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Tumblr promptfic catchup - Biggles, Babylon 5, Murderbot
I went through a batch of lingering prompts in my Tumblr inbox (dating back to the start of this year) in late June/early July and got caught up on the backlog.
1. Babylon 5 - Londo/G'Kar sex pollen
Posted on AO3 here (explicit; 3700 wds)
***
2. Biggles - kid!Fritz and touch-starved Erich
Prompt: Young Fritz is very openly affectionate and touch-deprived Erich isn’t sure how to react to this
Posted on Tumblr here
"Uncle Erich!"
Erich had only a moment to brace himself before the boy flung his small arms around Erich's legs. Erich staggered a little, trying not to wince at the sharp bolt of pain through his leg. He had to search inside himself to find the right tone, the right joking words, a quote from a long-dead uncle of his own.
"God in Heaven, Hanne, is this Fritz? It can't be. He's so tall!"
He must have found the right words, the right tone, because Fritz giggled against his leg, and Hanne was smiling in the careworn way that looked strange to him on her still-youthful face. Erich was not quite sure what to do with his hands. He patted the boy's shoulder, expecting him to let go, but nothing of the sort happened until Hanne, evidently recognizing his discomfort, moved in and detached Fritz with practiced skill.
"Did you bring me a present, Uncle?" Fritz asked, beaming up at him. "Greta's papa always brings her presents when he comes to visit."
He did indeed have an orange in his pocket, and while Fritz peeled it with meticulous care, Erich quietly gave Hanne the more important of the two presents, a slightly crumpled envelope with money inside. She peeked in, shook her head and tried to shove it back at him, but Erich pushed it firmly back into her hands.
"For the boy's sake," Erich said softly, "if nothing else."
Hanne's lips twisted, but she shoved the envelope into the pocket of her faded housedress.
She had saved some of their dinner for him, though he knew they could ill afford to spare it. And then Hanne brought out a dusty bottle of brandy with a few fingers left in the bottom -- where she'd got it, he couldn't imagine, but she poured a small glass for each of them, and a very tiny taste for Fritz so he could feel like a proper member of the party (which he tasted, made a face, and ate his last, carefully hoarded quarter of orange).
It was past Fritz's bedtime, but Hanne did not make him go to bed. There was a single sofa with sagging springs, and that was where Erich and Hanne sat, with Fritz curled up between them, leaning trustingly against Erich and blinking slowly. While the adults talked, he wilted sideways until Erich had his lap full of the small, warm burden.
"Would you like me to rescue you?" Hanne asked quietly, her lips quirking up. "He usually sleeps here, but he can sleep in my bed tonight, and you'll have a blanket out here."
"No need," Erich replied. He became aware that at some point, he had begun to cautiously stroke the boy's hair with his hand -- his callused, killer's hand. "I don't intend to stay the night. I just wanted to --" To see both of you "-- to deliver what I brought, and then I must be off. This is not a safe place for me right now."
"Off to where?" Hanne asked, but he didn't answer, and she sighed but did not ask again.
Fritz was utterly limp, twitching in his sleep, like a young puppy. If he knew, Erich thought -- If he knew who I really am, what I really am .... But all Fritz knew of his uncle was whatever stories his mother had told him, as well as Erich's own carefully curated tales, turning his own tragedies into thrilling bedtime stories of adventure and excitement. Perhaps it was not too selfish to enjoy these last moments of the boy's lingering innocence before he learned too much. Or perhaps Erich was too tired to deny himself. He rested his hand on Fritz's small head, the soft golden curls springing up around his fingers.
"Wherever you're going," Hanne said, "I'm sure it's far away. Bring him something back. He'll treasure it." She eyed him keenly, perhaps sensing a little of what he was not saying. "At least bring yourself back. He'll treasure that most of all."
Erich could not find words to respond. Hanne poured out the last of the brandy, and Erich took the glass with his free hand while the boy slept in his lap, jerking a little now and then. Erich began stroking Fritz's hair again. Perhaps he would stay the night, he thought. He was very tired, and tired men made mistakes. The boat did not leave until dawn.
