PARALLELS

By Laurie

Disclaimer: All of the usual stuff - all the characters in this piece are owned by J Michael Straczynski, Babylonian Productions™ and Warners™.

Author's Note: I first published this in 2000. It has now been revised, rewritten and generally, I hope, improved.

This story takes place after the 4th season episode Racing Mars; any reviews are gratefully received.

Dedication: To John, my exhaustive - and by now exhausted - beta reader, with love and many, many, many thanks.

That space was simply infinite blackness was one of the myths that had been exploded the first time he took a starship out. In truth, there was light everywhere: the stars, the nebula, even the planet glowed. Seeing this perfectly ordered chaos, it was easy to forget the dangers it contained. John Sheridan drew a deep breath. It still felt good to be out here with little between himself and the universe, just a few millimetres of metal and some wiring. It was how he had started his career; it was where he would always belong. From this position the station, usually silhouetted against the light from their local star, was invisible. Out of sight, but never quite out of mind.

Once that would have been his idea of hell. Funny how things change.

'Captain, what the hell do you think you're doing out there?' Ivanova's voice was distorted by the comm. system. Sheridan grimaced.

'Just having a little fly-time, Commander. Nothing for you to worry about.' He could imagine her face, eyes flashing with fury. 'And before you suggest it, I am not going to get myself a baby-sitter.'

'You're crazy. Sir.' Every word bitten off.

'I'm sorry, I seem to be losing you, interference on the channel. See you later.' He turned it off, but not before he caught the beginnings of the eruption that was Ivanova on the other end.

He had no destination, no plan in mind. A few hours of peace and an enjoyment of that sensation. Sheridan tried to remember the last time he had been off the station for anything that wasn't related to a fight and failed.

One war was over and they were already fighting another - but for now, for one day, or at least for these hours, there was nothing. There was silence, there were the stars – there was Delenn.

He smiled.

There was always Delenn.

The only darkness, and the one to which his mind kept returning, was Garibaldi; they had gone from being firm friends to barely tolerating one another's presence within the space of a few weeks. There had to be a reason, but Sheridan couldn't see it. Conversations inevitably regressed into confrontations. He had been aware that the course he was following would antagonise people, that a few he had counted as allies might turn against him. He had just never thought that Michael Garibaldi would be one of them.

And it hurt more than he cared to admit.

Sheridan shrugged it off. Later, perhaps, he would try again. It might even work this time. For now, however, he was content to let his mind drift out to the stars.

The pulse of light was unexpected, blinding; the kind of light that penetrates straight to the brain and paralyses all of the functions. It engulfed his small craft. Sheridan experienced only numbness, and behind that the dim awareness that something was terribly wrong. Metal was buckling, the sound of it impossibly distant yet impossibly close. Control surfaces never meant to come into contact with one another were scraping together. The Starfury was shaking violently as if something was trying to rip it apart. It took an effort for Sheridan to close his eyes and in the ensuing darkness was able to collect something of his battered senses. He fired his manoeuvring thrusters in an attempt to shake off the grip of whatever force was holding him. It only increased the pressure. Ominously, the grinding of metal - his seemingly constant companion even though no more than a few seconds had elapsed - was abruptly silenced. His stomach sank; the silence could only mean components of his ship had finally, catastrophically failed and had been wrenched apart.

'Whatever Susan was going to say to me, I thoroughly deserved it,' he thought grimly. 'Every insult, every Russian curse. But how the hell am I going to get out of this?'

