October, 2267
Lyta, sobbing, had turned Zack down that evening, saying she was too old and had nothing to offer him in return. Zack was crushed. For Angel’s sake, they tried to keep up appearances. She, of course, could sense that something was wrong, that something was very wrong, but they told her over and over that nothing was wrong. Angel wasn’t the least bit fooled, she knew that mommy and daddy had always kissed in the day and snuggled up like a pair of magnetic spoons at night, and now, they weren’t even touching each other. If nothing was wrong, she wouldn’t have caught mommy worrying if her small income was enough to pay for a separate room, away from daddy. The next few weeks were tense.
All too aware of the situation, Tess did her best to both stay out of the way but to still help mediate. She was conscious of the situation a lot better then anyone else, and felt partly responsible. She didn’t, however, gossip. She knew better than that.
"Not to sound like a snoop, Teresa," Delenn’s image on the screen asked, "but you’ve seemed to be very . . . out of sorts recently. May I ask what’s wrong?"
Tess sighed. "A couple of weeks ago, I gave a friend what I thought was some good advice, and it worked, but since then it has seriously backfired and I think I’m kindof responsible for an – um – unpleasant situation for both of them.
"That’s not good. Are you certain it was you? Perhaps if I knew how it began, I might be able to offer some small piece of advice. I can’t guarantee anything, but I can certainly try to assist."
Tess sighed, and began to explain the conversation she'd had with Lyta three weeks before. " . . . I knew her self-esteem wasn’t very high, but I didn’t think it was that bad, I mean, she was sick, physically sick yesterday! That’s how bad it’s gotten! And she isn’t able to face up to Zack, the two of them won’t even look at each other anymore! They’re both in pain about it, but if I try to push them together – they were such good friends before – I don’t know. Lyta has no other place to go to, at least none I can think of off-hand that she’d accept, it’s just . . ." She gave up trying to explain. "She’s had to start over so many times, I don’t think she can do it again without help. Lyta’s just . . . given up, and Zack can’t and won’t *force* her into anything. She needs something, someONE that she knows cares about her, but hasn’t got the strength to go look for it. I know she’d be able to do anything, anything at all, but without the inertia to get started . . . I don’t know what to do."
Delenn was silent for a few seconds. "Her relationship with Mr. Allan has deteriorated beyond repair, then?"
"I don’t know. I hope not! They just need a push to get back together – but it can’t come from outside, they’re both so mule-headed stubborn, and I don’t think either one is willing to make the first step without a reason. No help from inside, no help from outside. Angel came to me yesterday, and cried for over an hour in my lap. She thinks her Mom is going away again, and doesn’t want to lose her. ‘I don’t want her to go back to sleep, auntie Tess, please make her stay awake. I want my mommy’. I . . . I could use a little advice."
Delenn was silent, absorbing everything. "I’ve only ever heard her wish for two things, in all the time I’ve known her. The first was before she became Kosh’s aide. She’d been injured while on B5 –"
"Uncovering the spy?"
"Yes. She left on a minbari ship, to avoid the bounty hunters Psi Corps had sent after her. Just before they left, I spoke with her, asked if there was anything she wanted. She was somewhat full of painkillers, and I had thought the drugs were responsible for what she said."
"Which was?"
" ‘I want to be normal. I’d give anything to just be normal again, even for just a single day.’ I didn’t know at that time how bad her treatment had been when in Corps custody. I had no idea how all the members of the Corps were treated."
Tess was silent for a few minutes. "I wish there was a way to grant her wish, but there’s isn’t one, is there. She’s . . . exceptional . . . even for a telepath. What was the second thing she wished for?"
"It wasn’t an actual wish as such. While I was treating her wounds when returning from the Coriana Six battle, she was very quiet. She only spoke once during the three days it took to return to Babylon 5, looking in a mirror from across the room. ‘I wonder what it would be like to wear one of those.’ When I asked, she just tipped her head towards one of the rangers nearby. I couldn’t get her to talk afterwards, the surprise of the First Ones leaving was quite strong still. I never had time to find her afterwards to talk, either, between the celebrations and then the civil wars . . . then I was on Minbar, and she was hospitalized for years."
"Delenn," Tess began slowly, "Are telepaths allowed to become rangers?"
She nodded. "Perhaps you are thinking the same thing I am."
"We might be, at that."
"She has been a valuable ally to the Anla’shok for many years. Perhaps, if she wishes it, the arrangement could be formalized."
Tess smiled for the first time in weeks. "Perhaps it could."
~~~~
Several hours later, Tess had started to search for Lyta, to tell her the good news.
