Regaining Life

Greetings once again. This story is a follow up to 'Rediscovering Marcus', and I strongly recommend that you read that one first. I don't know how many parts this will be because some of my stories have a habit of running away with themselves. Anyway, read, enjoy, and send me any comments; I like getting emails. Hi to Betsy, Claire, Rachel and Red Wulf. Thanks for the input.

Please visit my webpage that is dedicated to the book I've written, and am attempting to get published. It is at, www.geocities.com/elenopa/

Disclaimer: B5 and associated characters all belong to JMS (All hail to the Great Maker), WB, TNT, etc. I'm just playing in your universe for a while. I don't mean to step on the flowers.

Spoilers: Call to Arms, and River of Souls. Just in case there is someone who hasn't seen all five seasons, spoilers for Endgame and Sleeping in Light.

Abstract: What happened to Susan Ivanova after she left B5. Set in 2286 with flashback to 2266.

Regaining Life

By

Hilary Weston

Part 1.

"…And the Lilac fairy made the whole castle fall into a deep sleep. Around the castle, cutting it off from the outside world, a forest of thorns grew. There the princess remained, sleeping peacefully for a hundred years."

"Just like Grandpa Marcus." William interrupted the story.

"In a way, yes."

"Will a princess wake him with a kiss?" Sofie asked, determined to have her say.

"Maybe, one day."

Susan settled the two children back onto her bed and continued the story of 'Sleeping Beauty'. If anyone had asked her when she had first become leader of the Rangers, what she thought she would be doing five years later, the last thing she would have said was reading bedtime stories to her grandchildren. Then again, if anyone had asked her twenty five years ago if she would one day lead the Rangers, she would have said no.

Yet here she was, and strangely, although she would not have chosen this path for herself initially, she was happy. As happy as she could ever be. Susan was the first to admit that she had not had the smoothest of lives; loosing her mother when she was just a girl, then Ganya during the war, and the long years of discord between her Father and herself. It was no wonder that she had grown a thick skin to survive.

After living with the Minbari for five years, Susan had begun to evaluate her earlier life. She now wondered if her actions had been as much about hiding as surviving, although the two were sometimes the same thing. Some of the earliest memories she had were of her Mother telling her to not tell anyone about her telepathic abilities. To hide them, she had moved homes and schools more times than she could remember, which meant that she never had many friends and so was often lonely. In her stubborn Russian way, she would tell herself that she didn't need friends, and so isolated herself more.

It was hard to tell from the distance of almost four decades, if she had joined Earthforce as a defiant act against her Father, or to hide. Having suffered the loss of someone so dear to her once already in her young life, the death of Ganya would have torn her heart out if she had let it. Instead, she buried her feelings and immersed herself in the military. There, the individual was squeezed out, creating a faceless number in the ranks. She could forget about her past because no one else was interested. She gained the respect of her comrades from what she did, not who she was. Soon, a new Susan Ivanova was born; dedicated, efficient, loyal, ruthless, respected and cold. The perfect soldier, smothering her emotions so well that she picked up the nickname 'Ice Maiden.'

Once, she had lowered her guard, for Malcolm. But the promotion to Io was offered and the lure of the safe predictable career path won over the uncertainty of a relationship. Susan may have said then that she was career orientated, but she had at the time been terrified of Malcolm leaving her, so she left him first.

Year after predictable year, she rose in the ranks. Dutifully obeying orders, not having to make decisions about her future, because they were made for her. She didn't care where she was posted, because she had no ties to bind her. Then she was posted to Babylon 5.

Maybe it was having to work so closely with civilians and aliens that gave her back her life. Immersed in a world full of other cultures and people doing everyday ordinary things instead of drills and exercises, the ice began to melt. One day she had looked around her and realised that, without noticing, she had a circle of friends. People that she cared for, and that cared for her back. Michael, Jeff, John, Stephen, Delenn, Talia…..

That had been a low point with Talia, and though her defences went back up, for the first time in her life she didn't run away and hide. Although the Ivanova curse was holding, and someone that she loved had left her, she did not have to cope with it alone. She had friends that she didn't want to leave, and a place that she considered home.

At the same time, Marcus had arrived in her life. Popping up in the middle of the Shadow war, she had had little time to think of him as more than an annoyance, undisciplined and uncontrollable. It was only because she needed him as a translator that she tolerated him on the Whitestar with her. In just a short time though he had proved himself capable and trustworthy, even if some of his methods were a little unorthodox.

