From s.phillips25@genie.com Tue Dec 24 17:22:49 1996
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 96 22:35:00 GMT
From: s.phillips25@genie.com
To: b5-creative@lists.best.com
Subject: New story:  On the Road to Fin

This is an expurgated version of a story from the other list.  With
apologies to Peter David, the title is:

                "On the Road to Find Out"

and takes place after WWE.  It's yet another take on the Garibaldi's
reaction after learning about Sinclair's disappearance.  There is some
implied sex here, but I think I took out any offending passages.

As usual, Michael Garibaldi and Babylon 5 are copyright Babylonian
Productions and Warner Bros.  Janna is copyright 1996 by Susan C. Phillips.
(that's me.)  No infringement is intended and no profit can possible be made
on this.



They gave him some cockamamie story about Jeff going back in time,
 becoming Valen, of all things.  Yeah, right.  He was a big boy, he
 could take bad news.  why didn't they just tell him the truth.
 Tell him that Jeff was dead.  The end result was the same, wasn't
 it?  No more Jeff.  No more secret messages, banter.  No more
 support group.

No more friend.

They'd had enough time coming back on the White Star to get their
 stories straight, that's for sure.  He wondered who'd actually
 thought up this one.  Sheridan?  Naah, probably not.  He was too
 straight arrow, a good man, but his imagination needed a lot more
 to prime it.  It was probably a joint venture between Delenn and
 that Marcus fellow.  They were the ones who knew most about this
 Valen character.  They'd figured something out that would fit all
 the criteria, all -their- criteria.

But it didn't fit his.

Michael Garibaldi stormed through Downbelow.  People kept out of
 his way, even though he wasn't in uniform.  All he wanted was a
 little time to sort this out.  A little time to figure out if he
 wanted to stay associated with people who lied so blatantly to
 someone who was supposed to be a friend, an ally.  Even Susan....

That was who he couldn't figure out, who he didn't have any
 explanation for.  Why had she gone along with them?  Such
 pragmatism, such Russian stoicism, he wouldn't have suspected it of
 Susan Ivanova.  But she'd just gone along with them.  Nodded at the
 right times.  Her eyes were hurt, haunted, much like what he saw
 when he looked in a mirror.  But --

It couldn't be.  Something had happened.  Something really nasty,
 so bad that there was no body to return.  So bad that they couldn't
 tell him.  He wanted to scream and rail at someone, at anything.
 Gave himself a wry smile when he realized that he had.  Delenn had
 stood there and took it, serene, but with tears filling her eyes.
 Tears for whose pain?  His?  Or Jeff's?  She'd been Jeff's friend
 too...why couldn't she give him the good grace to tell him the
 damned truth?

A door opened before him.  A bar.  A bar.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Go in, sit down, get drunk.  Drown the pain, the betrayal, fill the
 Sinclair sized hole in his soul.  He followed the sound of people,
 found a table in the back, flagged down a waiter.  He ordered
 whiskey, told the fellow to leave the bottle.  It tasted strange,
 bitter at first.  But he kept drinking, kept pouring from the
 bottle until he was home again.  Home inside the haven of alcohol.
 Fascinating bit of information; the pain didn't go away.

So he kept drinking.

Why had they lied to him?  That was what hurt almost as much as the
 loss of his best friend.  Why?  Garibaldi drank some more, was
 barely aware when tears formed in his eyes, when they began making
 their way down his face.  "Damn them."  There was a crash that he
 couldn't identify, didn't recognize as being from his table, being
 the sound of the bottle and glasses being swept from before him to
 land on the floor.

A big bruiser started toward him.  A fight.  Yeah.  Come on.
 That's what I need, something physical, to distract me from the
 physical pain.  Jeff, dammit, Jeff....   Through blurred eyes, he
 saw a smaller figure come between him and the bouncer, put a hand
 on the man's chest, say something he couldn't make out.  "Come on,
 damn it.  Scared?"  His voice sounded loud, sounded soft, sounded
 blurry even to him.  He hadn't drunk that much...had he?  Oh god,
 Jeff....

The figure that had stopped his prospective opponent coalesced into
 a female...human, as far as he could tell.  "I think you've had
 enough."

He shook his head, tried to tell her that there would never be
 enough to make it right, that it would never be right again for
 him.  But the words didn't come.  He realized suddenly that he was
 sitting down again, from being standing --  he thought -- when the
 bouncer had come forward.  The woman was sitting next to him, and
 the bottle and glasses had been cleaned up.  He put his head in his
 hands.

She put a hand on his shoulder.  "Are you going to be okay?"

He wanted to say no, but what came out of his mouth was  "Yeah,
 eventually.  Woulda been better if I'd creamed that guy though."

She laughed, crystalline in the noise that had sprung up again
 after his outburst.  "That's K'tal...he used to fight in the Mutai.

I don't think so.  Not in your current state."  Her face came into
 focus as she leaned in towards him.  "Not that I don't think you
 could...on your good days."