What was left of sensor array had overloaded, gone into safe mode and told him nothing; the comm. system was so scrambled that the only thing that he could hear was a terrible scream - a chilling sound all too familiar. With every system aboard the small ship either off-line or in the red, he did the only thing he could do – applied zero pitch and yaw and killed power completely. If nothing else, it would bring the Starfury to a dead stop – and it would have succeeded had something other than inertia not been at work. But there were other forces present. Unnatural forces. The light was still flooding all of his senses; it was all that he could to activate a distress beacon and hang on for ... for whatever it was. Armageddon, possibly, Sheridan thought; and a fine way to meet it. From somewhere unseen there were voices: not coming from the comm. system and not from inside his head, but calling out insistently nonetheless. He was sure that he could hear someone repeating his name. A sudden, agonising pain ripped through his body, leaving him gasping for breath. The brightness increased and then there was darkness.

'Love' was not a term that Commander Susan Ivanova had ever been comfortable with. It was an annoying, unwelcome sentiment and she was probably the last person in the universe to admit to feeling it. But the truth was she loved John Sheridan like a brother. Losing Ganya had been bad enough – she'd wanted to kill him for dying on her. And now Sheridan. For the second damned time, no less. The next time she saw him, she reflected as she made her way to C&C, she might just kill him for not learning his lesson the first time around.

'Susan!'

'Oh, hell…' She turned sharply at her name and saw the slight yet determined figure of the Minbari ambassador bearing down on her. Her heart sank – she'd known that she would have to find Delenn sooner or later but she had not been looking forward to the meeting. Her face was too controlled; her eyes glittered dangerously.

'What has happened?'

Ivanova started in spite of herself. 'How do you…' she tapered off. The question, she had to admit, was a redundant one. God – or some other higher being – might know how Sheridan and Delenn knew the things they did, but no-one else. And when it came to the connection between them, Ivanova would defy even a god to explain it.

Handling this situation professionally seemed the best approach, Ivanova decided. 'We're not really sure.' The words were clipped. 'The Captain took his Starfury out and switched off his comm. system. We tried to keep him on our sensors, but there was some kind of… of… force out there. It looked like it stretched from Sector Fourteen.' Delenn hissed; a sharp intake of breath that Ivanova tried to ignore. 'There was a lot of interference,' she continued, 'and by the time our instruments came back on line, he'd gone. We're still trying to interpret his telemetry data for whatever clues it might give us.'

There was silence for a moment. Delenn was staring beyond Ivanova – out into the stars as though she could somehow drag the missing craft, and its occupant, back through the rift by sheer force of will. It was a lost, empty look, one Ivanova had seen before and had hoped never to see again. And after it came the resolve, the hardening. When Delenn's eyes met Ivanova's again, she was the woman who had led armies. There would be no rest for her until Sheridan returned. If he returned.

For her part, Delenn felt as though someone had reached inside of her and stopped her heart. She had been deep in meditation when it had come; the sudden, inexplicable dread followed by the image of John, in pain, calling to her from somewhere she couldn't reach. For a man who valued the lives of others so highly he was, in her opinion, too reckless with his own. He should have told someone of his plans; he should have taken an escort. He should have done a million things he had not done. But if he had then he would not be the man she knew. The man she loved.

'I will try to contact Draal,' she stated, no uncertainty in her voice. 'His knowledge of everything that happens in this sector of space is far greater than our own. He might be able to help us.'

'Good. That will help.' It brought a kind of relief. If Delenn had a role to play it would keep her from brooding. It would be one less thing to worry about. And Draal was, potentially, a source of hope. She watched Delenn's retreat, robes billowing as she walked. Despite her show of stoicism, Ivanova could still see her distress and couldn't help but think that the only way that Delenn would be able to conceal her feelings about the captain would be to either wear a mask, or lock herself in her quarters. 'In fact,' she thought, warming to the idea, 'perhaps we could lock both of them in together. That would keep Delenn happy and John out of trouble. We could set up a special channel for him straight to C&C so when we need him, it will be just as if he were in the room.' The thought cheered her for a few seconds before the reality of their predicament intruded once more. She wondered briefly what her ancestors had ever done that was so bad that all of this trouble should perpetually fall on her.

'It's a good thing I'm Russian,' she thought grumpily, 'at least I can just blame it all on fate.'