And he made her laugh.

That was one of the wonderful things about Marcus. When she was angry at him, he didn't shout back, because he understood that her anger was a defence mechanism. Instead, he found a way to cheer her up. No one had ever done that for her. She still smiled at the thought of his picture chart of the command structure of Babylon 5. When he had presented it, she had wondered if she had found a kindred spirit. Theirs was a strange friendship as they spent most of their time together discussing tactics on the bridge of the Whitestar rather than socially, but Susan found herself enjoying Marcus' company. What would have previously been tedious missions she began to look forward to. At a time when it was hard to know who to trust, she trusted Marcus implicitly, voicing concerns and discussing problems with him, knowing that he would not repeat them to anyone else.

As friendly as she was, Susan was still, in a sense, hiding. She knew that Marcus liked her. Only an idiot would miss the way he acted towards her, but she still kept him at arms length. She had been hurt too many times in her life and was determined to not let it happen again. And so she hid her feelings, convincing herself that she was not interested, and hoping that Marcus would give up trying to woo her.

Susan still cursed herself for being a coward to her feelings. If only she had not tried to scare Marcus off, then perhaps he would have declared his love for her earlier. If only they had had a relationship, maybe he wouldn't have proceeded with his desperate plan to save her life at the cost of his own. If only he was alive now instead of her. He should have been the one reading bedtime stories to his grandchildren.

If only. She knew that it was useless to try and discover what had gone wrong with the past. It was gone and she just had to accept it, but she still wished things had gone differently. Then again, if she had done things differently the outcome might still have been the same. Marcus might still have carried out his big heroic act, but at least there wouldn't have been regrets. She still had the regrets. The guilt she had dealt with long ago, but she regretted the wasted opportunities, with Marcus, and among others, her first crew.

She had dreamed of having her own ship to command ever since she had joined Eathforce, but when she was promoted to Captain and offered the EAS Titans, she had not accepted it with great enthusiasm. The year long shakedown along the Rim had just been another excuse for her to run away and hide. It was hard to shake old habits, but this time there had been a difference. She hadn't run away because everyone had left her, but because she had too many friends that cared. Susan knew that if she had stayed on B5, everyone would have been incredibly supportive but also very sympathetic telling her how sorry they were and treating her as if she was going to fall apart at any moment. Delenn would have said something philosophical about the soul, John would have tried to empathise with her because of Anna, and Corwin and the others in C&C would have looked upon her with sorrow. She would have hated it and within a week would have been tearing everyone apart, limb from limb.

And they would have wanted her to talk about it, as if that could have made her feel better about what had happened or help her understand. How could anyone understand what it felt like to have someone give their whole life force to you. She didn't understand it. She didn't know what to feel; pain, gratitude, anger? She felt nothing.

She had vented her grief with Stephen and needed to move on, but no one would have let her, so she left. On the Titans no one knew about Marcus, so Susan could pretend that nothing had ever happened. She had cut herself off completely from her past, from everyone she knew, in an attempt to forget about it.

The next five years were a wasted void. Susan had hidden from herself behind the role of Captain Ivanova, but she only succeeded in hurting herself and her crew. She denied her past, but had no future ahead that she could envisage, so the present ceased to have meaning for her. She threw herself into the role of Captain one hundred percent, carrying out the duties that metered her day, issuing orders and assigning tasks, but she did it automatically. Susan gained a new nickname because of the way she acted; the Robot. Pre-programmed to carry out the tasks exactly. That is what she did, without emotion or feeling, unless it was anger. Her temper was soon well known among the crew, and a single look would send the lower ranks running for cover. No one disobeyed her, although it was because she was feared rather than respected.

Each new day on the Titans became the same as the one before it; predictable, safe, routine. They blurred together as weeks became months. Susan didn't live; she existed.

* * * * * *

2266

When the orders had come in for the Titans to return for Earth for the celebrations of the fifth anniversary of the Interstellar Alliance, Susan at first thought that they had got the date wrong. Then she checked the calendar.

A week later, they were in orbit around Mars. Earth space was being kept clear for visiting alien dignitaries, so the red planet was being used as a shuttle point for any personnel that wished to visit relatives. Just about everybody had been granted leave, and the fleet was down to skeleton skeleton crews. Susan didn't like it, but no one was expecting trouble, and space had been pretty quiet lately. Susan didn't like quiet. It meant that there was nothing to do but think, and she had avoided thinking for five years.

