Susan left them to their own devices and went to look in on Marcus. It was strange that it was here, right in front of his frozen solid cadaver that she felt most at peace. She had avoided seeing him like this for a long time and now she wondered if she had done the right thing. In retrospect, it hadn't been very respectful of her. The glass in front of his face was starting to frost again. The tube was running on its own emergency generator. Normally, the glass should be perfectly clear. She didn't worry too much about it now though, the generators lasted weeks. With a moment of hesitation, she cleared the glass with her sleeve. She wondered what he would think if he saw her now, almost seventy years old, wrinkled and grey, albeit still spry and feisty and with a good three decades of life at least left ahead of her.
"He would think you are still the most beautiful woman he has ever seen."
She was startled by Faroush's sudden appearance at her side. She looked down at the wise little alien who smiled gently up at her.
"I can hear him in you," Faroush said, "Whenever I am in your mind. It is strange. It is not memory but neither is it a separate entity. I have been meaning to ask if I could look deeper into your mind to try to understand how I can hear someone who is not you within your mind."
"Really?" Susan looked at Marcus in surprise. She deliberated about how much to reveal.
Faroush was possibly the only person she knew that could help her understand what had happened to her that night some forty years before, "He gave his life for me," she said quietly, afraid that any of the others would hear. Marcus' actions had been fairly common knowledge among the higher ranking Anla'Shok of the time but the information had not been shared beyond that and she had no intention to let it get out. It was too intensely personal, "I was fatally injured during the final battle of the Earth Civil War of 2261. I was going to die, I had maybe a week left. He loved me so he used that device we spoke of in the hospital, the one that takes a person's life force and gives it to someone else. I woke up, unable to move. I watched him die, right there, unable to do anything about it. You know what his last words were?"
"I love you," Faroush said. She looked up at Susan with tears in her big eyes, "I never told you why I trusted you so implicitly from the start. It was because of those words which I constantly found floating in your mind. They are always there, in the background. I thought anyone for whom such words held so much importance could not be a bad person."
"I never forgot," Susan said with conviction, "I think Delenn named me head of the Rangers in the hopes that I would come to get used to the idea of people dying for me. She spread the idea around that since I was Sheridan's right hand, I was to finish his work as Entil'Zha, take his place in history. I never wanted to be Entil'Zha. I fought her every step of the way. I agreed to be Anla'Shok'Na but I won't be Entil'Zha. Even now, when Delenn's been in a monastery for years, I still have to fight to get the Rangers to see me only as a temporal leader, nothing more. 'We live for the One, we die for the One'. No thanks. I expect people will die because of me but I refuse to have them die for me."
"It is their choice though," Faroush said, "The Sta'ui understand this at least. Among our people, a Sta'ui may choose to give up their life force for one they care about who is beyond what technology can cure."
"There are things you can't cure?" Susan was surprised after the miracles she had seen Sta'ui medicine accomplish.
"Matters of the heart and the soul," Faroush said, "In these cases, often the patient is not the person dying but the one who cannot let them go. Only that person can decide if they can go on if the beloved is gone. Among the Sta'ui we believe that living for one other person is as valid a life choice as any other path."
"How does the person who remains behind feel about it?"
"She accepts her beloved's choice, usually," there was something in Faroush's voice that suggested she had been in that place but Susan did not dare ask, "and lives for two. She lives the path she chose for herself and by doing so lives for him as well."
"You are a wise people," Susan said softly, "Much wiser than I suspect I will ever be."
"Probably," Faroush answered with a smile, "But don't let that stop you from trying."
They shared a moment of reflective silence. "I do feel bad," Susan admitted, "I feel like I've wasted my life. I know I've done a lot for Earth, for the Alliance. But I don't feel I've contributed anything really meaningful. I've lost so much, Faroush, so many friends, so many loves and nothing I've done could not have been accomplished equally well by someone else."
"I think you are wrong," Faroush said gently but with conviction.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Susan said, "but I'm sorry I ever went to Lari'na'maia. You know you're my closest friend but I feel responsible for what's happened since you opened your world to the Alliance. This mess wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been there in a part-Vorlon ship."
"But we chose to talk to you and to join the Alliance," Faroush took Susan's hand in her own, "We also chose to lower our shields. You are not responsible for that. It is not a choice we regret, not in the way you mean "regret". Our language has a different term for the emotional and intellectual versions of regret. We think it was a bad idea, overall, but not entirely. We have learned much and made good friends. But the responsibility is entirely ours."
"I still feel guilty, irrational or not," Susan squeezed Faroush's hand lightly, "If there was anything I could do to go back in time and make it so we never met, I would."
"Then we would never have become friends," Faroush replied.
"I know," Susan said sadly, "it would be a loss to me, almost too much to contemplate, but it would be better for you. I would be willing to sacrifice everything you've done for me over the past few years so that your people didn't have to die senselessly."
"Ah," Faroush smiled softly, "now you are beginning to understand him."