Sheridan stretched and repositioned his head. The pain was immediate and made him groan. He was dimly aware of a low hum - a generator, perhaps - and the sound of people moving around him.

'Captain Sheridan? John, are you awake?' A familiar voice, close to him.

Groggily, he opened his eyes, took a moment to focus before identifying Stephen Franklin looking down at him.

'Yeah.' A soft croak. Swallowing, he tried again. 'Yeah, I'm fine, Doc.'

'You were lucky. Wish I could say the same for most of our fliers. Think you can sit up? I want to scan you.'

The effort of raising himself left him unable to ask Franklin what the hell he was talking about. Franklin. Stephen Franklin was supposed to be on Mars. He couldn't be back so soon. Sheridan's vision blurred; he closed his eyes tightly, shook his head, took in his surroundings once more. It wasn't MedLab, he realised. A medical facility, yes. It had to be. He blinked against the dimness again, trying to clear his vision. It didn't help. Except for the pools of light from lamps suspended over the beds, the place was in near darkness. A door opened, brightness beyond. A surgical suite, he could see the instruments. And an orderly washing the blood from the floor. Sheridan turned away, his skull pounding. The walls, he noticed dully, were cut from bare rock with huge metal struts supporting them. Underground, he thought stupidly. They were underground and it made no sense.

Oblivious to his patient's confusion, Franklin was busy with his scanners and his readings. His scrubs were creased, faded, the look of too much hard wear. A fine spray of dried blood was caked on the cuffs of his trousers and the coverings over his shoes.

'Well you seem to be bouncing back quickly. I'd like to keep you in to watch for signs of concussion, but we need the bed and you're no stranger to concussions anyway. There's yet another meeting in a couple of hours. We can hear all about the latest disaster. As if I didn't know already.' He looked exhausted and angry as he surveyed the heavily bandaged figures.

'What-what actually happened?'

'There were more of them than we expected - as usual. The only thing that saved our bacon this time was that they didn't seem to be very interested in us. But you know what it's like better than I do, you can't see them until they appear right in front of you.' He paused. 'I think that you ought to get some rest before the meeting. Just in case.'

Sheridan didn't answer. He was looking around, his face impassive, but there was something beneath the control. With someone else, Franklin would have called it bewilderment. 'John. Are you okay?'

Sheridan shook his head as though trying to clear it. 'Stephen, I-' He broke off, eyes darting around the enclosed space. 'I'm … fine, I guess. A little shook up, that's all.'

'Mmmm. I'm not sure.' Franklin reached automatically for his instruments.

'I'm okay. Really. I still feel a little dazed. It'll wear off.'

Sheridan strained to keep his gaze direct, focused. Franklin scrutinised his face. 'I'm almost considering holding up some fingers, asking you how many and what year it is.'

Sheridan was still. 'Compromise. I'll count the fingers, you do the calendar.'

The doctor let out a bark of a laugh. 'Right.' He held up a hand.

'Three.'

'Congratulations, you're in perfect health.' Sheridan was staring at him expectantly. 'You cannot be- Fine. Twenty-two-sixty-one. Happy now?'

Somehow, it was the answer he had been expecting. Sheridan felt the edge of hysteria rising, laughter forcing its way to his lips.

The doors burst open, a figure on a gurney that was barely recognisable as any form of sentient life was wheeled in. There was a low keening noise. And the smell of impending death.

Franklin was already turning, his body angling away from Sheridan but not yet moving.

'You should go.' Sheridan's eyes flicked in the direction of the latest casualty, then back to the doctor's face.

'Yes. Seriously, take it easy, okay? And stop by later, I want to take another look at you.'

Sheridan managed a ghost of a smile.

There was a jacket lying across the foot of the gurney, he picked it up. It was blue, dark blue, leather around the collar and down the front. He hadn't worn an EarthForce uniform for over a year. He pulled it on slowly – it felt both familiar and strange. It was scratchier than he remembered. More constrictive. Or perhaps that was just his imagination.

