It hurts, and Lyta isn’t even sure why. She didn’t carry a piece of Kosh with her all the time, he wasn’t with her on her last mission, but now that he’s dead, there’s a hollow space inside her that just feels wrong. It aches, but it isn’t a physical pain, perhaps it’s wrong to call it pain at all, it’s simply a space within her where she constantly feels something ought to be, only it’s not there anymore.

It had felt strange at first, carrying part of the Vorlon ambassador around inside her, on those occasions when he required it, but over time it had come to feel… natural, even comfortable. Now though, knowing she will bever feel his presence again, never see him again… The pain, she supposes, is a sort of heartache. She misses Kosh, he was… not a friend, but her employer, her mentor perhaps, something of the sort anyway, and now she feels lost, rudderless.

The new Ambassador Kosh isn’t like the Kosh she knew. There’s something cold about him, something harsh, not exactly cruel, but indifferent to her feelings, indifferent even to her presence. He scares her in ways her Kosh never did, but she has to serve him, the way she served the first Kosh, has to keep up appearances, act like nothing has changed. No one can tell one Vorlon from another, nothing is visible thanks to the encounter suit they all wear in public, and that helps, because for reasons known only to the Vorlons themselves, they’ve ordered that no one, outside of a very select few, must find out that Kosh died.

Lyta will do her part, treat this Kosh as if he is the same Vorlon, even carry part of him inside her if necessary, but it feels… wrong.


The End