Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Every time she dreams, she’s in the same place.

 A stone floor, warmed with sunlight. Climbing vines curling across the roofbeams with soft flowers of white and yellow. Windows framing a view of mountain peaks and blue-hazed forests. There would be a garden too, out of sight from where she’s standing, designed like everything else here to be calming, peaceful, still. As if there’s nothing beyond these walls, and certainly nothing to worry about; as if years here could pass like days.

She does not look at the corner beside the windows.

There are books here too, muted colours lining shelves. This would be a good place to read if you wanted to (why should you want anything else, after all). And any books requested would be brought without complaint, of course. They were not cruel.

The figures beside her are standing back a little, waiting, close enough to reach her in a heartbeat if they need to. She can’t see their faces - she doesn’t want to see their faces - but they’re Warrior caste, she’s sure. Out of armour (no such thing, Branmer used to say). It wouldn’t be appropriate here. Or maybe it would be too appropriate.

Because there’s something wrong here, something terribly wrong, and she can’t look away from it any more. A figure in the furthest corner half-hidden beneath a blanket. Not moving (asleep? injured? although surely not injured, not badly at least, not here). She can smell sweat and blood and fear.

The figure stirs, lifts its head and -

“No.” She turns fast away. The guards move together without words, one keeping pace with her, the other two standing aside.

“Perhaps tomorrow?” the guard says once the doors close behind them and she is free. “I appreciate progress is slow, Satai Delenn, but -”

“I’ve changed my mind. Let him go.”

“Go where?” says the guard. 

She woke cold and disoriented, unable for a moment to recognise even the comforting familiarity of her own rooms. 

She forced herself to breathe. Slow. Calm. Here, the cool glow of the artificial sunrise was starting to light the shadows; there, the dark outline of the nearest frame on her wall, holding an abstract pattern of green and grey, a vision of home that her clan had sent on her appointment to the Grey Council. 

Beyond the doors her aide would be sleeping. Delenn briefly considered waking her but decided against it; it was near morning now, and she was hardly a child who needed comforting after a bad dream. Besides, there would be someone awake elsewhere if she needed to talk. The Valen’tha had been home for years now and there were many here she called friend.

Talking about this, however… No. That would not be necessary.

Breathe, she told herself. You are here, this is home. You were dreaming. You will forget. 

And yet.

The Ingata was preparing to leave for home, with a considerable degree of damage and a number of frayed tempers. Neroon’s was very much among them. Escorting survey missions was usually something to look forward to: either nothing happened, in which case it was easy, or everything happened, in which case it was interesting. This one had managed to be both dull and exhausting at the same time. 

They spent several weeks far too close to an unstable gas planet while the Worker caste survey ship scanned an empty, plain-looking moon. In theory they were there to make a statement to the Drazi about whose territory this was, but it wasn’t long before they were protecting the survey ship by directly shielding it from an endless bombardment of dust from former secondary moons, long since pulled apart by the planet’s gravity. The Worker caste ship went undamaged at the cost of the Ingata’s shields, with Branmer’s crew working themselves to exhaustion on constant rounds of maintenance and repairs while the Workers refused to leave. And for what? Not because they found anything - not even because they seemed likely to find anything - but because the Drazi wanted that moon and therefore it must have something worth wanting. 

Eventually one of the Ingata’s power cells failed with a dramatic explosion and a fire that put three of the crew in the medical wing. The Workers agreed to leave after that, at least, although not without a pointed comment about the Warrior caste’s ability to protect Minbar against enemies given its apparent problems with rocks.

It had, all in all, not been a good voyage.

Branmer was quiet when they brought him the message from the Worker caste captain. He folded his arms across his chest, he looked thoughtful, he nodded very slowly. 

“I could speak to them,” Neroon offered. 

“Absolutely not, and don’t tempt me.” Back to quiet contemplation. Branmer was not easily rushed. 

Neroon let the time pass trying to calculate how long the ship would be out of commission once they were home. If it was just the faulty power cell, that could be replaced easily enough; but if the surges had caused further damage, if the diagnostics systems were failing somewhere, that was weeks at best. Likely weeks at this little research outpost in the middle of nowhere, too, no risking a long hyperspace voyage alone. Wonderful.

“We’ll let this go,” Branmer said eventually. “Infuriating though it is. They wanted their moon, they resent having to rely on us. Besides, they’re right.”

“They’re right?” Neroon barked. “Shai Alyt -”

Branmer cut him off with the wave of a hand. “This should never have happened. You know that as well as I do. And we’ll have enough to deal with back home without making a caste issue out of this. I’ll speak to the Workers, you arrange the immediate repair work, and then we’ll find out what went wrong.”

This, of course, was easier said than done.

They spent half a day going over the power systems with engineers and mechanics, then another speaking to the crew turn by turn about processes and safeguards and checklists, trying to discover what had failed. Someone assumed something, someone felt no need to double-check a superior’s work, some earlier revision of an older process let this go unnoticed. And underneath it, a sequence of unknowns: why this alarm hadn’t sounded, why that compensator circuit hadn’t worked, what would be the next system to go.

“This is a fractal disaster,” Branmer grumbled. “Look close enough at one problem and find ten more.” 

He hadn’t stopped once since the explosion. After it became clear that the problem was bigger than they hoped, he had walked the length of the ship twice, from the two injured crew still in infirmary care, to the engine rooms, to the control systems, gloveless hands skimming over the walls,  determined to somehow feel what he’d failed to see before. Branmer might have been Religious caste by birth, but at times like this there was no doubt where his heart’s calling lay. To a Warrior, damaged ships were wounded ships, and ships with unpredictable, destructive faults were sick. Suffering. “Fever”, was the word they used for overheating systems. 

Still, disaster at least had been averted. “Nobody died,” Neroon reminded him.

“‘Nobody died’ is not the standard of success I’m aiming for on a survey mission. When are the Moon Shields arriving?”

“Three days,” Neroon said, “probably.” The Moon Shields had the nearest ship that could be spared to accompany them back through hyperspace, which was the safest option if not exactly the most dignified one. At least Branmer was in command; had this happened under Neroon’s watch, the Moon Shields would have mocked him the entire way home and beyond. 

“Three days,” Branmer muttered, and picked up the tablet in front of him again. “Well. At least we have plenty of time for clearing all the repair orders.”

Yes... and yet. Neroon looked at the table before them, covered with screens and printouts and Branmer’s scrawled handwriting. “It doesn’t require two of us.”

Branmer looked up from his display. “Are you telling me to go and rest, or asking me to relieve you so you can take out a fighter and shoot some rocks?”

“The first,” Neroon said, although the second did sound very tempting.  Any situation which could try even Branmer’s vast reserves of patience was more than pushing his. But it was Branmer who’d slept the least over the past few days, Branmer whose ship the Ingata was and Branmer who had taken this the hardest. 

And Branmer who was fighting off a yawn now. “Later,” he said.

“Now, things are quiet. Later, things may not be quiet.” Neroon picked up a report himself and leant back to read it, the you’re dismissed gesture he’d have used with one of the junior officers. 

It was a gamble, but a successful one. Branmer laughed and left him to it.

He had six hours of quiet in the end before chaos found them again. Still, at least it was a productive six hours. In truth it was easier to deal with things in his own way and at his own pace for a while. Branmer’s approach was admirable - he’d not deny that - but it was always complicated and discursive, full of tangents and unexpected connections. Sometimes you just needed to get things finished.

He was reviewing the reports that would go ahead of them to the maintenance yards when one of the junior communications officers appeared on the screen beside his desk, looking nervous. “I know you said we were not to disturb the Shai Alyt. But -“

“But, the Drazi declared war on us? But, we’re lost?”

“We have a transmission from the Grey Council ship. I did alert him but he said you were handling all his messages. I don’t know if he... maybe didn’t hear me clearly?”

