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"John once said I look stunning in this color," Anna whispers against Delenn's neck, her lips carving Delenn down bare. Delenn struggles against her restraints, makes a big show of her protest. John will come for her. Someone will come for her. "What do you think, ambassador?"
"You do not have this memory," Delenn breathes, heavy-hot-shaking. "The person you are now did not know John Sheridan."
Anna pulls back, her dark red lip smudged over the side of her face, her hair mangled and unkempt and - and lived-in. When Delenn was first ensnared, Anna Sheridan had appeared wholly artificial and entirely fake, too neat, too stiff. They couldn't even fake it right. Now, after Delenn's touch, her body looks like worn, scrapped-off fabric. Tattered. Exhausted.
Anna had baited her into this. She forced their frames into collision, driving the impact with wielded threats. Hold me close, or you will never hold anything again. Red lips, blood between the teeth. But it - it feels right, somehow, to be this close to the ghastly figure that has kept its grip tight around John's throat for all of their years together. It feels right to kiss her, to be held down, to be slithered into.
Maybe now Delenn will finally understand.
"I missed my husband," Anna replies, a flat droning-out. She takes Delenn's face between the fingers and thumb of her right hand, forces Delenn's face further in. "We'll be close again. We'll be a family."
"If you missed him," Delenn manages, "why have you kissed me?"
Anna squeezes her, releases. "You can be a part of our family, too, if you'd like."
Delenn's fists clench together. No mercy, she will think when John rescues her - he will rescue her - no mercy. A sick stirring rises inside at the memory of the words.
The Shadows do not know mercy. Anna Sheridan does not understand family. She did not when she was alive, and she does not now. Calling no mercy on the Shadow servant barely counts; it cancels everything in the equation out. No mercy. There is no mercy for anyone involved.
Delenn bites down on her bottom lip, and begins attempting to snap the ties binding her wrists together behind her back. "Do it again," she says. "Sheridan. Do it again."
"You didn't answer my question."
Delenn gives her a confused glance.
"What do you think of the color, Delenn?" she asks. "I didn't know what color was until I saw this shade. It's perfect, don't you think?"
She looks deranged with the crimson smudged around her mouth like fresh devoured blood. She smiles, wide, wide, wide, and tilts her head to the side. A sad, confused Earth dog that has never before seen the outdoors, unable to see in color, cursed to be loyal without enlightenment.
Delenn snaps her wrists apart behind her back, but the ties remain solid around her, digging her flesh into a darker, flushed pink.
"John was wrong, then," Delenn replies. "It does not suit you."
