Two Words - a Crusade ficlet

Dec 11, 2007 12:48

Fandom: Crusade (the Babylon 5 spinoff)
Pairing: Gideon/Galen
Rating: PG
Warnings: description of m/m and m/f romantic love, spoilers for ‘The Well of Forever’ and ‘The Path of Sorrows’
Summary: Galen reflects on his motivations for first saving Matthew Gideon.



When I turned back for him, I knew with certainty that I would not remain with my order for long. Fate called to me with his voice, and I knew that, in the fullness of time, our paths would merge as one. That time was distant yet, and so I left him only my name, that he might remember when the time was upon us. I returned him to his people, and I returned to mine, although I now understood that my time with them was short.

As I flew through the silence of space, returning alone to the secret place where the others waited, I knew that my life had changed irrevocably that day. There are crossroads in time, where the energies of life bend, strengthen, and sometimes intersect. Unlike crossroads in space, however, they cannot be revisited. The chosen path determines the destination, and all the magicks in the world can do nothing to alter it.

“Don’t go.” And I could not. The compulsive secrecy of my order, the cowardice that drives us into hiding, the anger that isolates me: for that moment, they suddenly meant nothing. Those two words, as powerful as any spell, banished all else. I could not leave him to die alone in the void.

“Don’t leave me to die alone.” The words which kept me at Isabelle’s side as she lay dying. With those words, she forced my anger away for a moment, so that I did not waste our final moments together thinking of the ones who betrayed us. And I watched helplessly as god slowly dragged her away from me, sharing one final kiss as he stole her forever.

“Don’t go.” And I would not. The path was chosen, and I turned back to rescue him. The crossroad faded into the past, and my destination lay before me. I will not leave him. And for as long as I am able, I will prevent god from taking him, as he once took her.

Ironic, that we believe them so different from us. Every technomage knows the fourteen words to make someone fall in love with them forever. And yet I have never spoken them, or had them spoken to me. For Isabelle, it took only one word, and I was hers forever. For Matthew Gideon, it took two.

THE END

crusade, slash

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