Setting of next scene: during episode 2 ("Convictions"). Rewriting a small part of it because I can :)
There is a bomber on the station and Lennier has been caught in the second blast. John is pissed. He won't have his station terrorized like this. People have been killed already and as long as this bomber is on the loose, nobody feels safe. He decides to visit Medlab, knowing Delenn will probably be there to keep track of how Lennier is doing. The young Minbari is in a coma after saving the life of Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari. Londo is very grateful and has spent most of the day at Lennier's bedside. He has left now and John watches the aide to the Ambassador of Minbar for a while. When he hears a door open behind him, he somehow knows she's here.
Delenn stands next to him and they both watch Lennier's still form through the glass for another minute before she speaks.
"He has been like this ever since he was brought in."
"I'm sorry, Delenn. I have my people working around the clock to find the bomber. We won't rest until he's caught."
"Thank you."
"With everything that's going on we figured it might be a political action, but I'm doubting it now. The Centauri blame the Narns and the Narns blame the Centauri as usual, but it doesn't make sense. The attacks seem so random."
"Random acts of cruelty. I will never understand," Delenn sighs.
Just then, Garibaldi pages him. They have figured out who the bomber is and are taking a tac team to his quarters.
"Maybe now we'll find out why," John tells Delenn, before he rushes off to join Garibaldi. He has a few words to say to this terrorist.
Delenn watches him leave, off to save the day again. He will never let his subordinates do his fighting without him. He is not that kind of a leader. He is a leader after her own heart, always fighting for life above all. Not just the lives of his own people, like most races do. No, he fights for Humans and aliens alike. The current Earth government seems to think that they should be putting Humans first and get rid of alien influences, but she knows John will never go along with that. All life is sacred to him as it is to her, not just that of their own kind.
She turns to look at Lennier again. Gentle, soft-spoken Lennier. His character could not be more different from John's but he, too, fights for life. He is in here, in a coma, because he even considered the life of Londo Mollari worth saving. Lennier is a man after her own heart as well. He is a follower, not a leader but he will fight when he has to. He would follow her into the fire, always, and she loves him for it.
A while later when she is in her quarters, Delenn hears from Ivanova that the bomber has been caught. Naturally, John had been the one to go in, unarmed, to confront the disgruntled employee. It's so senseless what that man has done and because of it, her beloved aide is still lying in a coma.
She decides to find the Captain and catches him on his way to Medlab.
"How is Lennier?" he asks as soon as he spots her, and they continue walking together.
"Still no change. But I hear you caught the man who did it."
"We did. The cleanup crews are still working hard to clear out the mess he's made, but things should go back to normal soon."
"Did you find out the reason behind the bombings?" Delenn asks.
She has a need to try and grasp what drives people to commit such acts of terror, even if she may never fully understand it. John sighs and stops for a moment to turn to her.
"Would you believe that all that motivated him was the fact that he's had a crummy life?"
"That cannot be all!" Delenn gasps.
"I'm afraid it is, Delenn. His life sucks so the rest of the galaxy had to pay."
"Incomprehensible."
"Raha nee'dul," John responds, and she is most surprised.
"You know Minbari?" she asks him.
"I'm trying to learn a few words," John admits with a shy smile.
It makes her feel happy inside to know that John is making an effort to learn her language. Somehow, she had not expected it and she wonders what made him decide to try. She does not ask though. Instead, she tells him she would be happy to teach him a few phrases too.
"No, thank you Delenn. I'd like to do this on my own," he tells her, and perhaps she should have known he would say that.
They continue walking and she remarks,
"Just like you had to go in alone to confront that bomber?"
"He asked for me," John says defensively.
"Of course he did. But you did not have to do it."
"There was a team right outside and I had my link. I stuffed it down my eh ... "
He gestures behind him and Delenn makes an "o" with her mouth without saying anything.
"It went fine until I sat on the damned thing," he adds with a chuckle.
"But still. He could have shot you on sight. Like you say, he had no real reason to do what he was doing."
"Would you have sent in someone else?" John asks her as they enter Medlab.
She knows he has just disarmed her and she makes a slight roll with her eyes. John chuckles again and she likes the sound of it. When they approach Lennier, they both turn serious again. Dr. Franklin is with him and tells them that as far as he can tell, there has been no change in Lennier's condition.
