could source it cheaply, but rubble was the major component of Narn architecture and landscaping these days. For all he knew, Londo had seen that on one of his state visits to Narn and gotten the wrong idea.
He brushed some sort of unknown red-purple Centauri vine aside, making a proper space to sit on his old favorite of the benches, and settled in. Slowing his breathing, he inhaled the smells of the place: water, mud, flowers that carried subtle hints of home.
And gradually he could feel himself relaxing. All the little stresses and frustrations of travel eased out of him, along with some of the tension of being back on Centauri Prime. He would not come here if he didn't want to. But it was still ... hard, sometimes. Stressful, certainly. Here, in a place that did not look Centauri or even smell like it, he felt calm.
He stayed until it was completely dark. And then he rose slowly and picked his way back along the lighted path, toward the warm glow of the windows, where he looked forward to finding Londo for a drink and a conversation that would last long into the night, as was their usual habit.
He wondered how difficult it would be to pry Londo away from Centauri Prime for a while. Take him back to Narn. Show him some proper Narnish landscaping. The vacation would be good for him, the education likewise. And for all the times he'd been back to Centauri Prime, G'Kar had never hosted Londo in the little stone house he kept, of late, in the western Tazee'Nin mountains on Narn. That was something to look forward to.
Bonus from Tumblr - two random headcanons about the universe of "Green Growing Things":
1. G'Kar's suite in the palace has a bed which is as comfortable for him as Londo could realistically achieve, with a mattress that is WAY too firm by Centauri standards, also lacking in fluffy bed pillows which G'Kar always claims are going to smother him. However, Londo will wander in and flop down on the bed to chat with him, and brings pillows with him to prop under and around himself, until he's laying there on G'Kar's bed in a nest of overly decorated pillows, and G'Kar is just like "What, are we having a sleepover now?" Then he'll look over and Londo actually will have fallen asleep there - it's extremely late, he's been drinking - and G'Kar will quietly slip over, gently take the half-finished glass of brivari out of his limp hand before it spills on the bed and put it on a table, and then go back to quietly writing in his book until he's stayed up through enough jet lag to be sleepy. At which point he'll just lie down on the bed next to Londo and fall asleep - honestly, after everything, actually having a sleepover on the same bed is the very LEAST of how weird they are about each other.
2. Londo gets to Narn to find that G'Kar's little house in the mountains has a guest bedroom that has the softest bed he was able to source on Narn, piled high with pillows. It's very much like Londo attempting to provide a Narn-friendly space to make G'Kar feel at home (as much as possible) on Centauri Prime - that is, the result is not quite right, but it's very clearly a little space to make it evident that he's welcome and G'Kar wants him to be comfortable there.
(Extra bonus third thing: they have essentially done the equivalent of planting Narn dandelions - dandelions genetically engineered to grow in mining waste, no less - and those things are going to be ALL OVER the imperial lawn in about a year. G'Kar will find it hilarious.)