Why do you imagine I've never gone back? Affection for him?

I am not often so cruel with words. But yours was an anger
that fed upon my own, festering until I could do nothing else but
retaliate. And so I exchanged hurt for thoughtless hurt.
Forgive me, Avon. For my words and for the deception that
followed.

I never meant the bonding to last so long. I was wrong, I
know, to form it at all. But I simply could not allow you to
face the interrogators alone when there was a way...

The link was formed in the moment before you teleported to
Earth, to allow yourself to be captured. I needed nothing more
than to touch your hand. You never noticed.

I only wanted to help. How could I possibly have foreseen
the random element of Anna Grant's return from the dead?

Anna was one agony I had not intended to share.

The rumours of my death...

Have been greatly exaggerated.

How lightly Tarrant spoke the words, both blithe and blind
to your torment. But your reply was anything but light as you
slotted the teleport bracelet into its rack.

Well... slightly exaggerated, anyway.

And when you walked away, your pain was tangible enough to
drive me to the cushions at the teleport console, biting back the
urge to cry out. Though you'd gone, the horror of your single
thought remained with me, bleak and coldly terrifying.

Not Anna too.

I knew the source of the horror then. So many others had
already betrayed you. Everyone for whom you'd ever cared... or
tried to care. You had come to believe that your "walls" would
protect you from ever being hurt again. And now... You had not
counted on the intervention of a ghost, any more than I had. The
hardest betrayal to bear is the one you would never... ever...
have expected.

Please, God... not Anna too.

"Cally?"

I jumped, aware of a hand suddenly touching mine, and a
voice -- Vila's -- concerned and gentle.

"Cally, what is it? What's wrong?"

I should have expected that of all of them, Vila would be
the one to notice my distress. But I could not tell him. How
would I explain?

"I'll be all right, Vila. Thank you."

"Well you don't look all right. You're white as a ghost.
Here, wait a minute. I've got something can help that..."

"No." I stopped his reach for the bottle. "Thank you. But
I really am all right. Or I will be, as soon as I've taken care
of something."

He glanced nervously at the corridor, the way you had gone,
and then back at me as though he might be uncannily aware that
some connection did indeed exist.

"He'll be all right," he said.

I blinked at him, not understanding.

"Avon," he added with a rueful little smile. "He'll be all
right, too. He's always all right. Nothing ever gets to Avon."

Oh, but you are wrong, Vila. So very wrong.

I wanted to say the words aloud, but could not. The pain
had returned, a frigid, clutching thing from deep within the
bonding. Your physical discomfort I had intended to share,
through the interrogation, and to lessen it if I could. But this...

This thing had been born in the darkest hell any Auron may
face. It drew its pain from cruel, uncompromised isolation.

Your fear, Avon. Alone and silent.

Why did I ever consent to have any part in your revenge?
Even so small a part as implanting the transmitter? Perhaps
because the thought of forming the bond had occurred to me. And
if I could not stop you from going, I might at least help you to
face the interrogators.

My people call it uhrtra.

The Sharing.

It is done easily -- and undone -- with nothing more than a
touch. A simple mental link. Quite fragile, really. But it can
serve a useful purpose, as it did in this case. And you need
never be aware of it at all. I knew you would be angry if you
knew. Angry that anyone dared enough to care.

I formed the uhrtra when we implanted the transmitter,
whilst you were still unconscious. I did not think then what a
risk I would be taking. If you had died in your quest for this
insane revenge, I would have died with you. Uselessly.

The Auronae say that revenge is bitter wine. One always
learns, too late, that it is never worth the price you pay.
So I shared, through the bonding, your five day ordeal. For
each of us to suffer only half the pain, I reasoned, was better
than for one to bear it all. I told the others I was ill -- that
was true enough -- and I retired to my cabin. They assumed that
I was only mourning Auron's loss, and that was also true, in
part.

But I had never realized just what horrors you were ready to
endure in order to exact your "justice." I had never been the
"guest" of Federation interrogators on a level with these. You
had. Yet you were willing to go through it all again, just to
get your hands on Shrinker.

Was he worth it, Avon?

I think not.

You killed him. You dispassionately orchestrated his death
-- and yet it turned out he had never known Anna at all. Had not
killed her. Had never seen her.

