B5 Quadruple Drabble: Walkabout
Aug. 3rd, 2025 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Walkabout
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Stephen Franklin.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: Walkabout.
Summary: He doesn’t know who he is anymore, and maybe he never did, but it’s time he found out.
Written For: Challenge 477: Amnesty 79 at
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fan_flashworks, using Challenge 84: Drugs.Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Quadruple drabble.
It was an uncomfortable feeling, frightening even, made all the more so by the fact that Stephen couldn’t even be sure when it had happened. Was it before or after he started relying on the stims to get through each day? Were they the cause or a symptom? Or perhaps they were an attempt at self-medication, a palliative so that he didn’t have to face the truth about himself, whatever that might be. As a doctor, he should have known better. He DID know better, but he’d taken the drugs anyway, just a bit at first, then more and more as his had body adjusted to them, become dependent on them. He hadn’t even realised he was addicted until he’d tried to prove to Garibaldi that he wasn’t. The irony of that wasn’t lost on him.
But the drugs hadn’t helped, they’d barely even papered over the cracks, and now… he had no idea who he was anymore, wasn’t sure he’d ever known. Perhaps Stephen Franklin, Doctor of Medicine, had only ever been a figment of his own imagination, or maybe it was Stephen Franklin the man who was the illusion, and the doctor who was real. Maybe Doctor Franklin was all he’d ever been, and in walking away from his job he was committing a kind of suicide.
Except this wasn’t about wanting to die, it was about finding a way to live, really live, instead of merely existing from one dose of drugs to the next. So here he was, walking the length of the station, hoping to find and meet himself, discover the real person behind the name.
He didn’t know if he could do it, didn’t know if he even wanted to know the truth, but maybe that was the stim withdrawal talking. He’d been fine to start with, feeling freer than he had in a long while, but that was before the drugs had started working their way out of his system. Now the withdrawal symptoms were kicking in with a vengeance, and he was starting to wonder whether it would have been better if he’d weaned himself off them gradually instead of just quitting. But no, cutting off his supply and walking away was the only way he could be sure he’d go through with it. He couldn’t afford to coddle himself.
He'd made his choice; all he had to do was keep walking.
The End
But the drugs hadn’t helped, they’d barely even papered over the cracks, and now… he had no idea who he was anymore, wasn’t sure he’d ever known. Perhaps Stephen Franklin, Doctor of Medicine, had only ever been a figment of his own imagination, or maybe it was Stephen Franklin the man who was the illusion, and the doctor who was real. Maybe Doctor Franklin was all he’d ever been, and in walking away from his job he was committing a kind of suicide.
Except this wasn’t about wanting to die, it was about finding a way to live, really live, instead of merely existing from one dose of drugs to the next. So here he was, walking the length of the station, hoping to find and meet himself, discover the real person behind the name.
He didn’t know if he could do it, didn’t know if he even wanted to know the truth, but maybe that was the stim withdrawal talking. He’d been fine to start with, feeling freer than he had in a long while, but that was before the drugs had started working their way out of his system. Now the withdrawal symptoms were kicking in with a vengeance, and he was starting to wonder whether it would have been better if he’d weaned himself off them gradually instead of just quitting. But no, cutting off his supply and walking away was the only way he could be sure he’d go through with it. He couldn’t afford to coddle himself.
He'd made his choice; all he had to do was keep walking.
The End
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Date: 2025-08-03 11:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-08-04 10:15 am (UTC)Thank you!