Blake looked across at her, she was sitting on the edge of the table every nerve strung tight as one of the strings on Dayna’s favourite bows. She was still dressed in Federation black, the colour showing up the lingering paleness in her face and the smudges around her eyes. Not for the first time he wondered just what she thought, and felt, about Avon.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She looked at him angrily for a moment more, then she relaxed slightly and the look softened, after a moment she gave him a poor excuse for a smile,
“You will be, Cally is furious with you, Tarrant is being most uncomplimentary and even Vila is willing to admit to being annoyed with you.” The smile widened and took on a humourless edge, “Dayna has been muttering about what will happen if Avon suffers for your mistakes. You are going to have a very hard time making it right with her.”
Blake looked at her suddenly uncertain again,
“Will he?”
Jenna sighed,
“Not physically. He’s still in the medical centre, but he is in no danger that I know of. Elliot is looking after him, he seems almost grateful for the opportunity. The stun bolt had more effect on him than it usually would have done because of his recent experiences, but Elliot is sure he will be back on his feet soon enough.”
She paused and looked at Blake, her face sombre and uncertain.
“Psychologically , who can say? I’m not sure that Avon was ever normal by the usual definitions, now….?” She shrugged.

Blake sighed, his own memories peering out at him from behind their barricades,
“He’s got a lot to come to terms with, and he won’t find it easy, no one would.”
Jenna eased the collar of the black uniform open and rubbed the back of her neck,
“Vila says that he will never forgive us for having seen that,” she jerked her head toward the room where the matrix couch still stood in menacing isolation.
Blake nibbled on his thumb as he considered that,
“He may be right about that.”

For a moment he was lost in thought, when he straightened and a slow and unfriendly smile spread across his face,
“But we still have Carnell don’t we, and Jocasta, I’ve no objection to throwing them to the wolf,” he cocked a glinting eye at her, “ do you?”
Jenna grinned,
“Not in the least.” She looked back at the couch and the console behind it, “and Vila will probably want to sell seats for the event.”
Blake laughed
“I’ve a feeling that Illyan might back him up.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Grant’s voice came from the doorway. “One way to fund the rebellion I suppose.” He smiled lazily, “As long as you can persuade Avon to agree of course. Just don’t expect me to be the one to ask him. In fact wait until I’m a long way away before you suggest it.”

Blake smiled with a flash of genuine humour,
“Oh I’d be the last one to ask, he’d say no to me as a matter of course.”
The humour faded and he pushed himself up from his seat before the matrix console, but stood and stared down at it. In the console beam the scarred and blood soaked Blake of Servalan’s fantasy was frozen in the act of falling, a shocked and uncomprehending Avon frozen in silence as he fell. ‘No’ he thought as he stared at the frozen image, he would have no problem in throwing the creators of this monstrostrous reality to the wolf he feared they had created.
“At least I think he would. He would have done so once upon a time, now I’m not even sure he will be willing to be close enough to me to hear what I ask for.”
Grant considered that for a moment,
“Well,” he drawled, “Avon was never easy, they won’t have changed that for the better. But you might find him more sympathetic to the cause than before.” He cast a cold look at the couch behind them, “if it wasn’t personal before it sure as hell will be now.”

Blake continued to stare at the matrix console,
“Oh I think they always intended that it would be. Somehow I doubt that Servalan knew the half of what she was paying for.”
Grant grunted an agreement, then shot Blake a hard look,
“But I wouldn’t count on that making it any easier. Somehow I don’t think they had our interests at heart either.”
“No.” Blake answered with a heavy heart. “I think we are going to need to know more about this,” he indicated the frozen image, “than many of us would like.”

He reached forward and shut the power down watching as the image of his own death blinked away. Yet he knew it was still there, still waiting for him, just as it always would be in his dreams.

***

In the medical centre the lights were dimmed, just a pool of brighter light marking out where Elliot was studying his findings. Avon had stood up better than he had ever dared to hope for, the test results confirming that the drugs were exhausted and his brain chemistry was nearly stable. That last event had sapped his physical reserves leaving him deep within exhaustion, but he would recover from that quickly enough. A day or two of enforced rest, a couple more of gentle relaxation and he would be ready to start facing up to the real world once again. For the moment he was asleep, not stirring as his many visitors came, watched and went.

The women from the Liberator had been here almost continually since he had been brought down here, one or other of them sitting silently at his side, watching as Elliot busied himself with any little tasks he could find to avoid the need to talk. The girl had been here longest, her dark skinned hand wrapped around Avon's pale one, staring down at him but with eyes somehow lost somewhere else. She had left a couple of times, when one of the others arrived; first that Auron woman whose eyes seemed to see through you, then the blonde in black who had sat so coolly expressionless when she though she might be seen, but who had looked at him with a surprising sadness when she thought she was unobserved.

There had been two male visitors from the ship too; the man called Illyan was well known to Elliot and he stayed as far away from him as he could, the one they called Vila was harder to ignore as he had alternated periods of haranguing the sleeping patient with interrogating his doctor in search of explanation and reassurance.

