You can still be free

Title: You can still be free

Author: RowenaR… yep… the one and only g

Summary: Just a small vignette about how Marcus feels after discovering how much Chesfer took away of Coreena. No stand-alone, sorry, recommended reading "X-Wing: Odyssey" first.

Rating: M due to dark and mature themes.

Disclaimer: All characters mentioned are children of my imagination but they live in the universe George Lucas created so… I guess I owe him some space in my disclaimer, too. The song the story was named after belongs to Savage Garden and can be found on their album "Affirmation". I don't intend to make money using their lyrics without official permission.

A/N: So far more or less everything's said. Well… maybe I should explain what drove me to write something this depressing. While writing some part of "Odyssey" I listened to my favorite Savage Garden album (yep, it is "Affirmation") and suddenly "You can still be free" came up. I always wanted to write a fic inspired by that song.

You can still be free

Cool breeze and autumn leaves
Slow motion daylight
A lone pair of watchful eyes

Oversee the living

Feel the presence all around

A tortured soul

A wound unhealing

No regrets or promises

The past is gone

But you can still be free

If time will set you free

Time now to spread your wings
To take to flight
The life endeavor
Aim for the burning sun
You're trapped inside
But you can still be free
If time will set free
But it's a long, long way to go

Keep moving way up high
You see the light
It shines forever
Sail through the crimson skies
The purest light
The light that sets you free
If time will set you free

Sail through the wind and rain tonight
You're free to fly tonight
And you can still be free
If time will set you free
And going higher than the mountains top
And go high let the wind
don't stop
And go high
Free to fly tonight
Free to fly tonight

You are lying there, looking frail and small and weak and still… I admire your strength, strength that made you survive Chesfer and all those things he did to you. Things you will never tell anybody, not even me. You will never be the same. I will never again see that hidden sparkle in your beautifully mismatched eyes, the azure fire in the right and the calming lush green in the left. Never again see how a timid smile will slowly spread over your face and turn into a most infectious one. Even… even maybe never again see how you try to ban your incredible long red-golden hair, all those stray strands that always escaped your plaid…

I touch the transparisteel window that separates your room from the rest of sick bay and let my forehead sink against the cooling plate. Yes, technically we rescued you, you and the other prisoners, but… but I think that we only rescued your body. Your soul however… Coreena, where do you keep your soul? Have you buried it so deep that no-one – not even yourself – will ever find it again? Is it even still there? Or has it vanished slowly, gone a little more every time someone or something hurt you? Gone with Alderaan, gone with Randy, gone with your hair, gone with your dignity?

A movement catches my eyes. I look up and see you stirring on your bed. Then you turn and look directly at me. I jump, startled. But then I remember that you only see a blank window and come nearer again and touch the window. I see empty eyes starring at me, silent tears running down hollow cheeks, and I wish I could just storm into the room and take you in my arms and make you forget all those things but the truth is: It will all well up inside you again if you only so much as see a man. It pains me to see you suffer at the sight of me, to know that you will probably never be able to make love to or even touch a man again. That doctor, Kardian, told me they could maybe restore your womb, making you again able to conceive a child but what's the use if your head will always deny you one?

I wonder… where will you go now? Now that probably not even flying can keep you sane anymore, now that you can't even bear to be in the same room with a man, not counting the fact that being in windowless rooms drives you into unspeakingly insanity? I've seen you Coreena, how terrified you were when I had been so foolish as to storm into the room and take you in my arms. Your eyes were large, even larger than they used to be, maybe it was your worn-out face that stressed them so much, and your features were terror-struck. It looked like you had found out that you were buried alive.

From that moment on I had known that I had lost you. Up to then I still had had my hopes that you would maybe recognize me when I came to sick-bay as soon as I could. Maybe you had had forgotten everything else but you remembered me. And then… you had woken up and – although now remembering everything – been someone completely different.

Had I known what was to happen to you I wouldn't have given a damn about stupid regulations and those things, had not given in to my own stupid shyness and fear to be rejected, instead would have given in to the knowledge that I would not have injured you if I had been a little more straightforward. I would have told you everything the first time I realized you were more to me than just my superior, even more than a friend. I would have scooped you up in my arms and never let you go again. It's all so… confusing, annoying, senseless… Before I couldn't touch you because of regulations – the ones the Alliance put me under and those I put myself under – now I can't touch you because I would cause you so much hurt it would kill me if I could feel what you would feel.

Coreena… I wish you knew what I'm going through now but then… you have your own problems. It was always like that, just the other way around, wasn't it? You were always stalling your own problems and concentrating on others instead so you could keep all those emotions inside you at bay, keep them from breaking you. It worked for a while, didn't it? But what will you do now? Now that your emotions have overwhelmed you? You know… I wondered… do you still feel? Or are you just an empty shell with nothing left behind your empty eyes? If I touch your fingers will you feel mine? If I touch your face will you feel it? If I touch your soul… will you feel it?

You stir again on the other side of the window. You get up and walk over to the big window, your back facing me and touch the transparisteel window just as I touch this one. What are you thinking right now? Are you even thinking anything at all? Or has Chesfer killed everything inside of you? Do you wish nothing of this had happened? Do you accept your fate? Do you think of me?

You know… your soul may be bruised and battered, tortured beyond imagination, and there will always be scars, big, ugly scars, on your body as much as on your soul but when you fight, when you find to yourself again, when you can break through that emotional cage, you can still be free.

And I wish I could be the one to help you to fly free again.