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1. 2258
In his relatively short time as commander of Babylon 5, Jeffrey had tried to make a point of getting to know the ambassadors of other races as well as he could. There were a few he might count as friends, and some who remained enigmas and perhaps always would -- the Narn ambassador among them. However, when he found G'Kar sitting alone in the Dark Star, watching the crowd around him, Jeff gestured an unspoken question if he might sit with him, and found himself in a surprisingly pleasant conversation with an unusually relaxed and cheerful G'Kar.
He was a little afraid to ask what had caused this mood -- knowing G'Kar, it was probably some misfortune that had befallen the Centauri people, or a shady business deal that had gone well. Still, it was not often that Jeff was able to catch G'Kar in such an open mood, so he took the opportunity to ask a few questions about matters of Narn culture that he'd been curious about. G'Kar was cheerfully willing to explain the finer distinctions in different kinds of spoo (all Jeff had been able to figure out about it so far was that humans found most of them equally disgusting), and after that, Jeff decided to venture onto a topic that he'd been curious about for some time.
"If it's not considered impolite to ask, do you mind telling me a little something about your people's belief in soulmates?"
G'Kar's hairless brow ridges rose. "Belief? You say that as if it was not a real, observable thing."
"Well, then." Jeff smiled. "Tell me about this real thing. Your people are the only ones in the galaxy, that we know about, who have such a thing."
"That is true," G'Kar mused. "And it is the only talent akin to telepathy that we have. Back when we had a greater belief in gods than we do now, it was sometimes said that we were given this to compensate for the telepathy we did not have. Of course, now we know that telepathy is genetic, so likely there is some similar basis for this as well."
"There's still plenty of room for wonder and mystery in a scientific universe, G'Kar." Jeff paused briefly, but it didn't seem that G'Kar minded the questions, so he went on, "Do you have one? A soulmate?"
G'Kar's smile was indulgent. "Oh, no, no -- not yet, anyway. Many people do not. And I have spent so much time off my own world over the past decade that perhaps the bond has had no chance to develop in me."
"It has to develop?"
"You really know nothing about it, do you?"
"That's why I asked," Jeff pointed out.
Once again, the odd hint of almost fond indulgence, as if G'Kar enjoyed being a teacher once in a while. "The soulbond in us Narn is born out of empathy. Some say love -- but it is really more empathy, or sympathy, the fellow feeling between two souls. Oh, I see your skepticism. You think we have less of it than your own race." Jeff began to protest, but G'Kar spoke over the top of him. "The Centauri certainly think so. The Centauri do not understand the soulbond, but the one thing they did understand was how to use it to punish and wound us."
His voice curled around the word Centauri in a way that Jeff had no word for. It was a kind of hate that had twisted into something almost poisonously fond, a hate nurtured until it was closer to G'Kar than his own heart.
But Jeffrey, not being without empathy himself, could tell there was pain beneath the all too justifiable anger. "That's truly vile."
"That is the Centauri for you," G'Kar said, a simple statement of fact.
In the interests of not restarting another war, Jeff decided to gently redirect the topic. "So -- you aren't born knowing who your soulmate is? Does everyone have one?"
"Oh, no. It does not work like that. Just as not everyone has one true love." G'Kar raised his brows again, but this time it was to waggle them suggestively at a pair of human dancers walking past, one male and one female.
Jeff cleared his throat. "It's not set in stone, then? Your soulmate?"
"No, no. Like falling in love, it happens. Sometimes over a lifetime. Sometimes in an evening. Many feel the first stirrings of the bond when their first child is born from their mate's pouch; a birth-pain shared is a pain halved, after all. For others, it is often a thing that happens under fire, sharing danger with a comrade and sharing their pain as well."
"When you say sharing their pain --"
The Narn's garnet eyes were sincere, devoid of their usual frisson of anger or mockery. "Oh, it is telepathy, Commander -- did you doubt this? I have never experienced it myself, but I know many who have. The soulbonded do not share thoughts, though it is said that dreams are possible. But when their bonded one is in danger, or hurt, they feel it as a wound to their own soul."
