Title: Perspective
Author: Purpleyin
Rating: K+
Spoilers: All of Season 2
Summary: Rather grim future fic. The war isn't what she expected, and it's also not something she can live with anymore. Diana/Marco.
A/N: Betaread by Fanwoman.
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He's pushed through the door roughly, stumbling and falling over, grazing his hands on the rough concrete. She offers him a hand up, and only then does he see who she is. He doesn't look nearly so pleased as she'd hoped. She still hugs him though, and his arms react naturally, circling round her body, a grasp tightening. But he pulls back a little, stares at her with horror in his eyes as he asks her one question.
“Do you know what you've done?”
She does - she's sold them all out for this chance to be with him. He's not been given back to her; she's given herself over to them, the side who captured him a year ago to do their bidding. She'd been worried he might do something stupid, like get killed escaping or hatch a sabotage plan that would kill his captors and him along with them. She's selfish this way, now, to want him rather than want to save the future. It’s because she doesn't know what, exactly, she's meant to be fighting for anymore. Maia didn't see her eighteenth birthday because of this war, and casualties have been much higher on their - or she should say, her previous - side.
Every loss has seemed more meaningful because they aren't soldiers. But these people are. She'd been hopeful, before, that they'd get wherever they needed despite that - that all would work out. The day Maia had been killed had broken the illusion. They can't hope to win against such forces, and the cost is too high. It's painful to get through each day knowing someone will likely die. How can they compete? The reality is that this is a slow descent downhill. They're failing, more falling each day - vital people taken down. Their advantage is lost, and so is the war. But no one else wants to admit it yet.
She can't fight for a future she's unsure of. Unlike Tom, she can no longer go on blind faith in the people who sent back the 4400; they don't know what they're fighting over these days, what difference it makes. All she knows is things are going badly, and the life the people from the future gave them is slowly being dismantled by the war - she wants certainty; she wants to at least keep Marco. She can't lose her husband to this, too.
But in betraying them, she's betrayed him, as well. She hopes he can get over that, that he might realise why she's done this, that really it makes far more sense than their futile struggle for... nothing? When they can’t even define the reasons for the struggle, why should they carry on?
She kisses him, and he responds in kind, but lacking the passion she'd have expected. This isn't how things should be, but he'll see it's better than the alternative. This is living rather than dying, defending peace instead of attacking in the name of change. She's had enough of change if change means suffering for something that you can't know, can't be sure will exist. The future is out there, and yet life is here, in the present - this is what matters to her now.