Subject: Grail:"Great Brightness"-'The Chosen Path'
'The Chosen Path'
by: LtCmdr Janice Hargen
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Janice wiped the tears from her eyes, finally calm enough to do so. She
had come to terms with what she was ages ago. She consciously
straightened her shoulders. It was time to stop acting like a baby and
move on. Picking herself off the ground, she surveyed the room. The
table and chair were each in several pieces, which were littering the
opposite side of the room. They had shattered upon impact. She bit her
lip, a wave of emotion coming over her again. She wouldn't let herself
break again. The time had come where she had to accept the facts and move
on.
Swallowing heavily, she forced the sob down that had come to her throat.
She didn't want to accept the facts. Accept that she was - her throat
closed as she even thought it - incapable of love. But no man, no matter
how intelligent, how much of a genius he was, no man could ever replicate
love. Oh, she could care for a person, as she did for both Epic and Eve.
And she could comfort them when they were upset, and hold them when they
needed to be held, and care for them when they were hurt. But she would
never fool herself into thinking that she was capable of love. She wasn't
good enough for that.
She didn't bother to straighten the room. It would serve as an efficient
reminder. A perfect thing to show her what she wouldn't allow herself to
succumb to again. Instead, she stepped before the mirror and stared at
herself. The long dark hair, traveling past her shoulders, down her back,
and ending just above her knees. The eyes, staring at themselves, unable
to see anything within them. The finely sculpted features, the gentle
line of her chin. Her jaw tightened more the longer she looked at her
reflection. Suddenly, her hand flew up and smashed the mirror, glass
piercing her fist, the light reflecting off the shards as they tumbled to
the ground. It was so fake. All that she saw was so very fake.
Licking her chapped lips, she stared down at the mess at her feet, the
light making the pieces glitter like jewels. Taking a deep, shaky breath,
she closed her fist even tighter, the shards digging their way even deeper
into her flesh. She could feel pain, quite distinctly. But she could
turn it off when she wanted. Which made it just as fake as anything else.
She looked down at her hand, finally. Blood ran down her fingers, pooling
itself on the floor. She stared at it curiously, almost morbidly. Oh,
Mandan had created her well. "If you prick me, do I not bleed?" The
quote ran through her mind madly. Oh yes, she bled. But that didn't make
her any more human. Not according to her standards. She was missing a
major asset that humans, all humans, possessed. The ability to love.
She shook her head, trying to knock herself out of the terrible,
self-loathing mood she was in. She reached for a washcloth, wrapping it
around her hand. She'd clean the "blood" later. And the mirror. She
swallowed, hard. If she closed her eyes, she could see Epic, looking like
he needed her so terribly. She couldn't make herself abstain from going
to him again. She would - she couldn't help it. But she would try to
draw herself away. Ever so slowly, but surely. She couldn't risk hurting
him. It was unfair to allow him to feel for her the way she tried to fool
herself into thinking she felt for him. That had happened once - and she
would never be able to forgive herself for what it had done to him.
She dropped the washcloth on the table, unheeding of the mess it made.
All would be cleaned up later. All of the physical mess anyhow. Her hand
had stopped bleeding, as she knew it would. She pulled out a repair kit
and quickly fixed the minor cuts. It was enough so that it would look
like she had been to sickbay. She could fix that later, too.
She left her quarters, her face drawn, but her stride steady. She had
finally found a path to take and would follow it, no matter how much it
hurt her to do so. The pain would fade eventually. Just as the pain in
her hand did. It would take longer, of course, but knowing that she would
have saved him from the eventual pain would help. For every relationship
she had been in ended in pain and torment. It was inevitable.