Then there had been Soolin, brought to sit by the bedside by a man Elliot didn’t know. She had looked nearly as exhausted as the sleeping Avon but she had refused his offers of help, just shaking her head smiling wryly at him,
“I think I’m going to be getting a lot of rest in the near future. Cells tend not be very active places,” she had said.
The soft eyed man with her had just shot her a long considering look but said nothing.

She had sat beside Avon for more than an hour saying nothing more, and when finally the man who sat behind her had reached out and put his hand on her arm and she had risen without complaint. But before she left she had leant across and pushed the hair from the patient’s eyes, bending lower to brush her lips across the exposed brow.
“I might not get the chance to say it again, you might not want to hear it,” she said, “but thank you for not killing me when perhaps you should have done. It was more than I had the right to expect.”
Then she left without a backward look, leaving Elliot to grieve for something that he had never had. Another illusion to add to the list.

Finally the man called Grant had visited briefly, standing in frowning silence before muttering ‘I’ll see you later’ and hurrying away.

Only Blake hadn’t been, and Elliot wasn’t leaving here until he had.

It was several hours after Grant had left that Blake arrived. He had stood just inside the door for a while before wandering across to where Elliot stared, unseeing, at a blood profile,.
“Is he going to be alright? Medically I mean?” he asked quietly.
Elliot nodded,
“Yes, I think so. He was lucky, more so than he had any right to be; and Chalco is very good, he knew what he was doing.”
He winced as he heard his own words, not a point of view he would want Blake to adopt! If that thought occurred to Blake then he gave no sign of it.
“So how long before he is on his feet again?” was all he said.
Elliot rubbed red rimmed eyes,
“Not long, a day of sleep to get him over the effects of the shock, another one, maybe two, to replace the nutrients the drugs and the winter have stripped him of. It will take a while for him to regain the weight he’s lost but that’s no real concern, he would do better to take it easy for another week but it won't do him any lasting harm if he doesn’t.”

Blake considered that for a moment, then nodded and moved on to what they both knew really concerned him,
“and when he wakes up? Will he still want to kill me?”
Elliot shook his head wearily,,
“I don’t know. I’m not the one to ask.”
“But I am asking you.”
The words were no less threatening for the gentle tone and Elliot sighed in reluctant acceptance,
“Probably not. I think the last of the conditioning broke when you met in the corridor, that’s why the shock is so deep. But I don’t know, they put in various sorts of checks and balances aimed at covering all possible eventualities, including the possibility that Servalan would introduce a false Blake if she got him away from here. But as far as I know once he accepts that you are real he will have no desire to repeat the matrix.” He looked up and met the shadowed eyes staring down at him without evasion, “and that’s what you really want to know isn’t it?”
Blake considered him in silence for a while and then smiled,
“As you would in my position,” he admonished gently.
Elliot found himself returning the smile,
“yes, I suppose I would.”

“Blake?”
The voice came from the bed, slurred and sleepy but strong enough to be heard. Blake immediately spun on his heel and crossed the room, Elliot was only half a pace behind him.
“Avon.” Blake’s voice was bland and light, “Yes, it seems I found you before you found me.”
“Did you?”
Blake reached out and gripped Avon’s shoulder ignoring Elliot’s worried frown,
“Yes.” There was a wealth of meaning and reassurance in the single word.
The man on the bed squinted up through the shadows, trying to read the faces above him,
“I thought I heard Cally? But she’s dead Blake, I lost Cally.” There was a well of sorrow and disbelief in the words.
A brief fury passed across Blake’s face, then melted away in his smile,
“No you didn’t. You didn’t lose anything Avon, you didn’t lose anything at all.”
Eyes dark with drugs and shock and confusion stared back at him for a moment, then the lids slid down hiding them from view, Avon sighed,
“Didn’t I? Not even myself?”
The words faded away as sleep reclaimed him.

Elliot checked the readings and turned to reassure Blake,
“He’s asleep again, I don’t think he will wake up now for some time.”
Blake cast him a dark look but said nothing. Elliot sighed,
“I’ll be over there if you need me.”
The weariness in his voice caused Blake to narrow his eyes,
“No, you need rest too, I don’t want Avon dying because something went wrong and you were too tired to spot it. We’ve a medic who can do what’s necessary until you have rested, and one of Liberator's crew can come and help watch him. Go to your quarters and sleep, I’ll stay here until someone else arrives.”
Elliot was too tired to argue so he just inclined his head and left.

Blake watched him go then pulled up a chair and sat beside Avon. For a moment he stared at the sleeping face without seeing it, his mind lost in his own past. He remembered Ravella and her friends, Foster and the others who had known Roj Blake in the days before his trial, people who had seen a stranger and tried to bring back the man they had known.

In the silence Elliot had left behind Blake heard Avon’s words again,
“Not even myself?”
Blake dropped his head into his hands and wished that he had an answer to that one.

****

End of part 3