WARLORD EPILOGUE 
                          
                   by Julia Henry

     Tarrant was waiting for him.  Not as he usually waited,
naked and snuggled between the sheets on their makeshift bed. 
Tarrant was still wearing his survival suit and his face was set in
harsh lines of grief and anger.

     Avon shut the door behind him, closing them off from the
rest of the ship.  "Well, get on with it then, Tarrant."
     
     "Get on with what?" demanded Tarrant.

     "Obviously you intend to make some kind of melodramatic
scene, so say your piece and let us be done with it."

     Tarrant stalked across the cargo bay and stopped a few feet
away from Avon.  "You cold blooded bastard, you don't give a
damn about Zeeona, do you?"   Under the glare of the strip lights
set into the ceiling Tarrant looked dreadful.   

     Avon couldn't help feeling sorry for him, but he wasn't
prepared to shoulder the blame for Zeeona's death. "Tarrant,
Zeeona is dead by her own choice and her own hand. Screaming at
me will not bring her back."

     "You knew what she was going to do, didn't you?"

     "I..." 

     "Yes or no, Avon?"

     "Yes," said Avon calmly.

     "And you let Zeeona go down to Xenon knowing full well
that she was going to..." Tarrant choked on the words and lashed
out blindly.  His clenched fist slammed into the bulkhead.  "Damn
you, Avon." 

     "Enough, Tarrant." Avon closed the gap between them. 
"Zeeona choose to die as she did.  I did not force her into
committing suicide to make amends for her father's treachery."

     "But you could have stopped her." Tarrant was almost
pleading.  "Why the hell didn't you stop her, Avon?" 

     "Listen to me, Tarrant." Avon gripped Tarrant's arm,
forcing him to look at him.  "Yes, I could have prevented Zeeona
going down to the base, but what purpose would that have served? 
Someone else would have had to have gone in her place, and -"   

     "I would have gone," interrupted Tarrant.

     "I would not have allowed you to go.  We need a good
pilot, especially now when this ship is all that we have left."

     "If I had known what Zeeona was going to do it would have
taken a better man than you to stop me, Avon."

     "If you had known...but you didn't know, did you?" said
Avon.   

     "No," admitted Tarrant.  He looked down at the floor. 
"Zeeona said that everything was going to be fine and I believed
her.  I should have known.  I'm the one who loved her."

     Avon only just resisted the urge to shake some sense into
Tarrant.  "You scarcely knew the girl.  You were together for less
than a week on Betafarl and for only two days at the base."

     "Three days."

     "Well now, that makes all the difference."

     "Don't laugh at me," said Tarrant.

     "I'm not, really I'm not."  

     "You say that as if you mean it." Tarrant closed his eyes for
a second.  "I did love Zeeona."

     "If you say so," said Avon.  He was never very adept at
handling other people's feelings, but Avon knew Tarrant well
enough to understand that he needed to believe that he had loved
Zeeona.  Unlike Avon himself Tarrant still hadn't learnt that such
emotions were all shadow and illusion.

     "Yes, I say so." Tarrant almost smiled.  "Haven't we had
this discussion before?"   
     
     "A rather heated discussion as I recall," said Avon.  "Zukan
was not best pleased to discover that his daughter was on Xenon,
and I was not best pleased to discover that you had risked the entire
alliance for the sake of that girl."    

     "As I told you then I didn't know that Zeeona was coming
to Xenon.  I didn't plan it," said Tarrant. "Not that it made any
difference in the end."   

     "No, it didn't," agreed Avon, "but you were hardly
repentant.  You maintained that you loved  Zeeona, and you
accused me of being jealous.  You also said that there would be no
more of this."
     
     They both looked at the makeshift bed in the corner.

     "That's not why I came here," said Tarrant.

     Avon raised an eyebrow. "No?"

     "No," said Tarrant flatly.  He turned away from Avon,
gazing round the empty cargo bay.  Avon watched him, seeing the
misery etched in the new lines around Tarrant's eyes.  Zeeona had
been a harsh lesson in life's cruel and captious realities for the 
young pilot.  However, if Tarrant was going to insist on wallowing
in guilt and self pity he would be no use to anyone.

     "Tarrant." Once again Avon took Tarrant's arm, pulling him
round to face him.  "Zeeona was not a child, nor was she mentally
unbalanced.   Zukan not only betrayed us and the alliance he also
sacrificed the men he left behind here on Xenon, his own people,
Zeeona's own people. Rightly or wrongly Zeeona felt that the only
way she could redeem her family's honour was by taking her own
life."    

     "What the hell would you know about honour?"

     "Well, I usually leave that sort of thing to you, but I can at
least respect Zeeona's decision. Why don't you try to do the same?"

     Tarrant shook his head. "I can't.  If it was disgrace,
dishonour, that Zeeona was afraid of then she didn't have to go
back to Betafarl.  She could have stayed with us, with me."

     "Obviously she didn't feel that she could," said Avon
gently.   

     "You mean that she didn't want to, that I wasn't enough..." 
Tarrant crumpled without any warning, his arms going round Avon
in a vice like grip.   

     Avon froze.  He stood stock still for a moment before he
disentangled himself from Tarrant's clinging embrace.  "Pull
yourself together, Tarrant."   

     "Sorry, all right in a minute..."  Tarrant sniffed, trying to
hold back the tears.     