***
3. Murderbot - Gurathin's augments go out while escaping something in the CR
Prompt: while running from CR bullshit, Gurathin's augments - all of them - are temporarily out of commission and he has to rely on Murderbot to get him to safety while he's terribly out of it. <3
Posted on Tumblr here
This was intended to be a full-length fic, but basically stalled out and got stuck for several months at this point, so it's posted here as-is.
--
I felt it happen, but didn't realize at first what it was or how much of a problem it was going to be. The feed blipped out, then came back. My firewalls were fine. I lost my drones for an instant, but restored the connection before they could do more than bounce off the wall.
Beside me, Gurathin stumbled and caught himself heavily on the wall.
I should have known our escape was going too well.
What's wrong? I asked him in the feed. When he didn't respond, I repeated it out loud.
"Didn't you feel that?" He coughed a little. "Augment kill. I guess it wouldn't affect you."
I didn't like the word "kill" in there. I hadn't actually realized that was a thing. "Are your augments offline?"
"Couldn't you tell?"
I guess his voice wasn't augmented. Unfortunately.
But when he hesitated to take a step forward, I realized we had a problem. A big one. Like most humans who were augmented on his level, Gurathin's augments ran data to and from his visual cortex. That was a pretty common way of doing it, because humans liked to "see" things, and running data to the visual cortex was a common way of displaying it. Iris had that, too. However, this meant that his augments were handling the input from his eyes. It was why I was able to tap into the flow of date from his eyes like a camera, when he let me, and why I'd been able to cut it off when we were hardwired that one time.
And now something -- StationSec, probably -- had just done that for him.
Meanwhile I was in the system feed for the CR station we were currently trying to escape from, pulling all the data I could from StationSys. They wouldn't just do that for no reason. There was no station-wide alert, but I could feel busy little hives of activity in StationSec, which I hadn't bothered hacking into before because I was handling it from the hub end -- no need to hack security if security never knew there was a threat.
Apparently they now knew there was a threat. I threw a couple of processes toward getting into their systems, and started another one searching for increased security presence -- oh yeah, there were extra guards on the docks. Wonderful. It was pretty clear from the lack of a high alert that they didn't know exactly what was going on, but they'd definitely figured out something was.
Gurathin was still standing there, looking blank. I guess I would too, if someone cut my visuals. I wondered what else he'd lost and how much this was going to slow us down. I couldn't feel him at all, which was weird, and without hardwiring, which we couldn't stop for, there was nothing I could do to help. The system wasn't actively blocking him. It had simply caused him to go offline. I couldn't imagine how horrible that would feel for me, but Gurathin was a lot more organic than I was. This had never really seemed like a benefit to me before.
I grabbed his arm, the way I was used to moving my humans around when they were being slow and I needed to. I'd done it with him plenty of times. But he jumped. Of course, he didn't know I was going to do that because he couldn't see me. Stupid Murderbot. Stupid Gurathin too, for letting this happen to him.
"I can't see," he said unnecessarily. His arm had gone still in my grasp.
"I know. That's why I'm touching you. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise," I said, already pulling him into motion. That made him smile, but he stumbled a little, almost walking into me. That wasn't normal. Humans relied on their sight to orient themselves in space, I knew that because some aspects of my own processing were similar, but he shouldn't be that disoriented. "I'll take you where you need to go. Tell me what's offline. The important functions, the ones that matter." Deity knew what random augments he had. I certainly didn't want to hear about it in any more detail than I had to.
"Well, uh, visual processing, obviously," he began as I guided him down the hall as swiftly as I could get him to move, meanwhile spreading out my drones into a wider perimeter. I dropped the dock inputs for now; we wouldn't be there for a little while, so it didn't matter yet, and I needed to get that processing power back if I was going to get into StationSec properly.
"What else?" I asked, because he had paused to navigate the floor.
