Work Text:
No Sacrifice
by Lyn
townsend297@gmail.com
Author's website: http://brothersinarmsfiction.com
At the risk of losing the one thing I thought was the most important thing in my life, I still know that this must be done. I'm not being honorable about it and it's no sacrifice either. It's what's called doing the right thing, fighting the good fight, and if I now still lose the one thing that means the most to me, then the blame for that can be laid squarely at my own feet.
I should have stepped away long before now. I'd already had more than enough doubts about carrying this off successfully without anyone discovering my subject's identity, but my naiveté and eagerness, my passion to succeed would not allow me to abandon my dream.
The crazy thing is that it started with wanting to prove myself right, not so much to my teachers and peers, but to myself. The belief I'd had ever since I'd first set eyes on Burton's Sentinel writings had sustained me through the long days and nights of searching for one small shred of evidence, the tiniest proof that Sentinels still existed today, had inured me to the impatience of my lecturers that I would not abandon my thesis and move onto something more mainstream and acceptable, had deafened me to the ridicule of my peers. And I was right. My work, my patience had been worth every ounce of sweat and tears. I'd achieved my dream.
A dream that has now become the nightmare we all fear. The one you think you will never awaken from, that holds you, paralyzed and unable to drag yourself from its clutches.
He called it my brass ring, I called him my Holy Grail, and in a way, we were both right, but I don't think he'll ever know, and I never realized, until not all that long ago, when Alex Barnes so cruelly trampled on everything we both held dear, that the dream was no longer my PhD, my nightmare is not the fraud confession I must now make.
So this is no sacrifice I make now. That sacrifice has already been made and I can only hope that what I am about to do will allow me to regain the one thing that is most precious to me.
Jim's trust and his faith in me.
End