     Avon sighed.  He put his arm around Tarrant's shoulders
and marched him over to the bed. "Here, sit down."

     Tarrant collapsed onto the mattress in a heap of misery. 
Avon sat next to him and placed his hand on Tarrant's shoulder. 
Even though the thick material of the survival suit Avon could feel
the tension in Tarrant's tight muscles.  He hitched himself a bit
closer and put both his hands on Tarrant's shoulders, trying to
massage out the strain and the grief.

     "Sorry," Tarrant said again.  He rested his head on his
drawn up knees.  "I can't remember the last time I did that."

     "When Deeta died."

     Tarrant's head came up sharply.  Their gazes locked in
silent communication, the shared memory washing over them both. 

     "Why me?" asked Avon, voicing the question he had never
asked before. "Why didn't you go to Cally or Dayna?"

     "They couldn't give me what I wanted."

     "True enough."  Tarrant hadn't asked for tenderness or
compassion, or for anything else Avon might have found it
impossible to give.  "Fuck me," he'd said and Avon had obliged. 
That had been the beginning.

     "There was always Vila," said Avon.

     Tarrant half laughed. "Come on, Avon, surely you don't
find it surprising that I'd prefer you to a Delta."

     "Well, if you put it like that then no, of course not."   
"Egotistical bastard." Tarrant settled back into the curve of Avon's
arm.   They sat in silence for a time, then Tarrant shifted settling
himself more securely  into Avon's embrace.  

     "It was you I wanted," he confessed quietly.  "You were
very...considerate, Avon. I never did thank you for that, did I?"   

     "No need," said Avon.  It had been Tarrant's first time
having full intercourse with a man. Avon looked down at the head
resting on his shoulder, at his own fingers buried in Tarrant's soft
curls.  "I saw no reason to inflict unnecessary pain on you."   

     "Just as long as I remembered that it was only sex, and that
I was a poor substitute for Roj Blake."

     That was a body blow, a sharp reminder of things Avon
would rather forget.   "Blake and I were never lovers," Avon heard
himself say and he was amazed at his own honesty.

     "What?"  Tarrant twisted round so that he could see Avon's
face. "But you told me that..."

     "I told you that I had ... feelings for Blake, you merely
assumed ..."   

     "Exactly what you wanted me to assume," said Tarrant.
"Why, Avon? Why did you let me think that you and Blake had
been lovers?"

     "Pride, perhaps I found it somewhat humiliating to admit
that Blake had rejected my advances."  It was more than that and
they both knew it.  The spectre of Blake had created a barrier
between them just as Avon had intended that it should.  Confining
his relationship with Tarrant to illicit sex, keeping it simple,
uncomplicated, until now.   

     Tarrant's arm encircled Avon's neck, pulling his head down
for a kiss, soft lips and a wet tongue plundered his mouth, but the
kiss lacked any real fire.  Avon merely accepted it, letting Tarrant
continue until he had to surface for air.   

     "What's wrong?" asked Tarrant.

     "Is this really what you want?" 

     "What else is there?" said Tarrant.  

     Avon stared into Tarrant's weary face.  He was right of
course, there never had been anything else for them, not here.  In
this bleak cargo bay sex had always been their sole method of
communication, and it was surely too late to change now.  Gentle
words, declarations of feeling, did not come easily to Avon, nor he
suspected to Tarrant.  Avon lay back, easing Tarrant down onto the
bed with him.   

     "Just go to sleep, Tarrant, we've a lot of work to do
tomorrow."    

     Tarrant lifted his head from Avon's shoulder and studied his
face for a moment.  "Don't worry, Avon, we'll make out somehow,
we always do."   

     "You're a fool, but let's hope that you're right."  Avon drew
Tarrant down into his arms and they settled for sleep.  Tarrant's
warm weight was very comforting, and Avon shut his eyes ready to
savour a few hours of peace in the midst of hell.   

     "Was Blake straight?" asked Tarrant.

     Avon frowned. "I don't think Blake knew what he was, all
he cared about was his damn cause."

     "Did you love him?"

     Silence.
     
     "Avon, tell me, I've got a right to know."

     "I don't know.  There were times when I hated him and
times when I would have died for him."  Avon buried his face in
Tarrant's hair. "We have things to settle between us, Blake and I,
until that's done I can't build any kind of life for myself ...  or for
us."

     "And if you find that Blake's changed his mind about
wanting you, then you'll go with him rather than stay with me?"
Tarrant was sure that he already knew the answer to that question. 
His arms tightened around Avon. "I won't give you up without a
fight you know."

     "Perhaps I'm not worth fighting for."

     "You are to me," said Tarrant.

     Avon knew that he'd done little to deserve such loyalty, and
Tarrant's declaration touched his lonely heart as well as his
conscience.  He kissed Tarrant's forehead. "I can't promise you
anything."

     "Have I ever asked you to?" said Tarrant. 

     "No," said Avon.  He stroked Tarrant's back trying convey
all the gratitude, all the caring, he couldn't put into words.  

     "That's all right then, isn't it?" muttered Tarrant.  He rolled
over, wrapping his arms more securely around Avon.  Tarrant soon
drifted into an exhausted sleep.  Avon lay awake for a long time. 
There was no longer any reason to stay on Xenon and he had put
off the inevitable confrontation for long enough.  Avon smiled
grimly. He wondered if Blake would be his salvation or his final
damnation.