Who Are You?

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

"Who Are You?"
by Christine Anderson
aka Anla'shok Ivanova
Written as a Theatrical Muse introduction.

I am Galen.

I am a technomage. My order is old, and holds many secrets. We believe in solidarity, secrecy, mystery, magic, science, knowledge, good; this is our Code and we follow it as best we can. Sometimes... we do not follow it as well as we should.

To protect our secrets, to hide them even from ourselves, we fled known space before the Shadow War began. In fleeing, we sacrificed who and what we had been. Many of the best of us were lost; Burell, Blaylock, Ing-Radi, Carvin, Gowen, Elric... Isabelle.

The mages pride themselves on knowing all that can be known, but even so there are some things they would have preferred to remain in the dark forever. I uncovered one of these secrets. It was a dangerous spell, one I was forbidden to use. I obeyed the commands of our leaders, our Circle- obeyed them when I should not have.

I have learned many other secrets of darkness since that time, each more devastating than the last, and though I should have turned from this path, I found that I could not. I came to believe it was my destiny, not to know all that could be known, but to know that which should never have been known. To hold all of the terrible secrets of the universe, and to somehow live with the terrible burden of that knowledge.

I fought the Shadows when few others of my kind did, and I would like to say that I stood as best I could against that darkness, but I did not. My control was perilous and often slipping, and I felt I could not risk opening myself to chaos. I feared that if I began to truly fight, I would lose all that I was. That I would be consumed by chaos.

But I did fight the Shadows, and that fight transformed me. Isabelle would have said that I transcended myself, but I did not, not until the end...

I have said all that I can.

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