Dinner With the Past

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

"Dinner With the Past"
by Christine Anderson
aka Anla'shok Ivanova
Written for the Theatrical Muse 'dinner with history' challenge.

It's been so long since she's considered anything as mundane as dinner; for years she has been consumed with things greater and ultimately more perilous.

But why not, now? She's thought of far stranger things.

The first person who comes to mind is John. She'd like to have dinner with John again, the way they used to, before- well. Before everything.

But she knows that this is impossible; too much has happened. He has moved on, and she... she should be beyond this now.

Should be. Isn't.

She sighs. Just for a moment, she lets herself wonder... What if? If she could see him again, sit down for that meal... what then?

It almost doesn't matter.

She misses him, though. Despite everything. She misses him.

(And the Shadow, the Shadow that's still within her despite everything... the Shadow laughs. Asks why she should miss him when he killed her.)

"You," she whispers. "He killed you. And you killed me."

And if not John, then who? Her fascination with the past- it was the mystery, the struggle for the answers. Asking the questions, getting the easy answers, seems like a cheat.

She wouldn't mind another chat with the First One, maybe- if only he could be a little less cryptic. If he could tell her- give her answers she would understand. But suddenly she doesn't feel she could phrase her questions any better than her answers.

She thinks then of the ghosts of the Icarus; Chang, Razor and the rest. Thinks of how good it would be to see them all again, her old friends. A crazy bunch of archeologists, funny and strange...

She had never realized how much she loved them until those dear, sweet, innocent people died...

But all the while she thinks these things, another name whispers in her mind.

Justin.

Justin, who had learned who she was, pulled her out of the ship to use her against John and the others. Justin, the Shadows' "middle man". He was the last person she had dinner with, and she would like to sit down with him again.

Things would be different this time, though. This time she would tell him all of the things the bit of her that was still her screamed so impotently and in such silence in the back of the Shadow's mind then.

He wouldn't give a damn- there wasn't enough human, enough anything left in him to care, but it might make her feel better.

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