Private to G'Kar
Citizen G'Kar,
I have told my story many times, but never, I think, with such difficulty as I face now. Perhaps the difference between this and the previous times is that now I say these things to someone who has begun to come to their own conclusions about them.
Perhaps you don't care. I would ask you to listen, anyway, and to consider what I am about to tell you.
I understand now a bit better than I did the night of Vir's Ascension Day party, why you reacted the way you did to what you heard Londo say to me. And for what it may or may not be worth to you, I would have reacted in much the same way if I'd overheard something similar.
I consider Londo a good friend, and I enjoy his company. However. I'm human, and my love life, not that it's anyone else's business, was already quite complicated enough. I am still technically married to John Sheridan, who I'm sure you're aware intends to marry Delenn. And as we humans say, I am seeing someone. I'm fond of Londo- but I don't love him, and I would not marry him.
I understand that you were angry at him; that what you said to him in regards to me was meant to hurt him. And I can't blame you for being angry. But while you may have struck at him, you hit me. The words might have been meant to hurt him, but they hurt me.
I know your name the same way that you know mine, and probably know as little of you as you do of me. I would not presume that the few superficial details I know of you are all that there is, would not presume to think that I know everything. I'm certain that I don't. What do I know of you? You are G'Kar, a Narn, the ambassador to Babylon 5. You have a reputation as both a fighter and a thinker.
Frankly, you disappointed me.
And me- what do you know of me? My name is Anna Sheridan. I was once John Sheridan's wife. I died at Z'ha'dum- or did I? I came to Babylon 5 in late 2260, and led John to Z'ha'dum.
I have heard that the Narn- like most races other than my own, who prefer to retain their fear of the unknown- have legends about the Shadows. That there is a drawing of a Shadow ship in the Book of G'Quon. I would have expected your people to have an understanding of them that mine lacked; I would have expected that you understood some of what they were, what they might do...
I chose to join an exploration trip to the Rim rather than spend my wedding anniversary with my husband. Not knowing I would never see him again before much of what made me who I was had died, been ripped away, died in blood and pain a hundred times...
We went to Z'ha'dum seeking answers to the past, but what we found was a future darker than our darkest nightmares.
In a tunnel beneath the surface of Z'ha'dum, after the Shadows had killed my mentor and several of my friends, begun to twist my colleagues... after I had finally begun to understand what we faced, I sought a clean death, a quick death, as the only way to escape that nightmare. Only to have the gun taken from my hand, only to find myself betrayed by someone I'd thought I could trust. His name was Morden, and I called him a friend.
He damned me in that tunnel. The Shadows made the same offer to me that they had made to him- my heart's desire, in exchange for my soul. I refused.
I refused, and so they took me, and twisted me, and broke me... and transformed me into a machine. Their machine. The ship. They took my hopes and my dreams, my past and my future, everything I was or might have been, and they wiped it away. Not quickly, not easily, but in agony and darkness and chaos. They took my identity, my humanity, my soul. They let me keep my name, because I held onto it so tightly.
But what is a name, if you have nothing else? Without your memories, your emotions, your loved ones, your free will, are you G'Kar? Does the name, the label, matter?
I loved life, my husband... my world before it was broken. None of that mattered, and none of it saved me, or kept me from doing what they wanted when they realized who I was and pulled me from the ship.
I had been part of it for years then- so long. And I didn't understand what they were asking of me. They showed me pictures- John, my parents- and the faces meant nothing. They taught me what a husband was, how to dress and feed myself, how to use my hands and my eyes and the primitive senses of my fragile, human body. And they taught me how I might manipulate someone who loved what I had been, draw him into their trap...
Morden taught me how.
And whatever I might have wanted, however desperate I might have been within the small part of me that still dimly recalled being Anna Sheirdan- I could not stop what happened. I could not do anything but what I was told. I could not do anything but betray someone I had loved.
A known associate of Shadows. Yes, through no choice of my own, I was that.
Morden sold his soul to the Shadows. I refused to sell mine, and was damned for it. What was taken from me, no amount of time or distance can ever give back to me. Who I was is not who I am. And I cannot even forget- what I lost, or what I gained to take its place.
Time may dull the pain, but it does not dull the memories.
There are nights when I can't sleep for the anguish in my soul. And sometimes the nights when I do sleep are worse. When I sleep I dream, and everything is as clear to me now as it was then, images and sounds terribly, perfectly clear. I remember the missions I flew for the Shadows, the countless numbers of innocents I murdered, the destruction I unleashed... the chaos that I was.
These are the wounds you reopened with your words.
With time and the love of those who accepted me, shattered as I was, I have begun to heal. But the wounds have never healed, and I will always carry the scars.
I understand you were not angry with me, but before you can apologize or take back the words you said, you must understand the damage that was done. You must know why the wound bleeds; understand the damage before you can attempt to heal it.
I hope now, you do understand.
Anna Sheridan