Disclaimer: I still don't own Babylon 5. This breaking news brought to you by ISN.

Rating: PG.

Continuity: A missing scene from Intersections in Real Time.

Snowflakes and Raindrops

By Andraste

When John Sheridan opened his eyes, he knew that he had to be dreaming. All of a sudden his head felt a hundred times clearer than it had been all week - and he was free of pain, and hunger, and the disorientation caused by the drugs.

"Hey there," said a familiar voice. "Thought you'd never wake up."

John sat up, and found himself on his parents' couch - or a perfect replica of it. The ratty upholstery was so real under his fingers he could feel every fibre, and the thick carpet beneath his bare feet was just as he remembered it. He turned his head and saw his father, standing by the window, watching the rain that was falling steadily outside.

"Dad?" he said. "Where - is this a dream?" For some reason, he was wearing his pyjamas. He felt for all the world as if he'd just spent the night asleep on the couch, something he'd often done during family holidays when his sister was using the guest room. His shoulders were even a little stiff, just like they always were the morning after.

"Now, that's a question with a more complicated answer than you might think," his father said. "With the effort they're putting into breaking your mind, you could say that this is more real than anything you've seen lately while awake."

John got up and went over to stand with his father - or a dream of his father - who continued to contemplate the rain. "I don't understand," he said. "If this is another hallucination -" and then, all of a sudden, he did begin to understand. "Who - what are you?"

The thing that he was now sure was not his dad smiled at him. "Just the echo of an echo."

John took a step back in surprise. "Kosh!"

"All that's left of me now," the phantom said with a grin. "When I touched your mind I left a - trace, I guess you could call it."

John frowned. Recent history had made him even less happy with the idea of being influenced by outside forces than he usually was. "Still keeping tabs on me, is that it?"

His 'father' raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you wanted me gone, son. You seemed happy enough to see me when I was saving your life."

John wanted to point out that Kosh hadn't done the best job of that, but then, it wasn't really the Vorlon's fault that he'd gone to Z'Ha'Dum. Even if he did want to ask why Kosh hadn't told him Anna might be alive ... but that would be getting off the point.

"Your people tried to get rid of all the Shadow influence in the galaxy by killing millions upon millions of people - after you'd manipulated us for years. I don't like the idea that you're still doing it."

Kosh shrugged, in a movement that was eerily familiar. He hadn't just borrowed his father's shape, but his father's way of speaking and moving. "You got yourself into the situation you're in now because your people betrayed you, locked you up, and want you to break you. Would you like your entire species judged by the behavior of President Clark?"

"That's not the same thing!" John said. "I know that you did help me, but you also pulled the strings from behind the scenes for centuries - millenia. Not just on Earth, but on thousands of worlds. You brainwashed us into trusting you."

Kosh chuckled. "All parents brainwash their children, son. It's called raising them. Not that I'm not I'm proud of what you did, but you shouldn't forget everything we taught you."

John sighed. The truth of it was, Kosh was the last Vorlon he wanted to argue about this with, and there wasn't much point fighting with a ghost anyway. "The rest of your species didn't seem to have much fatherly interest in us there at the end. The Shadows I almost understand - I don't like what they did, but I can comprehend it. But the Vorlons? How could they do that? Even if they didn't care about the cost in lives, they were throwing away thousands - maybe millions - of years of work."

Kosh nodded toward the window. "Most of my colleagues thought of you like that. Thousands of drops, just falling until you hit the ground and splash all over the place. Indistinguishable from each other - and easy to replace."

"And you don't? Didn't?"

"Not just me. We're not that different from you, you know. I can't remember a time when we all agreed on anything." He waved a hand at the window. "I can only speak for myself, but I prefer to see you more like this."

All of a sudden, it was snowing instead of raining. John was reminded even more strongly of family holidays - add the sound of his sister and mother moving around in the kitchen, and it could have been Christmas morning.

"Every flake out there is unique," Kosh continued, "even if they all look the same to us. If you could ask them, I'm sure they'd tell you they're nothing like each other at all. When a snowflake melts, there'll never be another one exactly like it." He raised a hand and put it against the frosty glass, and just stood there for a long time, expression as inscrutable as the mask of his encounter suit.

Eventually, John broke the silence. There was something he had to know. "If I hadn't asked you to get your people to attack the Shadows directly - if I hadn't gotten you killed - would you have argued with them? Tried to persuade them not to slaughter those people?"

"You already know the answer to that. What you really want to know is whether or not I would have succeeded - and nobody will ever know that. Besides, if things had kept going the way they were, if the Vorlons hadn't acted as they did, you'd probably have ended up fighting just another Shadow War."

"You're saying that those lives were worth the trade? That the war would never have ended forever if they hadn't died?"

"Would it? Would you ever have figured out what you had to do? They were the last links in the chain, son. Do you have any idea just how long it took me to get you where I needed you?"

"You - you manipulated me into doing that?" John resisted the impulse to reach over and shake the thing wearing his father's face. "You're saying that you wanted me to throw your people out of the galaxy?"

"You know," Kosh said, still calmly looking out at the snow, "way back when I voted for us to stay here, when the others went beyond the Rim. Then I voted for war with the Shadows - I thought they were doing too much damage, that everyone would be better off if we broke the agreement and got rid of them once and for all. But eventually I did realise that we all had to go - leave you to make your own way."

"So you - what? Planted the idea in my mind?"

"Not your mind, son. The mind of your entire species. You ever notice that humans are more prone to wars of religion and ideology than any other species you've run into so far? Not that I'm taking all the credit - but you have something of a talent for killing myths, and making new ones. I helped you learn how to fight legends, but you were the one who decided how to apply the knowledge. Are you really sorry I showed you the way?"

John wasn't as surprised as he should have been - he'd thought about exactly what the Vorlons had been up to all those years before now. He wasn't even angry. He might not like Kosh's methods, but he couldn't exactly argue with the end result. Throwing the Vorlons and Shadows out had been his decision, and if he'd been shaped by others, well, he'd have to live with that. Fighting with a dead Vorlon wouldn't change anything.

"Why are you still here, if I've already done what you wanted?"

"Don't worry, I'm not here to use you. Think of it as my way of paying you back. You know, sometimes I saw past the last days of my people in this galaxy, into your future. You're going to do some pretty amazing things in the next twenty years. Can't have you melting just yet."

"You're helping me withstand the torture? How?"

"The touch of a Vorlon protects a mind, makes it more resilient. I can't help you in any physical way - I am dead, after all - but I can help you resist. If you survive, I'll make sure you recover. Let's just say I've done this a time or two before."

Kosh walked over to the couch, sat down, and motioned to the seat beside him. Abruptly exhausted, John sank down onto it. "I don't have very long out there, do I?" Soon he'd have to go back, to the endless questioning, pain and confusion. He didn't know how much longer he could hold out.

"That's really up to you - I can't give you any more strength, just channel what you have more effectively. Remind you of what you're fighting for. If you make it through, when this is all over you can come back to this place in your mind. You'll heal faster that way, be ready for the next big game."

John felt his eyes sliding closed, guessing that he was being dragged back into the real world. "Will I remember this, when I wake up?" he asked, struggling to remain where he was a moment longer.

"You never have yet," Kosh said, smiling.

"Even if I don't agree with everything you did," John said, feeling himself fall away, "I'm sorry that I never got a chance to thank you for saving me. For teaching me."

"Yes," Kosh said, his father's voice fading away into a choir of sound as John regained consciousness, "you did."

The End