disclaimer: BABYLON 5, Ivanova, Talia, and all characters and situations thereof, are all rights and © J. Michael Straczynski and Babylonian Productions. This is a not-for-profit effort for the purpose of fan-to-fan appreciation of some wonderful characters :). This story ignores the events in the season 2 episode 'Race Through Dark Places', where Talia first ended up in Ivanova's quarters. angst. lots of intimate contact. :D enjoy.

SOFT

-----

The softness of the couch was little comfort.

The cold glass slowly swirling scentless liquid no longer gave solace to her mouth.

Sometimes sadness cannot fathom the immense senselessness of a race's passing.

Sometimes there can be too much death.

Susan sat in the absurd brightness of her quarters, sat and slowly placed her unemptied glass next to its companion bottle and tried not to think of the coming night--as such could be called in the eternal night of space. Tried not to think of the arrangements she would process in the morning for hundreds of dead bodies. Tried not to think of the stream of names she had already run through the logs, in preparation for their deletion.

Tonight, Babylon 5 was a crypt for the last of the Markab race.

What can be said for an extinction? What words to commemorate, to speak, if not in formal ceremony, at least in her silent heart when she completes her duties in the morning for the Markab plague victims? Loss had taken its toll of her weary heart and mind; no words could be recalled tonight.

"Lights, dim."

Susan rose, picking up glass and bottle. Alive, was how she felt. Breath, a fatigue in her limbs, an old, tense ache in her shoulders. Alive, in pain, in sorrow. How strange to be so fortunate, when so many had lost their gift of existence in just this one night.

"Seems selfish," she murmured to herself.

Her entrance way chimed.

A station commander is always needed. Susan briefly contemplated ordering the person at her door away, but knew that even tonight, she hadn't the luxury to neglect her duty.

"Come," she ordered, watching the door.

Tonight, the door seemed to slide open far slower than usual. The familiar hiss of tubes sinking into oiled castings seemed to exhale with a longer, deeper sigh of sleep-like resignation. Susan felt the same breath silently leave her chest and exit her nostrils, a fine, long release, at viewing the visitor at her entrance. A visitor slowly revealed like an unexpected gift.

"May I...come in?" Talia Winters asked hesitantly.

Susan studied the Psi Corps telepath at her door--the beautiful lines and soft regard of a woman she had always held at arm's length for her membership to a hated, Alliance entity.

The telepath wore no Psi Corps badge. Susan was certain that if she could see the hands the blonde woman clasped behind her back, they would not have on the black Corps gloves.

The commander turned away, carefully placing the vodka bottle and glass on the kitchen counter.

"Not a night for being alone, is it," she finally answered, her rich tone subdued by her contemplative mood.

"No....it isn't," the telepath softly replied, and she stepped within the commander's quarters, the door finally allowed to hiss slowly shut behind her.

A beautiful voice, Susan found herself absentmindedly thinking. She has such a beautiful voice. Deep, rough. Like an insistent caress of soft upon soft.

"Sit down," Susan suggested, barely giving a glance over her shoulder to see if the telepath complied, but she could easily hear the brush of a dress' fabric as the blonde woman's body touched the couch. Susan regarded her glass and bottle one last time, before finally releasing them.

"What can I do for you," she murmured, as she slid into the cushions of the couch and faced the waiting telepath. Talia's visage held a deep sadness; silent, weary. Susan knew it mirrored her own.

"Letting me in has already helped me immensely," Talia commented quietly, a fleeting smile gracing her saddened mouth. Susan felt her own mouth respond. Such a history they've had, of the commander's lack of tolerance for the telepath. Tonight's acceptance, finally, of the blonde woman into her private quarters was certainly an exceptional occasion.

"Are they really all gone?" she heard Talia whisper, breaking into her thoughts.

"Yes," Susan answered quietly, feeling that the simple truth was best.

Grief is a weight; it bends the body, it causes it pain. Talia did nothing more but shut her eyes and turn away, but Susan saw sorrow radiate in pangs from the telepath's tense body. Though she felt an answering ache in her own heart to the telepath's grief, the commander decided to do nothing.

"I can hear death," Talia finally said, her voice raw. "They're like final sighs. They're the sounds of last exhales, then nothing. Thoughts gone eternally silent. I heard too many of those tonight."

"The void left is immeasurable," she whispered.

Susan momentarily shut her eyes at such knowledge. Death was only a void to the living, yet it still hurt so. And it wounded the telepathic more.

When she opened her blue eyes to Talia again, the telepath turned to her, as if to ask something.

Perhaps she lost her resolve; perhaps she saw something in Susan's eyes that stilled the words that nearly left her lips; instead, the blonde woman's saddened blue grays lowered, and for a long while, neither said nothing.

