Spoilers: Through "Endgame"
Pairing: Ivanova/Marcus. Well, according to Marcus, anyway.
Note: Some dialogue taken from "Messages from Earth, "Between the Darkness and the Light," and "Endgame."

Amo, amas, I love a lass,
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's grace is her nominative case,
And she's of the feminine gender.

April 8th, 2260

When Marcus arrives at Susan Ivanova's door, he fully expects her to take one look at him and his art project and throw him out in the hallway--possibly bodily, definitely metaphorically. He's known from the moment he met her that she doesn't suffer fools gladly, and this is definitely one of the more foolish things he's done. But he is patient, stubborn, and--to the continual consternation of the Minbari, who thought they had locked up the market on it with their bone crests--extremely hard-headed, so he's going to do this anyway. Besides, she might enjoy tossing him out on his ear, and since his mission tonight is to cheer her up, he could still consider that a victory.

Still, no point in giving her the opportunity to kick him out before he's even got a word in edgewise, so as soon as the door opens, he starts talking. "I thought you might want to see this. As I recall, you were somewhat concerned about where I fit in the great organizational scheme of things, so I went to the effort of preparing this chart."

Susan hasn't removed him from her quarters yet, which is encouraging, although she doesn't look amused either, which means he'll have to try harder. He decides to go for flattery first. "Now, then. Here's you, right at the heart of everything, and why not?" He looks up from his chart, expecting anything from an apoplectic fit to a swift kick in the arse.

When she laughs, he can feel the change in his heart. It's like he's started falling down a deep, deep well--one he's fairly certain has no bottom. *As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,/So deep in love am I...* He prattles on, hoping to elicit another chuckle, or--is that a *giggle*? He can die happy now, knowing that he made Susan Ivanova giggle.

"And here's me. This is the captain, Franklin..." He points at the three pictures in succession, then moves his finger across the chart. "Here's my mum and dad..." Susan gives him a look that openly questions his sanity, but he ignores it, blithely continuing, "They don't actually have anything to do with it, but it's a very good picture of them, don't you think?"

She says his name, and doesn't sound angry. Oh, bliss! So far, this scheme has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He pushes his luck and sits down on the couch, still explaining his chart. Susan joins him. "I actually think I've come up with a way to explain the organizational structure of Babylon 5 using the Ottoman Empire as a model. It gets a little confusing around this bit here, but one has to start somewhere." Even he can tell when a joke is about to run on too long, so he stops talking, looks up, and gives her what he hopes she'll take as a perfectly innocent smile.

Her breathy laughter continues for another second, and he reminds himself that he really ought not melt into a puddle of goo on her couch, much as he feels like doing so at the moment. She quiets, and then her gaze sharpens. "Why are you doing this?" she asks.

*Slowly, slowly...* This has gone *so* well, and he's *not* going to screw it up. "Did it make you laugh?" he asks, quite serious.

She looks like she wants to say no, but the evidence of the past few minutes would contradict her. "Yes," she says, reluctantly.

He shrugs, grinning happily. "Then my job here is done." How he wishes it weren't, but patience is certainly the key where Susan Ivanova is concerned, and he's content with this moment. For now, anyway. He stands up. "Have a good--"

Her link beeps, and he closes his mouth. She answers, and when he hears Sheridan's heated voice, he has a sinking suspicion that his efforts have just been for naught. He plans to give the universe a thorough cursing once they find out whatever Sheridan wants them to see on ISN.

"And to confirm earlier reports, President Clarke has signed a decree today declaring martial law throughout Earth Central..."

Damn.

Can I decline a nymph divine?
Her voice as a flute is dulcis;
Her oculis bright, her manus white,
And soft when I tacto, her pulse is.

January 7th, 2261

It's a twelve-hour journey in hyperspace toward the first sector Ivanova thinks might be hiding First Ones. Twenty minutes in, Marcus can tell she's bored. She hides it well from the Minbari crew, but he's made it his business to learn as much about her as he can over the past year, and the restless way she's flipping through status updates and systems readouts, just quickly enough to not actually be absorbing any of the information, is definitely indicative of boredom.