He stood up and steadied himself against the gurney as dizziness caught him like a blow. It was like the time-flash again. Nausea, disorientation... But this wasn't the past and it couldn't be the future. Not this, it was all wrong. And something Stephen had said started a very nasty warning bell ringing in his head. The walls were closing in; he needed to get out.

Sheridan looked around, moved towards the exit; he found himself in a long, ill-lit, corridor that was filled with people wearing grim expressions. Several greeted him as they passed. For a moment he could fool himself into believing he was on Babylon 5 as the passers-by were a mix of EarthForce personnel, some Minbari, the occasional Narn and the odd Centauri; except, of course, for the fact that Babylon 5 was not carved out of rock. The ache in his head increased with the effort to make sense of it. He told himself it was a hallucination; any moment he would wake up in MedLab – the real MedLab – on the receiving end of the wrath of at least one irate female and probably more.

Despite the dubious reassurance that rumination brought, Sheridan didn't feel very hopeful. Everything he saw seemed to be far too real to be mere hallucination. It was bizarre, but it lacked the surrealism of the dream-world.

Another voice came at him unexpectedly. Familiar, but not readily identifiable until he turned to face its owner.

'John, how are you feeling? We thought that we'd lost you this time; your Starfury looked as though it had been chewed up and spat out again.'

Sheridan hoped that his face didn't reflect the staggering disbelief that he was feeling. His hope wasn't quite fulfilled when his interlocutor continued,

'Are you all right? Did Stephen let you out or did you sneak off while his back was turned?'

The smile was affable, nothing hidden in the depths of his eyes. Sheridan strove to keep his voice level. 'Stephen- He, uh, he said I could go; he just thought I should get some rest before the, uh, war meeting.' A guess that seemed to be correct. His new companion fell into step next to Sheridan and the captain experienced another wave of disbelief as he encountered the dark eyes.

'Sure. Want to grab some food before that? We need to talk about that meeting before we jump into it – we just had a message from a Minbari cruiser coming in. They weren't on the schedule and from what I could make out, they have some fairly high ranking people on board.' With a nod, Sheridan allowed himself to be steered through the passageways, occasionally looking at the elegant figure next to him. He mind flashed back to the year before – or what should have been the year before, as he remembered it – and the last time he had seen Jeffrey Sinclair.

Draal – or, more accurately, the projection of Draal – was waiting for Delenn when she arrived at Epsilon 3. Steady gold gleaming against the dimness he inhabited, slowly settling into something that gave the illusion of solidity.

'You know what has happened.'

She watched him expectantly. There was no question he knew; he had known her far too long not to be able to see the desperation she was trying so hard to hide. All she could hope was that he could give her the answers she wanted. That she needed.

'Yes, I know. He is a good man, your mate. A great one. But even the great ones can and do fall prey to foolishness on occasion.' Looking harder at her, he added, 'As you well know.'

'Yes.' Her expression was set. Draal knew her past and could lecture with the best, but the times he could lecture her had come and gone many cycles ago.

He seemed to understand. With a sigh, he concluded, 'You wish to enter the Machine?'

Delenn was already moving past him towards the inner chamber. Did she know just how human she had become? That impetuosity, that rebelliousness had always been part of her, just beneath the surface - and it was now dominant, Draal noted.

His insubstantial image followed her as she made her way through the passages but he took care not to speak, not to break her concentration, along the way. For the next few hours she would need her ability to focus her efforts perhaps more than any other quality she possessed.

They were well matched, she and the Human she had chosen. For their love they would experience great joy. And great pain. But not today, he was certain. He was determined. Not today.