Susan contemplated the longing she had briefly seen in Talia's searching, blue depths before they fell away into acquiescence of the mutual silence of their bodies. She recognized the same poignant yearning, shuttered from view in her own cool gaze, that pulled secretively at her own protesting heart. It tugged like a wailing child, disregarding any of her old, prejudiced resolves.

Eventually, slowly, a bare hand, its nakedness so apparent, reached out; tentative, open.

"Can you..." Talia finally whispered. "Please?..."

Yes. Susan finally decided. She could. She moved forward and allowed Talia in her arms.

Breast to breast, Susan felt grateful limbs wrap around her, hugging her close, just as she returned the embrace with equal intensity. An affirmation of warmth, of breath, of the feel of another's blood and beating heart. Susan felt the sob Talia tried to stifle. She felt the wet of tears touch her neck as grief caused the telepath to tighten her embrace.

"It's all right," Susan soothed, saying random nothings, speaking sweet things, as if comforting a child. Words were inadequate, but she knew the sound of her voice was what Talia needed to hear. That her body was what she needed to feel. That some kind of caring....some kind of love, was in her heart for her.

"It's all right," Susan whispered again, and underlining the words of nonsense comfort, was the tone of a deeper emotion.

Talia squeezed Susan harder, still upset, still in anguish. A turmoil raged in her heart, evident in the frustrated, nearly angered sobs that sounded from her soul. She raised her head to brush a wet cheek to Susan's cheek. She moved her lips across Susan's face and kissed her mouth.

Time meant nothing in the desperate contact of a mouth desiring comfort from another mouth. The moment their kiss broke, Talia's lips pursued Susan's again, then again. Softness recklessly pressed against soft, seeking a lifeline, a connection. Susan willingly responded; a confirmation.

After one more kiss, Talia cried anew, this time at her transgression.

"I'm sorry," her voice rasped as new tears left her shut eyes, still reluctant to move from Susan's embrace....the beautiful touch of the dark haired woman's forehead to her own, even as she felt that she did not deserve such comforting contact. "I'm sorry...."

Susan kissed her then, stilling any more apologies.

The commander did not know when she decided to allow such intimacy to go on; it was not just a gift, some sympathetic, benevolent gesture of tolerance to another soul's need for physical assurance. As she felt the telepath's urgent mouth move from her own lips to her throat, felt hands pull at the tucked confines of her shirt to seek warm succor from the bare skin and muscle of her back, Susan knew this was not merely comfort of the flesh, but what she privately, profoundly desired. Affirmation of living. Confirmation of breath with another.

And as she felt herself insistently pushed back upon her couch cushions, her breasts exposed to the cool air, Susan knew she wanted that confirmation with someone whom she finally realized, was a true connection. One she had always desired knowing.

She felt Talia's mouth upon her breasts, and she soothed the telepath's hair. Talia's tears touched her chest even as the telepath's hands insistently pushed her pants down. Susan murmured words of encouragement, hoping to dispel Talia's fears. She felt the telepath's fingers stroke between her legs and she parted them willingly. She felt Talia's body hover above her own, sheltering her intimately. The telepath made love to her quickly, urgently, until they were nothing but hard breathes exchanged and gazes locked in glimpsing some fleeting nakedness in each other's eyes. Susan cried out, and gave up her body to Talia.

Later into that long night, Susan reveled, silently, once again, in the softness of Talia's skin. Like many times that night, she felt the telepath's warm mouth seek her own. Connection. In the emotional communication of that mouth, a confirmation. During this night of death, they lived, and somehow, they had paid their debt of life by affirming it.

Susan was the first to wake in the morning, finding Talia still entwined with her own rested body, their heated flesh married in mutual, innocent contentment. The alarm that sounded to jangle the telepath awake and cause tenseness in Susan's limbs was an unspoken announcement of the day's realities ahead. Of grim work that needed to be done, and passings formally finalized.

Later, dressed, Talia stood at her door; this time ready to leave. She faced Susan, her subdued gray-blue eyes searching within Susan's own quiet blues.

"I did not mean this as a one time thing," She finally told the commander.

"I know," Susan answered. In her mind, she made a decision. She allowed the guard within her to finally die.

"Come back tonight."

If she had reason to cause any sort of beauty, it would be the kind that brought such profound relief and happiness to the telepath's face. Talia impulsively leaned in and kissed the commander on the mouth sweetly.

"Thank you," Susan felt spoken with the timbre of deep gratitude against her lips.

The door hissed open with an elegant exhale; no longer a fatigued sound, but one that seemed a prepared breath for the coming day. The telepath stepped back, and their gaze did not break as the door completed its duty in sliding shut, hiding Talia from Susan's view at last. The commander remained still and reflected; a spark of promise had come into being this moment, in a once immeasurable void.

Susan struck her link.

"Ivanova to C & C. Begin the day," she ordered.

the end.

Back toSTATION STORIES