"Uh, some of my proprioception is handled through my augments." He was still unstable, legs trying to tangle up, which bothered me in a way I wasn't going to think about. He brought his own hand around to grip the hand I had on his arm, putting his hand over mine, then realized he was doing and jerked it away. I could tell he was looking for additional stability.
"You can do that," I said. "Just let go if I do." He nodded, and although I didn't want to admit I didn't know, I asked anyway because I figured that I needed to know for mission purposes. "What's proprioception?" Stupid shitty language models.
"My awareness of myself in space. Balance, stuff like that."
"Why in the world would you have augments for that?"
"It helps with coordination and speed. Not getting sick in zero gee. That kind of thing."
"Humans," I muttered. I hadn't noticed Gurathin being any more coordinated than your average human, and considerably less so than some. Maybe he'd been really terrible at it before. "What else?"
"There's also one that's -- that is, was supporting some of the nerve functions in my knee from that thing on the survey planet." With all of his other wobbling around, I hadn't noticed, but it was true that he was moving his legs a little oddly. He hesitated briefly, then said, "Those are the only ones that matter to us now."
My drones alerted me to a security patrol up ahead, so I had to guide us a different way to the lift network than I was planning to go. "What else?" I asked. "From the way you said that, there are other ones."
"You said you only need to know about the ones that matter."
"Okay, for the sake of information, just tell me what else there is."
I couldn't understand his hesitation until he started talking again. "Liver and kidneys. Those are down right now."
I couldn't remember off the top of my head what human livers and kidneys did, but I was pretty sure they were necessary. "Is it normal to have augments for that?"
"No, SecUnit," he said impatiently. "We'll talk about it later."
I added a brand new process, which was pulling information off the station feed on human organ function. I hoped it wasn't too gross. "How long until that becomes a problem?"
After a pause which was probably not as long for him as it felt like for me, he said, "Longer than it'll take us to get to a transport, and if we aren't there by then, it won't be our biggest problem."
I put a priority flag on that download.
***
4. Babylon 5 - Londo having visions of AU realities
Prompt: Londo gets visions from a timeline where he made different choices? (any point in canon)
Posted on Tumblr here
Like the above Murderbot ficlet, this was intended to be part of something longer, which didn't materialize, so I'm posting the part of it that I have. I hope someday to make a complete fic out of it.
--
The dreams begin on the night after Londo meets G'Kar in the Zócalo for a drink he never expected to have, the night after they sign the accord (on separate pages) and, maybe, take the first tentative steps toward ... something different than what they've been before.
That night, he dreams.
Nightmares are nothing out of the ordinary for him, especially the past couple of years. But this dream has that peculiar ringing clarity that goes along with his true-dreams, the death-dream and the others. The ones that have all come true (shadow-ships flying overhead, looking up into the blue Centauri Prime sky) or will come true (iron-strong Narn hands wrapped around his throat).
He is in the throne room, and Cartagia is on the throne. Also hardly unusual for his recent nightmares. But this is an older Cartagia, his short crest streaked with gray, his once-lean body and handsome face now showing damage from the wantonness of over-indulgence.
The throne room is dim, the curtains show signs that the servants have not been dusting frequently.
Cringing, obviously frightened, a courtier approaches Cartagia. "Majesty, we have heard back from the fleet, the campaign to recapture Beta IV --"
Cartagia waves a hand through the air. "Do we care? Tell us something interesting. Good news, preferably."
"Majesty, there is very little good news. The latest campaigns go badly --"
Londo, who spent too much time in Cartagia's court not to know how Cartagia deals with news he doesn't want to hear, even in dreams, turns away and so he only hears the wet, meaty thud.
A hand touches Londo's arm and he nearly jumps out of his skin before the awareness comes that this is a dream and nothing can hurt him. Still, when he turns his head, he does not expect to see Lady Morella beside him. She, too, looks older and much wearier than when he last saw her. There is a scar on the side of her face, jagged, from near her eye to the corner of her mouth.
