The Abbess
We stood at the small abbey and waited.
As Bek, abbess of the Third Fane of Chu'Domo entered the room, the whispering and the occasional accusation weather the civil war I had caused and to Lennier, who they insulted as clan traitor, Lennier of all people, died away instantly.
I had questioned him about her yesterday, yet he hardly knew her and had only seen her a few times at mass from some distance. She seemed always grumpy and would be very cynical, but not exactly vicious, he had reported. And she had taken over clan leadership after the Ashan incident. In my time as Satai I have had contact with many clan chiefs, but this explained why her name didn't rung the bell the least for me.
,,Entil'Zha Delenn ra'Mir. Lennier.", her deep, rasping voice cut through the silence. I had imagined an matronly, old matriarch. Instead a tiny, very thin woman, roughly as old as I, paced trough the crowd. Yet in face of the implicitness with which she expected that her clan cleared space for her and that rang in her voice, I hardly noticed the first thing.
She stopped, leather-brown eyes a human would have called east-asian estimated first me and then Lennier assessing, not a single expression showed in her sharp face.
An mantle ornamented with scenes and objects that probably had high meaning for the clan but that I couldn't decipher swung around her slight body. She wore metal, symbol-ornamented vembraces and the sharp tips of her bone crest were shod with metal, relicts from the days as fights had still been hold woman against woman.
Yet even despite these materialistic symbols of her power she didn't seemed like I had imagined it for the leader of the most conservative of the religious clans. She rather reminded me at G'Kars former attaché Na'Toth.
"So. We'd came together here because of connection closing of one of ours with a clan foreigner. Usually I would trust the calling of their heart and my own knowledge of them there. Out of reasons I suppose I don't need to exaggerate here", her voice sounded almost mockingly, "this case takes shape a bit more difficult."
She approached us: "Lennier, I'll sent you into the dreaming now, to lay open probable hidden reasons. That'll make the decision easier."
He bowed very lightly, and then he did something the shy, naïve monk from five years in the past would have never done: "To sent me into the dreaming is not necessary anymore. For a very long time I regarded my deep love for inappropriate, knew that I wasn't worthy of her, and tried to persuade myself that it was deeper and more holy", his voice broke a bit, "than it was in truth. Yet I suffered to many years in pain in which I condemned myself to not know my reasons."
"It is the calling of his heart. What can you achieve against that?"
"We can find out if this is truly is a matter from the calling of his heart.", Bek simply replied, "Lennier, go into the dreaming."
And this time he obeyed. With nervous eyes that fluttered back to me again and again he trotted towards the back wall of the room that looked almost exactly like the one of my own clan, as different as the rest of the architecture actually was.
I knew at least that I couldn't achieve anything against that. It was important and rightful, as much as everything in me struggled against it.
Dull fear shot trough me. I thought at my own dreaming, back then, and how the doubt awoken trough it only had lead to this here. I knew how deep and unconditional his love to me was, had known it even as I had tried to tell myself he wouldn't love me. Yet did it was in maybe only a lie, and he did in truth have whole other reasons? The thought scared me as much as his love once had.
"Does anybody here volunteer as his companion?"
How much would I have accompanied him, as he had done with me back then, but the dreaming actually was about us. Finally his aunt broke away out of the last row and stood beside him.
"Go.", Bek ordered the rest of the clan. As I stayed, and looked after Lennier, she meant: "You too." And so I went.
I visited Beks bureau and tried not to think about that Lennier probably saw the true reasons behind his fidelity to me. I had known from the beginning that he could impossibly love me, my true self.
The door whirred open and I entered. Bek stood lurking in a corner of the room and reminded me with her dark poncho, that hang down her arms like wings, at one of these bloodsucking, transforming to bats mythical earth creatures called vampire.
I bowed before her. She returned it, yet starred at me so grumpily the whole time that it rather seemed like a mocking of my gesture.
"I trust your wisedom in our case, in which you even already noticed that our relationship is a matter between my partner and me that is actually to private and not thing of the public.", I tried to persuade her of something I knew that it did not apply myself.
"Hm.", she only growled, "Just as private as your nice little tryst with this human captain you puffed up media-effective to an incredibly romantic, corny love against all odds and against the former hostility between humans and Minbari.
I ignored her impudence deliberatly. But I didn't liked how she had instantly noticed my political intention in this manner that had been concealed even from said "human captain".
"It is the calling of his heart. Lennier bears no political goals with it, and concerning me this is a truth of my soul I denied for far to long. Why should I have entered a relationship with him where I actually could have that 'nice little tryst with the human captain' that would have been immensely better fitting as a political symbol like you described yourself.
