by DsignG4
Twenty years since the end of the Shadow war. No one came back from that war the same. That god-forsaken war. Those of us that didn't physically die, died inside out. Those who weren't touched by death, heard it scream in their dreams every night. I've been dead more times, and in more ways, than I can count since then.
Twenty years see the faces as clear as yesterday and knowing the cost they paid may not have been worth it. Still not even sure if it was the right thing.
You'd think after this long I could look on it with honor. Know that what we did was for the right reasons. Know that the losses had been worth it. That the disgraces had been forgotten. They haven't, and I'm still not sure what we did was right. That we were even in the right.
One face still haunts me, and has since I woke up. Mine. The morning after Marcus died. The morning after I died. I'm still dead. The Susan Ivanova he knew died with him never to return.
The rest noticed I was never the same, they just smiled and tried to act like it was all the past. But their past was my present. Every goddamn day I'm here is one he's not, and I can't forgive myself for that. Nothing they ever say will ever convince me that I was worth it. Been worth him. It still hurts too much to know someone had to die to let you live. To make you live. I still don't feel as if I have earned his love - his life.
This life, if I can call it that. I sit in an office and trot around like a prize pony on holidays. "A great hero of the Interstellar Alliance, a liberator of Earth." Smile, wave, kiss a baby or two - drink myself to sleep. Bullshit. I survived that's all. Not through any great act of my own heroism, by any valor, but from the gift of a man no one will remember but me with every tainted breath I take.
I called it a gift for a while, trying to give it a nice spin, an honorable title. But it always sounded fake and hollow. He didn't give me a gift, he gave me himself. His very life. There's no way to make that go down easier.
I had lived so many years intent on just surviving I forgot that life was for living. It took a dead man to teach me that. That is the one thing I can say Marcus gave me. It took me twenty years to realize it.
I've spent a lot of years running from him. Running from my own face in the mirror. Running from everyone I knew then.
I haven't stepped on a Whitestar since. The new ones don't even look like the ones then, but the name is the same. It's hard to even talk to a ranger to this day, they all look like him. Even the Minbari ones.
That's all going to end soon I know. John's time is growing near. Delenn calls. She's not terribly subtle for a Minbari anymore. I know she's worried. I know what she'd hinting at. What she wants me to do.
Whatever I choose, I won't be coming back to EarthForce. That much I know. I've served my time plus some. It's time to do something I should have done along time ago. There's nothing for me here anymore. I never should have returned to begin with. I did so because it was all I had to run to.
I'm tired of running. I'm going to have to face him one of these days and I'm going to have allot of explaining to do if I don't.
It's just a matter of when. I know he doesn't have long. And I'm frankly glad. Ever since he's seemed one step from the great beyond for ever now it seems. He turned grey a year or so after Lorien left. He mutters, putters and generally makes everyone look away so they can remember the great hero he used to be. He gets more pity than respect now. The grand old war hero, who went a bit off the pier too far. I know he wants to go, you can see it in his eyes. He knows what they all think and tries not to think it himself. He only stays to make Delenn feel better I think. To make it easier on her.
The great war, the 'war that changed everything'. I thought they were just words. They were prophesy. You never know how long time plays with you, like a cat with a mouse, until you're alone. Until it's your time. Then you begin to feel those claws in your skin, here the beast growing in tour ear. When you play dead and when you decide to die are two different matters.
I'll just bide my time until I get the call, then maybe I can begin again. Begin it all again, and make it up to him.
Susan Ivanova, General - EarthForce.