 For a moment Neroon feared this was complications from the Worker caste, but if that was the case Branmer would have wanted to handle it himself. Which meant it was unrelated to the survey mission. Which meant. “Transfer it to me, then.”

 “But. Alyt.” Kalenn looked deeply uncomfortable, which he supposed he couldn’t blame her for. Only her first month on the ship and already expected to ignore protocol for what must seem like no reason at all. He’d been grumbling for years about the speed that rumours and gossip spread on this ship; just his luck that this had finally improved the one time it would have come in useful. 

“But, you are carrying out orders as instructed by Shai Alyt Branmer and myself,” he said. “No-one would expect anything different from you.”  

Kalenn nodded, looking barely any more reassured, and the screen dissolved to silver as the incoming message connected. 

As he expected, it was Delenn's face that appeared, and as he should have expected she looked far from pleased to see him. He bowed all the same, fist to palm. "Satai."

"Where is Branmer?"

"Resting."

"Resting. Really." She sighed. “So. Should I wait patiently until he feels fully rested, or do you think he might consider sparing me a few minutes of his time?”

"Is this an order from the Nine?"

"Do I need to order my dear friend to speak to me now? Go and get him, Neroon." 

"I have orders of my own."

There was a long, cold silence. "I see," she said.

“I can take a message to him if you want,” said Neroon, hoping she didn’t. Even if he hadn’t known anything about their last argument her tone would have been hard to misinterpret.

But instead, she was quiet for a few moments, looking thoughtful. “If Branmer is indisposed, then you are in command of the ship?” 

“Of course.”

“And I hear you are returning home?”

“Yes. For repairs, though. We’re in no state to serve as an escort if that’s what you need.“ Whether the Valen’tha should be travelling without escorts at all had been a continuing subject of discussion since the war; best not to comment too much on that.

“No,” she said. “I am travelling alone. I will be with you in two days.”

Well, he could hardly refuse. However much autonomy Branmer had over the ship, neither he nor Neroon acting in his place could deny such a request from one of the Grey Council. Nevertheless, this seemed unlikely to go down well with Branmer, and Neroon couldn’t shake the feeling he’d just been outmanoeuvred in a game he didn’t know he was playing. “We’d be honoured by your presence,” he said, falling back on formality. 

She nodded, looked satisfied. “One more thing. Have you ever read Aszeni of Izan? The mystic.”

What? “You’ll be amazed to hear I have not.”

A smile flickered briefly over her face. “There is something she wrote I find intriguing. She believed that although the future is not predestined, still the universe has a path it prefers to follow. Like water in a stream bed. We can divert the stream, but if we do it will run alongside its true path and seek a way back. It knows where it should be and it longs for its own direction. So if we are troubled by visions of things that never happened, this is because they should have happened and the universe is trying to create them through us.”

This did strike a vague memory with him. Something from childhood? One of Branmer’s anecdotes? Well, whatever it was, he didn’t find it any more revelatory now than he presumably had then. “Fascinating though this is, Delenn, I do have considerable work -“

She cut him off. “Do you believe it?” 

“Are you really asking a Warrior caste Alyt for my thoughts on medieval mystics?”

“Yes,” she said simply.  

He sighed. “Then, no, I don’t believe it. I don’t think the universe works in this way. I don’t even think water works in this way. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“It is,” she said. “Thank you.” The screen blinked to black and she was gone.

Branmer’s quarters were a strange blend of Warrior and Religious, something Neroon had slowly grown accustomed to over the years. All the other converts he’d ever known distanced themselves as soon as possible and as much as possible from their old caste; Branmer never had. 

Neroon had found it unnerving at first, in the earliest days of the war. How could he be a Warrior, how could he lead Warriors, with trappings of the Religious caste all around him? But Branmer seemed as happily oblivious to his or anyone else’s discomfort as he did to the conventions they’d expected him to follow, and by the time Neroon worked out that Branmer was never oblivious to anything, candles and prayers seemed a small price to pay for one of the best tactical minds the Star Riders had known for decades.

So Branmer kept his prayers and his candles and his odd customs, his Adronato books and his strange-smelling teas. The Star Riders soon grew used to it and the other clans would never challenge the loyalty of someone of Branmer’s stature, even when caste divisions grew after the war. The few comments that still came these days were minor grumbles that Branmer waved aside with ease (“it’s a cup, Shakiri, I don’t think it’s plotting against us.”) 

Right now Branmer was surrounded by papers and screens, lost in a world of ancient battles. This was, apparently, resting, although Neroon didn’t quite see the appeal. Studying past defeats and failures was one thing; viewing history as a series of errors awaiting sensible correction felt like courting trouble.

The virtual landscape in front of them showed some landscape Neroon didn’t recognise. A bay surrounded by hills, with a small scattering of rocky islands punctuating the waves and a cluster of lights shimmering at the shore. “You finally gave up on Trivana Bridge?”

“In the tradition of all great generals, yes I did. This is five hundred years before that. Island settlement. See?” 

No, but it would put off the other conversation for another few minutes. “Where’s the enemy?”

“Ten years away, caught up in civil war. Not the problem. The problem is that here they spend ten years starving before the enemy arrives, and that's why they're a target in the first place. Look.” He waved a hand across the simulation and the hills started to glow green, then slowly dapple and turn to yellow as the lights flickered and thinned. “That’s the first ten harvests. There isn’t enough food.”

“What about the sea?”

“Exactly! They didn’t touch it. All their food came from the land. See, if it hadn’t…” Another turn of his hand and the simulation started again, this time with the sea glowing green as well. The dots of light brightened and spread across the bay. “Why not?”

"No boats?" suggested Neroon. 

"They had boats. They came in boats."

"I don’t know. Unusually dangerous fish?"

"Ha. No. Or not that I can tell. I've spent most of the last hour trying to find contemporary accounts of the ecosystem."

Of course he had. And this conversation could go on for another hour with ease, Neroon was sure. Still… “With all respect, Shai Alyt, this doesn't seem very restful."

"You'd be surprised." Branmer waved the simulation off. "So. What did Delenn want?"

I am not entirely sure, would be the truest answer. “She has requested that we take her back to Minbar.”

“She’s coming here?”

“In two days.”

Branmer muttered something under his breath in Adronato. “Does this delay our departure?”

“No, it won't.”

“Well, that’s something at least.” He gestured for Neroon to sit on one of the mats opposite him. “I take it she is unhappy with me.”

“She thinks you’re avoiding her.”

“I am avoiding her.”

“She’s noticed.”

Branmer rubbed at his eyes. “Notify the bridge crew and make sure someone’s prepared quarters for her. All right, engineering reports. How far did you get?”  

He looked very, very tired. “Branmer,” Neroon said.

“Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve brought this entirely on myself. It’s no great principled stand. I just didn’t want to fight with her again, shortsighted idiot that I am. Reports, Alyt Neroon.”

Neroon handed them over without further discussion. 

Another dream.

She’s determined not to look away this time. She tells the guards to keep back (what harm can he do me?, she says, and they exchange glances and step almost far enough away). She kneels before his hunched, frightened form and doesn’t flinch herself as his alien eyes meet her own.

“ Valen sa. Tu asta sha ti -"

“I’m not your Valen,” he says. “I don’t know what you want.” 

She can see the thin metal band binding his hands together at the wrists. (Temporary, all this is temporary. It won’t be like this forever. It won’t.) He’s cradling one bruised, swollen hand in the other. They are not supposed to cause him harm - she’s been very clear. There is even a group of physicians assigned to keep him healthy. Medicines, food, she’ll spare nothing to find him what he needs. And yet no matter what they do, what she does, he seems to fade more and more every day. “That is the wrong question,” she says.

“It’s the only question! I’m not worth anything to you. I’m not high ranking, I don’t know anything important. Surely we can’t be a threat to you now.”

