The Inner Workings of my Mind
When did the suspicion lurk at the edge of my consciousness for the first time? So much had happened back then. While John and I lead the battle against darkness this feeling was far to meaningless in the face of the war to ever pay attention to it.
Was it as I marveled at his work smiling and naïve as a child and played around with his language, and rejoiced over his smile as reward?
Was it as he said grinning: ,,I don't have anything against alien rituals, especially not with a woman as beautiful as you"? For one tiny moment I felt something spark up. Furiousness about seeing our millennia-old culture, everything that made us out simply paraphrased to ,,alien rituals" and the uncomfortable feeling not I as a person but just the fact that I was ,,such a beautiful woman" would be the reason that he would get himself into at all. Did I say nothing back then because I still had to make him believe to be just a naïve human woman to have him as ally for my plans? Yet didn't we were actually far to close now for that to be still necessary? Or did I say nothing because I knew that with all his easiness and happy energy he plain and simple was not aware of how deeply his allegedly compliment was?
And the emotion did vanish immediately. He did respect me and my culture after all. Our love overcame the former hostility between our people after all, it was such an important political symbol. He was the love of my life after all.
Or back then as my clan sent me into the Dreaming? They wanted to help me understand my motivations, said Callenn. They had to find out if it really was the calling of my heart or something else. I did not think the slightest bit Callenn with his self-praising tone of voice could speak the truth.
How much alike my former self was to Lennier. We both were so shy and insecure, our gaze directed on the floor, yes, we even talked similar, slightly hesitating before each word. Almost as if he would be my mirror image. For a moment I believed that he could understand everything about me, even my terrible mistake. It was so comforting, comforting and foolish.
And he understood it in truth. He didn't confess crying he could not look at me anymore without thinking at the monster I was in truth. He just stared past me deep in thought. He could not truly have forgiven me. Not really. And so I answered with the truth, and described the terrible, all-embracing fury that had filled me, half to justify myself, half because I did not want believe it. Yes, I was the woman who almost extinguished humanity.
,,The fault is not yours.", he tried to comfort me. Or maybe to protect himself from truly having to see that his best friend, mentor, was a mass murderer and war criminal. I did not allow it. I was the one who had given the deciding vote. The Dreaming showed me a truth that did not left open any flight, any other possibility. How could I ever have not thought about it, how had I deserved to not feel this guilt so often in the past?
And the dreaming showed me this guilt, as brutally clear as everything else.
,,A moment of rage.", my own voice sounded distant, ,,I spent the last ten years of my life trying to make up for it."
,,And that is why you have agreed to become one with Sheridan.", and Lenniers voice was only a continuation of this terrible truth.
Betrayal. Now he had betrayed me nevertheless.
I heard myself gasp, turned about to see his face, but it was just as blank and thoughtful as ever.
,,You're still grieving for your action", I didn't wanted to hear that, but he still continued, ,,still guilty over the death of so many humans, trying to atone for your mistake."
,,You can not believe that!", I snarled at him. My own voice sounded shrill in my ears.
Terrible, terrible truth. This could, must not be the reason for my love for Sheridan. No, it was not. I loved him genuinely after all. Not as penance for all the lives I took. It was not true.
,,Not after we've been trough so much! You have seen!"
,,Yes, I have.", he finally said, ,,And no, I do not believe it."
Of course not. It couldn't be true.
,,But we can not lie about the Dreaming. And if we tell them what the dreaming showed us, this is what they will say, and this is what they will believe."
I managed to breath normally again. Somehow I had not even realized that I could not breath until now.
So the Dreaming had just warned us how my Clan could try to claim my courtship with Sheridan as wrong. But why wasn't there more? I needed more.
After that I didn't even wasted a thought about it could be the reason. Yet something inside me stang and it was more than just the feeling of betrayal. How could Lennier have doubted about it for just an moment? Our love was perfect.
Just a few days after my visit to my clan I found John at his office.
,,You wanted to speak with me because you needed my advice for the Hyach-treaties?", I said with an smile that showed how less this was truly the reason, as we both knew. How much I would have longed to be alone with him for a few hours, without the duty to protect all those people.
John sat at his desk, and put down an giant orange to hand me the papers. I stroke his hair, breathing in its bewitching skent while doing it, read through the agreements and corrected mistakes he had made in his political lack of knowledge, but the orange drew my attention. It was as big as Johns head.
,,No, one only makes unofficial contact with these groups, otherwise one would wake the rage of the government. This is an widely common mistake.", I explained, and towards the orange, ,,What is this?"
,,It is amazing, isn't it?", his eyes gleamed and his voice was full of excision. He continued to peel of the skin and considered it fascinated. It too looked like a normal orange, except for the slightly more yellowish color – and the fact that one piece of it had the length of his hand and was more than half as wide.