"I see," Jeffrey said. He sat back in his chair, holding his nearly untouched drink. "It seems that your people have a great deal of depth, G'Kar, and much to teach us."
"Of course. Doesn't everyone? Excepting perhaps the Centauri." G'Kar turned his head to meet the eyes of one of the human dancers, who smiled at him. "Now if you will excuse me, I think I might go find someone else to share a drink with -- not that your company isn't charming."
"Of course, don't let me keep you." Jeffrey rose from the table and G'Kar's gaze strayed back to the dancer. But before leaving, Jeffrey added, "One more question, if you don't mind indulging my curiosity. Might he be the one?" He glanced at the human dancer, who G'Kar looked at with such interest. "Could a Narn have a soulbond with someone of another race? Has that ever happened?"
G'Kar laughed. Like all his laughter, there was a mocking element in it, laced with that familiar underlying curl of anger. "Of course not, Commander. It is not merely unheard-of, but impossible. As you have pointed out, it is we and we alone who have this 'thing,' is it not?"
2. 2060
"Tell me, or I'll rip it from your mind!"
Later, much later, in a cell in Babylon 5's small jail -- from which he could easily escape; from which he did not wish to -- G'Kar lay half asleep, drifting muzzily through dreams that felt oddly unfamiliar. Places he had never seen, people who were not Narns, who wore Centauri hairstyles ... The Centauri were never far from his nightmares, of course, but this was new.
He woke, once, gasping from a sharp pain in his lip and a fierce ache in his arm. He had to touch his face to realize that his lip was intact, his arm uninjured, the pain fading gradually from his conscious mind.
Who knew what strange sensations, what mind-opening experiences, what punishments, even, that the enlightenment of G'Quan might bring? He lay gazing up at the low ceiling of his cell, his mind pulsing with all he had seen and experienced. Then he rolled on his elbow and reached for his pen and paper, and wrote some more, trying to jot down his impressions before any new insights vanished in the daylight.
3. 2261
There was more than enough to distract and worry Londo in Cartagia's court without also feeling ill on top of the difficult dance of pleasing Cartagia and hiding his own subversive activities.
It had come on slowly, a gradual development of bone-deep aches and inexplicable sharp pains. Nothing seemed to be truly wrong, not to the extent that he could risk the visible display of weakness that would go along with seeing a physician. Even Vir noticed something, asking him if anything was the matter. Londo put him off with excuses of too much drink, but it chilled him to think that if Vir noticed, who else might? He wondered if Cartagia had poisoned him, something slow-acting and rare. There was nothing he could do about it, no one he could turn to for help.
Most of the physical discomfort, whatever its cause, he could learn to ignore, as he had learned to ignore so much else. But when he sat bolt upright in bed with one hand clapped over his eye, he had the searing knowledge, for an instant, that his eye was gone. He had to stumble to look at himself in the bathroom mirror to be sure that it was still there. It throbbed incessantly, though just to look, it was no more bloodshot than the other ... which was not to say not at all, as he was getting by mostly on brivari and nerves these days.
"Londo?" Vir stood in the doorway, bleary and half asleep, clumsily wrapped in a robe. "I heard -- that is, I was -- uh, are you all right?"
"I am fine, Vir." Londo lowered his hand swiftly from probing at his eye. There was a blurry moment of near panic before he blinked and saw Vir properly. "Go back to sleep. We leave for Narn early in the morning."
Vir looked at him for a too-long moment before slipping back to the darkened main room of the suite.
Londo would have stayed up, poured himself a drink, except that Vir was sleeping on the couch in the outer room, and such activities would have kept Vir up and betrayed Londo's own agitation as well. So he went back to his bed and lay under the covers: aching, confused, afraid.
And then, slowly, strangely, a sort of calm crept over him. It was not precisely a lack of anxiety. It was more a sharply honed clarity of purpose so strong, so large in his mind that it crowded out everything else, leaving no room for fear or doubt.