They chat for a minute and Dr. Franklin expresses his relief that the bomber hadn't been a Centauri. John agrees that that would have caused even more unrest. At least now, they can write it off as the actions of a loner. And then, as if on cue, Lennier begins to wake up. John sees Delenn's face light up and she rushes to Lennier's side. She talks softly to him and touches his face, and again, John feels this pang of jealousy in his gut. He clenches his jaw and tries to just be happy for the two of them, but he decides to retreat quietly, leaving the three people in Lennier's room to chat. They seem to be having fun, the patient, the Doctor and the Ambassador. The bomber has been caught and Lennier will be alright. What more could he want? What more could he want indeed …
Setting of next scene: season 3, episode 5 ("Voices of Authority") - Delenn hears about John's meeting with the new political officer to Babylon 5 … :))
Lennier is on the mend and like John had predicted, things have gone back to normal on the station. But now, John has missed his appointment with Draal, sending Ivanova down to the planet instead. Delenn has been trying to figure out what could possibly be that important, that he would miss such a vital appointment. While she agrees that Susan Ivanova can be trusted to handle things well on John's behalf, she knows it is not like him to leave things to others. Especially when he was personally invited by Draal to see if they could find some of the First Ones who may have stayed behind just like the Shadows and the Vorlons. Having more First Ones on their side would make a big difference in the coming war against the Shadows.
And now she finds out that he was having dinner with a woman.
She does not know how to feel about that. Lennier has informed her that this woman was sent by Earth's Ministry of Peace to be their political officer to Babylon 5 from now on. She will be the personal adviser to the Captain on behalf of the government. Now as much as Delenn understands that it is important to maintain good relations with Earth while the political climate on Earth is morphing into something very hostile towards alien influences under president Clark, she had not expected that this would entail wining and dining this person. This female person. This … attractive person. And now Lennier tells her that John has taken the woman back to his quarters with him. Her aide had almost smirked when he said it.
She is alone now, standing in front of her mirror, looking at her own reflection. What is she, exactly? A Minbari with hair? Or a Human with a bone crest? There have been more changes to her body, both on the inside and the outside, but nobody aside from Dr. Franklin knows this, nor do they need to. So what is she? She knows her heart is still wholly Minbari but she cannot help wondering what John sees when he looks at her. Could someone with a bone crest growing from their head ever be appealing to him?
She had studied the Humans at length when Dukhat had first mentioned them, and she knows that many Humans are not very thoughtful when it comes to relationships and intimacy. They tend not to follow the calling of their hearts - at least not at first - but to follow the calling of their bodies instead. She has compared them to the Minbari warrior caste on occasion, who are far more weary of reflection and rituals and more prone to follow their passionate nature and live for the thrill of the moment.
She knows John is a warrior too, but somehow she had thought he was different. More aware of the bigger picture and less susceptible to temporary, superficial pleasure. Perhaps she had thought wrong.
The Captain is his usual, slightly angry self the next morning and it pleases Delenn that he seems very annoyed by the presence of the new political officer. He feels like a Nightwatch spy has been dumped in his lap and while Delenn tries not to visualise that particular expression, she still cannot resist probing him a little.
"So I take it your evening with Ms Musante did not go well?"
John seems stunned by the question.
"My evening with … what have you heard about that?"
They are alone in the conference room where Delenn has met up with the Captain after his morning staff briefing. He seems nervous suddenly and now she wonders even more about him and this woman.
"Just that she was important enough to miss your appointment with Draal for," Delenn remarks dryly.
"I had to! She knew there was nothing on my calendar and I couldn't very well tell her about Draal, now could I?"
Somehow she feels that John is being too defensive. He even seems a little flustered.
"No, of course not," she admits. "And besides, you can do whatever you want with your time. I am sure Ivanova was an excellent replacement."
"She was actually. You wouldn't believe what she's found," John says excitedly, but then he stops. Nobody besides him knows that the Commander is a latent telepath and Susan has sworn him to secrecy about it. But if she hadn't been telepathic, she would not have been able to pick up that transmission from the past when she was inside the Great Machine, giving them solid proof that Earth President Clark had his predecessor Santiago assassinated. The explosion had not been an accident, and the information is en route to General Hague as they speak.
"What did she find?" Delenn asks.
He decides to tell her, downplaying it a little as if anyone could have found it with the help of the machine, and he thinks Delenn is buying it. If Minbari can lie to protect someone's honor, he can omit something to protect someone's secret, right?
"That is amazing and terrifying at the same time, is it not?" Delenn asks. "You were afraid of foul play all along and now you know."
"Yeah."
John rubs his chin. He's felt uneasy about the developments back home ever since President Santiago's death, and the way this Julie Musante speaks, has only confirmed his fears. The propaganda machine is in full swing.
"This woman," he says, looking at Delenn again.
"What about her?"
