Time Passages
(Part Three)

by Moyra J. Bligh
(moyra@interlog.com)

"I really think it would be for the best if I had Stephen come and get you and take you to Med-Lab." He was trying to be firm, but the look on her face was breaking his heart.

"Truly John, I wish to remain here. I do not feel inclined at this moment to explain anything to anyone. There would be so many questions... too many questions. I would feel so much more comfortable if I could sleep here, in my own bed. I promise you I will be all right."

"I'm still really concerned, you've been badly wounded...."

"I am fine John, I have been given excellent medical attention on Alex's ship. I need only some time to heal, and I will be more at peace here."

He shook his head "Delenn..."

"Please John, humor me in this."

"Very well..." he sighed, and then added as an afterthought, "you have me at a great disadvantage."

"Which is?" she asked. He reached across and ran his fingers gently through her hair.

"I love you too much to refuse you anything."

"Then perhaps this is also the moment to ask you to help me to my bed."

"I am at your service." He was as gentle as possible when he lifted her, but she cried out in pain, and the sound she made tore his heart in two. He would not have hurt her for anything in the world.

"Oh my darling, I am so sorry." Somehow he had imagined that the first time her carried off to bed it would be under vastly different circumstances.

"It could not be helped."

He laid her gingerly on the mattress and tucked a throw around her for warmth. He could see still the distress in her eyes from the strain of being moved.

"Are you alright? Is there anything at all I can do?"

"I will be fine, if I can lie still for a while, the pain will subside."

"I'll go then, and let you get some rest."

"Stay with me," she whispered "stay with me, tonight. I need to know that you are close."

"I'll never leave you Delenn," he smiled as he remembered the last time he'd said that to her, "not if the whole universe stood between us."

John sat in the quiet, fragrant darkness and watched his love sleep. As beautiful and serene as she was in her waking hours, in slumber she was luminescent. `Her true face revealed' he thought. He yearned to reach out and caress the velvet softness of her cheek, but did not wish to wake her.

Tyler, when he finished screaming had been most helpful. By the end of their little talk, she even knew his mother's maiden name and what he'd had for breakfast, not to mention a few dozen things about the Neo-Nightwatch group that were going to come in really handy when she got back. Most importantly Alex now knew where they had acquired the device, and when, and this time she was going to make sure she got there early.

Sometime in the early morning he had dozed off in the chair, and when he came to it took him a moment to realize where he was. He stood up and looked at Delenn who was still sleeping peacefully.

"We need to set a date, my love." He said, even though he knew she would not hear him. "I have the feeling it's past time....."

`Man', Ivan thought to himself `I get all the fun jobs.' He was some three weeks in the past, sitting at a terminal in a secure area of the Earthgov offices. It was a particularly ungodly hour in the middle of the night, and he was planting the message for the President that he and Alex had carefully composed. `Tricky stuff, timelines. Damn tricky stuff making sure you were in the right place at the right time.'

The possibility existed that if they managed to prevent the Tyler and the others from getting their hands on the shifter in the first place, David Sheridan would not receive the intelligence report which had prompted the mission. In itself, this would not be a problem, except that, as the timeline came right the crew of the ship would suddenly find themselves back on earth, the ship having never been dispatched. For the senior members of the crew who had been fully briefed on the mission and all the possible outcomes, this would come as a shock, but at least they would have some understanding of what had just happened to them.

For the others, the trauma would be devastating, possibly mind destroying. The shock of suddenly being somewhere, light years from where you were a moment ago, coupled with no one around you being aware that anything untoward had happened and everything you remembered from the past few days having never occurred, would snap all but the strongest psyche. Of course, only those who had actually crossed one or more of the time barriers would remember anything of the events, because for the rest none of it would ever have taken place.

The message had also been carefully constructed so that the President of the Earth Alliance would have a complete briefing of the original mission.

With Alex's final instruction to the crew ringing in their ears, "and leave the agent of darkness for me..." they jumped in to a point in time some twenty minutes before the rendezvous was to take place and waited, hidden and silent.

There was a flash of light and suddenly the perpetrator was there. Tyler had not known who the man was who had made the deal and delivered the time-shifter, but Alex knew him the minute he appeared. From the En'til'zha's description she'd have recognized this man anywhere, and his appearance made her blood run cold. A dark servant of the Shadows, his heart blacker than midnight. Delenn's persecutor from those dark times when the Sheridan's were imprisoned on Centauri Prime. This demon from hell who had hurt her grandmother more deeply than anyone else in the galaxy, and somehow, the universe with one of it's strange twists had just put this malevolent being into her hands. The time had come.