When she walked onto the bridge just after breakfast in a deserted mess hall, she found a lone lieutenant checking the readings to ensure that the autopilot was working. He looked up at her entrance and after acknowledging her silent greeting of a nod, swallowed down his apprehension and spoke.

"Captain?"

"Yes lieutenant?" Susan didn't look up from the status reports that she had begun to read, and so did not see the young officer sweating and shaking with what bordered on terror.

"I noticed that you had not yet arranged any accommodation for planet leave Captain." He began to broach the subject.

"I do not take planet leave. I have seen Mars."

"But….."

As the lieutenant faltered, Susan turned her gaze on him.

"What?"

The lieutenant shrank back. Susan knew there was bad news coming. Damn! It had been far too quiet.

"Well?" She snapped, "Spit it out. The sooner you tell me; the sooner I can begin skinning the person who is idiotic enough to annoy me."

"Th..the orders came through j..just this morning."

Susan crossed her arms as she waited.

"Th…the Titans is scheduled for a refit, and n…now seemed the best time as most of the crew is on leave."

Susan lifted one eyebrow. Here it comes.

"Any remaining crew have been ordered d..down to the planet, t..to facilitate speedy completion by the c..contractors." The lieutenant hurriedly finished while he could.

"Including me?" Susan asked, already knowing the answer. The lieutenant just nodded and shrank further back in an attempt to not be noticed.

Susan began to pace the bridge, sparks almost visibly flying from her.

"This is just great! Not only am I dragged all the way back to Earth space to just sit around doing nothing; but now I am being booted off my own ship so that my quarters can be repainted in the same shade of grey! Garibaldi put you up to this. Didn't he?" She swung around at the lieutenant but he desperately shook his head. "Have Earthdome got nothing better to do than keep butting into my life? I was quite happy just cruising along out on the Rim. But no, that's not good enough. I've got to attend the celebrations, and play the war hero, and pretend that any of it means a damn to me!"

As the last sentence echoed around the empty bridge, Susan took a frustrated breath and looked upwards.

"You just don't get tired of it do you?"

With a sigh of resignation, she returned her attention to the cowering officer.

"I suppose I had better go pack my belongings. Book me into a hotel for the next few days."

"I…I've already done it." The lieutenant handed Susan a flimsy. She took it without a glance and began to head off the bridge, muttering as she went.

"I suppose I could read 'Crime and Punishment'. It would use up the time; and it might even cheer me up."

"Why don't you visit your family?" the lieutenant suggested, feeling bolder now that it seemed that he was not going to be torn to pieces. He only just caught the captain's answer.

"I have no family any more."

It didn't take Susan very long to pack, basically because she had nothing to pack. All that she had brought from Babylon 5 with her was one bag of clothes and one box of belongings. Everything else had been sent back to her Uncle Yossel on Earth. The practical reason for this was that her quarters on the Titans were only a fraction of the size of the ones she had lived in for four years. In reality, she had packed away her former life in those boxes, sealing the lid on all that had happened, and everyone that she knew. She was the Captain of a ship now, and nothing else. The only clothes that hung in her wardrobe were uniforms; the only items on her desk were official reports. There was not a personal item to be seen.

Susan had packed away her reports and was sorting through the clothes that she had not worn for five years, deciding which ones to take, when her link chimed.

"Ivanova. Go."

"The shuttle is standing by for you Captain." It was the lieutenant.

"I'll be there in five minutes."

She severed the link and haphazardly bundled the pile of clothes into her bag. There would be time to sort through them later. After grabbing the few items that dwelt in her minuscule bathroom, she walked rapidly out of her quarters. It wasn't that she was in a hurry to get away, but that she was irritated. A simmering anger that she was being forced to do something that she didn't want to, and there was nothing she could do about it. There was no one responsible within reach that she could squarely shoot between the eyes with a ppg; or batter senseless, which might have relieved some of her stress.

As it was, all she could do was walk rapidly, her footfalls drumming out her irritation into the floor of the corridor. It didn't seem to help much, but standing still would have been worse. She reached the shuttle and strapped herself into her seat. The pilot had taken one look at her face and decided that today was not the day in which to try and start a casual conversation with the Captain.

The trip to the surface was bumpy, short and silent.

When Susan left the shuttle, she first noticed how disconcerting the lower gravity was; just when she didn't want a spring in her step. The second thing she noticed was the bustle. There were people everywhere! Business people rapidly walking in all directions across the concourse of the Mars spaceport; families waiting at the arrivals gate, searching among the incoming passengers for visiting relatives; aliens from almost all the worlds of the Alliance; and mixed in quite liberally were the blues and greys of Eathforce officers.

