Once away from the tracking gallery Blake strode quickly down the narrow corridors and towards the nearest exit. All his attention was focussed on getting as far away as he could from the horror of that room in as few strides as possible. Those passing cast him a few curious looks but no one made any move to stop him, maybe the shuttered look on his face discouraged interference, or the still visible marks of the recent events on his clothes and skin. Either way they left him alone.

Gaining the privacy of an empty transit cab he collapsed back against the wall and closed his eyes, pushing back the tears that still threatened, hands gripped in fists at his side. Not again, please not again he whispered. Wrapping his arms around himself he struggled for control as the tremors began to rock him; guilt and regret had been his companions for such a long time that he could barely remember any other emotion, but he had thought and hoped that he had finally put this level of despair behind him. He wasn’t sure that he could survive it again.

Physically he was only marginally more comfortable. The pain killers they had given him were wearing off now and his body reminded him of recent abuses; every muscle ached as if he had been kicked and the headache caused by the bang as he had fallen had returned as a dull ache behind his eyes. He ignored it, all his attention being taken up with the tearing pain in his mind and, he fancifully imagined, his heart. His nervous system was frozen with the guilt and despair that flooded him as the memories of those last minutes replayed against his eyelids.

With a jolt the cab came to a halt, he pushed himself hurriedly forward between the parting doors and out into the light. The bright day was harsh on his eyes after the controlled world of the lower levels and he felt his eyes sting. No one was around, the heavy skies, the drifting leaves, and fine mist in the air had sent people inside; shivering in the sudden chill Blake hurried across the walkway towards his room in the surface accommodation block. Pushing a shaking hand at the sensor he almost staggered through the door, listening for the hiss of the lock as it closed behind him. Here he was safe.

With a ragged sigh he unfastened his belt and threw it onto the bed, the ruined jacket followed; then, running out of energy, he collapsed into the chair by the table that served as a desk. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes with his palms, trying to push away the image of the circling troopers, an image that seemed to be burned into his eyelids.

Not one of his better days, he thought, but at least the worst was over. It had to be, he didn’t think he could face any more.

After a while he sighed and, letting his hands drop, he considered his conversation with Deva. Yes he was free to continue his fight, Deva was right about that, not that it seemed to matter much for the moment. In time he knew he would begin to plan again, to regroup and start afresh. He had lived to fight another day. 'But at what cost?' a little voice muttered in his brain. He pushed it away in tired resignation, knowing only too well that it would soon be back; it always came back.

With a shudder Blake hauled himself to his feet. At least he could do something about the physical discomforts. Stretching, he felt some of the chill and cramp melt away from his protesting muscles. He stretched his shoulders again, before sinking heavily back into the chair feeling the fatigue solidifying into lead in every muscle and joint. Briefly he pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes again. In the darkness behind his hands he wondered, for the thousandth time, how it had all come to this.

Self indulgence, or so Avon would have said.

Avon, so much of it came back to Avon. Well not any more. This decided it, Avon was gone from his life now. Finally gone for good, taking his bitter tongue and uncomfortable clarity of vision, and accusing eyes, with him. Yet Avon had not willingly or easily deserted him, the man had been an enigma to the end.

With a heavy sigh Blake got to his feet and dragged himself to the small washroom, starting to shed his torn and bloody shirt as he went. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and stopped, staring for a moment into a face he barely recognised; the grubby skin and several days’ growth of hair repelled him. That and the dried blood that had spattered his face and clung to the incipient beard. He soaked his hands in cold water and scrubbed at his skin; the water released the colour of the blood again so that it flowed liquid crimson over his palms and through his fingers to drip onto the metal surface of the bowl. Blake stared down at the splashes on his hands feeling the revulsion rise in his gut.

With a muttered curse he turned away from the reddened water. Picking up his discarded shirt from the floor, he scrubbed at his hands with it, transferring the bloody water from his skin to the stained cloth. The water was lost amongst the blood already stiffening the torn fabric. He rolled it up and swabbed the bowl clean before casting the wet and stained ball back into the corner. Then he leant forward, pressing his hands to the wall either side of the mirror, head hanging, his forehead pressed against the cold surface, breathing deeply.

It was over, at least for now.

Blake raised his head, looking unflinchingly at the face he didn’t know as his own. It was barely ten hours since he had last stood here, and yet in that time his world had come to an end... again. Ten hours to become a stranger.

He looked at himself for a second longer wondering if he would ever shake off the guilt. Gan’s death had been bad enough; but this guilt was so much greater. He could feel it burning like a brand in every part of his mind, searing his very soul. No amount of thought, no words of comfort, or friendship, were going to change this. Jenna’s words after the raid on Centero drifted into his mind, her advice to him when he thought they had lost Cally, 'you have to make peace with yourself to survive'. His stranger’s reflection looked back at him in despair, how could he ever make peace with himself now he wondered? He had lost everything and everyone; more than that he had lost himself and become what he had most despised. How could he go on, knowing that?