An hour after that, she was getting anxious in her search. Lyta was nowhere to be found, but when she checked with a member of security, he knew what had happened to her, but was in no mood to be the one to tell his boss that. Lyta had been found, collapsed in the hallway, and been brought to medlab 3 a few minutes before.
"Oh, hell." Tess took off at a dead run.
~~~~
They’d placed Lyta in a private alcove, with the privacy screen turned on. Tess, of course, paid it no mind and walked straight in to where Lyta was sitting hunched over on the bed, her face buried in her hands and crying uncontrollably.
"What’s wrong? Are you all right? Where’re the kids? What happened!?"
Startled, Lyta looked up at her, then turned away. "Leave me alone!"
"No," Tess said bluntly, and waited for her to calm down.
After a while, Lyta scrubbed the tears away with her sleeve. "Everything is wrong, no I’m not all right, and they’re in the waiting room, playing." She sniffed, then looked at Tess again, suddenly furious. "You and your stupid ideas! Break the status quo! Get laid! Did it ever occur to you that I’m too *stupid* to remember details like a contraceptive?!?"
"W – what?"
Lyta was very quiet again. "I’m Pregnant. Almost a month. I was hoping it was the start of menopause finally. Oops."
Lyta began to cry again, Tess holding her gently as she trembled. They were still hugging almost an hour later when Zack arrived.
He didn’t do much for the few seconds it took them to see him, instead just watched. When he was noticed, Lyta instantly began to beg his forgiveness. "I’m sorry! I didn’t plan for this to happen, Zack! I’m so sorry!"
"I was . . . told by the doctors that you’re pregnant." He said simply.
Lyta, her face turned away in shame, nodded.
Zack asked Tess to leave with a look, and she reluctantly backed out the door.
Alone with Lyta, Zack knelt down in front of her and just looked at her for a few moments. Then he reached into his pocket, and pulled out the box with the ring. "I couldn’t help you last time. I looked after you and Angel, at first partly out of a sense of duty, but quickly, very quickly, I feel in love, and it consumed every part of me. I love Angel, and I love you, too, I have for a long time. But I’d never say anything because I thought you knew, I thought you were scanning me, or at least picking up on it. It wasn’t until you said you weren’t worth having, that I realised I’d been assuming too much. Lyta, I love you. I want to be with you, forever. I want to raise Angel and the new baby with you, I want to grow old with you, I want to know you are protected and cared for. Please, please say you’ll stay, please say you’ll finally marry me. For real. And if you try that ‘I have nothing to offer you’ line again, I’ll know it’s B.S. You are carrying my child inside you, Lyta. I’m going to be a father again in just over 8 months and by all means, that’s one hell of a fabulous gift. Please, Lyta, look at me. Scan me, feel what I feel."
"No. I can't, I won't scan you! Ever. I won't!"
"Lyta, please, I won't get mad, I asking you to! Just TRUST me and DO IT!"
Quivering with fear, Lyta let her shields down and listened to his emotions. "Ohhhh . . ." She gasped, then slid off the bed to hug him tightly, shaking with tears.
"It’s ok, Lyta. It’s going to be ok," he whispered. "I love you."
"Yes," she whispered back. "Yes!"
~~~~
They were married early the following morning, in a small, private ceremony. Zack and Lyta were there, of course, with Tess as the witness, the preacher as the forth, and two grinning children completed the group.
Tess reserved an private alcove at the Fresh Aire restaurant and treated everyone to an early lunch, only slightly less ecstatic than Zack and Lyta were. She did eat better than they did, as she wasn’t kissing someone at every second bite. Angel was simply happy that everything seemed to be fixed, while Shawn did his best to sneak food off everyone else’s plates to nibble rather than his own.
In the restaurant’s lobby a few minutes later, "Hi, Angel. Why are you here?" A security guard had noticed her standing next to the restroom door.
"Shawn had to go pee."
"This may seem like a silly question, dearie, but why did you take him all the way up here? There’s closer ones to the gardens."
"Because Auntie Tess is taking Mommy and Daddy to lunch right now? In there?" Angel’s expression was a perfect copy of her mother’s ‘it is sooo obvious’ expression. "So how come you’re here?"
"I’m making a dinner reservation for a nice lady who I want to impress. I’m hoping I won’t get called in, with the Chief off and all. We all figured that if he did have to work, he’d break our skulls, it being the first anniversary your mom was here for. And considering the bragging you were doing yesterday in medlab . . ." Angel froze. "Anniversary?" "This is the day they got married, right?" Angel blinked blankly at him, wondering what he was talking about. [Nobody's been told about the ceremony yet. Have they?]