She wants so much to reach out and touch him, to soothe his bruises and feel the warmth of him alive under her skin. Instead, she promises him everything they have. They can show him the science of their ships, artificial gravity, limitless clean energy, whatever he wants to know. They can show him archaeological relics older than his planet. They can show him messages found in the stars from civilisations long dead, ghost voices still whispering in radio waves across the galaxy. They can show him philosophy, poetry, anything he wants from a thousand different worlds. If only he will stop fighting them. If only he will work with her.

“I don’t understand,” he says. 

“Valen once brought us together. He made us one people. And now we are breaking apart again.”

“I’m not Valen.” 

She holds his injured hands in her own. As gently as she can, but he hisses in pain all the same. “Please,” she says. “I know you don’t yet understand, but we are in danger. All of us. A terrible enemy is returning.”

“You’re the enemy,” he says, and there’s nothing left but hate in his eyes.

She woke in panic, once again. Got to her feet, paced across to the viewing window, waited for her racing heart to still.

“I did not do this,” she said out loud, needing to hear the words spoken. “I would not have done this. I will not do this.”

The stars looked back at her, silent and cold.

Chapter Text

The last time Branmer saw her was back on Minbar a year ago, in one of the Star Rider buildings outside Yedor. Rather inconveniently far outside Yedor, in truth, but that couldn’t be helped; the Star Riders (and what came before them, and what came before them) had held that land for a thousand years before Yedor was the capital of anywhere. 

 Tirain Sha had once had a perfect defensive position huddled into sea-cliffs. Approaching fleets would have been visible from miles away, as its own spires would have been visible to them, the colours of the Star Riders bright against pale stone. The strategic benefit had been lost millennia ago, of course; no sea battlegrounds now, no invading fleets from warring clans, and the only boats below them were the little leisure skiffs dotting the water. But the view out over the ocean was as striking as his ancestors must have found it. 

The clear steep-angled glass that made up most of the north-facing walls reached high above him, a thin lattice of steel supports branching like tree limbs over the halls. Ahead, as far as he could see, sharp cliffs and dark islands and the thin lines of pale beach banded the edges of the ocean. And Delenn was there watching the same view, waiting for him, silhouetted against the sunset as soundless waves dissolved against rock far below them. 

That was still the image he remembered the most about that day. The outline of her, how his first thought was I’ve missed you, how much he would give to go back to that moment before she told him why she was there. 

“It is not an order,” she’d said when his first reaction was disbelief. “A request. Only that.”

“Do the Grey Council make requests now?” 

“I do.” She rested her fingertips on the window before her as if trying to touch the sunset, but she was still looking at him, careful and cool. 

“Then you are asking me,” he said, barely able to say the words himself, it seemed so absurd, “you are asking me to go before the Nine and suggest they choose a caste for me.”

“It has been done before.”

Fourteen hundred years before. “Why? Why would you even think of this? What good would it do?”

But he knew as soon as he’d said it. It would be a statement for all of them that castes mattered less than what was needed, now. It would distance decisions made during the war as relics of another time, temporary aberrations soon corrected. It would give the Religious caste one less measure of distance from the Warrior caste. It would give the Warrior caste little, but even so there were elements who would be glad to be rid of him.

“We can’t afford to let this division between the castes grow any wider,” she said. “We can’t. You know that.”

“I can think of five hundred other things today that would do more to mend -“

“Then think of them as Religious caste. Imagine what you could do with that insight. Who would question you? The Warriors trust you, the Religious caste know you. Imagine what good you could do.”

She sounded so calm, so determined, so certain. “I take it that the decision about which caste to place me into has already been made, then,” he said.

But she shook her head. “The gesture is what matters. Not the outcome.”

“Considering that I am the outcome, allow me the courtesy of disagreeing with you on that point.”

“It is not an order,” she said again.

No, it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Because an order would never hold. She wouldn’t get a unanimous vote on that from the Nine, the Warrior Satai would never agree. She could drag him there and demand he went wherever they decided, but it would always have the stamp of duress on it, visible to the Warrior caste even if every one of the Religious could be convinced to look the other way. 

No-one would question his own choice, though. There would be muttered disapproval at his eccentricity at most. He had switched castes before, after all - why not again? 

No, Satai Delenn could not persuade him to choose this. But Delenn, just Delenn, the Delenn who knew him so well, she could. Already his protestations sounded pathetic, childish. What was his preference against the needs of his world? He would lay down his life for them all, wouldn’t he? 

“And then what do I do?” he said. “Quietly retire to a monastery somewhere?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“The future will attend to itself.”

“This is insane.”

She didn’t disagree, at least. “We live in strange times.”

They weren’t alone; those halls were never empty. Others walked past alone, or talking in twos or threes. By the windows, little knots of conversation gathered and dissolved again as people moved on. Over there, a shout of greeting. The other way, someone scolding a furious child who kicked at the floor. His own people. 

“I made my decision eight years ago,” he said. “I can serve our world best here.”

 “Eight years ago everything was different.” Her hand rested lightly on his. “I would not ask this of you unless it mattered more than either of our wishes. You see what’s happening. You see the distance between the castes growing greater and greater. We were supposed to mend with time! They have so much anger still -“

“They?”

She stopped, for just a moment. “I mean all of us,” she said. “The Religious caste as well. There is too much anger. Too much division.”       

“You are in a better position to mend that than I am, Satai.”

She shook her head, frustrated. “You would have listened to me once.”

“You were different once. Is this what the Grey Council have become now? Moving people around like game pieces!”

“And what else did you do as a general, Shai Alyt?”

“You are no better than the rest of them."

She watched him in silence for a heartbeat, two, three, four. “Well,” she said. “Now you sound Warrior caste.” 

He wanted to call after her as she left. (And he had done many times since, replaying this whole conversation in his head. Apologise, retreat, renegotiate. Suggest something else. Suggest anything else.) But there was nothing to say, in the end. He watched her walk away in silence, kept watching until long after she’d gone, and only then noticed Neroon standing near him.

“How much of that did you hear?” he muttered.

“Not a word,” Neroon said. “Of course.”

The Moon Shields sent the cruiser Chula-sei, which had been patrolling in the next sector. Moon Shields always named their ships after songs; Chula-sei was a mournful dirge for a lost lover. It seemed faintly ridiculous to Neroon, but then all the clans thought this privately (or not so privately) about the ship naming systems of the others. 

Branmer left in a shuttle for the Chula-sei as soon as it confirmed arrival, leaving Neroon to command the Ingata and keep channels open with his counterpart on the other ship until Branmer arrived safely on the bridge.  A standard precaution there should be little need for in peacetime, and with the other ship so close, and usually he’d be grumbling about it but this time maybe he’d let it go. 

“If it’s any consolation, Ingata, you look fine from the outside,” Alyt Mirann said from the Chula-sei. 

It wasn’t, but he was hardly in any position to say so. “Grateful you could help.”

“You weren’t far out of our way. We were due home for the winter tournament anyway.” 

Never get between Moon Shields and their winter tournaments. Tempted though he was to say something about priorities, they were doing the Ingata a favour. They would have been within their rights to make this a Star Riders problem once it became clear the ship was in no danger. “I’m sure they won’t start without you, Chula-sei.”

“Ha,” Mirann said. “Is Branmer coming this year?”

No, in their original plans. But now they had weeks of unscheduled time ahead (and weeks at best, the engineers wouldn’t even make predictions at this stage, who knew how long they could be stuck on land dealing with caste council matters in endless meetings), there was at least a possibility Branmer would want to take them up on his standing offer. “Maybe. We’ll confirm once we’re home.”

“You too, of course.”  

“Less likely, I’m afraid.” 

Mirenn waved a hand dismissively. “You’re just afraid you’ll get beaten again.”

“Once, Mirann. Once.” 

“So come back, if you’ve improved.”