,,That's a pomelo. We had just an two-ton shipment from one of the rouge traders, he had to get rid of them as unobtrusively as possible."
I couldn't help but smile with him. It filled me with warmth how much he could rejoice even over something as small as an fruit-delivery, even in times like this.
But then it seemed suddenly as if something had slightly, oh so slightly shifted in reality. And it seemed to me that it was more than just the tension after all this crisis. Suddenly it was to me as if I would miss something that I hadn't had since Jeffrey Sinclair.
I longed to talk with Susan about my exhaustion and my worries when our talks exceptionally got deeper and we dared to show our inner selves.
Then John laughed and the emotion vanished. He had peeled the pomelo to a half by now and examined it grinning and with a shake of his head. But finally he ripped a piece out – it looked really absurd how gigantic this strange earth fruit was – and his look became skeptical.
,,Don't you have the feeling too to be suddenly – all small?", he watched the giant orange slightly disturbed, ,,As if you had dwindled, and an orange would be huge suddenly?"
,,No", I grabbed for a piece of pomelo, ,,It tastes… interesting."
He took a bite too, and eyed the piece warily. Despite we both had bitten of something of it hardly a quarter was missing: ,,I feel like a dwarf… Like Gulliver in the land of the giants!"
I remembered this story, I had heard about it as of curiosity and later real fascination I had begun to read, listen or watch opuses of the humans.
,,Can I have it, too?", I took the pomelo. It weighed aquedatly to its size and my hands looked hilariously tinny under this over dimensioned fruit, and yet its inside, its skin and even the white threads around its pulp resembled so grotesquely an orange. Suddenly I understood what John had meant.
,,I… I feel shrinked now, too. Here. You can have it back."
,,Marvelously…", he rocked the fruit with a shake of his head and gleefully in his hands. Even at the private meeting afterwards warmth ascended in my heart at the memory of my mate and how much he had delight in this simple fruit, and I had to hold back an laugh as I thought at the dialogue about being shrinked.
Yet in the Civil War I did not thought at John as soon as I entered the Sharlin cruiser, had no time to think at him. At the shuttle hangar I wondered how Susan would bear losing yet another person who was close to her when I sacrificed myself. And my people. Don't think about their situation. Not at the places I had marveled over as child and that were just ruins and memories anymore. Not at the future. Just at the plans I had to undertake, and not at my whole culture, society, the peace and the synergy of the three castes I had so foolishly conceived as everlasting. I thought at the past Neroon and I had once, and chased this memory away to concentrate fully on my plan to imply him. I thought at Lennier who had sacrificed himself again and about what would become of him without him. Could he have lead my people instead of me?
And in what I thought to be my last moments as I stood in the circle of the Starfire and burned slowly, I looked in his face and saw his silent horror. I am so sorry that I have to leave you behind with this burden, Lennier. But you are the only person I can imagine for it.
Then I spoke to my people, raised my arms and only thought at the future I had created for the Minbari and to where my soul would arrive now.
Instead Neroon died for me.
Somewhen later I came back to Babylon 5, and John closed his arms around me and said me how much he had missed me and how much he had worried and that I should rejoice, because I had won. Yet I did not feel happy. How strange how low it made me feel. It was peace at least after all (but what meant that in face of everything that had been destroyed?).
,,He is your enemy. He doesn't deserves that you mourn for him!", John meant.
I didn't even told him that he had been my first lover and how much I missed him really, despite we had been enemies for the last ten years.
Yet he had accompanied me my whole live. It had been an established constant in my childhood and youth that Neroon of the Warrior Caste came around all few weeks, and I never questioned it or even tried to find out why he visited my clan at all back then. He was my friend, almost something like my mate or how could have been called what had been between the two of us, ally in the Earth-Minbari-War and finally my arch enemy. But he had always been there. I could not comprehend how he could suddenly only be ashes at the rock temple of Varenni anymore.
There was no time to doubt as we got to war against the dictatorial regime of Earth Alliance. I had to develop battle plans and seek allies, so I wasn't allowed to lose myself in something as unimportant as these doubts. And not in the tinny unease about how we should behave and the way how we both suddenly shyed away from closeness between me and my trusty attaché, closest confidant I felt despite all, even if I suppressed it.
A/N: I hope the retold parts of canon are not to boring if one knows the series.
And I really love how the Pomelo-scene turned out. It is such a miniature of how this relationship works but also how they behave around each other and what misses, despite being a funny , happy scene.
Also, that bit of Delenns past with Neroon… I didn't even ship them at first but after other people pointed it out I couldn't unsee it and always thought they shared a past with each other.