The crew acted as if one. Tyler and the other members of his group went down in a hail of PPG fire. Alex took certain aim and blasted the device out of the fiends hands, as Ivan ran to recover it she saw the man start to reach for his pocket, where she was sure the other device must be secreted.

"Don't even think about it," she heard herself say in that voice of her grandmother's that was all steel and ice, "you have hurt my family enough, you will not do it again!" He froze as much with what she said, as the realization of who she must be.

"Sheridan," he hissed at her "for this you will die."

"Better choice than not being here in the first place." she retorted. "Ivan, he's got the other device in the left inside pocket of his jacket. And be careful he moves quick. The rest of you cover him."

"Gotcha, Alex." And with one fluid motion her second slammed the dark servant flat on his back to the ground. Then bending down he retrieved the shifter from exactly where Alex had said it would be. She took a deep breath and looked straight into the man's eyes.

"I am a Ranger, we walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no one may pass. We live for the One, we die for the One. In'cil'zha vene. In Valen's name." Then she lowered her PPG towards his head and fired.

The message to the En'til'zha had been as carefully constructed as the one to The President of the Earth Alliance. It included the name of the dark servant Alex had just eliminated; their path in time was now ensured.

Things had gone off without a hitch for a change. `So lovely having the element of surprise in your favor,' Alex thought. Marshall Franklin's voice broke her reverie.

"So now that we've got four of these things, what do we do with them?"

"We don't," said Alex, "if you take a look there should be only three of them."

"Three? No way. We had one to start with, we took one from Lennox on Babylon 5 and we just picked up two here."

"Except that because we picked up the two here, before our friends went to the station, and one of those was the one they used to get to 2261; they never got there, so there was never one there."

"Okay," he said slowly, still trying to work it all out.

"Don't think about it too much Marshall, or it will drive you mad. We are now in the strange position of being able to remember things that have never happened. Now, if you will excuse me, I have one last thing I need to do, before we head for Epsilon 3. And, to answer your question, leave these little gadgets with Draal."

Back in her cabin Alex prepared to do something she knew she really shouldn't be doing. But, more than anything she wanted to make sure that everything really had turned out all right. She carefully set the device to the time in question, straightened her baseball cap, and with her fighting pike full out in front of her, waited for the brilliant flash of light to flare and die away.

They came out of hyperspace at the Euphrates gate. The vast deserted shell of the station hung before them, like an apparition. A derelict, floating desolate in space, a ghostly legend of what might have been. Abandoned, but not unloved, discarded, but not forgotten. Alex thought of the two of them as they had been then, of her father as a young boy running down the corridors, of she herself walking those passages in a different time.

"Our last best hope." Alex said softly, and walked off the flightdeck to prepare for her trip to the planet.

Ivan was contemplating the possibility of there being a substance whose dynamic reflective value was great enough to cause an explosion with a single jump in a confined space. He was already working on a scale to quantify DRV and a graph which would indicate at what level of DRV, square area became a factor.

Alex had never met Draal, but he was no stranger to her. Between the Vid-images she had seen, and the stories her grandmother had told her about the custodian of the Great Machine, he seemed like a old friend. She handed the three devices over to him, thankful that the shifters would no longer be her responsibility.

"How is your grandmother?" Draal asked her.

"Which one?" Draal looked confused for a moment before he answered her.

"Oh, I see what you mean. The one who occupies your time in the Universe."

"She's fine. She's pretty amazing really."

"Always was. And now that I've met you I know your Dad's right."

"About?" It was Alex's turn to be confused.

"He's always maintained that you have more of that `If-you-value-your-lives-you-will- be-elsewhere' quality of hers than anyone else in the family." She looked at him wondering how he could know that after so brief a meeting. "Ah well," he said "I've been bouncing around out there keeping an eye on what was going on."

Back on the ship, Alex stared out into the familiar red and black spectral light of hyperspace for a long time. So very much had happened, or hadn't, depending on your perspective of the Universe. So many revelations about all the little moments that occurred in her life that she'd long taken for granted. The total understanding of what Dad meant when he talked about the magic in the way his parents looked at one another. The realization of why her grandmother would sometimes catch her breath when Dad walked in a room unexpectedly. Pieces of the puzzle of her life - the Universe trying to understand itself.

"I'm going to my quarters." She said to the young crewman on the flightdeck. "Buzz me if anything happens." What she needed most right now was some sleep. By late morning they'd be home.