He could feel the smirk of the junior bridge officer next to him. It was tempting, if only for a moment; it must have been ten years at least since he’d lost a flight display contest to the Moon Shields, trying a little too hard to impress a certain one of his own clan’s judges. It felt like a lifetime ago.  

He didn’t even know if Kalik was judging this year, and that thought itself did not sit particularly well with him. She hadn’t said; although in fairness he hadn’t asked, and the days when they would have known every detail of each other’s schedules had passed years before.  

But none of that mattered now. “Shai Alyt,” Mirann said, and Branmer next to her bowed an acknowledgement. Further plans for the journey home, and all that would happen afterwards, would begin on the Chula-Sei without him. And if Branmer’s guest should arrive in the meantime - well, then she would need to wait as well.

———

She did, of course. Delenn had an unnerving habit of arriving whenever least expected or most inconvenient. He met her at the docking bays himself; there were protocols, whichever guise she was travelling under. “No flock of acolytes with you this time?” 

She smirked at that. “It did them good to see a Warrior ship in operation.”

Probably it had, although he doubted any of them had learned much. They’d been insufferable, constantly wide-eyed and in the way, roaming the ship like gawping tourists. Whatever trouble she brought with her this time at least she was bringing it alone.

But she seemed smaller than he remembered, alone in the cool pale expanse of the docking bays. She was still Delenn, unreadable, unshakeable, and there was nothing he could see in her that was different, and yet there was something all the same. Perhaps nothing he’d have noticed in the past. Perhaps not. 

He waved the apprentices beside him away to gather her bags and arrange sign-off with the docking bay crews. They didn’t know who she was, of course; diplomatic transport was all the paperwork would say. Religious caste would not surprise them, everyone knew diplomacy was the religious caste’s territory. And they were too young to notice anything unusual about her arrival, too inexperienced to know who on the ship to ask if they did, and too afraid of him to say anything anyway. 

 A shame, really. The only time that most of them would serve on a war cruiser, and not only was the journey cut short by this ridiculous accident but they were entirely unaware they’d met a Satai.  

“You must have been travelling a long time,” he said. “We have your guest quarters ready, but if you would prefer some food before Branmer -“

“I would prefer to sleep,” she said. “Thank you.”

It’s dark, this time, the lights set to a dim blue glow. In the distance she can see - stars? - no, not stars, lights, buildings somewhere in the distance. This is Minbar, she assumes. This is home. And she knows now what she has to do. 

“This is not real,” she says.

The man she now knows as Jeffrey David Sinclair does not vanish, does not transform into something greater, does not praise her for understanding and teach her wisdom. He does not even rise from his crouched guarded position on the flagstone floor. He glares at her. 

“You are not here,” she says.

 Nothing.

 "None of this exists outside my imagination.”

 There, he finally moves. “Well, great. Imagine me back home then.”

“You are home.” She kneels before him, and this time he doesn’t flinch away. “You are on Earth, you were never here. We let you go. You are on Earth. You are well.”

(This is not the whole truth. They have been watching Jeffrey David Sinclair closely since the war ended, although he does not know it. He is healthy and safe, that much is true; but he is also guarded and suspicious, he seems distracted, he will not talk about the Battle of the Line. He is not trusted by a large number of his fellow warriors, who don’t believe his claims of lost memories. He takes unneeded risks with his own life. He does not expect to ever be promoted again, and when the list of potential commanders for the new Babylon station reaches him he will surely be surprised to be chosen. Earth sent his medical reports recently, which mention nightmares of the war. She wonders if they are anything like hers.)

 “So let me go. If this isn’t real it doesn’t matter, right? Tell your guards to leave and let me walk out of that door.”

 She sits back on her heels. There must be a sign, something, somewhere. There must be a message she is not seeing. Some symbolism in the way he sits, some coded sign she should recognise in the folds of his alien clothes. All of this is a test. But she cannot find the answers; she cannot even find the questions. “And then what?”

 He rasps out a laugh. “How the hell should I know.”

 Her hand traces the ripples in the flagstones between them. Sediment laid down by ancient seas, worn away into smooth contours. It is not real, it is not real. “Teach me,” she says.

"Teach you what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what the hell do you want? How can I help you if I don’t know what you want?”

She tries to answer, and the air turns dark around them.  

Chapter Text

Because she had told them was making a formal request of the Star Riders, and because she was their guest, Branmer arranged for a small feast’s worth of food. The low table they sat around was covered in dishes all crowded so close together she could barely see the inlaid Star Rider sigil. It was a Warrior caste custom, and one of the better ones.

There would usually be attendants as well but her own staff were still on the Valen’tha and Branmer, thankfully, only brought Neroon, not some fleet of aides whose allegiances and loyalties she didn’t know. Clan dynamics could introduce complications; at least Neroon’s loyalty was to Branmer above all. Although, given the suspicious way he was watching her right now, perhaps that wasn’t entirely a good thing.

Branmer offered her bread and bowed as she took it. “We welcome you, Satai.”

“And I welcome your hospitality.”

The three of them had eaten together in this room before, several times; here, at least, nothing significant seemed to have changed.

Although - yes, something was new. On the wall opposite her, half in shadow, she could see the tiles of a mosaic. Too far away to make out the colours, but she had seen enough of these to know they would be something from the Star Rider homelands. Maybe the dull blue of the sea grasses, or the black-tiled roofs of the island villages, or the pale cliffs at Tirain Sha. The Warrior caste were exceptionally keen on these at the moment. And while they were beautiful in their way, and while there was little in them to object to, exactly, she had always found them slightly unsettling, knowing the smudged abstracts of colours were purposefully meaningless to those like her.

Enough time, then. “We have been more interested in dealing with the other worlds for some years now. The war with the humans interrupted this for a time, but it remains our interest.”

Branmer nodded, Neroon did nothing. She went on.

“Until now the Religious caste have handled all diplomatic matters. We intend to change this. We suggest that the Warrior caste are permitted to speak for our world on a small number of diplomatic missions. The Council have agreed that this should begin with Star Riders.”

“That isn’t what we do,” Neroon said.

Branmer didn’t challenge him, which was interesting. As Branmer’s second Neroon wasn’t there to speak in his own right. But Neroon was becoming more powerful himself in recent years; she’d heard his name from the Warrior caste Satai more than once now. “The Warrior caste go where you are needed,” she said. “Unless I am mistaken?”

“I meant -“ A quick glance at Branmer, still silent. “We have never been considered worthy of the honour.”

A reasonably good recovery, but not quite convincing enough. “If it’s beneath you, Alyt Neroon, I can take the offer to the other clans.”

“All right, enough,” Branmer said. “But he’s right. We’ve never done this. We’ve never been trusted to do this. I rather thought we were the alternative to diplomacy.”

That much was true. And whatever she might threaten Neroon with in passing she’d never really make the same offer to the other Warrior leaders. Branmer, and Branmer only, was what had been agreed - and even that felt dangerous. Branmer could be relied upon, but behind him were far too many like Neroon, and now three Warrior caste Satai with the confidence of a victory. For anything less important than this she’d have considered it far too great a risk.

“Things can change,” she said, watching the steam from her cup rise and curl and dissolve in the air.

Branmer’s sharp blue eyes narrowed, searching. “And what does the Religious caste get in return?”

She was not obliged to tell him. In fact, she would have been within her rights to reprimand him even for asking. There was never an expectation that the Grey Council would discuss its processes with others, and besides, she was almost sure he wouldn’t refuse this whatever she disclosed or kept to herself. But Branmer was never entirely predictable, and what she could hear now, all too clearly, was I don’t trust you.

So: The Warrior caste way. Lay out all her weapons and all her weaknesses before them. See, I conceal nothing, I show you everything I hold. “A vote,” she said. “The new station the humans are building will be operational soon. We want to send one of the Nine there, to remain on the station for its first years. We need the Warrior caste’s agreement to secure this.”

“What?” Neroon barked.