She is frowning at him as if she knows him but can't place him. "Come," she breathes, barely moving her lips, and they retreat through the curtains together into an adjacent hallway.
This too is wrong ... the floor stained, a drunken couple groaning in the corner. They go past them until they enter an empty apartment, and Morella turns to fix Londo with her keen stare.
"I have seen you before," she says quietly.
"You prophesied my rise to the throne, Lady."
Morella shakes her head slowly.
It is a dream, Londo reminds himself, his stomach cold. This is not even a theoretical future that could come to be, because Cartagia is dead; Londo held his body in his own arms, watched the life go out of his eyes, saw the royal physicians declare him dead.
"Can you tell me what has happened here?" Londo asks her.
"What do you mean?" Morella draws her gaze back from somewhere distant.
"Cartagia sits on the throne. What did they mean, the campaign goes badly? What campaign?"
"The war." Morella gazes at him, her eyes sharp. "The second Narn war. We are eight years into it now. You don't know any of this, do you?"
"No, Lady." This is a dream, he thinks rather desperately, fingering the carved woodwork on the back of a chair beside him. Everything seems so real, the slight mustiness of the unaired room, the smell of blood ... "Tell me, why are we at war with Narn again?"
"They attacked us at Ragesh IV. We attacked them back. Border skirmishes, flaring into a true war that neither will back down from. They mean to wipe us out this time. They have made allegiances with the Drazi and others." She draws a sudden breath. "I do know you. I met you once, on Babylon 5 --"
"Yes, Lady," he says, almost desperate to grasp some thread of familiarity. "You gave me a prophesy --"
"I do not remember that. It was after Turhan died. I met you briefly at the funeral ... the ambassador we sent to the human space station."
"Yes, Lady." He was never at Turhan's funeral. "Can you tell me -- er -- did we speak there?"
"Briefly, I believe." She looks at him with a kind of sympathy, almost pity. "Yours was a position of little importance, I am afraid."
It had been, he thinks numbly. A joke, a laughingstock. "Do you -- know what happened to me after that?"
"No," she says impatiently. "I assume you went back there."
"Yes, I have been, er, out of the loop for some time. Tell me more of the war with the Narns. Eight years?" With Cartagia on the throne .... "What of our occupation of Narn?"
"In Turhan's father's time?"
"No," he says, again with that cold feeling. "More recently."
"Could we even manage it now?" Lady Morella breathes. "I suppose I should be glad Turhan didn't live to see this. He always believed peace with the Narn could be achieved, even after the Ragesh attack. But this war grinds on, we kill them, they kill us, they take our colonies, we take theirs."
"And may I assume," Londo says slowly, "that we have no -- um -- no powerful allies in this war, no one to help us?"
"Why does it matter to you?" Once again her keen eyes turn on him. "I see so much around you that I cannot understand. Blood and shadows ... though none of that is a surprise in this terrible place." She leaned closer, peering at him. Her voice fell. "You do not belong here."
Londo wakes with a yelp and a jolt, tangled in his bedcovers and drenched in sweat. He has to reach for the chrono display on his screen to be sure that it was the same night he thought it was.
Only a dream, he thinks, pouring himself a glass of brivari with a shaking hand. Sleep is definitely not happening again that night. The strange vision of an older, dissolute Cartagia floats in his mind's eye, oddly vivid. And Morella with that scar ... he should have asked how she got it, and then is glad he did not.
It could not be a true dream. The things that have happened already -- Cartagia's death, the Shadow alliance, all of it -- cannot be undone.
But he finds himself thinking, as he refills his glass after having barely tasted the first: if he had never welcomed Mr. Morden's company, the war would not have happened -- not as such; but Turhan would still have died, one way or another. Cartagia or someone like him would have ascended to the throne. The war with the Narn would not have happened ... or would it? They were eager for another war, as they had proven at Ragesh. His people were too.
"I do not know what you wish to tell me," he says aloud, to the universe at large. "But I would like you to stop it. Consider your message to have been received, whatever it is."
