Choices

Disclaimer: Babylon 5 and its characters don't belong to me. The characters mentioned all belong to J. Michael Straczynski.

"Choices"
by Christine Anderson
aka Anla'shok Ivanova
Written for the Theatrical Muse 'decisions' challenge.

All decisions are important. Some more than others, but in the end all choices matter.

Does importance mean, though, the decision that was most difficult? Or perhaps the one that has affected one's life the most? I would suspect the latter, but I find the word "important" to be troubling. Who can know the importance of their actions or inactions, or of the decisions they have made? Certainly I had very little perspective on any of mine until they had been done and moved beyond.

And so again we look to the past. Past choices define one, I suppose and the pivotal decisions more so than others. Whether one knew them for what they were at the time is probably beside the point.

All of us make choices, some for good, some for ill. Some choices we make not because we wish to, but because we see only one road open before us, and know that we must walk it. Others seem necessary in the same way, but they are different.

My most pivotal choice- and I will use that term, I think, rather than important- defined both who I was and who I would become.

I chose, in the end, to become more than the spell of destruction, more than the weapon the mages so feared would turn in their hands. I chose to find my own way, though the choosing was difficult, and the road both lonely and long.

I chose to leave the hiding place of my order when I was asked to do so, rather than fight to remain as I could have done. I chose to accept that my path was different than that of the others, that perhaps they were not ready yet.

My choice was Sheridan's choice- neither order nor chaos, but balance, freedom. My life as my own, my fate in the hands of no one else.

All of these choices are really one choice.

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