Branmer held up a hand to quiet him. “The humans asked for that?”

“The humans will not be told. They will know me as an ambassador.”

“You?”

"Yes."

He bit off another piece of tari crust, taking good time to consider his words. “You’d be very far from home,” he said eventually.

Little point in disputing that. “It would not be part of the work we ask you to do,” she said, taking one of the smaller pastries while he thought. The sweet, sharp taste brought back more memories of better times, times when she would have not already felt like a diplomat treading carefully on foreign land. “You would only need to deal with worlds where our existing relationship is less challenging.”

“And we would speak for Minbar as the Warrior caste?”

“And you would speak for Minbar as the Warrior caste.”

Branmer didn’t challenge that. Nor did he comment on the fact that the Warrior caste had been requesting a role like this for years, and been refused by the Nine every time. Instead, he said “It’s a better use of our time than guarding Worker caste surveys. But we would need time. We would have to reassign some of the colony work, we would have to prepare. We don’t have the background.”

Time for preparation should have started years ago, with Dukhat’s first efforts to persuade the Nine to look outside their own world. Time for preparation should have been what happened instead of a war. But here they were. “You will have all the time you need,” she said, letting it sound magnanimous.

“Then yes,” Branmer said. “I accept.”

————-

Engineering had never been one of Branmer’s strengths. He had made an effort to learn what he could years ago, looking over schematics, learning a language of gravity generators and magnetic deflectors and jump engines, because how could you command a ship without understanding what kept it flying? But while the basics were familiar enough by now, the ability to think in that language was not.

So he had decided that what kept the ship flying, in the end, was its crew. People like Hazi, the head of engineering, who had taken full responsibility for the power cell failure and had only with difficulty been persuaded not to resign her position. She was clever and dedicated and understood the ship as easily as breathing, and as a result had been promoted and promoted again until she, too, was navigating a world she felt less at home in, one of managing the dozens of engineers who now answered to her and having to explain complex mechanical system failures to someone like him.

Hazi was walking him through the damaged section of the engine halls now. Partly this was to show him that everything was done as requested, all patching repairs made and all affected systems shut down where possible. Partly it was to show him order and neatness restored after the smoky chaos he’d seen before. And partly, it was becoming clear, to try to talk him round on the length of time the Ingata was now booked for repairs at the orbital shipyards back home.

“You don’t trust the Worker caste with your ship, Hazi?”

She snorted at him. “I wouldn’t trust anywhere else. I trained there, did you know that?”

“Hazi,” said Neroon.

“I didn’t, actually,” said Branmer. “Why not the Warrior caste yards?”

“They fix little guns and little flyers. If you want to learn, you train with the Workers. And if they say Ingata will be finished in twenty days, it will be finished in twenty days. And I would be failing in my duty if I let you believe it would take any longer.”

She was right, of course. “It suits my purposes for now,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “for us to be at home for a while longer than we would otherwise be. And fewer questions are asked about ships in repair.”

That, he could tell, was new information to her. Good. Rumours spread fast on ships; if there was any close to accurate speculation about what Delenn was here to discuss, it would have reached her already. He trusted Neroon, of course, but there were a thousand other ways for information to escape between the Grey Council’s ship and his, and then between his and the other Warrior clans. He’d happily exchange the dented pride of a ship sitting in a repair bay in exchange for a little more time to prepare in peace before everyone else found out.

“You have questions, Hazi?”

She did, of course, and he could see how close she came to asking the more obvious ones, but in the end she was far too obedient a warrior. “So,” she said carefully. “They won’t work slower, Shai Alyt. Will it not be inconvenient when they run out of repairs to do?”

“We’re paying for the bay anyway, aren’t we?”

“We are, but she’s right,” Neroon said. “It would be noticed.”

At least some of that, Branmer suspected, was Neroon’s own visceral discomfort with having the ship quiet and still and out of action for so long. But they were right, all the same, and he was outnumbered. “Fine,” he said. “Then find some other things they can do, Hazi. Anything. Whatever list you keep somewhere of things to ask me when you think I’m in a good mood, whatever it is you want my permission to repair or replace or repaint like a Narn cruiser, consider it agreed. Buy us some time.”

She grinned over the salute. “As long as you need, Shai Alyt.”

-----------------

Delenn began to wonder, without any particular sadness or anger, if he would find some way to avoid her for the entire journey home. There was a dull inevitability to it, a natural consequence of all the decisions she’d made or failed to make. She could accept that. She read through Council papers, sent decisions back to her aides on the Valen’tha, lit a candle for the evening prayers.

And then just before the ship cycled into night, he was there.

A Warrior caste bow, the sweep of his cloak curling a neat shadow on the floor. “We will be departing soon,” he said.

“Good.”

“If you would prefer to travel home on the Chula-sei, we will arrange a shuttle for you now.”

She replaced the tablet she was reading on the table in front of her, edges carefully aligned. “Is this ship going somewhere else?”

“For your safety, Satai.”

“My safety.” But not the safety of the crew, who were all, it seemed, still here. These ships could be run with a fraction of their usual staff in an emergency; if Branmer was really worried about the ship, it would be close to empty.

“We’ve been cleared to leave, but the engineer’s reports are only provisional until the yards at home can do a full inspection.”

“Provisional engineering reports? That sounds terribly dangerous, Shai Alyt. Perhaps our ship should have taken all of you home.”

“Humour me, please.”

“Would that achieve anything useful?”

He shrugged as he took a seat beside her. “It would give me some time to think of another excuse for being here.”

Despite herself, she smiled. He’d always found ways to disarm her. She placed her hand against his chest, palm to heart, and bowed as he did the same.

“I have missed you very much,” he said, his voice heavier somehow. “I wanted to tell you that, before we find ourselves arguing yet again.”

“I didn’t come here for the purpose of arguing with you.”

“You never do,” he said.

A long time ago, a very long time ago, some time after he became Warrior caste, he had gone missing in battle. Two days he was lost before his broken ship was picked up drifting in a debris field. After, she met him in a room very like this one and found she could not stop touching his face, his hands, all of him, could not care about anything beyond that he was alive and there and with her. She could still remember the feel of the new battle honour arm-ring he was wearing, its metal warmed slightly by his skin, by hers; could still remember with perfect clarity how nothing had seemed more right than that they should be there, then, together. And then the war continued, and no day of her life had ever seemed quite so right since.

Now, she settled for a hand on his upper arm, the shape of the arm-ring barely there under his surcoat, and a different memory. “Then I would remind you that when you first felt called to this caste I stood by your side as you took your armour. I see no reason why we should find ourselves arguing today - but if we do, I ask you to remember that I was not there that day to advance the strategic interests of the Nine.”

His hand over hers, briefly, and then he got to his feet and busied himself in making tea for both of them. She watched the easy familiarity of his movements. “Where are you going when we reach home?” he asked.

“Tuzanor. And then south, in time. I have applied to see my mother, but first I must ask again in person and then I must wait for the Sisters to consider my request after twelfth week.” She hadn’t intended the impatience she heard in her own voice.

Branmer had looked up sharply at the mention of her mother, but said nothing about it. “And while you’re waiting for the decision?”

“Preparing for my work on the human station, I suppose. And I wanted to travel and see a little of home before I leave. It has been a long time since my schedule has been so clear.”

He brought her tea and they talked easily for a while about places she had been, routes he would advise, new grandchildren of old friends. Nothing of importance - very deliberately nothing of importance, and he steered the conversation deftly away from anything that could lead to conflict. You will make a good diplomat, Branmer, she thought. But you would have made a better Ranger One, if you had only trusted me.

She was doing the same, of course. She didn’t want the conversation to end, she didn’t want to be reminded of the minefield beneath it. In another reality, there was a version of today where the distance between them had never had chance to grow, where she would never need to step so carefully around a conversation, where she was talking to him now knowing he would still be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next; and it felt so close she could almost touch it.