It hardly felt like his own emotion. He had never really felt that sure about anything in his life. But it was there, somehow both intrusive and reassuring. He put a hand over his throbbing eye socket and felt it somehow begin to ... ease, or ... he wasn't sure what he was feeling, exactly, almost a reverse of the strange emotional clarity, as if his physical condition was slowly winning out over the pain, perhaps.
The thought that came to him in the dark was strange and wild and, really, only the sort of thought that could have come in the dark: it seemed to him, in that fanciful instant, as if his physical health was seeping across to some unknown, unseen other person in exchange for the emotional calm settling over him.
As he lay drifting in this strange new calm, his thoughts went elsewhere. It was often the case these days, whether he wanted it or not, that he found himself thinking of G'Kar and whatever might be happening to him now in his cell. Londo tried not to dwell on it. There was nothing he could do to change any of it. The worst still lay ahead of both of them.
He was not quite able to fall asleep. But he lay in that peculiarly settled state until the first gray traces of dawn touched his curtains, and then he rose to wake Vir and prepare for the flight to Narn.
4. 2262
G'Kar had vaguely suspected what was happening to him for some time now. He had denied it, he had questioned his own perceptions, he had wondered if the strange, nagging flickers of feelings and dreams could be his imagination, or a lingering echo of his experiences under the influence of Dust.
But the stabbing pain in his chest, the crushing breathless urgency was all too undeniably real.
After Mollari was out of danger from his heart attack, G'Kar supposed it should probably be him (as the one who had more of an idea of what all of this was about) who should have gone to open a conversation that he did not particularly want to have. But he hesitated and resisted; he told himself that he might be wrong, though he knew he wasn't. Anyway, Mollari was supposed to be resting in his quarters.
But the chime at his door came with the undeniable awareness of Mollari's presence, the one person G'Kar would never have to ask to identify himself.
"Come in."
Mollari entered, looking nervous and wan. He was fully dressed in his council chamber formalwear, but looked as if he would be more comfortable in an invalid's hospital gown. He glanced around, and G'Kar had a brief flash of Mollari in this same room half a year ago, taking the first tentative steps towards -- something. They were far beyond mere reconciliation now.
Mollari flinched a little, and G'Kar had the startling realization that they were both thinking of that day, not so long ago in absolute time, but a lifetime in other ways.
"Sit down, please," he said, rising from his chair. Seeing Mollari standing there, off balance and uneasy, was making him uncomfortable, though just a few months ago he might have relished it. "Do I need to call Vir and let him know where you've wandered off to?"
This made Mollari's face screw up in dismay. "Please, no. I cannot bear his hovering a moment longer. I beg you, hide me." He sat down heavily on the nearest chair.
"You do not look as if you should be out of bed."
"Don't you start too." Mollari raised a hand to rub at his face, discovered the sheen of sweat that G'Kar had already noticed, and looked at his fingers with vague dismay. He pulled a square of silk from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead and neck.
G'Kar poured them both cups of a light summer wine that was mostly fruit juice, probably not too badly counterindicated for a recovering heart attack patient. Mollari took it with a slight, tight nod, and G'Kar became aware that he really had no idea if they were both feeling what he thought they were feeling. He didn't know what was happening in Mollari's head. But he knew that there was something. Whatever it was that had been growing between them, one unwanted and half-unacknowledged sensation at a time, had snapped into completion when their eyes had met in that moment across the medbay. He felt faint glimmerings of Mollari's emotions even now, and strangest of all, it was not unpleasant. It was ... comfortable. Like the pleasure of being understood in a deep conversation or an intense sparring match.
"What did you do?" Mollari inquired. Though the words seemed accusing, his tone was not upset or angry, merely wondering.
"What did I do about what?"
"You know what I mean." Mollari stopped speaking, turning the metal cup around in his hands, and started over. "You were -- there. In ... the medbay. And then ..." He stopped again.
