Resurrection
by LizBee
Notes: This is a WiP. Yes, that's a terrible cliche, and as I am a slow writer, subject to whims and blocks and real life, there is no guarantee that there will be updates. You pays your money and you takes your chances. On the other hand, I am terribly obsessed with this idea, and I don't imagine the plot will take more than 10 chapters of about 1500-2000 words each. And I promise never to threaten to withhold chapters if I don't get enough feedback. The truth is, I want to write this fic, but I just had to share it with someone at the same time. My usual best friend/beta doesn't know B5, so I'm just throwing it out there for the world.
Prologue
I am going to the sea.
In the silence of space, Delenn smiled. For too long, she had ignored the call, lingering as she put her affairs in order, delaying the inevitable. Saying goodbye.
Her youngest great-grandson's tears still seemed to linger on her cheek, but she could no longer imagine returning.
I am going to the sea.
Valen had left no body behind when he died; nor had John. She required no mystical vanishment for herself, no First Ones to take her away. Only a natural end, and freedom at last from age and pain and grief and life.
She had lived too long. There were days when her childhood memories seemed more vivid than the recent past, and moments when to look in a mirror was to see the face of an alien stranger.
Oh yes, she was ready to go.
As if in response to her thoughts, her little ship gave a shudder. Alarms chimed, but Delenn silenced them. She looked out at the stars, and waited for the end to come.
The stars flickered.
For a moment, all of reality seemed to invert itself around her. The alarms activated again, more urgent than before, and the ship threatened to tear itself apart. Not at all the peaceful death she had envisioned for herself.
Another alarm was blaring, a proximity detector this time. Something had struck Delenn in the head – or had she been thrown about in the turbulence? She could barely see, but there was a ship, a vast cruiser drawing her little vessel in.
"No," she moaned.
Damn them all. She was ready – why couldn't they let her go? She was so old – so weary – would she spend more years defending her past to increasingly indifferent or hostile strangers?
The world was going grey.
Perhaps she would yet escape.
Time seemed to stretch around her. At one point, although she could not quite recall it, she lost her balance, and the floor rose up to meet her. Her ship stopped moving. There were people around her, barking orders at each other, taking the hands she could no longer feel. Telling her to hold on just a few minutes more.
You're too late, Delenn tried to tell them. Thank Valen, you're too late.
She closed her eyes, and death came with the roar of an ocean.