But in that reality, there was also a broken figure in a prison waiting for her.

“I am sure this is keeping you from your duties,” she said.

He sat back and placed down his cup (how long had that been empty?). “Maybe,” he said. “Delenn…” and for a moment she thought he was going to ask her again about transferring to the other ship, but instead he said “The Moon Shields are holding a tournament not long after we return. I haven’t been for several years, but I plan to go this time. You should come with me.”

“A tournament.” She almost laughed.

“You wanted to see more of our world before you left. And after all, you aren’t doing anything else.”

And after all, she wasn’t doing anything else.

—----

For the first time in many years, she walked at his side onto the bridge of a cruiser. It was all as she remembered, the muted sound of their footsteps, the curve of the console banks, the crew's deep salutes to Branmer and lesser to her, even Neroon in his usual position, who looked at Branmer as if to say Really? before calling the bridge to attention.

"To an uneventful journey home," Branmer said, "a well-deserved shore leave, and no more rocks. Go." And the ship began its graceful wheel around into the night.

------

This time she falls asleep on the ship, and dreams she wakes up on the ship still, nothing changed except that he is standing there watching her.

“Why are you here?” She takes three steps towards him. Four. Stops. Under her bare feet the floor is so cold she imagines it is covered with ice crystals, feathered out under the rugs, spreading across to the walls. “Why did you follow me?”

“Followed you?” He holds up his hands, chained and cuffed.

"You should not be here," she says. "This is the Ingata. It would make no sense to bring you here."

"I don't know why you do anything," he says.

She could leave. Although there are no guards here with them, although the room is too cold, she senses there are others on the ship. But the thought of Branmer being part of this is worse than the thought of being here alone. So, she decides, she will wait here until she wakes and this is over.

“Nothing to say? Aren’t you supposed to be interrogating me?” His injuries have almost healed now, at least. He does not seem as afraid of her as he once did. But he keeps his shackled hands raised, as if to show her, as if to shield himself from her.

She takes one more step towards him and this time he moves faster than she can think, sudden, sharp. The force of his motion slams her back into the wall. Her head collides against metal, her shoulder flares with pain. One of his bound hands is now around her throat, and she thinks, detached, that he must have planned how to do this, how to take the first chance he had.

Her jaw forced upwards, she looks him in the eye, searching his furious, twisted, alien face for any trace of Valen. She recognises nothing.

But he does.

"Delenn," he says, and lets go of her, and steps away. "You're Delenn. I know you.” His hands are trembling. “Why can't I remember?"

Chapter Text

Branmer had always liked warrior caste strategy games. He'd learned to be good at them as a child, taught by his father, finding they served as a bridge to his warrior caste cousins. Later, he’d used them as an easy way to show allegiance with his new caste: anyone could learn the rules fast, but being able to play well enough to win without really trying took years of familiarity.

Beyond all that, though, he enjoyed them just as games. They sharpened thought, they rehearsed patience, they exercised the ability to think three steps ahead of your opponent. And he could still beat Neroon at least half the time, even when discussing clan or ship matters over the board.

Now, he placed down another counter and flipped its adjacent line white to blue with a satisfying click of glass on stone. “We should discuss your concerns,” he said.

“Which concerns?” Not: what concerns, Branmer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If he’d been speaking Adronato, of course, he could have kept that ambiguous. If he’d wanted. Which he wouldn’t.

“You tell me,” Branmer said. “You know we’ve asked for this before.”

“I do, yes.” He hesitated over putting his own next counter down, and in the end played a safer diagonal in his own corner. “Was your name on that petition?”

“Yes.” Well. “As a supporting signatory. It wasn’t my petition, if you’re suddenly worried about offending me.”

Neroon snorted. “Diplomacy with other worlds is meant to be the religious caste’s role. They are meant to speak for all of us and they don’t. And if all we demand of them is a little piece of it for ourselves then what do we gain? They give us some less challenging worlds where nothing we do matters, and then we lose any right to ask for more.”

“I don’t imagine there are any worlds where nothing we do would matter.” But other than that, he thought, fair point. Underneath Neroon’s general impulsiveness and suspicion, he could be a much better strategist than a lot of the others. Still, little use in being a good strategist if you couldn’t - or wouldn’t - fight from where you actually stood. “Little steps, Alyt.”

“In which direction?”

“Better to be walking at all.“

Neroon did not look convinced. “And this insanity of sending one of the Nine to the human station.”

“I grant you, that’s odd.” More counters, white to blue, blue to white. “Much of this is odd. I don’t pretend to understand why they do things. But since we have little choice in it, we may as well use whatever advantage they’ll trade off to us as a result.”

Neroon considered that, turning over another row of counters with the flat of his hand. "Sometimes, Shai Alyt, I don't know whether to chide you for your optimism or criticise your cynicism."

"There's a certain amount of overlap," Branmer said. "I believe that's what they call diplomacy. "

"I'll defer to you on that." Another wave of blue to white. He could win, Branmer thought, if he stayed focused on one front. But that had never been one of Neroon's strengths.

—-

Branmer got the uneventful journey home he'd wished for, and they arrived at the orbital shipyards just as planned. Delenn, who had never before had reason to be so close to ship repairs, stayed at the viewing bays by the bridge to watch. The scale of the yards was breathtaking. From here the worker caste ships were so small they were barely visible, and yet the immense machinery arched above them, lines of massive metal circles, the nearest so close she could only see sections of it dividing the sky across Minbar far below.

Not that there was much else to do for the crew but watch, either. The ship was where it should be and the swarm of little ships around them were scanning, checking, co-ordinating where to lock on clamps and tugs. There was little left for the warrior caste to do.

“Stand by to confirm transfer of control,” came the message from the workers. And then in their own language: “welcome home, Ingata.”

“Is that customary?” she asked Neroon, who was standing by the windows, arms folded, looking out over the shipyard.

“This ship was built here,” Neroon said without taking his eyes off the vast complex of spinning metal. “So we allow it.”

They waited. Waited. The bridge was silent other than the hum of machinery and the brief exchanges between some of the crew and the workers, quick volleys of numbers and readings. There was, surely, no real concern that anything could go wrong now, but all the same it felt unpleasantly tense.

And then the screen before Branmer glowed back into light. “All in order -” the worker began.

“Wait,” said Branmer, and said something to the officer beside him before returning to his screen. “Again.”

“All in order,” the message came again, this time over the entire ship’s intercom. “You are now under our perimeter and protection. Transfer navigational controls and we will guide you to the bay.”

The faint sound of cheering echoed through the ship.

——

The final dinner was an old tradition for any voyage home, even those that ended as unceremoniously as this one. More so, maybe. Now they had finally made it back safely, the ship docked by the shipyards awaiting the worker caste guides, there was such a sense of relief that something needed to mark it.

As always the dinner felt slightly chaotic, as if there were too many people for the space and not enough tables for the food. It was constantly moving with people, so loud you could barely hear your own voice over all the others. Neroon could hear pieces of a dozen conversations from here, and the clatter of plates, the scrape of benches over floor tiles. It was wonderful.

He sat at Branmer’s side, at a table with most of the senior crew and the three juniors who had been injured in the power cell explosion. No Delenn, but Branmer looked more like Branmer than Neroon had seen him do in some time and there was an easy lightness to him now that had been absent for most of the voyage. Even as they shared plans for after their return, and Branmer's contribution to the talk of missed loved ones and family reunions was a caste elders meeting about low birth rates, he was laughing.

“Didn’t they have one of those while we were away?” Neroon said. “Maybe they’ve solved it by now.”

“Apparently not,” Branmer said. “Although I have since learned that all the Wind Swords arrived with their own children filing behind them.”

“No.”

“Yes, really they did.”

He couldn’t help but laugh as well. “What sort of point is that meant to make?”

“Not one I can compete with, anyway. Unless I borrow yours.”

