name = chance
email = (unknown)
title = second chance
warnings = 
story =      

	The quarters were dark as Susan walked into them. She didn't care. She
didn't seem to care about much anymore. It had been two days since she had
made the decision to leave Babylon 5, three days since she had been brought
back from the dead. She wished she hadn't been. She wanted to die. But she
couldn't now, she had to go on, she had to live a good life, for him. For
Marcus. Because if she didn't, then he would have died for nothing. And
that thought was more than Susan could bare.
     "Damn it," she said, as her eyes filled up with tears. She crumpled
down to the floor, her knees unable to hold her anymore. She didn't care.
She didn't have anything left to care about. She was leaving all of her
friends, the only friends she had, and friends were all that she had left.
'Face it,' she thought, 'your running away.' She just couldn't bear it
anymore. She needed to get away. To start her life all over again, because
she didn't have much of one left anymore. 
     "Why," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse and raspy. How could anyone
love her that much, to give their life for her. She had never done anything
to deserve that love. She didn't want it. She hadn't wanted her heart to be
broken yet again. So she pretended that she didn't hear his hints, that she
didn't hear him silently screaming for her to give him a chance. She hadn't
wanted to know. So she hadn't even given him a chance. Not one. God, why
did he have to be in love with her. There was nothing so specail about her,
nothing that his life should have been given for.
      She realized that she was sobbing. Stop, she ordered herself. Just
stop now. Stop thinking, stop feeling, stop wondering about what might have
been. It's over now. You can't do a thing. So stop. She had managed to get
hre breathing back under control. Jesus, what she wouldn't give to just see
him one more time. Just to talk, to talk to him. To understand why he gave
his life for her. To know what her saw in her, that made him willing to do
that. And more than anything, to apoligze. To tell him that she was sorry
that she never gave him a chance, that she never spent any time with him.
She knew, in her heart, that she could have loved him. If, even for a
second, she had allowed herself to think of him in the way he wanted her
to, she would have given her a chance. And she vowed, not to her friends,
not to herself, but to him, that she would feel. She had to feel. Because
if she didn't, then there was nothing left. 
     And then she just went over the top. She was so fustrated, so angry.
Why the hell did he have to die. Who had any right, any right at all, to
say that her life was more precious than his. Who had decided that she
would live and that he would die. Why the hell would anyone want him to
die. And she knew that he would have done it all over again. It wasn't some
spur of the moment thing he did without thinking. He'd die for her again
and again and again. And that, more than anything else, was what she
couldn't deal with.
     She sat on the floor, just crying, for the better part of the night.
Seeing ghosts. Hearing words from people that would never speak to her
again. Her alarm sounded, signaling that it was time to get up. And she
did. She wiped the tears away from her face, and pushed herself off the
floor. And got dressed, and left the room. She did all of it for Marcus.
Anything she did would be for him. Because he had done so much for her. And
she would always remember that. No matter what happened. Because she swore
to herself, that through him, she would learn, and she would allow herself
to love. no matter how painful it was, she had to. For him. Because he had
given her a second chance. A chance to live. And she wasn't going to waste
it. She would never waste it, because it was from Marcus. And because
Marcus was the man she loved.

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