by Deborah

Pairing: Delenn/Lennier

Summary: The end of Delenn's life, and some thoughts on the consequences of Minbari reincarnation.

Rating: G

Series: Related to 'Varieties of Repentance' and 'The Candle and the Star'.

Disclaimer: Belongs to JMS, who'd better not be reading this.

Dedication: Still for Maia.

*

"I cannot imagine a life without you in it." - Delenn

"That is unnecessary. While I am no longer sure of a great many things, there is one thing I know with absolute certainty. We will meet again, Delenn." - Lennier

(from Objects at Rest)

*

It was the last hour of Delenn's life. Her son was with her, while her lover waited outside. He meditated. He prayed the traditional prayers for her soul to return in a better incarnation, although he knew it would not.

Finally, the door to her chambers opened, and David emerged. "Stay with her until the end," he said to Lennier.

"Should you not also be with her?" Lennier asked.

"I will see her when my life is over," David said.

David had always understood. "I grew up on Minbar," he had said to Lennier, shortly after the young Minbari had become Delenn's lover, "with a human soul. A new soul. I saw children recognize each other, I saw friendships and loves that were still there from lifetimes past. No one ever recognized me this way, though I watched for it carefully. But my mother is of the Minbari, and so is her soul. I always knew there must have been a Minbari soul weeping when my mother married my father. I am only glad she found you again."

Delenn was lying peacefully, breathing calmly. Lennier knelt next to her, and put his head on her belly. He took her hand in his, entwining his fingers with hers.

"We have been here before," she said.

"Yes."

"In every lifetime I must have been older than you. In every generation you would have sat by me, watching me die."

"Do you remember?"

"No." Minbari never remembered their previous incarnations, except in vague flashes of intuition. "But it must have been. For a thousand years."

"Only a thousand years?"

"If the prophecies are true, my soul is the soul of Valen, once a human soul, dwelling among the Minbari. Why did my soul return here, instead of following the fate of human souls to the place beyond?"

"Because of the prophecy," Lennier said. "Because Valen had to return."

"Perhaps," she said. "And perhaps because of the young lover who knelt by my side in my last moments, someone that I could not imagine existence without."

There were no prophecies for the end of her life, no tales that told of her years of seclusion and the love who would comfort her at last. She still did not know if she had done wrong by turning to Lennier so soon after John's death, by allowing them their meager thirty years together. But right or wrong, it was done, and she could not bring herself to regret it.

"Do you believe this?" he asked.

"A thousand years," she said. "I am sorry this is all my soul could give you."

"Let me tell you what I believe," Lennier said. "In time, the sun will fade, the galaxy will burn, Minbar will be ashes and dust. No bodies will remain for our souls to inhabit. Then darkness and fire will take us, but our souls will be free, and I will find the place beyond, and I will go to you there. For I am sworn to your side, Delenn, and I will not leave you while my soul exists."

"You will challenge the very stars if they try to keep you from me," she whispered.

Her voice began to slow. She had only a few breaths left.

"This place, beyond," she said. "Let it be a place of no jealousy. We say on Minbar that three is sacred. Perhaps even now we do not begin to understand."

It was her last breath. He pressed his lips to hers. "Go to him," he said, as if it were a blessing.

Lennier remained, for a long time, holding the shell of what Delenn once had been. At last, he went out to tell David that his mother had gone. They sat together until the sun rose, and cried, and remembered Delenn.

As Lennier returned alone to the shuttle that would return him to the ship where the Grey Council sat, he imagined he could hear Morden's voice, as he had so many times. "Well?" Morden seemed to mock him, "Is this what you wanted?"

Lennier thought back over the past thirty years, so little and yet so unexpected. And the lifetime after lifetime that he could not remember, but they had been there, and they had been with Delenn. "No," he said. "It is more than I could possibly have imagined."

Then he stepped on to the shuttle, and took up his grey robes, for there was work to be done for all of Minbar.