Title: In Between Life And Death
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: John Sheridan, Lorien.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400
Spoilers: The Hour of the Wolf.
Summary: Sheridan went to Z’ha’dum, and he died, but is that to be the end of him?
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 339: Amnesty, using Challenge 76: Question.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.



He fell, such a long, long way, and perhaps he’s still falling. Perhaps this is no more than a dream, a hallucination, or the last firing of neurons in his dying brain. He doesn’t know, can’t even remember reaching the bottom of the pit. The last thing he recalls with any clarity is jumping from the balcony and beginning his seemingly endless descent into the abyss.

But Sheridan is here, wherever that is, on solid ground, in a cavern of some kind. There’s light from a flame, and enough dry wood and other debris to build a small fire for warmth. Does it make him feel any warmer? Was he even cold to begin with? More questions he has no answer to, so he pushes them to the back of his mind. The answers aren’t important; what matters is that the fire is a comfort of sorts, perhaps not for its probable warmth or the light it gives out, since the flame he lit it from still exists, but for the fact that it is there and he kindled it himself, with his own hands. Keeping it going gives him a purpose, something to fill the time when he’s not sleeping.

When the strange alien being joins him, the company is welcome. It’s good to know he’s not alone. Sheridan has some hope at first of getting answers, but his new comrade talks in riddles. He’s frustrating, almost maddening, answering questions with questions, never offering his name. When Sheridan starts walking, looking for some way out of the caverns, the alien goes with him. They walk for what seems like miles, and yet they wind up back where they started, by the ashes of the fire he’d built… was it yesterday, or longer ago?

The alien, who eventually gives the name Lorien, tells Sheridan he’s dead, and Sheridan doesn’t want to believe him, doesn’t want to accept that his life is over because there’s so much still to be done, and what of Delenn? But when he checks himself for a pulse, there isn’t one. He’s caught in the limbo between seconds, and there seems no way out, but Lorien…

He claims to be not one of the First Ones, but the one who came before all the others. Whether Sheridan believes him or not, Lorien is his only hope.

“Do you have anything worth living for?”

He does.

“Delenn!”


The End