Hand in Glove 3/4
--------------------------------------------------


Garibaldi folded himself down to the level of 
the loveseat and rolled onto his left hip, his 
torso angled toward her but his right foot still 
heading for the door. He brushed aside the cast-
off gloves to make room for her to set down the 
tray, and when she had poured two cups of tea, he 
opened his hands to receive one. He let the steam 
drift up to his face, but he did not drink.

"Lyta, I’m not sure I know how to start this. 
I’m embarrassed I haven’t said it sooner, but I 
still don’t know how to start."

She could have let him off the hook and just 
scanned him, of course. Then she’d really know 
what he felt, and he wouldn’t have to search for 
the words. But she didn’t.

"I promised myself I’d do this," he said, more 
to himself than to her. "It’s hard. I wanted to 
do it back on Mars, but we had to make 
connections with the Resistance, and then there 
was the offensive itself, and…"

And all those people who might hear you, she 
thought, but she said nothing.

"Lyta," and he looked at her for the first time, 
"when you scanned me…" For a moment he seemed not 
to notice he hadn’t finished the sentence, and 
when finally he did, it was too long gone. He 
started again.

"Back there on Mars, when the Resistance had me, 
they were ready to kill me, and I couldn’t blame 
them. No one believed my story – hell, I barely 
believed it. I really thought everyone and 
everything that ever mattered was lost to me. And 
there was no way I could convince them. It was 
just my word, and no one was buying my word.

"But you did. You trusted me, you took a chance 
on me – one last chance – and I’m alive because 
of it, because of you. Somehow there’s got to be 
a way for me to thank you."

And you want me to tell you what it is , she 
thought. Chocolates, or flowers, maybe. Heavens, 
not dinner – someone might see. But she said 
nothing.

"No one knows better than you do how I’ve always 
felt about telepaths. I feel sort of ashamed 
saying that to you, especially now. But I’ve got 
to be honest. I don’t know if the feeling has 
really changed. I mean, I trust you, and I feel a 
sense of responsibility for all of the telepaths 
we put on those ships. But I really don’t know if 
I… you know? I mean, Bester and his kind – why 
would anyone trust telepaths?"

"We’re not all like Bester, Michael."

"I know, I know, but you know what I mean? It’s 
…I guess what I mean is, it’s about who you are. 
‘Telepath’ is just a scary word, you know?"

She knew, but she said nothing.

He sighed. "Not much of this is coming out 
right, is it?"

For just a moment, she saw vulnerability in him, 
and it made her smile. "How is it supposed to 
come out?"

He tasted his tea. "I’m supposed to find some 
elegant way to explain to you that everything I 
ever thought I knew about telepaths is all turned 
around inside my head because a lovely lady, who 
happens to be a telepath, was willing to look 
beyond all my harebrained ideas about telepaths 
and life in general, and exercise enough 
compassion to venture into the madness inside my 
skull."

They both took a much-needed breath. "Of course, 
I’d need a brain transplant before I’d ever come 
up with anything elegant," he continued, and she 
giggled a bit. "It’s all upside down, Lyta, and I 
don’t know how to ever get it straight. On so 
many levels, I’m asking so many questions, and I 
don’t have a lot of answers. How am I supposed to 
feel about telepaths when one telepath did this 
to me and another was the only person who’d 
believe me? How am I supposed to feel about 
myself when I can’t ever be sure how much of what 
happened was Bester’s doing and how much was me?" 
His fingers stroked the wrinkled fingers of one 
of her gloves.

"Is that why you came to me, Michael? Do you 
want me to sort it out for you, to tell you 
what’s real and what’s manipulation?" She 
listened to see if he heard her anger. To his 
credit, he thought a long time before answering.

"No," he said at last. "You’ve already done more 
for me than I’ll ever deserve." He was quiet, 
sipping tea and struggling with the question. "I 
just had to talk to you. I…" He searched for 
words. "I couldn’t just go on like what you did 
for me that day was something ordinary. That 
wasn’t routine, Lyta. That wasn’t line-of-duty.

"I was scared, and not just of the weapons aimed 
at my head. I was scared of what I was asking you 
to do. Scared of what it would be like if you 
agreed. Scared of what would happen if you 
didn’t.

"And the weirdest part is that I wasn’t afraid 
of dying. I didn’t care if they shot me. What 
scared me was the possibility that no other human 
being would ever know what really happened."

Bester knew , she thought, but she said nothing.

"It’s like … like if I didn’t share it with 
someone I’d never be sure myself what was real."

"And now?" she asked. "You and Sheridan must 
have talked about what happened."

He set his empty cup down on the table. "Yeah, 
we talked." He shifted his body, setting himself 
in profile to her, and she was not sure if it was 
the body language or something more that told her 
of his discomfort. "I tried to explain." His 
hands fell open, giving an unfinished feel to his 
sentence. "And John believes he understands what 
happened, and it’s behind us."