Old guilts hovered behind the new one, waiting for their chance to rattle their chains at him. He recited the mantra of these past months to drive it away. It had been the only way, he had been so certain of that, still was in his calmer moments, but the knowledge gave him no comfort. Not now. For a moment his image shifted and he thought he could see Avon reflected behind him, eyes angry and bitter, and beyond him Vila staring in disbelief. Blake shook his head and turned away towards the shower cubicle, he had done what he had to do, the Federation had to be defeated whatever the price. Let that be an end to it. The thought froze him mid step; more memories, that was what Avon had wanted, an end to it. Blake shook his head to dispel the image, and turned on the shower, then he quickly began to strip off his remaining clothes.

***

Avon awoke in the same room, but the grey man was gone and he was alone again. Only the hum of the machines that surrounded him, and the familiar hiss of the ventilation systems, preventing total silence. Lying with closed eyes he waited for something to happen, no doubt it would soon enough. At least he knew who he was now and he had a good idea of who his captors were. Not that knowing was a great improvement. As far as he could see he would have been better off not remembering. First Liberator, then Cally, now Blake. And the others, he must not forget the others, he owed them that much at least.

For an unprepared moment grief surged through him, and it took every bit of discipline he had ever cultivated to push it away, but even so it left him cold and lost. He had sought Blake, killed Blake, and in doing so he had caused the death of Vila and the others. In the privacy of his mind there was no point in denying the regret; anyway there was no one left to hide it from. Finally he was truly and completely alone. He didn’t want to speculate about why that didn’t it bring the peace he had always hoped for.

He remembered his words to Cally after the death of Auron, regret was indeed a part of life, but for the moment it seemed to be his whole life. Though he had promised himself so many times before that he would never feel like this again, never care again, as he lay unable to do anything more than remember he found that there was nothing but care and regret left. The struggle to survive, to plan to escape, might come later, but for the moment nothing seemed to matter but remembering.

Avon allowed his mind to drift back to the tracking gallery; perversely he accepted his need to understand events even as he acknowledged to himself that it didn't matter any more. There seemed to be so much he couldn’t remember yet; but that was only to be expected if what the grey man had said was true; and he had no reason to disbelieve him. But he knew he must try to remember if he was to understand, and that was the only thing left for him now.

So he made no move to block out the memories. Instead he welcomed them, seeking out all the precision and detail that he could find. Yet he was surprised that they came so readily, and that, despite it he still couldn’t make sense of the events he remembered. Events that had killed the others, and that had brought him here, to being imprisoned in this room. Events that had killed Blake.

Slowly and calmly he recalled that last meeting with and wondered how it had all gone so terribly wrong. When he had come to Gauda Prime he had no intention of killing Blake, he was sure of that; on the contrary he had been reconciled to the idea of forging some form of new alliance with him. Maybe he could admit to himself now that he had gained some pleasure from the idea of seeing Blake again, if only for the chance of surrendering to him the unwelcome role of commander; aposition that he had been forced to assume in this last year or so if they were to survive. Certainly he had welcomed joining Blake for the pleasure of escaping the role of rebel leader he had seen himself being pushed towards.

He had known that word of his actions from Obsidian onwards was spreading, and after the Helotrix business there was a real danger that the whole of Blake's mantle would drop upon his shoulders. With Blake apparently dead, Avalon silent, and the legend of Blake's people being what he knew it was, there had been inevitability about the business that had appalled him. Even as he had known there was nothing he could do, nothing he was willing to do, that would avoid it.

The Federation was recovering far faster than logic or reason could ever have predicted and the opposition was still fragmented. Striven by warring factions and rival leaders the rebellion would need a unifying figure to hold them together if it were to succeed. The situation was little different from the one he had discussed with Blake in orbit around Earth just before the Central fiasco, now as much as before the war they needed someone to unite behind. With Blake apparently lost who would be a better choice than one of the original Liberator crew? One who had been beside their hero at Control and Space City, on Albian, Horizon, and a dozen other worlds. One about whom they knew so little, on to whom they could project anything, any quality, they wanted. The rebel alliance he had tried to build would have been only the beginning and he had known it.

He had no great respect for hero's, their certainties tended to cost a lot of other people's blood, yet he could see the role beckoning and no realistic way to avoid it. He had told Vila that winning was the only safety, and that had been uncomfortably true, but there had been more to it than that. With Blake gone the option for him to run away from the role of heroic leader didn’t really exist, someone would always find him and then find ways to demand that he played it. Just as Blake had done, damn the man. Yet, despite all that he had said to Blake and the others in the past, he was rather afraid that he would have played it. Fate's final joke.

