Out of the Darkness

chapter 25

Londo did not sit forward on his throne, because the pain was too great. His conversation with G’Kar had taken the last of his strength from him. He did not think he had any reserves left.

One of the guards came in first and walked toward the throne. He did so hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure if Londo was even there. That was how well hidden in the shadows Londo was. “Highness?”

“Yes.”

Having affirmed for himself that Londo was there, the guard said, “Sheridan had passed out for a short time, but he seems to have recovered.”

“Oh, good,” Londo said dryly. “We wouldn’t want him to be anything but awake for his final moments. Bring them in.”

Sheridan and Delenn were ushered before his presence. They squinted in the dimness of the room; Londo preferred it dark these days. It was as if he had surrendered totally to it. The guards stepped out, leaving them alone. Sheridan and Delenn seemed puzzled, as if wondering whether they were alone.

Suddenly Londo’s hand went numb. Even he had lost track of how much he had had to drink. The glass, which he had totally forgotten he was holding, slipped out of his grasp and clattered to the floor. Delenn jumped slightly. Sheridan did not. For some reason, Londo found that interesting.

Delenn and Sheridan slowly began to walk toward him, squinting.

“Close enough,” Londo said softly. He spoke hardly above a whisper, and the words were slurred. He barely recognized his voice. He felt as if he were viewing the world through a haze.

He tried to stand and discovered that his legs and brain were no longer on speaking terms. If he did manage to get to his feet, he would most likely topple over, and how dignified would that be? It wasn’t fit that he spend his last moment sand they were his last, he was quite convinced of that—flat on his face.

“You will excuse me if I do not stand,” he managed to say. “You see, I have had considerable to drink… it is the only way we can be alone. We do not wish to wake it.”

Sheridan looked at him in confusion. Technically, he looked twice as confused as he should be, because Londo was seeing two of him. “Wake what?”

Londo cocked an eyebrow, which was the only part of him capable of movement. “Ah, then you do not know. We all have our keepers, you see…” He chuckled softly. “Oh, they make us think we have free will, but it’s a lie. I gave a very good performance, yes?”

He saw understanding beginning to dawn on Delenn’s face. Sheridan still looked befuddled. That made sense to Londo. He had long suspected that Delenn was the true brains in the family. “It was satisfied,” he continued. “It doesn’t care why I do what I do as long as I do it… as long as you are dead.”

He managed to find enough strength to lean forward. Delenn’s face remained impassive. It was as if she was expecting to see the creature there. But Sheridan looked totally stunned, and that confused Londo even further. Londo knew that he had spotted the keeper on his son’s shoulder, when he had endeavored to stop the boy from leaving Minbar. Now, though, Sheridan acted as if he’d never encountered one of them before.

“It cannot hold its liquor, you see,” Londo explained. “I learned that if I drink just enough, I can put it to sleep for a few minutes… a few minutes where I am in charge of myself again…” He took a deep breath. Putting together understandable words, coherent sentences, was a tremendous effort for him. “But the minutes have been growing shorter and shorter… so we do not have much time.”

He leaned back, once again at home in the shadows. And why not? He had been living within them for so long, he no longer had anything to fear.

“My life is almost over. My world, all I hoped for… gone. You two are my last chance… for this place, for my world… for my own redemption.” He steadied his voice, glad that the alcohol had so numbed him that he was no longer capable of feeling any emotion; merely observing it from a distance, as if in a dream. “You will find a ship hidden behind the palace. My personal guard will take you. In exchange for your lives, I ask that you and your allies help free my world. I can do nothing more for them.”

Sheridan seemed touched, and still a bit bewildered. “Londo… if there’s anything—”

Londo shook his head. “No. There is nothing. Now go, quickly. You don’t have much time. I can… feel it starting to wake up. Hurry. Go,” his voice got louder with the last words.

Sheridan and Delenn looked at one another, and then turned and left. He knew that Dunseny and Caso would be right outside, as they had been instructed. That they would carry out his final orders.

Alone, again, as always, Londo waited for the creaking of a door that he knew would come. “You are there, my old friend?”

G’Kar entered the room, watching him, looking at the keeper balefully. “Yes,” he said.

“They will never make it out alive, unless…” He took another breath. “You see, my keeper will awaken any second. It will alert the others… and my only hope will die. And I will die soon after. They do not take betrayal lightly.”