“You’re not borrowing my children for caste politics, I have higher expectations than that. Here!” One of the communications officers was finally passing their table with the jug of spiced anva, and he was just close enough to grab an oblivious elbow.

“Speaking of children, of a sort,” said Hayan, First Principal of the pilots, “your cadets haven’t given their toast yet, Branmer.”

“So they haven’t. Cadets !” But crowded around the furthest table, they didn’t hear him. “Someone go over and get their attention.”

Hayan did. The cadets must have known the final toast was up to them, as the most junior members of the crew, but it seemed they had spent too long discussing it and too little time reaching an agreement on who would speak and what would be said. Hayan, mock-solemnly chiding them, gestured towards Branmer; Branmer held up both hands, pretending surprise. Eventually, one of the cadets was pushed to her feet to give a long, rambling toast: to the Moon Shields, to the shipyard workers who would attend to the Ingata, to Branmer, to the Drazi who had claimed that moon (this one to a loud chorus of objections), to the crew, to their forebears. By the time Hayan got back to the main table, the others were shouting over the speech with their own suggestions, the whole lot dissolving into a happy, disorderly mass of noise.

And then through cheers, one voice called “Shai Alyt Sinoval!”

Sinoval, General of the Battle of the Line. Sinoval, who took his own life rather than relay the Grey Council’s surrender order to the fleet.

“Branmer,” Hazi said.

“I heard,” Branmer said quietly. “Neroon, go and find whoever gave Sinoval’s name and bring them to me, please.”

It wasn’t difficult to find the one responsible. Neroon clamped one hand on the cadet’s shoulder, hauled him backwards off the bench and half marched, half dragged him across the floor to Branmer. A little excessive, arguably; but by the time they reached Branmer the whole room had fallen silent, watching, which was after all the point.

“Sinoval,” Branmer said. “Did you know Sinoval?”

The cadet shook his bowed head.

“Look at me,” Branmer said. “Look me in the eyes. I knew Sinoval. Did you know Eshall of the Fire Wings?”

“No.” Very quietly, although there was no-one in the hall not already listening.

“She was a cadet like you. She died the day before Sinoval died. One of many. Fila of the Wind Swords? Alik and Sanenn of the Star Riders?”

“No, Shai Alyt.”

“They were all on the Endless Sun when a human ship damaged its shields. Luck more than anything else, really, they were hurling their fighters at us by that point. We saved the ship. We couldn’t save all of them. Fila and Sanenn died in the explosion, so at least that was fast. Probably Alik died instantly as well. We never found his body but you hope, don’t you? Eshall was thrown beyond the blast doors. She was still breathing when they got to her - look at me, cadet, you will look at me and hear this - but the burns were too extensive, so she died, too. That was not fast. And the humans died, of course. I don’t know their names. I imagine their families remember them.”

Absolute stillness. No sound, beyond Branmer’s voice and the fast, ragged breathing of the cadet in front of him.

“We endure this for duty,” Branmer said. “We cause this for duty. We accept this as our place. The Religious pray, the Workers build, and we fight. For our world. For our people. Not for ourselves. Not because we enjoy it. Because we accept it as our duty.”

The cadet nodded, a small, scared gesture.

“If we abandon that duty, if we choose our own orders to follow, then what is left? They died for nothing and we are all murderers. No meaning. No sense. Only death, after death, after death.”

“I didn’t - mean - I’m sorry, Shai Alyt.”

“ I gave the surrender order to the fleet when Sinoval refused. It wasn’t my decision, but it was my duty. And I will accept responsibility for that just as I accepted responsibility for the deaths of those on the Endless Sun . And you can despise me for it if you choose, but I will not have you cheapen all we did by celebrating that traitor. Not on my ship.”

Very quietly: “Yes, Shai Alyt.”

“Get out.”

He did. Gradually, the noise of conversation returned in the tables around them, as if it had never happened.

——

The ship, again, still. And both of them standing where they were before. No time has passed, she knows; she can still feel her racing heart calming, the pain in her shoulder starting to subside.

“How do you know my name?” she says.

She isn’t even sure that he hears her. “I remember I trusted you,” he said. “I remember talking to you. In a garden. There was a garden. You said this isn’t real. Was that real?”

She tries to place the idea of a garden somewhere that it fits. There is nothing like a garden on these ships, nor on the places they kept him after they took him from the battlefield; there was never anywhere he talked with her or trusted her, and surely she never told him her name. And in reality, she remembers, she must remember, he was only aboard the Valen’tha for a short time. So then, perhaps this garden represents, rather than recalls; perhaps there is a symbolic meaning here she is failing to see; although if this is so, she can see no indication he recognises it himself. “I don’t know,” she says.

“So where is this now?” he says. “Is this your ship?”

No. But from his perspective, maybe. “It is one of our fleet. Ingata.”

“What does that mean? Is that its name?”

“Yes. Ingat is an animal from our world, a hunter. And -ta makes it plural.”

“Like, ‘wolves’?”

“I don’t know that word.” But, she realises, she does know the other words he says. He is speaking Adronato, although heavily accented and sometimes strangely phrased. Valen should know their own tongue far better; Jeffrey Sinclair should not know it at all.

He sits back against the wall, and drops his head, and stares down at his own chained hands. She feels moments and ages pass.

“I can’t make sense of any of this,” he says, eventually. “And I can’t be whoever you think I am. But I won’t be what you’ve made me either. I was more than the war. I had things I cared about and people I loved, and plans, and hobbies, and a whole life once. I was more than anger and grief and hate. I know I was.”

She can think of nothing else to say to him, and anything else she might ask seems insignificant beside the growing and awful thought that perhaps, somehow, he is as lost as she is here, as out of time as she is. So she kneels down beside him and slowly, carefully, removes the shackles from his wrists.

He stares at her. "Why?"

"I was more than this, too," she says.

Chapter Text

The crew remained the crew after leaving the ship, still under Branmer’s command and subject to all the same rules that were in place on the Ingata . They stayed on duty for the shuttle transfers, and the journey back to Minbar, and even the walk out from the atmosphere shuttles across the terminals, in formation and full armour. Ship duty did not end until your feet crossed the metal line inset halfway down the huge gallery of the receiving hall.

Branmer walked at the head of the first column, glad that his role at this point was mostly ceremonial. All the transfers and travel, the training placements, the moves, the arrangements for who went were and when and how for several hundred crew, were all done by others in their clan.  All he needed to do now, really, was bring them back and say goodbye.

In some ways it was easier that the workers had insisted the whole ship be cleared. There would not even be a skeleton crew for the first phase of repairs. This was relayed to him as a necessity so that anti-gravity and life support systems could be fully tested, which he didn’t believe was the whole truth but was happy to accept. This way, the worker crews could fix whatever had gone wrong with the ship without any of his crew there to distract and annoy them - and he could start fixing whatever had gone wrong with the crew, without the ship there to distract them. 

He greeted the harbour-masters and requested permission to enter (no-one had said no for hundreds of years, but there were protocols), and then stood aside. As each row of warriors hit the line the column broke like a wave into a happy mayhem of greetings and goodbyes, bubbling around him too with shouts and salutes and farewells - “be well, Shai Alyt,” “my thanks, Shai Alyt,” before being dragged along by the crowd, by their shipmates, by the friends and families and partners waiting behind the line. 

This was how it should be. This was how it was meant to be. Even coming home too early after a mission gone wrong, this was a time for happiness.  And still every return home was never quite enough to overwrite the memory of the one at the end of the war: four times as many crew filling this hall then, and fewer there to greet them, and every single one silent. 

At least mine came home, Sinoval, he thought.

Hazi came over to stand beside him, her eyes scanning over the crowd. “Neroon said you’re walking back to the city on your own, like you’re some kind of wandering apprentice.”

“In those words?” 