"Yes," G'Kar said, and he half-laughed. It was hard to believe even for him. Foolish, too. But the universe was wide enough to allow for the impossible and the foolish, like the fact that they were sitting here together now, sharing a drink in slightly awkward companionship without knives at each other's throats. ".... So tell me, Mollari, have you ever heard of Narn soulbonds?"
5. 2262 (some months later)
The Imperial palace was nearly quiet, ominously so. Londo stopped in the half-wrecked hallway outside the double door to his rooms, where G'Kar was even now resting. This close, he could feel G'Kar's pain and worry as if it was his own. He had been trying to keep a very tight grip on his own feelings, but even so he could sense that some of the worry was about him.
By now he was halfway used to it, this thing with G'Kar -- the way they finished each other's sentences, the little surges of emotion (amused, wry, fond, sometimes angry) that curled in his mind. When they had clashed over Na'Toth, G'Kar's fury had all but knocked him down. But most of the time it was (somehow, strangely, impossibly) a rather pleasant thing, and he knew that G'Kar thought so, too, because he could feel that also.
But no matter how tight a grip he kept on the spillover of his own feelings, when ... that -- the horror awaiting him -- happened to him, there was no way that G'Kar would not feel it. And worse, there was no way, no possible way that they would not know that G'Kar knew.
Londo did not know what to do. Torn between two impossible options (to sacrifice his world, or watch G'Kar fall with him), he could only think of one thing to try.
"Hello, G'Kar -- no, please sit," he began, pushing open the door. He didn't need to ask how G'Kar was doing; it took him a small effort to avoid limping from pain not his own, and when G'Kar sat up with effort, a sharp thrust in Londo's side made him gasp at the start of his next little speech. "I cannot stay, I come only to stay that you must leave the planet. Immediately. I will arrange for a shuttle, and an Alliance ship will have to pick you up in orbit."
"What?" G'Kar stared at him, then grasped the back of a chair and levered himself to his feet. Londo reached out automatically to steady him, then stopped himself; by now he knew that contact strengthened the bond. If he didn't touch G'Kar physically, there was at least some hope that he could manage to keep the most important parts of this from him. "No, this is absurd, I'm not going to --"
"Listen to me. It is not safe. I cannot --"
"The fact that it isn't safe is why I need to be here, Mollari!"
"Listen to me! I cannot do what I need to do with you here," Londo snarled, all too aware of how true it was. Maybe G'Kar would feel that truth. "You are a visible symbol of the Alliance, and we are still at war. I believe I can end the war --" How true that was; how terrible the truth. "-- but only if I can act freely, which I cannot do with you here. I am sorry, but you must go."
G'Kar met his eyes before Londo could dodge his stare. "Mollari, you are a terrible liar in the first place, and you must know you cannot lie to me. What is really happening?"
"I have told you. The palace literally fell upon your head; what more proof do you need?"
"You are afraid." Although it was taking him visible effort to stay on his feet, G'Kar reached out for him.
Londo jerked away. "Of course I am afraid. My planet is on fire. Your people are bombing it. Who wouldn't be?"
"Something has changed." G'Kar studied him, and Londo wondered if it was just his imagination that he could feel G'Kar leaning on their connection, trying to see what Londo didn't want him to. It was taking all the effort that Londo could spare to keep him out.
"You are keeping something from me," G'Kar said slowly. "Something very bad. What is it?"
His hand settled carefully on Londo's arm, and Londo knew in that instant that what he should do was push G'Kar away, leave this room he should never have come to, go back to the --
G'Kar's eyes widened briefly, and Londo felt the gloved hand tighten on his arm. G'Kar saw. G'Kar knew.
"Mollari -- by G'Quan, what is that?"
He was not sure, after, exactly how it came to happen -- G'Kar, injured though he was, guiding him down to sit beside him on the couch; G'Kar's physical pain and Londo's terror echoing back and forth between them until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
But with G'Kar still gripping his arm, Londo told him everything.