But the universe, of course, is not that kind.
1. Babylon 5 - Londo/G'Kar sex pollen
Posted on AO3 here (explicit; 3700 wds)
***
2. Biggles - kid!Fritz and touch-starved Erich
Prompt: Young Fritz is very openly affectionate and touch-deprived Erich isn’t sure how to react to this
Posted on Tumblr here
"Uncle Erich!"
Erich had only a moment to brace himself before the boy flung his small arms around Erich's legs. Erich staggered a little, trying not to wince at the sharp bolt of pain through his leg. He had to search inside himself to find the right tone, the right joking words, a quote from a long-dead uncle of his own.
"God in Heaven, Hanne, is this Fritz? It can't be. He's so tall!"
He must have found the right words, the right tone, because Fritz giggled against his leg, and Hanne was smiling in the careworn way that looked strange to him on her still-youthful face. Erich was not quite sure what to do with his hands. He patted the boy's shoulder, expecting him to let go, but nothing of the sort happened until Hanne, evidently recognizing his discomfort, moved in and detached Fritz with practiced skill.
"Did you bring me a present, Uncle?" Fritz asked, beaming up at him. "Greta's papa always brings her presents when he comes to visit."
He did indeed have an orange in his pocket, and while Fritz peeled it with meticulous care, Erich quietly gave Hanne the more important of the two presents, a slightly crumpled envelope with money inside. She peeked in, shook her head and tried to shove it back at him, but Erich pushed it firmly back into her hands.
"For the boy's sake," Erich said softly, "if nothing else."
Hanne's lips twisted, but she shoved the envelope into the pocket of her faded housedress.
She had saved some of their dinner for him, though he knew they could ill afford to spare it. And then Hanne brought out a dusty bottle of brandy with a few fingers left in the bottom -- where she'd got it, he couldn't imagine, but she poured a small glass for each of them, and a very tiny taste for Fritz so he could feel like a proper member of the party (which he tasted, made a face, and ate his last, carefully hoarded quarter of orange).
It was past Fritz's bedtime, but Hanne did not make him go to bed. There was a single sofa with sagging springs, and that was where Erich and Hanne sat, with Fritz curled up between them, leaning trustingly against Erich and blinking slowly. While the adults talked, he wilted sideways until Erich had his lap full of the small, warm burden.
"Would you like me to rescue you?" Hanne asked quietly, her lips quirking up. "He usually sleeps here, but he can sleep in my bed tonight, and you'll have a blanket out here."
"No need," Erich replied. He became aware that at some point, he had begun to cautiously stroke the boy's hair with his hand -- his callused, killer's hand. "I don't intend to stay the night. I just wanted to --" To see both of you "-- to deliver what I brought, and then I must be off. This is not a safe place for me right now."
"Off to where?" Hanne asked, but he didn't answer, and she sighed but did not ask again.
Fritz was utterly limp, twitching in his sleep, like a young puppy. If he knew, Erich thought -- If he knew who I really am, what I really am .... But all Fritz knew of his uncle was whatever stories his mother had told him, as well as Erich's own carefully curated tales, turning his own tragedies into thrilling bedtime stories of adventure and excitement. Perhaps it was not too selfish to enjoy these last moments of the boy's lingering innocence before he learned too much. Or perhaps Erich was too tired to deny himself. He rested his hand on Fritz's small head, the soft golden curls springing up around his fingers.
"Wherever you're going," Hanne said, "I'm sure it's far away. Bring him something back. He'll treasure it." She eyed him keenly, perhaps sensing a little of what he was not saying. "At least bring yourself back. He'll treasure that most of all."
Erich could not find words to respond. Hanne poured out the last of the brandy, and Erich took the glass with his free hand while the boy slept in his lap, jerking a little now and then. Erich began stroking Fritz's hair again. Perhaps he would stay the night, he thought. He was very tired, and tired men made mistakes. The boat did not leave until dawn.