He sidles over to her and leans casually against the metal railing around the command chair. He barely has to wait at all before she snaps, "What?"

"I was just thinking," he says laconically. She turns to glare at him. He continues, unhurried. "The best way to learn Minbari is to speak it. There's only so much that poring over a computer program or a book can do. Would you like to practice? "

"Don't you have something else you could be doing?" she asks.

He's used to this. In fact, he's pretty sure he will fall over dead from shock if she ever accepts one of his suggestions the first time he mentions it. He shrugs, giving her his most guileless smile. "Not really."

She sighs, and he can tell she's about to give in. He'll have to wheedle a bit more, though. "It'll put you closer to being able to take a White Star out on your own." He doesn't add that he's pretty sure she *will* be doing that sooner or later, determined as she is, and he'd just as soon she knew enough of the language not to get herself killed with a misconjugated verb.

"Fine," she says, just like he knew she would, eventually. He takes the chair beside her, making an effort not to beam.

Not knowing quite what she's been studying--though given her ruthless practicality, her lessons have probably been limited to words and phrases associated with space travel and warfare--he asks her how she is. It's more specifically translated as something along the lines of "How does your soul fare in the world?" but that's the Minbari for you.

She raises an eyebrow, but replies with a perfectly grammatical "I am well." She adds, in English, "I thought this was supposed to be helping me give orders in Minbari."

"Giving orders, how your spirit fares...it's all one to them. But if you insist..." He tells her that five enemy vessels have just jumped out of hyperspace and asks for orders.

"Ah'dun fa ahael!"

Marcus notices the young Minbari woman manning the navigation console trying very hard not to smile. He can't blame her; he's on the verge of laughing out loud himself. "What?" Susan demands.

He has to tell her, he supposes. "You just said your head is on fire."

She clenches her fists, looks toward the ceiling, and makes a sound he can only categorize as a growl, or possibly a strangled scream. Maybe it's both. "All of the words sound alike!" she says, looking accusingly at him, as if *he* has something to do with Adronato's tendency towards homophones. "And what kind of language has *thirty-nine* verb tenses?"

"A very interesting one?"

He's pretty sure he's lucky not have been slugged for that remark.

"You were very close," he says, because they still have eleven and half hours until they drop out of hyperspace, and he wants to live to see it. "But the noun is pronounced more like 'dune' than 'dun,' and the singular command form of 'ahael' is 'ahaeli.'"

She says it slowly. "Ah'*dune* fa ahaeli?"

"Perfect."

She smiles, and he wonders how many times one can fall in love with a person before it becomes impossible to do so again. He strongly suspects rocks will melt and seas go dry before he finds out.

O how bella my puella,
I'll kiss secula seculorum;
If I've luck sir, she's my uxor!
O dies benedictorum!

October 22nd, 2261

An hour and a half after he promised to wake her, Marcus enters the dormitory to find Susan sleeping peacefully, despite the slanted Minbari bed.

Seeing her lying there, he finds himself wishing for a lot of things. That the war were over, for one. That they were alone together in a big four-poster bed with a view of a garden out the window, for another. That he could tell her everything that is in his heart, for a third.

He passes a hand slowly over her face, pretending he is touching her, that he has said everything he wants so much to say, that she has given him one of those rare smiles and told him she understands. "You'll never know," he murmurs instead, because he is doing none of those things. Truly, he is the soul of cowardice. Sech Turval would be most displeased. But perhaps after the war is over...

He shakes her shoulder, and she wakes up instantly. "You slept well," he says with forced cheerfulness. "Last time you couldn't sleep at all on these things."

She sits up, groaning and rubbing her eyes. "I still hate them. How long did I sleep?"

Time to pay the proverbial piper. "Four hours."

"Four hours?!" she repeats, leaping off the bed. She clearly intends to do some kind of damage to him. He'd better try to remedy this.

