For Fanfic100 at Livejournal, I have to do 100 Marcus/Susan-centric fics based on prompts.
Title: Shattered
Prompt: 'Broken'
"Susan!"
He sits alone. It's dark in his room, completely dark; he had to cut off the power source just to get the damn lights to go off.
Lying on his Minbari bed, he remembers how she hates them and he cries. He remembers what she said to him that afternoon and he cries. He remembers what she did and he cries. He can't stop the vicious wells in his heart from rising up.
Bitterness shakes his light frame; he curls his fists tight, his chest heaves. He has tried so hard in his life to do things right and be a good man, but everything he touches freezes and dies. Nothing has ever gone right for him.
He didn't want his father's life or business. He didn't want to be that kind of man, didn't want the harsh way it forced itself into his mind. He didn't want to be there. It changed him, made him arrogant and cold. Will had known. Will tried to save him from that life.
He didn't want to be a Ranger. He didn't want to live for anything, let alone the One. He was tired of everyone smiling and thinking he was decent, he was alright; his heart, twisted and cynical, was nothing like anyone imagined. He hated himself for his inefficiencies.
Now, thinking about these recent hours, he still does.
He should have- could have- gotten her out of the way. It wasn't fair. In mental anguish, Marcus plays the scene over and over in his brain, judges the time, the distance, his warning. He had time to get to her, he convinces himself of this. The facts are there, in his mind, irrefutable. He damns himself for being too slow.
Too slow, too unobservant, useless. Utterly useless if he couldn't even save what was most important to him out of everything he knew.
Down the hall, she lies in a sterile room while doctors try to put her pieces back together. Down the hall lies his lily, his angel lies down the hall; her face horridly puffy from bruising, edema, internal damage, shock. Her skin so pale.
Thinking about her almost drives him mad: he pounds his fists into the wall and cries.
All those dreams of holding her and he can't even get within ten feet of her now, can't hold her hand. Even if they let him in her room, he couldn't touch her. She'd shatter apart.
He can't understand why this happens to her. She's the backbone of everything good going on in the Universe. Without her, even with everyone else, with Sheridan, he cannot believe the Station would still be spinning, still be free. He can't imagine all the treaty worlds coming to fruition without all her sweat going into it too. He can't imagine Earth being free from Clarke's regime.
To Marcus, she is Freedom.
In the dark, his eyes are vacant, but his brain is moving too fast. He's in the conference room with the doctor again, listening to their preliminary results. Vertebra shattered in eight places. Spinal fluid leaking everywhere. Crushed ribs, damaged lungs, no function in one and a half kidneys. Skull fracture. Concussion. Broken tibia. Broken left arm and left leg. The list goes on.
He imagines her there, struggling to breathe. He imagines her trying to breathe for the next week, the struggle increasing, liquid filling her lungs. The tears sting his red-rimmed eyes as he imagines her drowning to death in her own body.
He's killed, seen death, but the death she faces is not one he would wish on anyone. Except for, perhaps, the bastards that put her there. Except for himself.
He wishes with all he has left he could die in her place.
000
Thanks so much for the support on this, guys. :) I appreciate every single comment you give, especially the critiques. 100 stories... ayayaye. /Sweatdrop/