Inesval said goodbye quickly after he had delivered the message. As soon as Vir and Alisa were alone, she looked at the ground and Vir sensed that she felt embarrassed about what happened the last time he saw her. Before he could say anything, she took his arm and pulled him behind her, leaving him barely enough time to close the door. They walked through the streets, or rather Alisa was walking, Vir stumbled along behind her, hardly able to watch where he was going and nearly landing on the ground a few times. Every time that happened, Alisa stopped and apologized, but did not slow down. She claimed that they were already late.
A short time later they arrived at a house Vir would never have recognized as an Ambassador´s residence. It was a two storey building, at the ground floor probably the Ambassador´s office and at the second floor his private rooms. Alisa let go of his arm and knocked at the door.
After a few seconds it was opened by a young human woman approximately 35 years old. She looked vaguely familiar and Vir wondered if he had seen her on Babylon 5. Alisa put her arms around the woman, they seemed to know each other well. When she finally let go again, she turned around and said: "Vir, this is my friend Catherine Sakai, you may have met her already. She is the Ambassador´s fiance."
Vir said nothing, he did not know how to respond to that. Instead he waited until Alisa and Catherine were inside, before he followed.
At first, the interior of the house was like he had expected from the outside, but after they had entered the first floor, everything changed.
The corridor and the rooms were full of pictures with landscapes from every imaginable planet and there were hundreds of statues and other things standing around on the tables and the boards.
While he took it all in, he glanced at Catherine, who smiled and explained: "I used to work as a planetary surveyor for a mining company, one of the best, if I may say so. The job paid well and I always stopped at the first inhabited planet and bought something to remind me of my newest success. If you excuse me now, I have to get my fiance to stop working and join us for dinner. He tends to forget it over his reports or whatever the Minbari give him."
She went back down the stairs and returned soon with a man that Vir knew well, following her, a man he never expected to see again, although it was a pleasant surprise. He had been one of the only ones he could call a friend. Vir stood there, speechless, for about a minute, before he had recovered. Then he said: "Hello, Commander Sinclair. I never thought I would see you again after you were gone without a word." The former Commander of Babylon 5 laughed and replied: "Neither did I, Vir. It is good to see you. I was quite surprised when Alisa told me you were here. I heard that Londo sent you away and that he has a new advisor now. Promise me that you will try everything to get him to take you back. I fear that without you he will fall to the enemy completely. You may think that he is lost already, but there is still hope for him. But enough talk about business, the dinner will get cold if we do not eat soon." He showed them to the living room, where the table had already been set and the food served.
To Vir´s surprise they had thought about getting Jurbeen as part of the main course and Snicks as dessert. They even had brought a bottle of Jala. It was not hot, but that did not matter, he liked it either way. Sinclair smiled as he watched Vir eating and said: "I imagined that you probably are getting bored of eating Minbari food. I do not want to be respectless to them, but I eat almost the same in different variations every day, so I have used your visit as excuse to import food from Centauri Prime."
Vir turned his head away from the table. Before he and Londo became friends, no one would ever have thought about doing something like this for him. He was overwhelmed with unwanted memories of his uncle and aunt hitting him every time he did something wrong, his cousins laughing at him after they had pushed him to the ground and his numerous teachers looking at him disappointed. His entire life before coming to Babylon 5 he had been regarded as a failure. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He stood up, excused himself and left the house. He heard Alisa calling, asking him what was wrong, but he could not answer her. He wandered through the streets until he got tired and collapsed on the spot.
