From dejla@ix.netcom.com Tue Dec 24 22:59:11 1996 Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:40:56 -0800 From: Deborah Laymon To: b5-creative@lists.best.com Subject: New: The Defence of Guinevere All this may mean is that I've read too much William Morris over the years. However, it came totally out of left field [which only proves that I write wtih my subconscious], and demanded a space in the writing queue. WARNING: THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR ZHA'HA'DUM. DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR ZHA'HA'DUM. Secondly... this has no sex, no real violence, and probably no slush, depending on how you define slush. I don't have any idea how to classify it, except as... Something out of the right brain. T H E D E F E N S E O F G U E N E V E R E The Defence of Guinevere Deborah June Laymon [all the usual disclaimers apply to this] 'And that was all the parting that they had, In the haystack by the floods...'* And there they all were: the man in between, Anna--//not Anna, not my Anna, but her ghost//--and Morden, the Shadows'--//what? messenger? scout? catamite?//, staring at him. All the arguments, the ones he'd heard in German, in Russian, in French... Arguments he'd heard from a PsyCop. Him, with a small PPG palmed in his fist, trying to stay calm. Those voices, the mad little chittering of roaches running over his feet, the chitinous clacking of claws on stone, creeping towards him, as if he would be distracted, taken by surprise. He whirled, made a clear hit with one. The other leaped on him, its needle feet hunting for the back of his neck, slicing at his face, digging into him with its small glass claws, hugging him as if it could somehow merge with him. It seemed to be melting into him, dissolving itself into his substance, his mind. At close range, he shot, and the pressure wave scorched him as it forced the vicious creature back, where it lay supine, screaming, turning to ashes as he watched. The screaming shook the walls, speared his eardrums, sent the bones in his body vibrating as if they would splinter. He spun back in time to knock Morden back, to send Justin down. Morden, in spite of the gaping wound in his shoulder, the smoke of cauterization spiraling upwards from it, crawled towards Anna, as if he could shield her with his body. And she pulled him to her, as if to cover him. So they had twisted her this far, changed her this much, that she would take one of them... Whatever he said, Anna turned pale, as if something in her could still feel shame, and Morden blanched with fury. That made him run. Not the fury. The words. He ran. They herded him. He knew they forced him, hall to stone hall, through this door first and then this one. 'No hiding place, no hiding place down here...' Delenn's voice, choked with tears, "I love you..." The arguments of history: 'only the strong survive'; 'survival of the fittest'; 'weeding out of the genetically impure'; 'telepaths are the future, the next step of evolution--it is our right and our responsibility to lead the weaker, the defectives, the unevolved...' He would have held his ears against them, but the words rattled in his head, only real in his mind. 'Lebensraum.' Destiny. Fate. "I don't," he said to the mind-voices, "give a damn for destiny. I don't--I don't believe in fate." 'Don't go to Zha'ha'dum.' Her voice again. Afraid for him. How much had she known? How much did that matter now? "Delenn," he said, as he came out at the end of this corridor. A balcony. Looking down over a city. A city built out of shadows, with its brilliant flames dancing in the night, spilling spicy-sweet smoke across the planet. Looking down into darkness. A stone in front of his toe bounced, rolled, slid off the edge of that balcony, and fell without sound. He strained to hear it hit bottom. Nothing. And then, they were there. And so was she. "I can love you as well as she can..." As whom? As Anna? As Delenn? The eyes that were not Anna's eyes, staring at him over Morden's enraged face. "You keep your filthy mind away from her, damn you--" "Morden..." "No!" Pulling himself up from her, even though she clutched at him, terrified for him. Morden's face, with the expression so oddly evocative of someone else. "Call me by my name." "Your name?" "David." "David." His guts froze with the name, tightening, afraid of the next words. "Do you think your precious lying Vorlons are the only ones with machines? A man has a right to be born--" spitting the word out like venom, "Father." And then the almost-childish, the beserk wrath of, "Don't you dare talk about my mother like that!" He could have laughed then. Now he could not laugh. David. Delenn's son. Anna's son. His son. His son, dying by his hand. He turned back to the fall, staring down into the dark, and heard his father's voice. His voice. Kosh's voice. "Father." With an explosion of raw sunlight, and the flames of hell, the White Star burst through the dome. A rush of dry arctic air poisoned the dome atmosphere. Jump. With David's words in his ears--"Father"--echoing in his ears, he threw himself over the balcony and went down into the darkness. Seeing her face--'I love you'--hearing her voice, and behind it, around it, hearing the others. Jump. We have David. David is our son. The two women's voices merging, jangling out of harmony, the words the same. We have a son. We have David. And the change in Morden's voice, as he lay there watching, those last words, that last-- "Dad. Dad, don't go." Don't go to Zha'ha'dum. *no, this isn't from The Defence of Guenvere. This is from Morris' 'The Haystack by the Floods'. Deborah Laymon dejla@ix.netcom.com You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.