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Lyta awoke feeling like she was falling.
After a moment of squinting in the dark, she remembered she was in her cell at the Corps facility. And for once, she was glad to be there.
The dream's details fell victim to the sieve of awareness, but the main feature was a boulder refusing to slip away: spindly black limbs crawling toward her, shrieks inescapable no matter how tightly she covered her ears, the jagged despair pervading her bones like an infestation…
The deep scans must've been getting to her if that was the shit her mind was conjuring up these days.
She took a deep breath and rubbed the chills covering her arms. Kosh was usually more present at night. He didn't have to hide in the back of her head while she was asleep. He was free to roam her mind and body, free to keep her safe in the one way he could. So, despite the nightmare of her reality, this was one of the first actual nightmares she'd experienced during her time here.
She could finally feel him descending over her nerves, basking them in honeyed calm, but something felt wrong. It was… hard to explain. His warmth was thinner, more scattered, preoccupied with something grander than her.
But it was enough to coax her back to sleep, enough to keep the nightmares away.
Or, it would've been had those creatures only been a dream.
-
They killed him.
The Shadows tore Kosh apart with those sharp spindly claws, shrieks boasting a twisted enjoyment like the universe had been sewn without a single thread of mercy.
She felt worse than she did during the never-ending deep scans. At least Kosh had been there at the end of the day to mend her broken mind. Now this… new Vorlon was in control and her Kosh was dying and it was all her fault and the walls were closing in on her and… and…
How had she lost everything so fast?
She just wanted him back. But instead she was mourning the days he'd been by her side, making her feel like the universe was at her fingertips because, well, it had been.
But the new ambassador? He only cared to take and take and take and if he weren't careful, which he had no intention of being, there'd soon be nothing of her left.
As she lied in bed, she realized she'd never felt so small. But something warm tugged at her thoughts as exhaustion finally drove her eyelids shut. Something that felt like Kosh--the real Kosh.
It was weak: a translucent glow bathing her synapses, delicate chimes distant…
But it was there. He was there.
And as much as her eyes blurred, as much as the melancholic relief cast away the aches and pains, as much as she wanted to wrap her thoughts around him and never let go…
He was just a fragment. A fragment of a fragment of a fragment hiding out in the commander's mind.
He wasn't going to last.
Don't waste your strength on me, she pleaded. The new ambassador was right. She didn't deserve anything Kosh had given her before all this. And now? There were more important things for him to do in his final days.
A sob wracked her body as her thoughts spilled apology after apology. He used to be her sun, brilliant in its fiery light. Now he was little more than a cluster of embers scattered by the wind. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you let me help?
A whisper of what once was, his response was like a dandelion on the wind trying to keep itself together: Safe.
It only made her cry harder. Why couldn't he see how important he was? Why couldn't he have just let her try?
But no matter how hard she tried to convince him she hadn't been worth it, that he should still be here, that it'd been a foolish sacrifice, he wouldn't listen. Instead, he continued his quiet melody until she could no longer keep herself awake.
And once she succumbed to his last lullaby, he did the one thing he could do. He guarded her dreams.