The Earthforce uniforms Susan had expected, but not quite in the concentration she saw. Was every ship being refurbished? She looked upwards at the dome of the spaceport and stared out beyond it into the Martian night. How many of their ships were orbiting on autopilot, with the minimum of crew? The image that thought brought to her mind made her uneasy. She tried to tell herself that it was her Russian pessimism, but she had faced death too many times to ignore her instincts.

Right now, her instincts were telling her to get out. There were just too many people and she felt hemmed in. Space may be tight on the Titans, but there the crew always made a clear path for her. Here, she was having to fight her way through the crowd just to reach customs. More than once she had to hold in a reprimand as she was jostled by someone too intent on catching their flight to look where they were going, or tripped up by an unsupervised child.

"Civilians." Was the only curse she allowed herself to mutter. Eventually, she reached the customs and was waved through with just a cursory scan of her ID. Susan's comment on planetary security was never vocalized though.

The concourse had been chaotic, but the area leading to the transport tubes was heaving with bodies. Susan took a deep breath, shouldered her bag and plunged into the melee.

Two hours later, she was shown into her hotel room. Dropping her bag, she flopped onto the bed and waited for some of the tension to leave her body. Standing up on a crowded tube car was not conducive to good health. After about five minutes, her muscles started to ease and Susan felt it was safe to explore where she would be staying for the next week.

The room was basic by hotel standards, but after five years in a ship's cabin, it seemed luxurious. A double bed with a soft mattress and thick duvet, carpet, a window, colours other than grey. Most of this though was immediately forgotten when Susan looked into the bathroom. She had a shower and a hot tub, WITH REAL WATER!

When John had first arrived at Babylon 5, he had asked if the shower had real water. Susan had laughed at him then, but now she felt exactly the same way. A vibe shower would get you clean, but there was something about the feel of the small jets of water on the skin, and the rhythmic, thrumming sound, that was inherently relaxing. Besides, she had never been happy with the way her hair had felt after a vibe shower. She seemed to constantly have bad hair days, which didn't help her temper. It was no wonder that she had cut it short after only a month in space.

Susan didn't have to think about what she was going to do next. She turned the taps on full and stripped off. Emptying a whole bottle of bubble bath into the tub, she sank down into the water with a sigh that bordered on ecstasy. Planet leave was beginning to look better.

The soak would have lasted for hours if Susan's stomach had not reminded her that lunch had been non-existent. Reluctantly, she got out and wrapped herself in a towel before going into the main room to sort out something to wear. She began pulling the rumpled clothes from her bag as her mind wandered to the options she would be offered by the hotel menu. If she was going to be stuck here, she was going to get as much out of it that she could. Earthdome were picking up the bill after all.

Perhaps she would start with a pate, then a juicy steak followed by the most fattening dessert she could find. She hoped to God they had real coffee here. It had been so long since she had eaten anything that wasn't tinned or dried that she had begun to forget what real food tasted like.

Lost to the wonders of food, Susan did not notice that as she shook out one of her tops, a small object fell from its folds. Only when it hit the floor with a heavy thump, did she look down. She bent to pick it up, but her hand froze an inch away from the object as recognition struck. Her blood ran cold with the chill of death as, unbidden, images arose in her mind of the last time she had looked upon that green stone flanked by two figures.

Medlab. Brought back from the brink of death. She had looked down to see his hand clasping hers; cold. She could barely turn her head to see him, lying so that their faces almost touched. He was still, the life sucked out of him. The only colour came from the light reflecting off his Ranger pin. She tried to move, but couldn't; tried to scream, but no sound came from her throat…..

Susan's whole body jerked backwards as if struck by an electric shock. She scrambled away and fell off the bed. She did not notice the pain as she continued to push herself into a corner, as far from the pin as she could get. What was it doing here? She didn't remember taking it, but she must have. She had to get out; now. Away from this room; away from the pin; away from him. For five years she had buried her past. She could not afford to remember now.

Susan fought down the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. It was irrational. It was only a pin, but the danger was from what it represented.

With a deep breath, she stood up. It was an effort to keep her eyes from wandering to the pin on the floor, but she managed it. She grabbed the items of clothing that were nearest to her, weather they matched or not, scrambled into them and left the room.

She cursed as she ran out of the hotel. She knew she should never have left her ship.