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When the door slammed open and G'Kar, recoiling from the light, saw the familiar crested figure framed there, he wasn't even surprised. On some level, he had been confident that Londo would get him out of this, even while recognizing perfectly well that it might turn out to be impossible. But that was what it would take: actual impossibility. He knew that Londo would try, and he also knew that a determined Londo was a force even the Drakh had learned, to their detriment, not to underestimate.
"Great Maker," Londo coughed, recoiling from the stench G'Kar had almost ceased to notice. "G'Kar? G'Kar!" There was an edge of raw desperation in his voice. "They said he was in here! Captain Jerek, send Underguard Turelli to talk to them, he'll get answers --"
"I am here," G'Kar said. It came out a hoarse rasp as he struggled to get to his feet, his chains clanking. He had been in the dark for -- how long? He did not know anymore, but he did know that it must have been less than a couple of standard weeks, which was how long a Narn could go without water.
The next thing he knew, Londo's arm was around him, one hand gripping the filthy rags at his back, heedless of the stains and smudges on the imperial whites. G'Kar clutched at the front of Londo's emperor's uniform, grasping on instinct and shocked by the weakness in his own grip. The heavy shackle on his wrist chafed at the sores before it began to slip.
"Jerek, bring cutting tools!" Londo snapped over his shoulder. ".... Er, nevermind," he finished as the chains clattered to the floor. They had been only loosely draped on G'Kar's scabbed wrists to give the semblance of a tight fit.
"I got them off earlier," G'Kar said. He coughed again. "The door was another matter." There were splinters of it under his bloody fingernails.
Londo gave a halfhearted little laugh. He had both arms around him now, supporting him, and it took G'Kar a moment to realize that Londo was staring at his eyes, with a desperation that made sense for one reason only. Evidently, G'Kar was not the only one who had thought about Cartagia during the past days.
"No, I still have as many eyes as I came in with," he said, smiling with cracked and bleeding lips. "And other parts as well." He wriggled his fingers, which were still knotted in Londo's imperial jacket, and Londo huffed out something like another laugh, more real this time.
Not that they hadn't beaten and bludgeoned him enough to make up for it. He hurt in every part of his body, but he walked out of the dungeon under his own power. Londo's arm around his waist was for moral support more than necessity, he told himself.
***
He was given water, and drank as much of it as they'd let him, with Londo's hand supporting the cup while Londo stood over him protectively and talked over G'Kar's head, giving orders to someone.
"Who were they?" G'Kar asked. His voice was faint and hoarse, and he had to ask twice before Londo, in full command mode, actually heard him.
"A group of radicals, opposed to our reconciliation with Narn," the emperor said tensely through his pointed teeth. "I'm truly sorry, G'Kar. I'm sorry. I didn't know they'd infiltrated the palace to that extent. We were too focused on trying to keep the conservative faction in the Centaurum appeased, not realizing --" He sucked in a breath sharply, seemed to catch himself mid-justification. "Anyway. They are being dealt with."
Apologies were oddly unwelcome, this time. Londo had found him. That was what mattered for now. G'Kar nodded, and his head slumped sideways against the emperor's leg.
He was gotten up, eventually, and moved into a ground car. Londo was still with him. It seemed to be night. At the end of the ride, he expected to walk back into the familiar environs of the palace, so he was started to realize that he had never seen the room in which they ended up. It was nicely appointed, but not palatial, more like a hotel room. The colors were all wrong for the palace.
"Where --?"
"We are on the south continent," Londo said, guiding him to sit (still caked in filth and dirtying everything he touched) on the edge of a bed. "You didn't know that, did you? Yes, that is why it took us so long to find you." The words were ground out like a curse. Londo was still quietly, dangerously furious.
G'Kar looked up at him. His vision was still a little blurry, but he finally registered Londo's own state, pale and sleepless with dark smudges under his eyes. G'Kar hadn't seen him look that bad since the early days after the Keeper. It didn't look as if Londo had slept at all in the time since G'Kar had gone missing -- however long ago that had been.
"Anyway, to get to the capital would be a half day, minimum, and that's if we take the suborbital shuttle," Londo went on. His hand settled cautiously on G'Kar's shoulder. "I didn't see any reason to -- ah -- deal with that just yet, or take you through the shuttleport."
"Thank you," G'Kar said. It was earnest. He was acutely aware, as was Londo, that everything about his presence here on Centauri Prime hinged on appearances. He would recover from being seen in public in his current state. But he was glad he didn't have to, and awkwardly grateful that Londo had anticipated that.