"We're still forty-five minutes from the target; more than enough time to wake up..." This obviously isn't working. "You needed the rest." Surely she can't argue with that. They both know she was tired when they started this mission.

She glares spitefully at him as she puts on her jacket. "That's the last time I'll ever trust you."

"Also the first," he can't help noting. Someday his mouth is going to get him in very deep trouble.

She turns to face him, and he prepares himself for some kind of verbal lashing. But instead of meting one out, she touches his arm, quite gently, actually, and says, "The last time that we were in this room, you said something to me in Minbari."

Well does he remember *that*. The one time he'd managed to give voice to the emotions cluttering up his heart, and he'd only been able to do it in a language she couldn't understand.

Susan taps her temple. "I happen to have an eidetic memory."

...Oh, bloody *hell*.

"It went 'Nu'shan fel'ani In'a lis'e medran.' You told me it was just a greeting."

This is the part where she tells him he's sweet, but she's not interested. Or possibly hits him. Should it worry him that he's so attracted to a woman from whom he regularly expects violence? "Yes."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, I've learned a little Minbari since then."

He nods, expecting the worst. Apparently the day when his mouth gets him into fathomless trouble has already come, gone, and come back around like some kind of bloody boomerang.

Then Susan does something he would never have expected, not given a thousand years. "Thank you," she says. She smiles, perhaps at the gobsmacked expression he's wearing, and walks away.

"Nu'shen ta," he tells the empty room, and follows her.

* * *

November 1st, 2261

One might expect him to be scared on the way back to Babylon 5. And he is, but not for the first reason that would come to mind.

In fewer than sixteen hours, he is going to be dead. Or so he very much hopes, anyway, because him dieing means that Susan will live, and that scenario is infinitely preferable to the reverse. He just hopes he will get there in time. She has so little time left.

He asks the ETA to Babylon 5. It is ten minutes less than the last time he asked. They're still some distance away.

Ten thousand miles, ten and a half light years, the infinite and infinitesimal space between life and death...it's all the same, he supposes. All of them are metaphors, once you get down to it.

He spends the rest of the trip either pacing, like she would have done, or badgering the crew for updates on how far away they are *now*. The young Minbari who suggests he take some rest quickly regrets proposing such a thing.

When they finally arrive, he slips through customs, deftly avoiding the gaze of electronic and sentient monitors. They will never know he was there. The guard who tries to stop him from retrieving the healing device is not so fortunate; knocking the man out is, he supposes, another metaphor, though not as poetic as some.

The sight of her lying so very still makes his heart lurch; the monitors, though, show that she is still holding on to life. "Just a little longer," he whispers, maybe to her, maybe to God, maybe to the universe. "Please."

He nearly tears the place apart hunting for the device and then hooking Susan into it. He doesn't pause before fastening the bracelets around his own wrists and turning it on.

He takes her hand in his. It is the first time he's ever touched her skin.

For a moment he doesn't feel anything happening, and he is terrified that the machine is somehow broken. Then his legs fail him, and he collapses into the chair sitting beside her bed. *Thank you.*

Once it starts, his life leaves him more and more quickly, flowing out of him and into her. Franklin's logs said it would only be minutes.

His head is becoming heavy, drooping towards the bed. Like going to sleep, almost. Or drowning. They say drowning is peaceful.

The words are easier now. The rest of him is so heavy that they seem to float up to the top; the purest part of himself, what is left after everything else burns away.

"I love you."

Shadows gather on the edge of his vision, and he slowly closes his eyes.

Amo, amas, I love, alas.

N.B. The lyrics to "Amo, amas, I love a lass" were written by John O'Keefe for the opera The Agreeable Surprise (1781). (I would like to give a link to the translation, but apparently my HTML is failing in this venue. It is googleable, though.)

The full text of Robert Burns's "A Red, Red Rose" (1794) can be found at the Bartleby website.

All of the Minbari words not originally heard on the show were either cribbed from John P. Hightower's English-Adronato Dictionary or derived rectally.