"She doesn't make sense at all. The things she says, they make my skin crawl."
"And you had to spend an entire evening with her," Delenn remarks, and he swears she's teasing him a little.
"Not voluntarily, Delenn. I assure you."
"If you say so."
She is turning away from him towards the window and he wonders if she's still joking.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks her, and he knows he's a little too defensive right now, but that's because he doesn't know how much Delenn knows about what happened last night.
"I hear Ms Musante was in your quarters late at night."
Delenn feels her heart beating a little faster as she stares out of the window of the conference room, pretending to admire the view of the gardens. She surprises herself, steering the conversation back to this woman, but she cannot help it. Not this time. What is this gnawing she is feeling inside her? Could this be what jealousy feels like?
"Who told you that?" she hears the Captain ask and she turns to face him.
This time, he does look like he has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar!
"Does it matter? Clearly, my information is correct," she answers, and she cannot suppress a small smile.
John nods curtly, and stands next to her, his hands clasped together behind his back, to look at the garden as well.
"So, do you think you will be able to work with Ms Musante?" Delenn asks.
"After last night? I highly doubt it."
He glances at Delenn and can see her thinking. Does she know what happened in his quarters? But how could she know? Ivanova wouldn't have told her. Would she? He remembers back when Delenn had just undergone her transformation, that she'd asked the Commander to help her with her hair and skin and other human things she had been getting used to. All that girl stuff must have created a bond between both women, so who knows what they gossip about when he's not around. He hopes Susan knows that he didn't actually do anything, aside from kissing the woman to distract her when Susan suddenly appeared in his quarters as a hologram from the Great Machine.
Delenn doesn't say anything and he wonders what she's thinking. When she starts to turn away, apparently to leave, he stops her. He can't help it that he feels the needs to explain it to her.
"Delenn, before you go … you do know I didn't want her to take her clothes off, right? I mean, she just did it and I was shocked. That's not the way I do things. You … you know that, right?"
Delenn is genuinely stunned. She can hardly process what John is telling her.
"Take her clothes off?" she repeats slowly, staring at him.
John curses inwardly. She hadn't known. Him and his big mouth! Now he'll have to explain further.
"Yeah. I guess she thought she could charm her way in but that's not the way I do business."
He stresses his words with firm hand gestures, so she will know he is absolutely serious. Delenn seems to recuperate from her initial shock quite quickly and he thinks he even detects a little smirk when she asks him,
"So you did not find her attractive?"
He has to think fast because this is a touchy subject between them, for him at least. He's been trying to keep his distance because of Lennier, but it hasn't changed his feelings for her just yet. He's relieved that he can tell her truthfully,
"I'm not really into blondes, actually."
Delenn tilts her head, absorbing his words, and he sees a realization dawn in her eyes just before she averts them.
"I did not know hair color was a factor in these matters," she says quietly.
Well, of course she wouldn't. Regular Minbari don't have hair. But she does and he thinks it's beautiful. Long and dark, and she couldn't look more different than other Minbari because of it. He stands a little closer to her and watches her profile as she keeps her eyes on the gardens when he tells her,
"Well, it is for me. Personally, I like dark hair. Always have."
His words hang between them for a few seconds before Delenn remarks,
"Your sister is a blonde."
"Yes. My mother too. But they're my sister and my mother," John states as if that's an explanation in itself. And in a way, it is. There's no physical attraction or romance there. Just love of family.
"Of course," Delenn says.
John thinks it's funny how she's avoiding making eye contact with him now. She does that, he's noticed, almost like she's ashamed of something at times. But he thought it had gotten better with him. He doesn't want her to feel uneasy around him. Well, maybe just a little, when he's flirting with her, to throw her off. It's not like he started it. She held his hand in the garden. Maybe there's something there after all. When Delenn smiles at him and then tells him she should let him get back to work, he lets her go.
Delenn walks out of the conference room and once she is out of sight, she stops to touch her hair and look at one of her long locks. She has dark hair and he likes dark hair. Maybe he does see a female when he looks at her, and not just an alien. She knows she feels less uneasy about this blonde woman now, and that has to mean something.
Her day gets even better when the news breaks on Earth about the recording Ivanova had found with the Great Machine, proving that now President Clark was behind the death of President Santiago. Ms Musante is recalled to earth to help deal with the ensuing governmental crisis and the entire staff is very relieved to be rid of her for now.
To be continued.
A shoutout to my most faithful reviewer Hellyer1977 and welcome to new guest reader Judy. Do spread the word. I know this fandom is tiny compared to the other one I'm writing for, but I love getting reviews!