I began to measure time in deaths. When Delenn next sent for me, so many had passed that it seemed the universe would soon be empty of anything but our fury and their hate. I saw the Grey Council ship surrounded by its guards, and I wondered what the humans had thought before they killed Dukhat, and what they would think if they walked with me now.
She was arguing with two others when I arrived. Beneath a bow I could not see their faces, but I heard the accusations of cowardice and slaughter, barbed with words not usually spoken aloud: Shadows, Rangers, Z'ha'dum.
When she saw me, she ordered the Warrior Satai at her side to leave. His objection, directed more to the other than her, was dismissed almost before it passed his lips. "I said get out, Coplann," she fired. "Branmer will speak for the Warrior caste."
"He will speak for you," the third one said. The controlled syllables of defiance reminded me of my alyt.
Delenn ignored him. Coplann bowed to her and left, and it was not until he had gone that she introduced me to the other - Lenonn, anla'shok na. "But do not speak of Shadows," she said. "Nowhere but here, and no time but now."
"Then what should we speak of?"
"Nothing," Lenonn said, watching Delenn with guarded eyes. "We must listen."
And we did. We listened in silence and doubt, hearing Dukhat's words say the same, terrible thing again and again and again: the humans are needed, the humans must be our allies.
"He didn't know," Delenn said, later. "He couldn't know. That they should be worse than animals, worse than murderers - he would never have thought any creatures to be this terrible."
"No doubt they would say the same of us," Lenonn muttered.
I said nothing to either of them. I looked down at my hands, in the black warrior gloves that had once seemed so alien, and thought of Dukhat. The child born with his soul would grow up in a universe where humans were nothing more than a memory.
Lenonn wanted to arrange one meeting with them, offering peace. Delenn argued that they would not understand, and appealed to me to tell him what they did to prisoners, but he would not be dissuaded. "Dukhat told us to do this," he said, his voice steady against the force of her anger. I doubt she would ever have relented if I had not offered to arrange this meeting myself. As it was, she was caught enough off balance by shock or anger to let him win.
"What if they kill you?" she demanded as he was leaving.
"Then do not avenge my death." He did not look back.
---
They did kill him. Delenn's anger turned quiet and cold, although she let his murderers go. It barely mattered - soon they would be dead anyway, and the rest of their people with them. I stood at her side as she discussed war strategies, and in the last hours before I returned to my ship, alone in her quarters, I cradled her head against my chest and gave her what answers I could. We had seen no Shadows with the humans, no sign of them, and if they had become this way through Shadow influence, then we must clean the universe from their presence as the Vorlons had taught us to do a thousand years before.
"The Vorlons no longer speak to me," she said.
And in this moment, even that did not seem to matter.
---
Many more warriors died before it was ended. The humans fought us with all they could, with a strength fuelled by hatred and minds blind to any greater cause. It took many more dead worlds and burning ships before I began to understand why the Vorlons had chosen these as our allies, and even then I thought the Shadows could find better use for them.
My warriors never faltered in their bravery or their devotion. I watched the young ones grow older, far older than they should, each new death a line on their face, and still they fought with as much strength as they had before. They knew as much about the humans as I did, now; each battle was routine, each new victory was another heavy step closer to the end none of us questioned would come. Years had passed since Dukhat's death, and we were not the people he had known.
Delenn still spoke to Minbar, and we still heard her. She reminded us of Valen, and the wars of our past; she no longer needed to tell us we should not doubt.
Workers built ships to replace those we had lost, so fast and so many that our enemies woudl never see us falter. Religious led us in conviction that our actions were not ours alone, that the universe must worked through us to create and understand itself. And we warriors fought the enemy until they died in their thousands before they could strike a single one of us down. Every Minbari fought, in their own place; even our children learnt chants of justice and purity.
And so it continued, until we reached Earth.
---
We were still one people and one voice when they surrender order came. We obeyed as one, even though we could hear the sounds of a whole beginning to shatter into its parts as the warriors laid down their arms. The Nine gave no reason, and I went to find Delenn, determined for the first time to ask her why.
She was kneeling on the floor of Dukhat's sanctum, crying. All my words were gone. I think it took her some time to notice me - time did not seem to matter, then, and I paid no attention. I sat beside her and touched her face, feeling her tears against my skin.
She took my hands between hers. "You are Religious again," she said, turning my palms upwards as though the gloves had hidden them all my life.
I shook my head. "I am asking this for the Warrior caste."
Her sobs had almost stilled now, her breath steadying. "I will not tell the Warrior caste," she said. "But I will tell you. The Vorlons were right, all those years past. The humans share our souls. In destroying them, we destroy ourselves."
I let her words sound in my mind over and over again, until emptiness showed itself to be certainty. "That is true whether they share our souls or not," I said.
She did not disagree with me. We stayed together in the moment that Minbar began to tear apart, in the only peaceful place our madness had left, and she told me of the Vorlons, and prophecy, and a role she could no longer fulfil.
"After what you have done," I said. "After what we have done. If the Shadows win -"
"Yes." I had never heard her speak so quietly. "But I doubted, and I cannot lead us now. Even the most terrible thing I did would not stop me from doing what I am required to do, if I was certain. But I doubted. How can I forget this? And how can I continue, remembering?"
I twined my fingers through hers, kissed the faint mark of the triluminary on her forehead. "I will remember for you," I said.
And when she returned to her place among the Nine, and began once again to see the universe and all its past and present as she once had, looking to me as often as to the Vorlons to give strength to her vision, I did.