"However, we do have physicians for you," Londo said. "Great Maker, what is keeping -- ah!" A knock came at the door. Londo's hand flexed on G'Kar's shoulder, then lifted away, and he went to let them in.
The physicians were Centauri, and G'Kar did not know either of them. But he was too tired to do anything except submit to prodding and accept that the fretful and irritating presence of Londo -- hovering over them, snapping sharp instructions -- was somehow enough to allay any concerns.
The doctors declared G'Kar dehydrated and malnourished, but not otherwise in bad shape. They cleaned the splinters from his hands and disinfected his worst cuts and gashes, gave him a shot of painkillers and drained an IV into him, and applied a few patches that tingled lightly on his bruises and cracked bones. Centauri medical technology, he would grant them this much, was very effective. With the shared biology between oxygen-adapted species (human or Centauri, Narn or Minbari) a great deal of the medical technology was easily transferable.
But it was still a relief when they left, leaving him slumping wearily on the edge of the bed, becoming aware of how much pain he had been in, now that he was not.
Londo said to him quietly, "There'll be food soon. Do you want to be clean?"
G'Kar wasn't sure why he was so tired now, drooping almost into sleep. But Londo chivvied him up and into the bathroom, where he found a hot bath had been run while the doctors were working on him. G'Kar had never been especially concerned about modesty, least of all now; he shed the filthy remains of what had been his underclothes and leggings with relief, and Londo gave him a hand into the sunken tub. He sank into hot water. The relief was immeasurable.
Londo stayed. He'd taken off the outer layers of his imperial clothes, but he was still partly dressed -- far too much for the warm, steamy bathing room; his face was red, his clothes damp. But he sat half in and half out of the water, and dipped up water to pour over G'Kar. It was funny somehow, G'Kar thought, lying back in the hot, lightly scented water, while the emperor of the Centauri got himself wet and dirty, washing G'Kar's filth away.
"No one did this for you," Londo murmured, sponging G'Kar's shoulders, "after Cartagia."
G'Kar didn't want to think about that now. He simply wanted to drift on waves of near-sleep, on the feeling of not hurting, of being somewhere safe. Of being clean. But he roused himself enough to say, "You don't know that. I might have had an entire honor guard of lovely young women scrubbing me clean after the liberation of Narn."
"Well, excuse me for impugning your honor."
G'Kar laughed. It hurt the cuts in his mouth, but it felt good.
"I will be right back," Londo said, and left him alone for a moment. He came back to find G'Kar trying to stand up in the lukewarm bath, placing a hand on the edge of the tub before jerking it back, having forgotten about the cracked bones in his wrist. "No no, don't hurt yourself," Londo said, reaching for him. As he steadied G'Kar's arm, he added, "The food is here. Can you eat?"
The physicians must have given him something in their injections to help with his malnourished condition, G'Kar was fairly sure. He was neither ravenously hungry, nor the empty non-hungry state of the starved man. "As long as it's edible. What is it?"
"Oborak tuber." Londo said, and G'Kar raised his head, startled by the name of a food from his home planet; though it was not that much of a surprise, since Londo was having it grown now in the capital because G'Kar had once said he liked it. "I had it flown in. That can go on a suborbital flight perfectly well. I hope you're right when you say it's hard to mess up. The kitchen here prepared it, and they aren't used to cooking Narn food."
"It really is," G'Kar said as Londo helped him out of the tub. "You literally can't go wrong. Baked, boiled, fried, fermented." It was also a good food for the starved, he recalled.
"Well, they baked it," Londo said. He'd often had the cooks at the palace prepare it that way.
Londo helped him dry himself on impossibly soft towels. Maybe it was the painkillers, maybe the all-over relaxation of the hot water, but G'Kar found himself sinking into the sensation of the towels, and after that, the silken robe that Londo helped him wrap around himself. It was nice to feel something pleasant for a change.
Oborak. A common food during the resistance, easy to grow, lasted for years. They used to cook it in the ashes of their campfires, even sometimes with energy weapons. It was inedible raw. But cooked, even indifferently, it gave up its nutrients, became tender and sweet. Before the Centauri came, it had been considered primarily a food for livestock and a poor person's travel rations because it was so easy to grow and carry.
After the liberation, no one would claim oborak as a favorite food; it was too ordinary. But everyone had a favorite recipe.
"Is there butter?" G'Kar asked.
"If there isn't, I will send for some."