***
3. Murderbot - Gurathin's augments go out while escaping something in the CR
Prompt: while running from CR bullshit, Gurathin's augments - all of them - are temporarily out of commission and he has to rely on Murderbot to get him to safety while he's terribly out of it. <3
Posted on Tumblr here
This was intended to be a full-length fic, but basically stalled out and got stuck for several months at this point, so it's posted here as-is.
--
I felt it happen, but didn't realize at first what it was or how much of a problem it was going to be. The feed blipped out, then came back. My firewalls were fine. I lost my drones for an instant, but restored the connection before they could do more than bounce off the wall.
Beside me, Gurathin stumbled and caught himself heavily on the wall.
I should have known our escape was going too well.
What's wrong? I asked him in the feed. When he didn't respond, I repeated it out loud.
"Didn't you feel that?" He coughed a little. "Augment kill. I guess it wouldn't affect you."
I didn't like the word "kill" in there. I hadn't actually realized that was a thing. "Are your augments offline?"
"Couldn't you tell?"
I guess his voice wasn't augmented. Unfortunately.
But when he hesitated to take a step forward, I realized we had a problem. A big one. Like most humans who were augmented on his level, Gurathin's augments ran data to and from his visual cortex. That was a pretty common way of doing it, because humans liked to "see" things, and running data to the visual cortex was a common way of displaying it. Iris had that, too. However, this meant that his augments were handling the input from his eyes. It was why I was able to tap into the flow of date from his eyes like a camera, when he let me, and why I'd been able to cut it off when we were hardwired that one time.
And now something -- StationSec, probably -- had just done that for him.
Meanwhile I was in the system feed for the CR station we were currently trying to escape from, pulling all the data I could from StationSys. They wouldn't just do that for no reason. There was no station-wide alert, but I could feel busy little hives of activity in StationSec, which I hadn't bothered hacking into before because I was handling it from the hub end -- no need to hack security if security never knew there was a threat.
Apparently they now knew there was a threat. I threw a couple of processes toward getting into their systems, and started another one searching for increased security presence -- oh yeah, there were extra guards on the docks. Wonderful. It was pretty clear from the lack of a high alert that they didn't know exactly what was going on, but they'd definitely figured out something was.
Gurathin was still standing there, looking blank. I guess I would too, if someone cut my visuals. I wondered what else he'd lost and how much this was going to slow us down. I couldn't feel him at all, which was weird, and without hardwiring, which we couldn't stop for, there was nothing I could do to help. The system wasn't actively blocking him. It had simply caused him to go offline. I couldn't imagine how horrible that would feel for me, but Gurathin was a lot more organic than I was. This had never really seemed like a benefit to me before.
I grabbed his arm, the way I was used to moving my humans around when they were being slow and I needed to. I'd done it with him plenty of times. But he jumped. Of course, he didn't know I was going to do that because he couldn't see me. Stupid Murderbot. Stupid Gurathin too, for letting this happen to him.
"I can't see," he said unnecessarily. His arm had gone still in my grasp.
"I know. That's why I'm touching you. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise," I said, already pulling him into motion. That made him smile, but he stumbled a little, almost walking into me. That wasn't normal. Humans relied on their sight to orient themselves in space, I knew that because some aspects of my own processing were similar, but he shouldn't be that disoriented. "I'll take you where you need to go. Tell me what's offline. The important functions, the ones that matter." Deity knew what random augments he had. I certainly didn't want to hear about it in any more detail than I had to.
"Well, uh, visual processing, obviously," he began as I guided him down the hall as swiftly as I could get him to move, meanwhile spreading out my drones into a wider perimeter. I dropped the dock inputs for now; we wouldn't be there for a little while, so it didn't matter yet, and I needed to get that processing power back if I was going to get into StationSec properly.
"What else?" I asked, because he had paused to navigate the floor.
"Uh, some of my proprioception is handled through my augments." He was still unstable, legs trying to tangle up, which bothered me in a way I wasn't going to think about. He brought his own hand around to grip the hand I had on his arm, putting his hand over mine, then realized he was doing and jerked it away. I could tell he was looking for additional stability.