An empty victory.

I began to regret the uhrtra then. But I did not break
it, even after Shrinker's death, because you placed yourself in
even greater danger by going after Servalan.

Again, I was foolish. And again, I might have died with
you.

It was I who warned you when Anna drew the gun. Did you
realize that, I wonder? I tell myself that it was as much for
self-preservation as for... well, for any other reason. Yet even
that is partly a deception. I know it, but I don't pretend to
understand it.

I do not know my own feelings any more, Avon. I do not
understand why I care... when it seems that you have never cared.
My brooding at the teleport console was disturbed again by
Vila's solicitous voice.

"Are you certain you're all right? Why don't you let me get
you that drink, Cally. It'll do you good. Promise."

I forced his hand away, gently but firmly. "No, Vila.
There is something I must do."

Over his objections, I departed in the direction you had
gone, praying that he would not follow. Fortunately, this time,
he did not.

I knew where you had gone. Even without the uhrtra, I
would have known. I'd seen you on the starboard observation deck
before, and assumed you had gone there for the same reason I
often did. To lose yourself for a time in the vastness of the
stars. To think, to remember... or to forget.

Only now you could do none of those things, and the stars
were no longer a comfort. They were nothing now but a billion
torments, scattered, hard and shining, as empty and alone as the
agony we shared.

I regretted the bond more than ever in that moment, not
because I could not withstand the pain, but because this was a
personal anguish upon which I had no right to intrude. I felt
suddenly cheap and deceitful for not having told you; you would
never have forgiven me in any case. And yet, to stop it, I had
somehow to touch you...

I came onto the observation deck and stopped just within the
door. The room was lightless, but I could see you silhouetted
against the rectangular port, standing there, staring out at
nothing.

I felt the tears, unshed, burn in my own eyes, and I
recoiled at the pain no Auron would have willingly shared -- the
acrid, bitter twist of the betrayer's knife that left you so
horribly alone. It murdered the soul, that knife; made it draw
remorselessly in upon itself like a collapsing star. Never to
trust again. Never to... love... again. New walls, re-erected,
were meant now to imprison you forever. Alone. To an Auron,
they would have precursed certain madness. I feared they might
well do the same for you. But they were your choice, those
walls. I wanted only to be free of them, to break the uhrtra,
once and for all.

Yet I could not.

I couldn't bring myself to move another step into that room.
Somehow, to reveal to you that I was there at all seemed a
betrayal as cruel in its way as Anna's had been.

Something else you would never have forgiven.
So, cowardice defeating me, I fled the room and sought
solace once again in the confines of my cabin.

For ten hours, I fought, unsuccessfully, to banish the
demons that raged at you. I even tried to drown them in the
misery of my own private sorrow: I studied the drawings of Auron,
a long and morbid reverie mourning the passing of a world. My
world.

It did not help.

Ten hours of grief gone by, and your voice calling softly at
my door brings both surprise and, guiltily, relief. Now at last,
a chance to dissolve the link. And you still need never know.
I scarcely hear your words -- or mine -- as you remove the
drawing from my grasp and gaze at it, detached, controlled once
more. As though your agony had never been. But it is still
there, behind the walls. I feel it burning. A cold fire,
twisting... consuming.

"Regret is part of living," you say, concealing your own
regret once more behind the omnipresent mask. "But keep it a
small part."

Now is the time, I know, that I must make the contact.

Break the link. So simple and innocent a thing, a touch. Yet
this one must be oh so much more.

"As you do?" I ask, and your smile is a thing somehow more
frightening than reassuring.

"Demonstrably."

Now. It must be now.

I smile as well, summoning a laugh, and place an almost
playful hand upon your chest. A friendly touch, light and
fleeting. It is all you are likely to allow.

But it is enough.

The uhrtra gone at last, I move past you to the door and
turn my feet toward the flight deck. A part of me wishes I could
tell you... explain to you. But I know you would not understand.

Another part of me wishes I could have done more, somehow,
to help you. But that, too, is impossible. You have made it so.
Pain, isolation, emptiness. They are all yours once more.

And I cannot -- will not -- share them again.

I am sorry, Avon. But this is how it must be.

He who drinks the bitter wine must drink alone...