"President Sheridan," his Aides face came up on Comm-Screen, "we've just received word from the Space Port Authority that your daughter's ship has docked. I thought you might like to know."

"Thank you, I appreciate the information."

"If that's all, sir?"

"Just one thing. Has the En'til'zha been notified?"

"Yes sir, when I spoke to them they promised to call her right away."

Home, she was finally home. Alex closed the door behind her gently and leaned against the frame drinking in the familiar mingled aroma of incense and tea. All of her life this was what home had smelled like. She knew now how much of it was the scent of her grandmother, her quarters on the station had been heavy with the same perfume.

"Alexandra? Darling, is that you?" the voice asked, that same softly accented lilting voice, that voice capable of steel or velvet, the voice of her grandmother.

"Yeah, it's me. I'm home, and more importantly, we are all still here." Suddenly she was very tired.

As her grandmother entered the hallway, Alex looked at her almost as if she'd never really seen her before. The green-grey eyes were perhaps wiser than the last time she'd seen this woman, but there was the same upright bearing, the same deep serenity, the same long hair, though now almost completely white. `She's still beautiful, I don't think I was ever truly aware of that until now' Alex thought, `No mystery why he was so much in love with her.' She put her bag down at the bottom of the stairs and walked into Delenn's waiting arms.

"You okay?" she asked softly in her granddaughter's ear.

Alex nodded, "I'm okay, tired that's all, but most definitely okay. Listen, I'm going to go upstairs, call Dad and get him up to speed, have a hot shower, and then do the one thing that I most want to do."

"Which is?"

"Have a cup of tea and some conversation with my grandmother."

Delenn laughed, "That can be arranged."

"Good." The younger woman picked up her bag and started up the stairs.

"Alexandra."

"What?" she turned to look.

"I love you."

"I love you too, Nana." she said reverting to her old childhood form of endearment. "But right at this moment in time, I don't think you have any idea how very much."

David Sheridan paced across his office in the Capital, turned on his heel and tracked back in the other direction. His daughters ship had docked fully an hour ago, surely by now she'd had time to get home and place a call to him.

"Damn, the girl." he said into thin air "Does she have no sense of time at all?" and then laughed softly at the irony of what he'd just said. He was more concerned than angry, more curious than alarmed. When the Comm-unit on his wall beeped he jumped at it, pounding the button hard. "Yes."

"Your eldest daughter's on the second channel." his Aide informed him.

"Good, I've been waiting for her call, put her through." He was not, however, prepared for the first words out of Alex's mouth.

"Anybody ever tell you you're a dead ringer for your father?" she'd asked.

Caught completely off guard, there was a long pause, before he answered her softly. "Yeah, my mother, all the time, especially when I catch her unaware." He paused again. "Am I to infer from that question that you actually saw him?"

"Talked to him too." Alex saw her father's raised eyebrow. "Yeah, well, things didn't come off exactly as we'd planned so I had to improvise a little, but it all came out right in the end."

"I know that. I'm still here. If it had not, we would not be having this conversation."

"True."

"I would very much like to hear all the details, but in light of the events of the past few weeks, I don't feel real comfortable with you sharing them on a Comm-link. Can you come in tomorrow and meet me?"

"Buy me lunch?" She smiled at him.

"Sometimes...." he said. "Yeah, of course."

"Good, I'll be there. How's the rest the family?"

"Fine, just fine." He stopped short as the full impact of what she had done hit him. There was awe in his voice when he spoke, "Are you aware of just how much we all owe you?"

"Nobody owes me anything, Dad. I only did what I had to do, and I did it, as much because I wanted to as because I had to."

"You will make one hell of an En'til'zha when it's time." he said. "Don't ever doubt that."

"Hopefully that will not be for a very long while. We've always been close, but I don't think I've ever felt closer to her than I do right at this moment." Alex paused. "She's right, you know, faith does manage. I have just returned from a most stunning life lesson on that point. And, I'll explain that tomorrow too. Right now, I'm signing off, and heading for the shower. I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, Alex. And tell that indomitable spirit who you live with that I love her for a multiplicity of reasons, not the least of which being the absolutely stunning job she's done of raising you."

"I will Dad. Give my love to Janet and the rest of the family. May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk." The Comm-screen blinked and she was gone.

David shook his head. He had to admit that his mother and his daughter were quite the pair, inexplicably linked in a way that even he did not fully understand. The sudden memory of the first meeting between the two made him smile. As Delenn reached down into Alexandra's crib, the baby had reached up and grasped onto his mother's little finger with her tiny fist.

