Work Text:
It is April 23, 2258, and Alfred Bester is putting his gloves on. He's going off to work -- a business trip, the mundanes would call it, though in the Psi Corps the distinction between the Corps and the rest of one's life is often... blurred. This is especially true for a Psi Cop. His life belongs to the Corps, and things done in service of himself are even, in a way, theirs too.
But this trip is purely business. He slides the glove with difficulty over his left hand, the hand that doesn't quite work right. They got word, yesterday, that Ironheart was heading to Babylon 5, and so Bester will be on the fastest ship the Corps can find. Most of the trip will be in hyperspace; it shouldn't take long at all. More time to hunt rogues, then.
He's never been to Babylon 5. Like everyone else, he read about the destruction of the four stations before it. He figured he'd get to go eventually, but he didn't expect it to be so soon. The station hasn't even been online for a year. Maybe this one will last. He doubts it. On the other hand, the last one vanished, and it's hard to top that.
He pulls the glove much more easily up his right hand and considers his hands as he reaches for the Psi Corps pin on the table. The gloves are a polite fiction for the mundanes. Certainly it's easier to scan someone when touching them, but he is capable of delving through their boring minds and their worthless, closely-guarded secrets from much farther away than they think. But it makes them feel better. It makes them feel as though they are in control.
He hasn't worn his gloves in days. He doesn't have to, at home. It's only him in his Corps-issued apartment, and he revels in the feeling of his bare hands against the fabric of his clothes, the wood of the table, the weave of the bedsheets. In another life, he might have been a hedonist. He suspects the Corps knows all this about him and allows him these small luxuries. The Corps is, at least, a benevolent Mother and Father.
The pin placed and straightened, he picks up his PPG and reflexively checks the safety and charge before holstering it. He's good. He might have to use it, and the thought does not faze him, as it might some of the newer recruits. Rogue telepaths are a danger -- Jason Ironheart especially -- to themselves, to others, and to the neat, comfortable system in which all have their place.
There are three choices: the Corps, the drugs, or death. Freedom is not a choice. It has never been one. And really, he tells himself, it's better this way. They are different. They are special. There is a place for them. A place where no one fears them, and they are among their own kind. Bester understands this.
It is time to leave. The door irises open, and Alfred Bester walks out into the sunlight. Against his fingers he feels only the smooth leather of the gloves.