Work Text:
All Mollari's fault. To have known, it is one thing. To see it, to feel it, to know it as he knows himself is another thing entirely. The rage, the pain, it consumes him in a dizzying wave of feeling compounding with the colorful blurring of the Dust as he hears Mollari's flippant voice echo again in his mind, "Why not eliminate the entire Narn home-world?"
There's more. There has to be more. Even if there is not, at least there will be pain.
G'Kar will see it. He will see all of it and it will hurt, because Mollari deserves it, and far more after everything. He delves deeper, his mind a hacking blade and Mollari a chopping block. The images come then, echoes of words and thoughts, a murky sea of feeling.
It takes time to make sense of things, to be both the observer and the experiencer, seeing the bloodied creature before him in the waking world, the strutting bastard in those memories, and being him, feeling what he feels, seeing what he sees.
'Let me out!' cries Londo in the smoke-filled elevator.
'There is no-one,' laughs G'Kar. 'You are alone.'
Londo's groan of pain turns into a rattling cough. G'Kar hisses through his teeth. He had broken one or two of his ribs when he'd rushed Londo and beaten him to the floor in a blind frenzy of rage.
His ribs.
Whose ribs?
No, he has to remember, has to keep exerting his will, else he will be lost. The Dust may give him mind-power, but his strength is his own, for what little he knows to do with it. He will tear into Mollari's mind, and if they are both driven mad, then so be it.
'Alone,' he repeats. The word, the concept itself is like a great boulder – the weight bears down on him. Londo's mouth twists.
G'Kar feels control sliding away again, the mad swirling of the Dust keeping him from grabbing hold of anything with his mind, swept along for the ride in long, nauseating moments, leaving him unable to catch himself.
Alone.
There is a bouquet of glowing flowers. Star-laces. A watery, wavering smile on the face of a beautiful Centauri girl. A name, whispered with near-reverent affection.
Adira.
G'Kar tries to steer his mad descent into Londo's mind – some things he has no wish to see, or to experience second-hand, or rather second-tentacle…
Alone.
An old man in a darkened study. His great crest of hair is almost entirely white, his eyes glittering with unshed tears.
"My shoes are too tight," he whispers, and the universe caves in around him.
'Father,' he whispers back with lips that are not his own, but it is not the study before him; a tree and a form hanging from it and he knows that the body there is empty of life and he is-
Alone-
There is an alien garden. A Shadow ship overhead. A Centauri woman with a shrill voice and a pinched mouth.
He sees two Centauri youths playing at blade-work stumble and fall to the bright grass, one getting comfortable with the other's lap as a pillow. And then he is Londo, looking down into the youth's face, but no, it is a much older man and he is breathing his last, and Urza's blood is on his hands, and oh, why did you make me do this, you knew-
The pain in his two hearts is beyond description-
No!
One heart. He has only one heart. He is Narn. He is G'Kar.
He tears himself away, not all the way but enough to begin remembering where he ends and Londo begins.
In the waking world, shimmering, wavering as though it were the mind-dream, Londo's face is pale beneath the blood and his head slumps forward. "Not-" he begins to rasp, but G'Kar forges onward.
'Quiet!' he roars into the echoes of Londo's mind and winces together with Londo as the sound of his own mind-voice seems to tear through him and rattle his very bones.
We are as one, he almost laughs – what hurts, hurts both of them, but G'Kar can withstand pain far better than this Centauri upstart, can he not? Has he not had the practice? It is even better than the elevator, to watch him fall apart, and only himself as the sacrifice, the price for the pleasure of his enemy's utter destruction.
'Alone!' he roars again, but it is not true – Mollari is not alone because G'Kar is there with him.
We are one, he realizes, and the thought is abhorrent to him.
He sees flashes he does not understand, an old Centauri and an old Narn choking the life from each other. There is fire burning bright and red in the eye of the old Narn and G'Kar almost recognizes him but the moment is too brief and soon he is hit with another barrage of images as Londo's unconscious mind begins to whirlpool beneath the force of G'Kar's will, a mad swirling of sound and color and emotion.
G'Kar cries out, bringing his hands up to shield himself.
We are one, he knows, and it terrifies him.
He is drowning.
Drow
ning-
And the tree again.
And then…