"You can do that," I said. "Just let go if I do." He nodded, and although I didn't want to admit I didn't know, I asked anyway because I figured that I needed to know for mission purposes. "What's proprioception?" Stupid shitty language models.
"My awareness of myself in space. Balance, stuff like that."
"Why in the world would you have augments for that?"
"It helps with coordination and speed. Not getting sick in zero gee. That kind of thing."
"Humans," I muttered. I hadn't noticed Gurathin being any more coordinated than your average human, and considerably less so than some. Maybe he'd been really terrible at it before. "What else?"
"There's also one that's -- that is, was supporting some of the nerve functions in my knee from that thing on the survey planet." With all of his other wobbling around, I hadn't noticed, but it was true that he was moving his legs a little oddly. He hesitated briefly, then said, "Those are the only ones that matter to us now."
My drones alerted me to a security patrol up ahead, so I had to guide us a different way to the lift network than I was planning to go. "What else?" I asked. "From the way you said that, there are other ones."
"You said you only need to know about the ones that matter."
"Okay, for the sake of information, just tell me what else there is."
I couldn't understand his hesitation until he started talking again. "Liver and kidneys. Those are down right now."
I couldn't remember off the top of my head what human livers and kidneys did, but I was pretty sure they were necessary. "Is it normal to have augments for that?"
"No, SecUnit," he said impatiently. "We'll talk about it later."
I added a brand new process, which was pulling information off the station feed on human organ function. I hoped it wasn't too gross. "How long until that becomes a problem?"
After a pause which was probably not as long for him as it felt like for me, he said, "Longer than it'll take us to get to a transport, and if we aren't there by then, it won't be our biggest problem."
I put a priority flag on that download.
***
4. Babylon 5 - Londo having visions of AU realities
Prompt: Londo gets visions from a timeline where he made different choices? (any point in canon)
Posted on Tumblr here
Like the above Murderbot ficlet, this was intended to be part of something longer, which didn't materialize, so I'm posting the part of it that I have. I hope someday to make a complete fic out of it.
--
The dreams begin on the night after Londo meets G'Kar in the Zócalo for a drink he never expected to have, the night after they sign the accord (on separate pages) and, maybe, take the first tentative steps toward ... something different than what they've been before.
That night, he dreams.
Nightmares are nothing out of the ordinary for him, especially the past couple of years. But this dream has that peculiar ringing clarity that goes along with his true-dreams, the death-dream and the others. The ones that have all come true (shadow-ships flying overhead, looking up into the blue Centauri Prime sky) or will come true (iron-strong Narn hands wrapped around his throat).
He is in the throne room, and Cartagia is on the throne. Also hardly unusual for his recent nightmares. But this is an older Cartagia, his short crest streaked with gray, his once-lean body and handsome face now showing damage from the wantonness of over-indulgence.
The throne room is dim, the curtains show signs that the servants have not been dusting frequently.
Cringing, obviously frightened, a courtier approaches Cartagia. "Majesty, we have heard back from the fleet, the campaign to recapture Beta IV --"
Cartagia waves a hand through the air. "Do we care? Tell us something interesting. Good news, preferably."
"Majesty, there is very little good news. The latest campaigns go badly --"
Londo, who spent too much time in Cartagia's court not to know how Cartagia deals with news he doesn't want to hear, even in dreams, turns away and so he only hears the wet, meaty thud.
A hand touches Londo's arm and he nearly jumps out of his skin before the awareness comes that this is a dream and nothing can hurt him. Still, when he turns his head, he does not expect to see Lady Morella beside him. She, too, looks older and much wearier than when he last saw her. There is a scar on the side of her face, jagged, from near her eye to the corner of her mouth.
She is frowning at him as if she knows him but can't place him. "Come," she breathes, barely moving her lips, and they retreat through the curtains together into an adjacent hallway.