He peered at her.  Golden eyes, cat's pupils.  Human?  Yeah,
 probably just one of those fad things.  He'd never been into that
 sort of thing.  She continued, "Do you have a place to go?"

A place.  Not anymore.  Not without Jeff.  Even with Sinclair being
 off station, B5 had been his place, security had been what and who
 he was.  But that had been in a universe where his friend still
 lived.  Where Jeff was still somewhere, still fighting the good
 fight.  When he didn't respond, her face softened.  "Come on."

He shook his head, didn't want to go.  This was where he belonged
 now.  But his body apparently had other ideas.  He found himself
 standing, leaning a bit unsteadily on her shoulder.  She was about
 shoulder height on him, and stronger than he'd thought.

There were rooms back behind the club.  She took him to a couple of
 them, laid him out on a bed.  "Here, get some rest."

"No, no.  Don't want to sleep."  If he slept, there'd be the dreams
 again.  Dreams he couldn't get away from since the day he'd seen
 Jeff's message, heard that he wouldn't be coming back.  That had
 started it...and thinking about it just brought back how awful his
 so-called friends were.  Jeff had intended not to come back; they
 should have seen to it he did.  Where had they been?

"Okay, okay."  She looked at him.  He allowed her to seat him on
 the bed at least.  "You got problems, so do we all.  You want to
 talk about it?"

Talk about it.  To a stranger.  Yeah, maybe it would help.  Maybe
 it wouldn't.  But it was eating him up inside and he couldn't just
 leave it.  He'd talked himself out to Susan, to Marcus, to Delenn
 and just gotten the same tired old story.  The same impossible
 tale.  So he told this stranger what had happened, leaving out
 names.

She'd left twice, brought back dark, black coffee....  He broke off
 suddenly.  "This is real stuff."

She smiled.  "Yeah, costs me a fortune, but it helps around here."

Garibaldi was beginning to tire, beginning to forget what he was,
 why he was there.  But --  "You got a name?"

"Now he asks."  She chuckled.  "Janna.  My name is Janna."

"That it?"

"That's all you're getting.  What do I call you?"

"Mike...you can call me Mike."  A part of him wondered why he was
 letting her call him that, but realized that it was sufficiently
 different to what anyone else called him that it wouldn't bring
 back memories he couldn't handle.

"Okay, Mike, you've lost a friend.  It happens."  She came to sit
 next to him.  They stared into identical cups of coffee for a
 moment.  "Life goes on."

He shook his head.  "No.  Not for me.  Not just goes on.  And I
 didn't just lose -a- friend, Janna.  My best friend.  Sometimes,"
 he was a little ashamed at the catch in his voice, "I think he was
 my only real friend."  He slugged down some of the rich liquid.  "I
 mean, real friends would tell you the truth, wouldn't they?"

The woman took a moment.  "They should."  When she looked over at
 him, he saw a cloud in her own eyes, turning them burnished gold.
 "Sometimes, that isn't always the best thing."  She reached toward
 the table to lay her cup down.  Put her other hand on his shoulder.

"Maybe these friends of yours, maybe they just wanted to let you
 down easily."

"Yeah, right."  His head was beginning to throb now, beginning to
 hurt.  He'd forgotten what liquor did.  It didn't really help, just
 gave him another pain to deal with.  "Coming up with this stupid
 piece of fiction...back in time, for god's sake."  He shrugged even
 though it hurt.  "Least they all had the same details."

Janna nodded.  She seemed farther away than before.  For the first
 time, he began to think that maybe there was something more to her
 own story than he knew about.  "I think some of the truth...I think
 you should know at least some of the truth...in a situation like
 this, I mean."

"You've lost friends like this before?"  Concern yourself about
 someone else?  Maybe that's what it took.  Jeff...

"Once.  Oh, not just like this, Mike.  This is pretty weird, you
 gotta admit, but I've lost a friend.  He was a scout...on the rim.
 Just disappeared one day.  Except ---"

"Except you found out differently."

Her smile was twisted.  "You could say that."

Garibaldi sat still for a moment.  He had to, movement tended to
 make the room spin and his gut threaten to explode.  The silence
 seemed to last forever for a moment.  He was seeing more clearly,
 at least physically, there wasn't two of her anymore, but he didn't
 trust himself to stand up and leave.  Staying down here...  He
 became aware that she was talking  "...you don't really want to
 stay here, do you?"

"Not my first choice, no."  His voice sounded loud, too loud.  He
 groaned suddenly.

"Well, you're in no shape to go anywhere right now, even with my
 patented drunk cure."  She gestured toward the coffee.  It suddenly
 penetrated that she didn't seem to have had anything other than the
 coffee...either that, or she held it a lot better than most people
 he knew.

"Lie down."  She eased him back.  Amazingly, the room stopped
 spinning now that he was looking upwards at it.  She leaned over
 him, unbuttoned a couple of buttons on his shirt.  "You need some
 rest.  Some sleep."

