Moments In The Life Of A Dead Man.
Rating: I'm going to say T because it mentions death in every chapter.
Characters: Sheridan in every chapter, the story focuses on him. Other characters will be mentioned as they arrive in my head. This chapter has David Sheridan.
Summary: John dealt with the knowledge that he was dying every day for twenty years. The people closest to him had to deal with that too. This chapter is about John telling his father.
Author's note: I just re-read LizBee's story Time That You Love. It prompted me to write this.
John looked away. He couldn't stand to see the pain in his fathers' eyes. The sounds of the party still permeated the room, but its gaiety seemed incapable of lifting the mood of impending grief. With those few words, snatched by a panicking father in-between political greetings, it was like highlighting a shadowy figure of death in the corner.
"Dad," he said, unsure of how to continue. "Dad... I know how hard this is, how much it hurts..."
Uncharacteristically, David laughed bitterly. "If you should be so lucky, John... If you and Delenn have a child... Try to imagine how it feels to know you will, in all likeliness, outlive him. That's a crime against parenthood."
"Dad..." John started again, walking towards his ever-strong father, whose shoulders were shaking. David Sheridan had gone very pale, and his jaw seemed welded shut. "Dad, please... Say something."
For a moment, it looked like horror and rage at the universe had ended his ability to speak. Then, as if the words caused him great pain, he started to speak. "Do you remember, when you were ten, one of the older horses was running around the back field, bucking and kicking, and suddenly the horse stopped and lay down. I wouldn't let you go near him while the vet came and took him away. I told you that he was sick and the vet was going to try and help him. After that, every time you asked when he was coming home I'd just say 'When he's better'."
John felt the tears slid down his face. He did remember, and as silly as it was to react like this, he had never truly stopped waiting for the horse to come home. He had simply stopped asking. As an adult, had he thought about it, he would have known the horse was long dead. But he hadn't thought about it- it had become one of the things he was waiting for without realising.
For another few moments, silence pervaded the small space. David had never been distant to John, he had never seemed separate from him, they had always been a part of each other. But now, grief was pulling him away from his father and he felt like a drowning man in a storm.
Just as the waters of emotion were closing over his head, David started talking again.
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:" As John realised what his father was talking about, the tears flooded down his face. He couldn't move, almost couldn't breathe as his father continued to recite the poem he'd heard as a child.
"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; if you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same; if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:" Each word pulled him back to his childhood, a small, knee scraped scrap of humanity lying in bed, insisting that sleep would elude him forever as his father smiled and spoke these words, words that John had been sure came from an ancient spell, the way they had held him spellbound and pulled him into the world of dreams- just as sure as he had been that he would never be wise enough to understand the things that were spoken about in its fluid lines.
"If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'" In those seconds, he remembered it all, every moment of pain since his instalment on Babylon 5- the pain of his grief for Anna, his confusion of love for Delenn, the betrayal of being told his own government was turning against its people, Anna's return and the agony she brought with her, the cruellest weapon- his death on Zha'Ha'Dum, Lorien's miracle and it's price, Delenn's reaction, the struggles, the battles, the long, terrible haul of a seemingly unbearable weight he'd never understood, he'd always questioned- Why him? Why was he the one with this burden? Why couldn't someone else take that terrible burden, even for a time? He'd never acknowledged such questions to himself, certainly never to another- but they'd been there, dragging the weight down, making it heavier. Those blasphemous thoughts had been gouged out of him on Mars and forced into his face, his doubts, his resentments, every 'Why me?' and 'How could they?' he'd ever felt had been laid bare, it seemed, for all the world to see. And now, with a poem he had known and loved his entire life, his father answered every question.
"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and- which is more-" John held his breath, accepting the revelation, the knowledge, that his father had known long ago and he had only just realised, "you'll be a Man, my son!"
The sobs burst out with his restrained air, an explosive decompression of pain, grief, rage, hate, injustice, terror, humiliation and every other emotion he'd repressed or ignored over the last three years and finally, choking, he dragged back into his lungs the acceptance, the stabile ground of knowing that he understood it all now, that his path may be hard, but it was not unwalkable. In his mind, he could see it; Delenn, cradling a child in her arms, the feeling of his heart swelling with emotion too powerful for a name, so powerful they hurt in a way he would never give up, a new burden of love, commitment, responsibility, grief and worry that he could bear- would bear- because that was part of it, part of what it meant to be a Man, just like his father.