Do I have to remind you that the Satai are known for nobody out of their own caste, because their private life isn't important, just as unimportant as my, but that only their actual political acts count?"
"Says the woman who literally made her own body to a symbol of international understanding.", she grabbed my hair and let a strand slide trough her fingers, "Because of that, Delenn, your mere existence is political. And you know that better than I.
I personally don't give a damn if you now choose Lennier or whoever. And if this wouldn't be so private as you claim it wouldn't have to interest the rest of the Minbari in the slightest way. You know as good as I that this is not the case."
I did not make any more sense trying to persuade her that my relationship harbored no political meaning in it. She wasn't foolish enough to believe that.
"The mayority of our people regard me as their leader. They regard me as Minbari. Now after the Vorlons are away and after the civil war our society has to change no matter of single clans want it or not. And this tiny step towards that could be an model for the rest of your clan. In the last years, Lennier probably brought most honor over the clan, even ostracized by you. Don't deny this further, it only brings you shame. You can't stop the change."
"Don't even want to. But my clan. If I had my way I would permit it, but I only serve my clan. Tja, and they actually regard you as an pervert abnormity."
It still hurt to hear that. A brutal kick into my soul. Even four years after my transformation still.
"Did you ever consider how much the civil war disturbed people like us? People who thought the whole time that they were more wise and peaceful than the other species?"
Of course I had. After the war not a single day had passed at which I hadn't thought at that. Not a day at which the pictures of my destroyed home city hadn't haunted me, the dead, the awareness how barbaric and brutal we truly were underneath the thin mantle of honor. And I had actually experienced the war from afar. How must it only then be for someone who had been here the whole time?
"They couldn't handle to evaluate a woman who they can distinguish with a single gaze as half alien as a Minbari. Not that shortly after the civil war."
"The same woman they selected in the very same civil war for the rescue of their caste and from whom they allowed to end the war.", I added.
Bek starred so penetratingly grumpy at me that it intimidated even me. She did not reply anything, but just continued her staring. I decided to change the topic.
"How did the war went for your clan?", I do had informed myself about the situation for the Third Fane of Chu'Domo, because Lennier had implored me panickedly to find out how his clan was, yet this had been rather tactical information than a true description.
"Caught us off guard. Not because nobody noticed anything about it. Contradictory, our elders did promote the conflict with Warrior Caste the most. But Minbari do not kill other Minbari. Nobody believed it could truly be war. It was said there wouldn't be anything happening, even as it became more and more difficult to provide needed goods. Then suddenly it was said Warrior caste stood before Avudor. And then half a dozen fast movers shot over the monastery away."
I breathed in deeply and tried to let my expression stay sympathic but unreadable. I had always been glad to have experienced the war almost exclusively on a political stage and in space. Yet at the same time I felt guilty for that. I had only brought my people in this position. I should have been the one who suffered from that.
"They didn't attacked us.", Bek meant as she saw me expression, "We're only ten thousand people here, we're not important enough for that. But they assaulted the cities in the valleys. Cut us off entirely, by air and by land.
As they realized that the war awfully well existed a majority of the young men and women of the clan volunteered to defend their caste.", her voice and expression didn't gave away even the slightest how much their deaths must have shaken her, yet I was sure that they had.
I suddenly imagined that if Lennier wouldn't have ended up with me, he would have died in this way too. Had these people too been so innocent and pure before they had been slaughtered by Warrior Caste?
"We are fairly autarkic, that means food lasted as long as we rationed it and we had enough energy – wind blows always. But the sending transmiters down in the valley had been destroyed, which means that we had only internet anymore if the net satellite stood directly above us. And as they shot it down too nothing at all. No internet first sounds not that bad, after all you can do without funny animal videos, fan-forums and illegally uploaded moves. But that meant that one couldn't find out how the war was going. We sent people down, but had to find out that one of the other religious clans had mined the valley completely. Tja, it's the greatest honor to sacrifice oneself for ones people.", her voice dripped with cynicsm, "Had Warrior Caste took over Avudor and Vinra'Shun? Had religious caste even probably lost? Believe me, this missing certainty was terrible."
I tried to not let the pain in my soul and the burning in my eyes show: "That… I am so sorry…"
Bek could have said that I would have actually started the war myself and that I shouldn't had broken the Grey Concil, if the consequences shook me so much. But she didn't do it. She plainly said with deep, rasping voice: "Now you know what we have to process."
A/N: I love Bek, little sly piece of shit, and I love the rhetorical duels she fights with Delenn, how she just gives a damn about Delenns power. Already her materialistic appearance in contrast with her rather small built is an interesting sight, and I wish I would have ever succeeded at drawing her.