"This one will be En'til'zha after me." she had said, and meant it.

"Mother! She's not even twelve hours old. She might not want to have anything to do with the Rangers. You can't possibly know at this time of her life."

"On this point, trust me," she had replied "I know."

"Star-stuff," he said to no one, "star-stuff, both of them."

The shower and the clean clothes made Alex feel considerably better. She walked down the stairs, into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her grandmothers waist from behind. "I have a message for you from the President of the Earth Alliance."

"And what does the President want with me?"

"He said, and I quote `tell that indomitable spirit who you live with that I love her for a multiplicity of reasons, not the least of which being the absolutely stunning job she's done of raising you.'"

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that. And I would like to take this moment to add my thanks to his message. You have been wonderful, all my life, and I remember times when that can't have been easy. I was a pretty rotten kid at points. I'm sorry."

"You had quite the time out there, didn't you?"

"It's that obvious?"

"To me, yes, it's that obvious. Now, go sit down, I will make some tea and we will talk about it."

"Satai." David Sheridan addressed his brother formally. He had used the diplomatic link to Minbar as it was more secure, and it only seemed appropriate.

"President Sheridan, much time has passed since we last spoke." David smiled at his brother's little joke.

"Much time. I thought you would like to be informed that we are all still here."

"She has returned, then?"

"Yes, she has."

"I trust you will brief me further when next we meet."

"As soon as the En'til'zha and I have all the details we will send you a full report."

"Thank you. In'cil'zha vene. In Valen's name."

"In Valen's name."

"I brought you something back, Nana. I left it on your vanity upstairs."

"No, perhaps I should not, but don't give me holy hell until you've seen it."

"By transporting any item across time you've taken the risk of altering the timelines, even if only slightly."

"I know that, probably better than anyone. But when have I ever played by the rules?"

"True," Delenn sighed, "very true."

"Things did not go exactly as we had planned and I got to meet your Captain, as well as you. He loved you so much.... It shone in his eyes. You two truly were soul-mates." She looked up, her eyes dancing. "He was one handsome dude."

"He was at that." Delenn took a deep breath. Forty years, more than forty years since he had simply stopped, since he had been taken from her, and it still hurt as much now as it had at the moment it happened. The thought of his face, his hands, his eyes.... She reached out and lovingly stroked her granddaughters cheek, "You have his eyes, little one."

"You always say that." Alex smiled at the memories. "She said that too."

"She?"

"She..., well you." Alex looked up and their eyes met, "Strange how you never really see your family, the people closest to you, the ones you love the most, as they really are. I'd truly not noticed until that instant when I retrieved her..., you..., from the Zocalo just how incredibly beautiful you were..., are....

David wondered if his mother was right, if what she and his father had created would last a thousand years. All they had worked for, all they had fought for could be so easily destroyed, as it nearly had been this time. As long as there was life in the galaxy, there would be dark servants who would try to extinguish the light of hope his parents had lit so many years ago. `Only time would tell,' he thought to himself, `only time will tell.'

The small carved box that was Alex's present rattled as she picked it up from her dressing table. `Sometimes the box is not the whole gift', Delenn thought, remembering the small soft black velvet box that had held her engagement ring. She lifted the lid and stared at the datacrystal inside. It was a long minute before she summoned the courage to remove it from where it had been secreted and place it in the viewer.

When his face appeared she let out a small strangled gasp and as she heard him say her name reached out with trembling fingers to touch the cool smooth surface of the View-Screen.

Sheridan was late, he'd promised to meet Delenn in the Zocalo for dinner at their favorite little restaurant and he was late. Not a lot late, just a minute or two, but he hated to keep her waiting, hated that it was a minute or two that he wouldn't be able to spend with her. Always some crisis or another, he thought. He rounded the corner just in time to see Delenn turn towards him.

As she turned to face him she had a sudden bright vision of a young human woman in a baseball cap, with a Minbari fighting pike in her hands. She would have dismissed the sensation out of hand, but for one thing, the girl had John's eyes. Smiling to herself, her heart light, she walked towards the man she loved with every fibre of her being.

"You're late." she said softly. There was no reproof in her voice.

He sighed, "I know my love, I'm sorry, we had a....."

"It is of no matter, you are here now." She looked up into his eyes. And there, at that instant in time, for two people standing in the middle of the Zocalo, time was suddenly irrelevant.