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Resonant Echo

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"Marcus," she said, and then he walked away because he couldn't bear to hear the rest.

He asked around, but no one could tell him why. Garibaldi looked sympathy at him but said nothing. Sheridan said nothing and kept it that way. Delenn he couldn't ask.

So he's looking now, mainly because the office has no door, so it isn't private. She's very tidy, he noticed that before.

It's on the desk that he finds it, face down, taking the light on its edge all-but-hidden under papers and a half-read book. He shouldn't: he does. She never needs to know. The frame is warm and worn in his hands, a little chink at one corner where maybe she threw it once. The woman in it is pale and golden, quiet, smiling. The life in these grey eyes is the reflection of a love he longs for.

This is when she should turn the corner and find him and he should have to explain, and then she would explain, but it isn't. No one comes and so he stays holding it, and the more he holds it the more he sees. He doesn't need to read the paper tucked under the silver lip behind, chafing under his fingers. Minutes have gone: he isn't even looking at the picture any more.

She drowns him out of the world he wants to have, and he slips away unnoticed with a hazy dream of one day, finding one glorious note to silence those echoes framed in silver.


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