'You know, this will be about the millionth time that I'll have wished that we had listened to the Minbari the first time they approached us. Hell, I wish we'd listened to the Centauri, the Narn and everyone else who was telling us the same thing. But that would have been too difficult. After we beat the Dilgar we were on top of the galaxy and no bunch of - what was it EarthGov said? Paranoid aliens? - were going to keep us down. I guess hindsight is always twenty-twenty. When I think of the number of people we've lost since then, well, it isn't just us, is it? I mean everyone is going down fast in the middle of all of this. It's a nightmare, John.' Sinclair grimaced, pushed at the mass on his plate that was masquerading as something edible. 'But I don't need to tell you that; I'm just the base CO – you're the tactical Commander. I hope that they bring their own supplies – I'd be embarrassed to give this slop to representatives of the Minbari government.' He looked at Sheridan. 'Don't get me wrong, I'll be glad to have them here. They seem to have been able to stop fighting among themselves for long enough to agree that we all need to be working together but everything depends on which clans and castes are contributing. And what they choose to contribute. We could do with some more of their cruisers here but we could do even more with regular transfers of technology: Earth has the manufacturing base but their weapons capability is still a lot superior to ours.'

'Yeah, and they're tougher than nails, too - they don't spend hours passed out in MedLab because of a small knock on the head.' It was a teasing voice and yet another one that Sheridan recognised. He looked up as Michael Garibaldi flung himself into a chair.

'Captain. Captain.' He nodded at Sheridan and Sinclair in turn. 'That was one helluva crunch you got out of. Full points for the survival instinct, and some extra for taking one of those sons-of-bitches down at the same time.'

'Thanks. I'd like to see any footage of it – just to get some extra perspective. See what went wrong.' Sheridan was barely keeping up his end of the conversation, hoping that his 'friends' were chalking his noncommittal attitude up to the aforementioned knock on the head. The truth, he knew, would land him in back in what passed for MedLab under psychiatric lockdown. His only hope, he reasoned, was to gather as much information as possible without divulging anything of his own. He had been running over everything in his mind, trying to reconstruct it all. So much was familiar and nothing was in the right place. It was like looking into a mirror that had been shattered, its pieces put back in disarray. The Jeffrey Sinclair to whom he had been talking for the last hour was definitely not the same person he had helped to steal Babylon 4. This was the Jeffrey Sinclair he remembered from the Mars riots. And as for Garibaldi… Well, this was definitely more like the Mr Garibaldi he knew of old. He had hoped for another chance to put things right. Sheridan smiled to himself grimly. The universe had a perverse sense of humour.

'You have to love this guy,' Garibaldi continued, 'nearly gets his head smashed in and a few hours later he's looking for ways of doing the same to them. Let me know if you figure it out.' His tone became more serious. 'I'll hold them down while you blow them sky-high. I'll get the footage to you.'

'Great. Tell Susan to bring it round when she's got a moment.'

Blank look and then Garibaldi's eyebrows rose. 'Susan? New girl on the scene, John?'

'No, I meant-' Knowing smiles on both faces opposite him. 'Never mind. Must've got the name wrong.'

Garibaldi grinned broadly. 'You've got so many women on the go you can't remember their names now?'

It took an effort to bite back the words. Sheridan forced a smile. 'Y'know, I'm still feeling a bit disoriented. I guess that's what a near-death experience will do for you. I think I'll go back to my quarters.' He stood. 'If I can remember where they are.'

Garibaldi evidently decided to take this as a sign of good humour and gave him directions to his quarters, along with a couple of others that he didn't really need.

There was silence at the table as two pairs of eyes followed the figure making its way across the canteen. And two smiles faded. 'Is he all right?' Garibaldi met Sinclair's eyes. 'He looks pretty shaken up.'

'I'm sure he'll be fine.' Sinclair felt less certain than he sounded. There had been an expression in Sheridan's eyes that unnerved him; it had been like looking into the face of a friend and seeing a stranger looking back out at him. Maybe it was just the after effects of the battle. Dropping the thought, he brought his mind back to the imminent arrival of the Minbari – and what they would feed them on when they got there.

TBC