Yes, to avoid that would have been both a relief and a pleasure.

Lying alone in the quiet of the bleak white room he cast his mind further back, trying to recall how and when he had formed the plan to rejoin Blake. When had he first discovered that Blake was alive, and why he had believed it this time? All the rumours they had chased after Star One, never finding any real trace of Blake or Jenna. Then the disaster of Terminal and the loss of Liberator and Cally in pursuit of another rumour; those events had taught him the little he hadn’t already known about caution, or so he had thought. So why had he risked it? Why had he been so sure of this final rumour? He couldn't remember.

Still he would leave that for the moment, there might not have much time left and it was more important for his own peace that he resolved the mystery of those last awful hours. The mist that had rolled through his mind earliert was gone and now the memories seemed to be burned into his brain. All it took was for him to relax a little and they began to loop through his head endlessly. But however many times he replayed what had happened, one thing remained unchanged. He still couldn’t understand why it had happened that way.

Everything had fallen apart so quickly, far too quickly. Not only that but everybody had apparently acted out of character, so contrary to all he knew of them that there had to be something, some reason, behind it; but he couldn’t think of what it might be. Even his own actions seemed like a closed book to him now, and not just those of Gauda Prime; ever since the loss of Liberator his actions had been those of someone he barely recognised as himself. Yet those actions had always been rational, at least as he could recall them, until those final moments when he stood facing Blake. Harsh on some occasions perhaps, but always necessary, always logical and with a view to the best possible outcome. Until Blake.

Why had he shot Blake? On Tarrant’s say so? No, surely not. Something must have happened to push him into such an irrational course of action. But what? Why couldn’t he remember? But even if he accepted that he had been irrational that didn’t explain Blake's strange behaviour. Avon shifted against the restraints, barely noticing the stab of pain as they rubbed his skin through the thin fabric of his overall, his thoughts still lost in the past. The more he tried to resolve the paradox the less he understood, the less sense the other man’s actions made.

Blake had always been a nuisance, forever demanding more than he was ever going to get, and Avon had always had his own views about why that was. Not that he had been surprised by Blake's demands; for most of his life people had wanted things from him, demanded things of him, and few had offered anything of real value in return. At times it had seemed that Blake offered more than most.

He frowned again, but Blake wasn’t incompetent or insensitive on the scale that his behaviour at Gauda Prime would suggest. The man was manipulative, always had been, and he had been inconveniently good at it much of the time; so although he might have misread the initial situation he would have corrected that pretty quickly. Certainly before the first shot. Could the Federation have got at him again? Avon considered the idea for a moment, but discarded it as unlikely given the events since Star One and Servalans attempt at Terminal. Given that it seemed unlikely that the Federation had been behind Blake's behaviour. It was possible that events since Star One had changed Blake ofcourse, but so radically?

He considered that idea, then discounted it too. What could have happened that would have changed him in that way? Guilt? Regret? Blake was likely to have known both of those if he had survived, but would they have been enough, given that he was no stranger to them even before Star One? After all the man had already lost his family, seen his friends murdered, caused them to be murdered, been betrayed and had his mind tampered with at least once. If he had not disintegrated, not lost his essential Blakeness, under all of that then what could, would, have done it?

Avon frowned, yet Blake had seemed different, changed, but in a way that made no sense. His appearance hinted at difficult times, at the loss of the humanity that had, in the past, held him back from surrender to the fanaticism that had always stalked him. Oh yes his appearance told eloquently of a change to the man, yet it was more than that. Some elements of the Blake of those last few minutes had been irritatingly familiar whilst others had been unrecognisable. Nor did there seem to be any logical pattern in those similarities and changes.

But that wasn’t all, not by a long way.

Avon let his mind drift over the last few days, the loss of Scorpio, the events in the forest, their arrival at the base. He couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that he was missing something; that there was an X factor that explained it all, every inconsistency and irrational event, but he couldn’t catch hold of what it was. The shadow of the answer bubbled in the bottom of his mind, teasing him with its closeness, but he was unable to reach down to pull it up into consciousness. All he was sure of was the essential wrongness of what had happened.

Maybe he could accept his judgement was slipping, maybe he could accept that Blake had changed; after all it had been more than two years since they had met. But none of that explained the odd behaviour of the others.