Shortly, he was in the main room of the suite, eating baked oborak that he mashed with a fork before adding generous quantities of the soft and mild-tasting butter supplied along with it. The silken, Centauri-style robe covered his bruises and brushed against the healing skin. Londo sat beside him, digging a fork into some sort of plump baked dumpling. Centauri could eat oborak, it wouldn't hurt them (cooked, at least), but Londo claimed it tasted bitter.
The kitchen had done a good job. The oborak practically melted in the mouth. It would have tasted good with a little campfire ash, but butter and salt was even better.
"What happened to the ones who did this?" G'Kar asked, after his initial stirrings of hunger were sated.
Londo hissed through his teeth. "They are still alive, for now. They've been incarcerated in the local oubliette. I can assure you they are suitably uncomfortable, probably also terrified. When we are back in the capital, I will of course preside over a public execution. Vivisection will do nicely. They will be given no food or water in the meantime --"
G'Kar interrupted before Londo could launch into a litany of lovingly described tortures. "I would prefer that you do not."
Londo, his train of thought derailed, frowned at him. "You what?"
"You have been working to implement a system of impartial courts across the realm, haven't you? You told me some districts have always had them, others have not, depending upon local custom, but of course the emperor and the local nobles may override a magistrate's verdict with any sort of arbitrary punishment or reversal of a politically unpopular decision. You are trying to do away with the older system and replace it with courts whose verdicts are above even the emperor's whims."
Londo scowled at him, evidently recognizing the oncoming sense of G'Kar trapping him with his own reforms once again. "Yes, but --"
"I would like to have the guilty ones tried in front of a magistrate," G'Kar said. "With presentation of evidence and the opportunity to speak for themselves. I will of course testify my side as well."
"G'Kar, we know they did it."
"We do," G'Kar said.
"So what is the point of --"
"The point is that having them summarily executed out of anger goes against everything you've been trying to do for the last decade."
There was a long silence. Londo said finally, "I didn't know you were paying attention."
"I'm a little surprised that I was, too," G'Kar said, huffing out a half-silent laugh that tugged at the cuts in his mouth.
"You actually want this?"
"Of course not. I want to see them torn limb from limb in a public square." The idea of Centauri being publicly executed for harming a Narn, as so many Narn had been in the reverse situation, was richly satisfying.
"Well, then, of course --"
"But I am asking you to do this."
Londo blew out a long breath and turned his face away. G'Kar saw him go through a process that started with anger and ended on something like amusement. He was smiling a little as he said, "You know that you could not have picked a course of action more calculated to make the entire planet furious with me? The liberal faction, the ones who support most of what I'm doing as well as those in the court who personally like you, will be outraged that I've allowed this insult to you and to my own rule to pass unchallenged. The old guard who hate me anyway would be infuriated by the executions of their kinfolk no matter what, but they will be an order of magnitude more so if I don't even show their kin the respect of giving them a proper public execution."
"But think of the symbolism --" G'Kar began.
"Oh, I've heard this one before. From Delenn, remember? Look where that got us."
"-- especially to the liberal faction, if the emperor seeks justice, not revenge, even for an attempt on the life of his bodyguard and ..." He paused, unable to find a word in either of their languages for the complicated thing that he and Londo were to each other. After a moment he left it and went on. "What could prove more definitively that you truly mean to implement these reforms, and won't override them, even for personal considerations? Not to mention the significance of seeking proper, legal justice for harm done to a Narn, and allowing that Narn to testify in front of a court as anyone else would. Also," he added, "it will look good to the Alliance; this is all in keeping with the principles of the Alliance charter, you know."
Londo looked at him levelly for a moment. Then he shook his head and jabbed his fork into the half-dissected dumpling in his bowl. "Well, all right, if you insist."
"I do." G'Kar scooped up a forkful of oborak. "Here, try this. Your kitchen really outdid themselves."
"Don't oversell it." But he let G'Kar feed him a forkful, and swallowed it, then made a face. "Ugh. You don't mind the bitter at all?"
Was it bitter? A little, just enough to keep it from being overly sweet. "I have a taste for it, I suppose."
Londo leaned a shoulder against his, and they ate together. Londo deposited a piece of his own dumpling on G'Kar's plate, and G'Kar ate it. Not bad; there were spices and meat, a rich combination of the sweet-savory flavors that the Centauri liked, which he had also developed a taste for in his years on Centauri Prime. Perhaps, when his body was in slightly better shape and less likely to reject an excess of heavier food, he would have more.