The Fall Of The World's Own Optimist
The world has gone insane. Coming from her, that's pretty damning.
She wonders about Susan Ivanova, sometimes. If all this craziness has affected her, or if she's still living on the edge and denying who she is. Even the Psi Cops couldn't feel it, that little whisper of awareness in her mind. Lyta could, but she never said anything. Susan could be a powerful enemy, and Lyta's position on Babylon 5 had been tenuous at the best of times. But she thinks about Susan, about Captain Sheridan and Delenn. About G'Kar. She thinks about Zack too, but only when she knows she can do it without crying.
In the cold, dark nights she licks cracked lips and thinks about him, bony fingers stroking circles over the little flesh she has left, moving between the scars and dipping through damp red curls.
She doesn't know what the Vorlons have done to her mind. To her body. Except that she almost does, it's on the tip of her tongue, like the next line of a song that you can't quite remember. If she pushed hard, then she's sure she could find some answers. She doesn't want them, so she doesn't push. After the Shadow war, she'd thought things might be different. Instead, she's hiding in a cramped and dismal room, on a planet whose name she's forgotten, awaiting orders. The days of Babylon 5, of feeling safe, are gone. The days of traveling with G'Kar, of feeling freedom, of seeing things she'd never imagined before and all for the price of the occasional tumble between the sheets with her eyes closed. All gone. All she has are memories, and she's too far gone these days to know for sure if they were real or not. And she has a faded picture of Zack Allen, the most precious of all her meager possessions. Once upon a time, she thought that maybe they could have something. When she was all alone, and a friendly word was all she looked for, he was there. When she had to move to smaller quarters, he'd been there too, but he'd only been following orders. And he came by one night, with pizza and a bottle of wine, as a housewarming present. If she had been as she was before, just plain old Lyta Alexander with no Vorlon enchancements, they could have had something.
Byron was more than a man. She fell in love with his ideals. He'd wanted something from her, influence over someone who had the ear of John Sheridan, over someone who had contact with the Vorlons. He, like everyone else, wanted what was in her mind. Part of her hated their joining. It wasn't making love. Yes, there had been arousal and passion, but he'd only touched her as a courtesy. Starved of any kind of affectionate contact, she didn't care if he brought her to orgasm by his hand, his cock or his mind. Anything more than that was something she was pathetically grateful for.
G'Kar had been rough, when that was what she needed. He'd suspected her of lying when she said she had no pain threshold, but he never called her on it and trusted her to tell him to stop if he hurt her too badly. She never did, and together they cleaned up the bruises and the blood, and he held her as she cried.
Zack had run his fingers through her hair, had stroked her back as she lay draped across him, had kissed her slowly, haltingly, with the slightest flicker of his tongue against hers, tugging on her lower lip with his teeth as she mounted him. He thrust against her, and they clung to each other, skin clammy with sweat. She has to remind herself that this never happened. Years later, reality gets fused with fantasy, with nightmares, until she's not entirely sure what happened and what didn't.
Zack has been nothing but a thought for so many years that she thinks he exists only in her memory. She could have made things up, gotten confused, imagined a look or a touch or a word.
("There's something about you that, frankly? I'm nuts about.")
She vaguely remembers being wanted like that, feeling the heat of his gaze and the gentleness of his affection, soft like silk. But these days she can't remember without other thoughts getting tangled in too, and he becomes Bester with his probing, inquiring mind that cut through her like steel, or John Sheridan with a gun to her head, or the second Kosh tearing fragile pieces of her mind as he pulled out of it. None of this may have happened. She's learnt not to trust her dreams.
She remembers the warmth in his eyes, the affectionate pressure of his hand on hers, his shy smile and bumbling attempts to flirt. She thinks that maybe the only reason she thinks about him these days was because he asked if it was alright to touch her. There were no fingers gripping into her flesh, nothing prying into her brain with its thoughts or its fingers or its machines. He is the only person she can remember who ever asked what she wanted. If he were here, she would send him away just because she could.
He's the kind of man she wishes she could want. These days, she's forgotten what wanting is. There was something he'd said, once. She remembers it like it was a dream.
("The life you lead is something I could never understand. Well maybe I could. Well...maybe I could try. You're the kinda person that makes a man wanna try.")
She wonders where he is now, how many promotions he's gotten, whose side he's on, and laughs, hollowly.