The shadows shifted again and for a second he thought he saw the outline of an important truth, but it then it melted into the background of the memories. Avon sighed and shifted against the restraints again, they caught at his wrists sharply, dragging him back to the glare of the white room and the unpleasantness of the present. Someone would come soon, he knew, and then he would have to make some very difficult decisions. He stared unseeing at the blank white ceiling, there was nothing he could do to prevent that, but he would like to find the answer before they did. Closing his eyes Avon turned his attention back to the memories and resumed the search.

***

The water washed away the remaining blood quickly enough but Blake continued to stand under the warm flow hoping it would dispel the ice that seemed to be settling at his very core. He felt as if he would have to stand here forever just to be warm again. No difficulty with that, one thing this benighted planet had plenty of was water. Far too much for anyone one to bother with installing alternatives, not that Blake minded the basic simplicity of the facilities, he had always found the hiss of the water as soothing as its cleaning powers were effective.

Today not even the sensation of the wet warmth on his skin could bring comfort, but that made it no less efficient at removing the traces of the day’s events. So he stood and let it run through his hair and ripple across his back, wishing that it could cleanse the stains from his memory as it did his body. Eventually he couldn't delay it any longer and he hit the dryer then stepped out and pulled on a robe, averting his eyes from the silent reproach of the bloodstained shirt still lying in the corner. Pulling the belt tightly around him like a shield Blake walked back into the main room.

There was no provisions unit here but a flask stood on the table with a solitary glass beside it. He reached out and filled the glass, not that he was thirsty but his throat was dry and he still felt cold. Then he crossed to the window and stood sipping his drink as he watched the fading light and the shadows, skittering between the trees beyond the perimeter, turn from pale grey to deep violet. Glad that he had opted for quarters above ground away from the main complex he leant against the wall and watched the waving trees, the forest was thinner this close to the base. Autumn was hurrying towards winter and the light faded quickly, even here in the most northern continent. With an effort of will he put the recollections of the day to one side, he would face those when he had more time, for the moment his thoughts needed to be directed to where he was going from here.

Whatever they said he couldn’t stay, the memories alone would destroy him however hard he pushed them away. If only there had been another way! If only he could have seen another way through the mess that his life had become, but he hadn’t been able to. And now others had paid for that failure.

With a curse he reminded himself that what was done was done and that the best he could hope for now was to find a meaning for it all, or rather make one. So he had to leave, find a ship and get as far away from here, and recent events, as he could. Others would carry on now; the army would continue to grow without him, wrapping its tendrils around the nerves and muscles of the Federation. He would leave. Start again.

Nothing else could make any sense of it, and he had to do that if he wished to survive. It wasn’t over, not yet, it couldn’t be.

As the light outside dimmed he considered his options. He had debts to pay if he was to survive, and there was only one way he knew of paying them. Sighing wearily he turned away from the deepening evening, back to the desk. With a hesitant hand he picked up the computer card that lay there and stood staring at it turning the wafer between his fingers. He was a dead man now. Deva was right that gave him choices that hadn’t been there before, just as long as he stayed dead. With a sudden shudder he threw the card down again. Exhaustion was taking hold of him and he knew that he would have to try to sleep.

Throwing the robe aside he crossed the room and collapsed onto the bed; basic, as all furnishing here were, it was comfortable enough and he had found no problems in sleeping on it until these last few days. Now, however, it had all the attraction of a Federation holding cell. Wearily he stretched out clasping his hands behind his head, staring with sightless eyes up at the ceiling. He knew that nothing was resolved, that he needed to think about the future, but his mind shied away from it preferring instead to dwell on older and happier memories. Laughing with Jenna, Cally’s quiet companionship and support, Vila’s unexpected wit, Gan’s slow smile and boundless trust. The cut and thrust of his exchanges with Avon, and the rare moments of real accord he had found with that reserved, difficult and enigmatic man.

He pulled up sharply, Avon again, why did the man haunt him so? Stupid question, he knew the answer very well. Not that it made it any easier. Avon might have been better with machines than people but he had understood more about Blake than had been comfortable. Recent events would not have come as a surprise to Avon, merely a confirmation of all he knew and feared. Betrayal. Avon had always understood betrayal, though Blake had never been sure how or why he had learned that particular lesson.

Blake gave himself a mental shake. Well he had lived down to Avon’s fears hadn’t he? There had been no choice, but that wouldn’t have mattered to Avon, didn’t matter to Blake; it was betrayal all the same. The bitterness of his own thoughts shocked him, but he knew they would follow him wherever he went from here. Possibly forever, however long that turned out to be. That was why he had to go forward, he could not wipe away the memories, or change what he had done, all he could do was make amends and hope that would be enough to bring some peace.

So he would start again. It wasn’t over yet and there was still work to be done, who better to do it than a man with little else to live for and an impossible debt to repay. On that thought he slid unawares into sleep.

***