This too is wrong ... the floor stained, a drunken couple groaning in the corner. They go past them until they enter an empty apartment, and Morella turns to fix Londo with her keen stare.
"I have seen you before," she says quietly.
"You prophesied my rise to the throne, Lady."
Morella shakes her head slowly.
It is a dream, Londo reminds himself, his stomach cold. This is not even a theoretical future that could come to be, because Cartagia is dead; Londo held his body in his own arms, watched the life go out of his eyes, saw the royal physicians declare him dead.
"Can you tell me what has happened here?" Londo asks her.
"What do you mean?" Morella draws her gaze back from somewhere distant.
"Cartagia sits on the throne. What did they mean, the campaign goes badly? What campaign?"
"The war." Morella gazes at him, her eyes sharp. "The second Narn war. We are eight years into it now. You don't know any of this, do you?"
"No, Lady." This is a dream, he thinks rather desperately, fingering the carved woodwork on the back of a chair beside him. Everything seems so real, the slight mustiness of the unaired room, the smell of blood ... "Tell me, why are we at war with Narn again?"
"They attacked us at Ragesh IV. We attacked them back. Border skirmishes, flaring into a true war that neither will back down from. They mean to wipe us out this time. They have made allegiances with the Drazi and others." She draws a sudden breath. "I do know you. I met you once, on Babylon 5 --"
"Yes, Lady," he says, almost desperate to grasp some thread of familiarity. "You gave me a prophesy --"
"I do not remember that. It was after Turhan died. I met you briefly at the funeral ... the ambassador we sent to the human space station."
"Yes, Lady." He was never at Turhan's funeral. "Can you tell me -- er -- did we speak there?"
"Briefly, I believe." She looks at him with a kind of sympathy, almost pity. "Yours was a position of little importance, I am afraid."
It had been, he thinks numbly. A joke, a laughingstock. "Do you -- know what happened to me after that?"
"No," she says impatiently. "I assume you went back there."
"Yes, I have been, er, out of the loop for some time. Tell me more of the war with the Narns. Eight years?" With Cartagia on the throne .... "What of our occupation of Narn?"
"In Turhan's father's time?"
"No," he says, again with that cold feeling. "More recently."
"Could we even manage it now?" Lady Morella breathes. "I suppose I should be glad Turhan didn't live to see this. He always believed peace with the Narn could be achieved, even after the Ragesh attack. But this war grinds on, we kill them, they kill us, they take our colonies, we take theirs."
"And may I assume," Londo says slowly, "that we have no -- um -- no powerful allies in this war, no one to help us?"
"Why does it matter to you?" Once again her keen eyes turn on him. "I see so much around you that I cannot understand. Blood and shadows ... though none of that is a surprise in this terrible place." She leaned closer, peering at him. Her voice fell. "You do not belong here."
Londo wakes with a yelp and a jolt, tangled in his bedcovers and drenched in sweat. He has to reach for the chrono display on his screen to be sure that it was the same night he thought it was.
Only a dream, he thinks, pouring himself a glass of brivari with a shaking hand. Sleep is definitely not happening again that night. The strange vision of an older, dissolute Cartagia floats in his mind's eye, oddly vivid. And Morella with that scar ... he should have asked how she got it, and then is glad he did not.
It could not be a true dream. The things that have happened already -- Cartagia's death, the Shadow alliance, all of it -- cannot be undone.
But he finds himself thinking, as he refills his glass after having barely tasted the first: if he had never welcomed Mr. Morden's company, the war would not have happened -- not as such; but Turhan would still have died, one way or another. Cartagia or someone like him would have ascended to the throne. The war with the Narn would not have happened ... or would it? They were eager for another war, as they had proven at Ragesh. His people were too.
"I do not know what you wish to tell me," he says aloud, to the universe at large. "But I would like you to stop it. Consider your message to have been received, whatever it is."
But the universe, of course, is not that kind.
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AU or not, that encompasses a lot of Londo's relationship with the universe.
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