He tried to object, but it didn't come out very well.  "Listen to
 me, rest, get some sleep.  It will all look better in the morning."

Morning.  The morning would just be another day without Jeff.  He
 shot a hand out as Janna began to move away.  "Don't go.  Please."
 Was shocked at how his voice sounded.  "I can't sleep, you know. "


"Dreams."

He looked at her.

"I know.  I had them after...after he left."  Her smile warmed him
 somehow.  "I'll be here, Mike.  You're in my bed, after all."

Her bed?  He tried to surge upwards, and almost made it.  She
 laughed again...a strangely comforting sound this time...and gently
 pushed him backwards.  "Scoot over."  Gingerly, he slid over a bit,
 until he was up against the wall.  She lay down next to him, after
 reaching to put the lights out.  "It's not much, but, a friendly
 body can sometimes help."  She turned away from him and curled up
 in a ball.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Why?  Because you need a friend who will give it to you straight.
 I'm not sure they didn't -- I certainly would have as much trouble
 believing that story as you did and I don't know these people --
 but you need someone who's just...there.  I can do that."

Garibaldi lay there quietly for a while.  Inside, he was beating
 back terror.  Terror intensified by the lingering effects of the
 alcohol he'd subjected his system to.  He could hear her breathing
 softly next to him, felt an uncharacteristic wave of tenderness, of
 inferiority.  He shifted uncomfortably and reached a hand out to
 her.

It encountered bare shoulder.  Funny, he didn't remember her
 undressing.  As he touched her, there was a jolt along his nerve
 endings.  Like a ppg bolt.  He was flooded with sensation, with a
 sense of loss much deeper than any he felt.  No.  No.  Anger welled
 up in him.  Losing Jeff was the worst thing anyone could ever bear,
 there could be nothing worse.

But the loss remained.  Images swam before him, Minbari faces,
 Jeff's face,  Sheridan's, Delenn's....and others.  A man with warm
 brown eyes, curly dark red hair and a quirky smile who touched him
 and made him feel wanted.  A --

Him?  No, these weren't his images, his memories.  These were....

Janna had turned over and was looking at him in the darkness.  Her
 gold eyes seemed to glow and there was a smile on her face that
 scared him, and elated him at the same time.  She'd put her arms
 around him, pressing her body to him.  Warm, round, female.  God,
 it had been too damned long.  With Talia gone, he thought he'd
 never...

Garibaldi felt naked female flesh against his even as he wondered
 what had happened to their clothes.  He felt the coolness of skin
 against his, of the hint of the air recyclers blowing across
 suddenly hot nerve endings.

He saw that man again...saw pictures of him and Janna
 together...saw that image fade into his.  Felt a tranquility that
 he could never have suspected.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back.  Why was he doing this?  A misguided effort to
 forget the grief, to deny what had happened?  It didn't seem to
 matter.  She kissed him back and he was lost in her.  Lost in a sea
 of stars that seemed to erupt from her, her body a star in the
 midst of the darkness.

The red haired man's face came to him again, this time superimposed
 on Jeff's...or was it the other way around?  It didn't matter.


He began to feel soothed, quieted, calmed.  The betrayal welled up
 again as the conviction came that they were telling the truth...an
 irrational conviction that now gave rise to the thought that they
 should have lied to him!  He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it
 all.  Would have if he hadn't been subsumed in the fire, in the
 distance that was the woman in his arms.

Was she in his arms?  She felt real.  He remembered their
 conversation, remembered her eyes, golden glitter in a rounded
 face, hair pale white.  A glimmer of memory rose from the depths of
 his mind...but he couldn't pin it down.  Didn't want to pin it
 down.  She was giving him surcease, giving him what he hadn't had
 for so long...a place.  A reason to keep going, a reason to believe
 that his was not the worst fate in the known universe.

Hers, hers was so much worse.  Loss -- the feeling of loss came
 from her and it was not only that of losing a love.  It was loss of
 a way of life, of a time, of a seeming that no longer had a place
 in this world.

It was enough, for the moment that she was there.  That she was a
 comforting presence.  That her mere existence was taking his pain
 away.

Took his pain.  Sweet...it was sweet to be without pain for a
 while, even if it were only a little while.  He kissed her again,
 feeling her surging into his mind and body like a whisper of
 forgotten wind.

When he had released himself, when she had let him go, he lay
 silent, his head on her breast.  Her hand stroked his hair gently.
 "Janna," he barely knew where the strength to speak came from, for
 she had drained him like a sponge drains the water from a pond,
 drained him physically and emotionally, "Janna, what are you?"

She laughed, low and warm and dark and light all at once.  "I am
 what you do not believe in, Michael Garibaldi.  I am your friend."

And he drifted off into oblivion wondering now, not how he was
 going to go on without Jeff Sinclair, but how she knew his name.