And at the last…

The words of Lady Morella floated to him across the years.

…you must surrender yourself to your greatest fear…

He wondered if that was strictly true anymore. Because in a way, his greatest fear was that he might continue to live.

…knowing that it will kill you.

He paused, an infinity of time passing in a second, and said the words that he had known, for as long as he could recall, that he was destined to say. “We have unfinished business between us, G’Kar. Let us have an end to it, quickly, before it stops me. I am as tired of my life as you are.”

G’Kar came at him. His hands clamped around Londo’s throat, and it did not seem right somehow, because in the vision he had always been fighting back. But he had no desire to do so. He just wanted it over, done, finished. He marveled at the Narn’s strength, wondered what it would have been like to battle G’Kar hand to hand, man to man, back in his prime, back at a time when any thing seemed possible. And then the keeper awoke.

G’Kar could not count the number of times that he had thought of this moment. There were times when he had, for his amusement, speculated what it would be like to sink his fingers into Londo’s fleshy throat, feel the pulse beneath his fingers, feel it slowing, feel it stopping. He had wondered how long he would actually stand there, once there was no life, and still keep squeezing, just enjoying the lifelessness.

And that day—that terrible day, when he had learned of Londo’s duplicity, drinking with him in friendship while Londo sent ships to kill thousands, millions of innocent Narns—he had gone berserk that day. When he stormed down the corridors of Babylon 5, howling for Londo Mollari’s blood, he would have done more than strangle him. He would have ripped his living hearts from his body, held up one, and consumed the other while the life flickered from Londo’s eyes.

Now…

Now he had him. Londo wasn’t putting up a fight. He was… he was sacrificing himself. Surrendering to G’Kar, telling him to get it over with, so Delenn and Sheridan could escape.

Sheridan. “The king.” And he was the hand of the king, and those hands were wrapped with murderous intent around the throat of a true king, an emperor.

The Narn named G’Kar who had imagined this moment, the Narn named G’Kar who would have reveled in it, had died years ago, replaced by a philosopher who was revered throughout the Narn Homework! as G’Kar the wise, G’Kar the thoughtful, G’Kar the scholarly. His writings were endlessly studied, examined for the slightest nuance. Students who sat at his feet repeated his teachings, statues had been built to him, songs sung, stories written. They worshipped him as a man of peace even more than they had revered him as a man of war. Some called his writings the most important since those of G’Quan himself—a claim he had always considered to be a tad overblown, but there it was, and he wasn’t going to deny it.

G’Kar the wise had forgiven Londo his trespasses. Had come to appreciate him, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been… and might yet be.

The hand of the king was going to have the blood of the emperor on it, and G’Kar’s will faltered. He saw Londo surrendering to what he recognized as his fate, and something in G’Kar recoiled at the very notion. There had to be some other way. Sheridan and Delenn had to escape, yes. But there had to be a way for Londo to escape as well, something that would not cost him his life. It couldn’t simply end like this, with cold-blooded murder… even if it was at the request of the victim. He was not an executioner. He was G’Kar, son of G’Qarn, scribe, sage, both teacher and student of the universe, and he could not, would not, do this thing.

And in deciding this, he began to ease up, ever so slightly, on Londo’s throat.

And then the keeper awoke…

We are threatened! We are being assaulted! It is trying to kill us!

The keeper howled in anguish and fear. It saw its host was in danger, saw its own life threatened, because they were bonded, one to the other. A keeper could disengage, but it was a lengthy process, one that took time… time the keeper did not have. It did, however, have defensive capabilities.

In the early years of their relationship, the keeper had simply been an observer. But as time had passed, the keeper had insinuated itself so thoroughly into Londo’s nervous system that, in times of stress, it could take over the body entirely for short periods.

Stop them, Londo! We love you! We care for you! We will never leave you!

The creature had never been so terrified, not since its spawning. When Shiv’kala had removed it from its nourishment pouch, it had feared the Centauri. Feared it so much that it had trembled in Shiv’kala’s keeping. But the Drakh had assured it that all would be well, and it had been.

And now it wasn’t.

Protect us, Londo! Protect us! Save us! Love us!

And Londo’s arms flew up, not of their own accord, but at the keeper’s command. They grabbed on to G’Kar’s throat, clamping in with ferocity.