She waited. When the silence became awkward, he 
dropped to his knees by the sofa and reached over 
to refill his cup. He held the pot aloft in offer 
to her. As they both concentrated on the amber 
liquid, she prompted him. "Do I sense a ‘but’?"

He did not return to his seat, but curled down 
onto the floor between the loveseat and the 
table. "I don’t know if John really does 
understand, if anyone ever can. Except you. You 
and I. You understand it as well as I do."

Which isn’t all that well . But she said 
nothing.

"I don’t know if I can ever make anyone else 
understand. I can tell them what happened, but 
that doesn’t do it." He straightened one of her 
gloves, staring at it, setting it parallel to the 
table edge. "He played with my mind, and he 
messed with my memory, so that I knew things 
weren’t right – I wasn’t right – but I couldn’t 
understand why or what was wrong. He manipulated 
me so totally that I don’t know if I’ll ever be 
sure what was real and right and what was his 
mindgame." Carefully, he set the second glove 
atop its mate, matching them, point for point, 
seam for seam. "I mean, I tried to tell John I 
was sorry and I didn’t know what I was 
apologizing for. I still don’t know. Did I do 
those things? Or was I just Bester’s pawn? Could 
I have stopped myself?"

"No."

His head jerked back. "You sure?" he asked.

She nodded. "Oh, maybe, with some kind of 
superhuman effort you might have been able to 
fight off some of the programming, but that was 
sophisticated stuff, Michael. And he’s a P12. At 
least a P12. Even another telepath couldn’t have 
fought that off."

She watched him swirl the contents of his cup 
round and round until the fluid threatened to 
jump free. "Michael, I know it’s hard to accept 
that someone else could make you do such hateful 
things. But the fact is he has tremendous power. 
He used you, and -- bastard that he is – he 
probably took delight in picking and choosing 
what to let you remember and when to let you 
remember it."

Garibaldi nodded slowly though his gaze was 
light years away. "I remember all right. I had 
little snatches of memory all along the way, you 
know? Flashes. The kind of thing you’re never 
sure was real and not a dream. Just enough to 
make me wonder if…"

He drank deeply of his tea, and when he returned 
the empty cup to the table, it banged down just a 
bit too loudly. She slipped down onto the floor 
beside him. "You’re not crazy." She stared hard 
at him and willed him to believe it.

"You take a good enough look around in there to 
be sure of that?" he asked.

She straightened and studied him with every 
available sense. "Do you think I invaded your 
mind, Michael?"

His eyebrows knit tightly for a moment, then 
rose in alarm. "You? No!" He shook his head. "The 
way you worried about hurting me… man, I couldn’t 
believe that you’d care that much about me, 
especially then. And when you were inside my 
head, I…I don’t really know how to explain it to 
you…I guess I expected a lot of pain, for one 
thing, and there wasn’t. You were so gentle, so 
careful. I always imagined a scan would be like 
having your brain ripped apart, you know?"

She knew, but she said nothing.

He took a swallow of tea. "I could feel you in 
there," he said, watching the liquid swirl in the 
cup. "I knew where you were and what you were 
seeing, hearing. I saw it all again, too, but it 
wasn’t just me remembering. It was different 
somehow."

"Tell me what you remember, what it felt like?" 
she asked.

An eyebrow arched quizzically. "You’ve been 
scanned, haven’t you?"

She nodded. "Lots of times. It’s part of the 
training. But when telepaths scan each other, 
it’s a two-way thing. Scanning a telepath feels 
different from scanning a normal -- for the 
scanner. I’ve always figured it must feel 
different for the person being scanned. But I’ve 
never heard anyone talk about it."

He shifted, unfolding and refolding his legs. "I 
don’t know. It was like – you know how sometimes 
you stop suddenly because you know someone is 
there or something just happened, but you can’t 
say what you heard or saw?"

She nodded, thinking how very like him the 
analogy was.

"It was like that. All of a sudden, there’d be 
some trigger and all of my attention would go to 
some memory, and … God, how do I explain this? It 
was like seeing it twice. I was remembering it, 
feeling it, living it all over again. But at the 
same time I was watching it, from the outside, 
like watching a vid.

"And it was all so fast, and out of order, even 
overlapping sometimes. I guess that’s one of the 
ways I knew it was you, and not just my memories. 
I’d have thought about it in order, played it out 
the way it happened, but you didn’t know what you 
were going to find, so you couldn’t take it in 
order, could you?"

"You never know what you’ll find when you go 
inside someone’s mind," she said. "Generally, you 
hit more recent memories first, and have to dig 
deeper for the older ones. But when there are 
memory issues like yours it’s harder to know."