Chapter Text
Fire. Honor. Death.
In Valen’s name, what has he done?
Neroon slumps into the chair of the guest room he was offered in the Healing Temple of Sinuviel. Stares at the small table, carved of delicate blue crystal, glinting in the late afternoon sunlight coming through the curtains. Data crystals glitter like shards of ice in that light.
Over four years’ worth of letters lay within them. He always carries these with him. If anyone should find them…he will be dishonored. Outcasted? Perhaps—or never mind perhaps, say instead of course because every digitized document and holo-recording locked within those delicate, gleaming facets lays a brick in the road to what he has become, one more nail in the coffin, as they have so often said—and even if he is spared outcasting from the Warriors, surely he will be dishonored. Stripped, most likely, of the ranks he has fought so hard to achieve. Because of what they are to him.
Never mind that one is called to serve and serves so willingly; that one is a valiant warrior and leader, fire in her eyes and loyalty in her heart; that one is Anla’shok, devoted to the Entil'zha and to Minbar. Never mind that one is said by Valen himself, in the sacred scrolls, to be revered and honored.
They are not Minbari, any of them.
Not Minbari.
An affront to the purity of his race. He knows this.
Despicable, he thinks not for the first time, squeezing his eyes shut. Pathetic, that he still flinches from something that gives him such joy and comfort, out of fear of the reproofs of his Clan, his Caste, his people. That he should seek to hide from simple truths. That he should feel shame over those who have sacrificed so much for his world, and for his own sake. Where is his courage?
They are not Minbari. He cannot pretend otherwise. It does not matter that they have honor, courage, vision. It does not matter that they have all been shields against his grief at one time or another.
Where is his honor? How long ago did he cast it aside?
Why did he not stop her from entering the circle?
As if I could have. The words bite like crystal-knives, thin slivers stabbing at the base of his skull. He has no image to put to the knowledge dragging cold claws across his thoughts. It all happened so fast, and he’d been nearly unconscious already from the pain.
He heard nothing but the sizzle of his own flesh; a distant cry of a woman’s despair in his own skull, echoed by something fainter, confused, a whisper of denial and grief that didn’t come from within him, and another echo, like a man’s shout and the breaking of glass; and the percussive thunder of door after door after door slamming open, the ground shuddering with it.
He felt only the sudden shock of impact against his chest, a single blow to break the shell of fiery agony screaming across his skin, the quick throb of ribs cracking like stone…
Why did you do this, little one? He lets his eyes open at last. The glint of the data crystals catches his gaze, reminds him of the countless messages, and half-promises, and violations of all that is correct recorded in their depths. Shadows and secrets and shame because half-human or no, she is not Minbari, and certainly neither are the others. I knew what I was doing. I was prepared to make the sacrifice for my people. Why did you prevent me?
Easier, to demand answers of a woman too desperately ill and injured to give them. Easier to try to stoke the embers of a pathetic rage rather than think the words clawing at his throat and prowling in his skull.
Vi drosh. I’m sorry. And by Valen, he is. So sorry for the last four years, for every cruelty he has inflicted on the four of them. For every tear he has torn from her, from them. All for his purity, for his pride, for his rank, for his standing in his Clan. For his refusal to believe that any Minbari, that all Minbari, can lie so thoroughly to themselves, to each other…
The last valsta does not, can never make up for what he has done. How he has dishonored himself again and again. Delenn was wrong to say she never questioned his loyalty. She should have. For where has his loyalty been? And where is it now, that he hides away in this room rather than be at the side of the one who risked her life for him? How is he such a coward, that he does not even contact the others?
Yet how can he even think to dishonor himself further by reaching for them? By going to her, sitting vigil at her side? The last valsta has been a dishonor, too. Shameful, perverse, obscene. The Shai’Alyt would tell him this, had the man known of it.
And he would be correct, even if he is wrong about so much else.
Even Branmer would say it, were he still alive. Surely. And that is a wound no amount of rationalizing can heal.
So now Neroon sits, oaths and honor and duties betraying each other until all he can think of is the sounds—doors exploding open, flesh crackling like meat over a fire, a woman sobbing in denial and another gasping in desperation, a familiar shout muffled behind gritted teeth, his own voice rasping in his throat as he begs his people to stop their madness…and that moment of bone-breaking pain when something rammed into him with all the force of a Sharlin war cruiser and threw him from the blinding hot agony of the circle.
Dishonor, to go to her bedside now and wait for her to die of her inexplicable wounds. Dishonor, to stay away after all she has done, after he has made her and the others those three terrible promises that should never have passed his lips.
Three is sacred on Minbar. They are three, in their way. Three impossible triangles once woven together into one, and now they are broken apart once more.
He must send them the news of this.
He cannot bear to tell of it.
He is a coward with no honor.
Never has he been so lost as to the correct path. Is that not also shameful, that he does not know in his heart what is right to do in this moment?
Vi drosh, the words echoing in his mind. Vi’a drosh, ah’zha'aia. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my own heart.
In Valen’s name…what if she doesn’t survive this? What will happen to the other stars in his heart?
What will he do if she dies?