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fan_flashworks2025-01-01 01:48 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fan_flashworks2025-01-01 01:48 pm
Entry tags:
Bounce Challenge: Babylon 5: Thankless Task
Title: Thankless Task
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Zathras.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300
Spoilers/Setting: War Without End.
Summary: Zathras does as he is told.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 465: Amnesty 77, using Challenge 452: Bounce.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
Zathras was loyal, strong, hardworking, and resigned to his fate. He had been serving the Great Machine for a very long time, was the oldest of the caretakers, and the most knowledgeable, aside from the one who controlled the machine. Now Zathras was here, far from his home, being bounced around through time, serving as a beast of burden, expected to fix everything people kept breaking.
It was a thankless task, but Zathras didn’t require thanks, or so everyone seemed to think. Do this, Zathras, go there, Zathras, mend that, Zathras, and Zathras did, Zathras went, Zathras mended… Poor Zathras. It was a very sad life, but it was his life, and he was used to it.
Now, Zathras served the One, and that was a very important task. In a way, that made Zathras important. Everything he was asked to do now mattered more than anything he had been tasked with in… the past? The future? Bouncing through time, it was hard to be sure of the when. Not knowing, it did not matter, only that what he did was important, perhaps to all of time.
Zathras had never been good at the knowing, but the doing… That Zathras could do. Following orders was another thing Zathras was good at, even if he didn’t always remember everything he wasn’t supposed to say or do. Some orders were complicated beyond his ability to understand. Still, Zathras had no regrets.
Except this. He regretted being stuck, but perhaps he would not need to regret it for long, trapped though he was beneath a beam too heavy for even one of his strength to move.
The One would come, the One would save him, because he could not serve the One if he was dead. That much Zathras understood. It was enough.
The End
It was a thankless task, but Zathras didn’t require thanks, or so everyone seemed to think. Do this, Zathras, go there, Zathras, mend that, Zathras, and Zathras did, Zathras went, Zathras mended… Poor Zathras. It was a very sad life, but it was his life, and he was used to it.
Now, Zathras served the One, and that was a very important task. In a way, that made Zathras important. Everything he was asked to do now mattered more than anything he had been tasked with in… the past? The future? Bouncing through time, it was hard to be sure of the when. Not knowing, it did not matter, only that what he did was important, perhaps to all of time.
Zathras had never been good at the knowing, but the doing… That Zathras could do. Following orders was another thing Zathras was good at, even if he didn’t always remember everything he wasn’t supposed to say or do. Some orders were complicated beyond his ability to understand. Still, Zathras had no regrets.
Except this. He regretted being stuck, but perhaps he would not need to regret it for long, trapped though he was beneath a beam too heavy for even one of his strength to move.
The One would come, the One would save him, because he could not serve the One if he was dead. That much Zathras understood. It was enough.
The End