Repost: My Most Popular B5 Fic

Title: The Last Place
Fandom: Babylon 5
Characters: Vir
Word Count: 886
Rating: Teen (for some imagery)
Summary:

A Narn recounts meeting Abrahamo Lincolni.

Spoilers/Notes:

Knowledge of the entire series is assumed.

This one-shot was originally written in 2006.

*****

I was young – hardly older than a pouchling - and he was soft and pale. When I awoke and found him looking upon me, I instantly imagined what it would feel like to tear at his silken brocade and sink my nails into his tender Centauri flesh. I was young, but I already knew that these monsters bled. In my province, the men did not simply lie down and succumb the way others did in the work camps after they had been worn down by humiliation, hunger, and disease. When the purges came, many rose up, and often while I was still free, I stumbled upon Centauri bodies. When I met him, I saw his too-fat face staring heavenward with all the others, his blood freezing crimson on the unyielding sand, and I tried to rise.

“Please – don’t move,” the Centauri said, and when I heard his voice, I came to the disconcerting realization that he wasn’t far beyond childhood himself – and that he was speaking our language and not his own. “I promise you won’t be harmed. You’re in a hospital in Yedor. They’re treating your injuries.” He sat down beside my bed. “You were in a mining accident at Torva, and my contacts brought you here. Do you remember?”

I remembered the accident itself – the explosion that burned my right arm, chest, and jaw. To this day, when I see the scars in my reflection, I can still recall the white-hot pain that crawled through my nerves as the chemical solvent from my drill seared my skin. But I could not remember most of the events beyond that moment. I guessed that I had been ill – that infection had begun to eat away at the tissue that remained. But any memories from those days were blended together in a feverish blur.

I remember that I, with all the youthful bravado I could muster, challenged the Centauri to kill me in that bed – that I refused to return to the mines to be broken further. In my mind rose the ghosts of older men and women I had seen at Torva who served our food and meted out discipline until they fell among the stones and breathed their last, mourned by none of their fellow prisoners. These shadows had made their choices for both selfless and selfish reasons, but in the mines, it hardly mattered which applied. It certainly did not matter to me at that time. As I have said, I was young, and I had very little left to lose.

When I urged the Centauri to blot me out, he paled further, and until I understood the full import of his reaction, I took pleasure in his horror. So many of these Centauri, thought I, had been spoiled by their decadence. It was said that even Londo Mollari himself grew nauseated at the sight of our suffering – that he preferred to keep such filthy matters far away from his own person. This Centauri boy, I imagined, was one of these men. He had never washed the blood of another sentient being off his hands; I had. He had never known the look of a corpse after it has decayed for a week in a dusty winter; I had known. He smelled clean – like soap and perfume – but I could still taste the dirt of the mines in my mouth.

“You aren’t going back to Torva,” the Centauri said.

“Another camp? I have been to three already.” And then I was wracked with pain and could not speak for a long moment. “No,” I gasped when the paroxysm had ended. “No, I will kill myself before I will submit.”

“No, you don’t understand.” And for the first time, I registered the sorrow in the young Centauri’s eyes. “You’re not going to any camp. You’re going to Babylon 5. I-I-I’ve already arranged it. The records will show that you’ve been killed. You won’t be bothered by my government. Never again.”

“It’s a trick,” I said.

“No,” the boy replied softly, “it’s not.”

His words hung in a silence punctuated only by the sounds of the medical monitors.

“Why are you doing this?” I finally asked when I had reconciled myself to his sincerity.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

The true identity of Abrahamo Lincolni is still a matter of dispute in some circles, but I believe he was a creation of that fat, quiet boy who spoke to me in that hospital on Minbar. And now that boy has been crowned the emperor of what remains of their empire. I confess that I feel very little pity for the Centauri as a race – the dead who walk beside me make such a sentiment impossible. But for their current emperor, I feel compassion. In his eyes, I can see that the many intervening years have changed him – that perhaps there are dead who walk beside him as well.

Until now, I have not spoken to Emperor Cotto directly – I have allowed the other Rangers to do so in my stead. But now I approach him in my robes, press my fist against my chest, and bow in respect. And to him, I say:

“I am Ro’Dath. Many years ago, you saved me from certain death in the Torva mines. I am in your debt.”

Finis.