So Dark and Thrilled I Can't Disguise

A part of me had noticed that Lenniers fidelity to me consisted of more than just devotion and deep, unconditional friendship. Yet I never truly believed he could love me. Not really. I knew religious devotion towards me, and Lennier, pious and hardworking as he was showed it like this of course.

I didn't believed it even as I found his open diary on his desk searching after an already weeks old report. He had told me several times about it. History fascinated him and he had thought about that that what we witnessed about history was always but a look at the past from the present. He could have feel that he stood in the midst of events that would become history and he wanted to capture in his chronicles for future historians how it is to be inside history, how it is if it is still present. He had filled half a dozen silvern-grey ornated books and I wondered how much of his free time he had sacrificed for this project.

I didn't even read it deliberately, my gaze just grazed it and my brain feed in the signs as text in my consciousness automatically.

,,…upon that it is not the reason for her love. I know she is so much wiser than I and I should cling to her judgement, even if I do not understand it, yet as much as I try, I don't manage to believe that she is right. She becomes different if she is with Starkiller. Yet she isn't more herself as without him, how I thought at the beginning. I know her long enough to know that her true self doesn't looks like that – or do I just presume that? She is not so clingy and dependent and in need of protection. Innocent. I know she is strong enough to behave only in the way she herself wants, and still she does it. Yet why? Does she want to be as she wasn't since her unforgiveable mistake at the war against earth, and becomes it with Starkiller? Then he does not know how her true self looks like. And he will never find out. He doesn't remembers how Jeffrey Sinclair was almost ready to shot her because he feared her so much. He will never learn that she started the war. Starkiller only knows his own picture of her, and it almost seems to me as if she would try to become it, because she isn't the leader of the Minbari anymore then. It hurts so much seeing how she, wise, intelligent, powerful, the most wonderful person I ever met, degrades herself down to the cliché of an clingy human affair. Every time when she whimpers in this helpless, not at all fitting tone of voice ,,Oh John!" I want to plea her to stop, not just because it reminds me once more that I am not worthy of her, but too because I can't bear to see her humiliated like this, when she is strong and smart enough to help herself. Would he force her to it, I could at least fight against him and it would be easier to bear, yet like this… It hurts so much. These feelings hurt so incredibly much.

She was even before the transformation, before the war with the humans a citizen of the universe instead of just an Minbari and I know she suffered from it. Now she can finally live it. And I wish so much this would be the only reason why she sais to love Starkiller. But the Dreaming shows us the truth, even when we don't want to believe it. And it showed the war. Even when she is right with her explanation, it doesn't shows that this terrible conclusion is not a truth, because truths can exist beside each other, they don't exclude each other. I wish I could forget it, or at least not believe it… to see her with this human who, contradictory to Jeffrey Sinclair, hardly has anything in common with her is even more horrid.

Wouldn't it be logical, that she can only gain forgiveness trough a human? Trough this one human, this hero of war, who holds her for innocent…"

The page ended. I only stared at his tiny hand writing, and strangly was not angry about him presuming such lies about the other half of my soul could be a truth only he knew. Such smugness I didn't knew from Lennier, why did he write something like this suddenly? And yet I felt no fury. Not even betrayal.

Sure, as I had came to know John I had done more naïve and insecure than I was to gain his trust, yet this were means I controlled to use them for my goals. I was completely aware of how I used my behavior, or not?

Then cold, crushing realization crept up in my consciousness but I wrestled it down, before it could reach my mind, and thought the whole day only empty thoughts in front of an vapid feeling that Lennier still had not managed to extinguish his prediuces against humans.

Just at night, when in half-sleep I couldn't be controlled enough the words crept in my consciousness. I had to think at this presumptuous line ,,I don't have anything against alien rituals, especially not with a woman as beautiful as you". My to expected reaction would have been to enlighten him assertive, though not aggressively that this was derogatory about my culture and me and he should mind in future to not accidently say something like this again, because I wouldn't tolerate this offence against my culture and my honor. I hadn't done it, not even thought about it. Because I loved John? Or because… She becomes exactly what she is not. But I was happy with him. The war meant nothing anymore. Despite he was Starkiller. Then it overcame me coldly, and I didn't want to know the rest of the thought, yet I didn't manage anymore to force it back.

I felt save just because he was Starkiller.

I didn't thought about it anymore too, after this night. But one can't make thoughts unthought. And at the next night, after the next exhaustion after an far to long space battle the realization came back and proceeded, proceed and proceed.

A/N: This is the core piece of the story where it starts to change from canon. I didn't wanted it to look to much as if a man (Lennier) had to tell Delenn why her relationship with Sheridan isn't so perfect at all, but she did needed a little push in the right direction because in canon she clearly never realizes or at least doesn't wants it to be true. I hope I managed this tightrope walk.

Anyway, this is the way I interpret the Delenn/Sheridan relationship, and the reason why it scares me

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