"They got hitched back in ’61 on this day – uh – I did get the date right, didn’t I? Oh hell. If it’s tomorrow and the Chief ends up on call, it’s my butt on the line."
Angel stopped to think, and then slowly grinned. "It’s this day." [It is! It is today!!] She shoved open the door to the restroom. "Shawn! Hurry up! I just ‘membered something I gotta tell your mom," she hissed to him as the guard walked over to the man at the reservation table.
"I stuck," the toddler complained as she walked out, holding his unfastened pants closed with his fist.
"Urh! Here. Done. Did you clean your hands? Good, now come on!" She grabbed his hand and half-dragged him back into the dining area.
"Bye, Angel," the guard called.
"Bye! And THANK YOU!" Angel stage-whispered.
~~~~
"Forsooth, the lumbering beast doth awaken."
Lyta groaned and buried her face under the quilt. "Tess, it is waaay too early in the morning to be so cheerful."
"It’s past noon. Are you decent? No, of course not. You’ve just spent the last 48 hours having wild, passionate sex. Where do you keep your nightgowns? I want to let the kid in from the hallway, and I intend to keep *some* pretense of innocence in her."
"Third drawer. It can’t be past noon. We just got to slee – where’s Zack?"
"He had to get to work, finally. I linked in to him a little over an hour ago to make sure he got up. You slept right through him getting showered and dressed. I’m not going to ask why he only semi-complained there was no hot water left . . . How it was used up is not really my concern, now is it."
Lyta only giggled.
"Ok, Angel! Come in."
"Hey, sweetheart. How was your stay at with Auntie Tess?"
"Long." Angel was about to hug her and stopped. "You haven’t washed yet, mommy. You smell worse than the gym does after a bunch of groundpounders have been using it."
"Gee, I love you too."
"Angel," Tess interrupted, "Go pick some new toys out of your box and put them into the bag, ok? I’m dropping you off at a park after school, to let your mom sleep some more. She seems to need it."
Lyta sat up straighter. "Who’s looking after Shawn?"
"A ranger who stopped to refuel his flyer got drafted for a couple of days. Shawn seems to hate him, though, keeps asking about you. Think you can be available tomorrow? If not, don’t worry, you’ve earned the downtime. And . . . you need the time to think on something really important. A chance of a career advancement so to speak."
"Which would be?" Lyta asked curiously.
~~~~
"Oh, Tess. You don’t know how much I would have loved to hear that, it’s just – it’s just-"
"It’s just you’re expecting again."
"I mean, if things had been different, if things hadn’t turned around, I would have left for Minbar, even if it would have meant leaving Angel for weeks, or maybe even months at a time. But I can’t leave, not now!"
"Actually, I updated Delenn last night. We were talking for a while and the checking she had been doing . . . you’re special, Lyta. You have talents, abilities, powers no-one else does, and there’s things few others suspect, and maybe some things no one suspects! Good talents, useful talents that I, personally, would love to get on my side."
"I am on ‘your’ side, Tess."
"Well, yes, but I meant officially-working-for-the-alliance type of side. With your ‘special’ abilities, Delenn hopes to give you special training, which can be done here. Lyta, she’s thrilled about the new baby, and your getting hitched. We – uh – were actually halfway through the conversation when she interrupted herself and said ‘wait a minute, weren’t they already married?!?’ And here I was, stammering, trying to figure out what to say when Angel pipes up from her corner, ‘They didn’t have a ring or a real ceremony or nothing back then. So we did it now.’ Whew. Three points for the tyke, because Delenn said she’d heard of recommitment ceremonies. And she thinks it was a very good idea, considering how you’d been apart for so long. The training, right. You couldn’t do all the physical stuff if you’re belly’s too big, for a while, but your brain is just fine. The offer is open if you want it, specs are in a secured file in your comm system. Mostly, you’d start on languages, computer skills, some pike training, lots of thinking stuff, and mechanical too. Fix things – whether or not they’re broken, if you catch my drift. You *are* smart, Lyta, Zack has told you enough times. I just wish it would sink in!"
"They’d let me? Even though I . . ."
"Minbari consider children, all children, sacred. Some rangers thought it rather amusing that I tried to schedule meetings around Shawn’s feedings. Something about being able to concentrate on work while a baby is feeding, and usually kicking, as being a good sign of metal fitness. You didn’t know? Minbari are mammals too."
"I’ll consider it. I will – it just seems too good to be true, like everything is suddenly going right for once."
"Don’t worry, I took a peek at what you’d have to do. It isn’t as easy as I’m letting you believe. Just promise me you’ll check into the possibility?"
"Of course!" Lyta replied.