But then Hazi’s wife arrived, with a whirl of a hug that lifted her off her feet, and their son, a head taller than when Branmer had seen him last, almost old enough to be applying for training positions himself. 

Neroon brought up the rear of the procession; it would be bad luck, and worse practice, to have the two most senior command staff both at the front. Delenn walked beside him. As ever, she had an unerring ability to never quite look out of place, even as the only one of the Religious caste in a hall full of warriors. Part of this was due to her position as Satai, of course, but not all; Rathenn wouldn’t have seemed so easily comfortable. “Because the chosen of Dukhat can do as she pleases,” Neroon had snarled once after some past dispute, and while Branmer had said a firm and immediate “ No , mind your place” at the time, that wasn’t entirely wrong. 

No such arguments now, at least. They were talking to each other about something he was too far away to hear; Neroon turned to listen to something she said and nodded. They had never liked each other much - too different in some ways, too alike in others - but they could get along well enough, sometimes.  

Neroon’s position, like Branmer’s, did not allow for an easy transition to being off duty. Still, old habits died hard. Only someone looking closely would have noticed, but there was an ever so slight drop in his shoulders, eyes closed fractionally too long for a blink, as his feet crossed the line. “Shai Alyt.”

“The transports are all here,” Branmer said, and to Delenn: “Yours too. I’ll take you myself.”

“I’m sure I can remember the way.”

“I’ll take you myself, as I would with any diplomat we were bringing home.”

“Hmm,” Delenn said, and then quieter with an eye on the crowds around them, “As long as there is no ceremonial honour guard I am not expecting this time.” The last words were directed pointedly at Neroon.

“Respect is important to us,” Neroon said, managing to look mildly affronted. He was still a little too smug about having once found a way to annoy Delenn purely through following correct procedure. 

“Not today,” Branmer said. 

---------------------------

The sun outside was warmer than he’d expected for the time of year. Beside him Delenn stopped, head tipped back into the light, and held out her hands as if she could balance its warmth on her splayed fingers. “You missed home,” he said.

“I missed summer. But yes. Home, too.” 

He fell into step beside her as she started walking again. Her transport wasn’t far away and he could already see the gold robes of her Religious caste escorts waiting for her. Not enough time to talk about anything that mattered.

“Wait,” he said, and she did. “All of this, coming home to see your mother, going off to be a diplomat on the human station yourself. I don’t expect you to explain to me what it is you’re doing.” 

“Good,” she said, her lips thinned slightly.

“But whatever it is, I wish you more peace with it than it seems to be bringing you now.”

Nothing, for a moment, and then she pulled him close to her, arms tight around him, face pressed into his shoulder. “I’ve missed you, old friend,” she murmured, her words muffled in the folds of cloth. “Don’t speak as though I’m leaving. I said I would come to your tournament.”

“It’s winter there.”

“I know it’s winter there.” She pulled back and placed her palm to his chest, her fingertips against the red cords signalling his rank. “Be well, Branmer.”

“Isil’zha veni, Satai.”

---------------------------

When he got back to the receiving hall the crowds had thinned out, most of the crew already gone and no sign of Neroon. Branmer caught the attention of the nearest person to ask and waited as ‘where’s Alyt Neroon?’ was relayed from group to group across the hall until it reached someone who knew. Neroon had been called away soon before Branmer returned, to speak with someone in Tirain Sha. 

This was intriguing. Tirain Sha would be Star Rider clan business. It should be Branmer they wanted to reach - but if it had, Neroon would have told them to wait. So it must have been Neroon himself they wanted, and urgently enough that he’d gone to speak to them now. Branmer thanked the pilot who told him and set off to find out. 

He found Neroon inside, speaking to someone on a screen he couldn’t see. Beneath the view of the camera, Neroon held out his hand sideways, palm-out: the covert field signal for stand by . “It’s hardly my place to challenge Shai Alyt Branmer in front of his whole ship,” he said, “even if I was inclined to.”

“I’m not telling you to challenge him.” The voice was faintly familiar from one of the clan councils, but not one of the other leaders. Someone sent to speak for someone else, then, a someone else who wasn’t willing to come to him directly. “We all know Branmer’s feelings about Sinoval. I am noting - for your benefit and his - that language like ‘traitor’ does not get received well.”

Branmer held the side of one hand diagonally over the back of the other, the signal for need reinforcements? 

no , Neroon signalled back. “It’s his ship. He can use whatever language he decides appropriate.”

“Of course, yes, but that wouldn’t make Wind Swords any less angry.”

“They’re always angry about something,” Neroon said. watch your back , Branmer signed, and Neroon tapped finger against thumb for acknowledged . “Are you saying that Wind Swords brought this up?”

A slight pause. No, then, thought Branmer. “Just planning for all eventualities, Alyt Neroon. In any case, it would also be smoothest for our clan if you took the cadet in question back for the next tour. And cadets are the Alyt’s responsibility, so...”

orders ? Neroon signalled.

fall back .

“Fine,” Neroon said. “Any more trouble and I’ll throw him home myself.”

“Thank you.” Not sounding particularly thankful, but at least placated. “Tell Branmer we’ll be speak to him again tomorrow about Satai Delenn’s offer. And on the subject of Sinoval, you can suggest that Shai Alyt Branmer considers the high esteem he is held in and how far his voice travels the next time he mentions that subject. He might hear it from you.”

“I’ll suggest it,” said Neroon.

Branmer waited until the connection was ended and Neroon joined him for the walk back to the hall. “Shai Alyt Branmer says, no.”

“Do tell them I tried very hard to convince you,” muttered Neroon. He hated being seen as any sort of lever to influence Branmer. It was an implicit challenge to his loyalty, even if disguised as allegiance to a greater loyalty. And it was an underestimation of him, too - an assumption that Neroon, from a powerful family, with an esteemed career, an unblemished record and no inconvenient Religious-caste influence, would of course always follow prevailing caste sentiment, and would of course have no reason beyond hierarchy to side with Branmer about anything that didn’t. “Why are we keeping the cadet?”

“He’ll learn. Or he won’t, and then best to keep him close enough to watch. Same as we do with Wind Swords and Night Walkers.”

“And Religious caste?”

“ Now you’re happy to challenge me, I see.”

“Never,” Neroon said with a grin. “Mostly never. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But, I’ll admit I’m curious about why you’re bringing Delenn to the Moon Shield tournament.”

Well, why was he. Why wasn’t it enough that they had managed to get back home while remaining on civil terms. “I wanted her to see it,” he said. “What it’s like. They should see us doing more than waiting at the fringes of their world asking for things.”

“It is impressive, I suppose,” Neroon said. “You missed the first part of that call. I've been told to accompany you to the tournament, so Star Riders have more of a presence.” 

“Because of Delenn?” That didn’t make sense.

“No. I don’t think so.”

They rounded a corner back into the main corridor, with its vaulted ceilings and crystal-reflected sunlight. It was designed to remind as well as to impress. Fifty generations had passed since the dawn of space travel and still there was a fear that you could lose yourself out there, forget who you were, forget where you belonged. A fear that maybe some wouldn’t come back, not because of an accident or an attack or a ship spiralling out into the vastness of space, but because there were other senses in which you could lose the way home. 

That was why the clan sigils were the first thing returning crews saw, and why corridors like this one were lined with pictures from their own clan’s history, battles and the foundation of cities and the first starships, one scene spilling into another in a flowing mosaic. To his Religious-caste trained eye representational art always jarred a little, but even in his past he’d never found it as didactic and gaudy as he was meant to. This was his history, too.

And part of that history was a complex power struggle with the other clans, stretching back long before Valen, long before starships, back into a past where neither caste would have recognised him as theirs. 

“Interesting,” he said. “Other clans must be sending more people, then.” The Moon Shield games had once been more of a meeting point for the different clans, originally because of the imposed truce that sat over the competition itself. Political issues were settled elsewhere, now, but not all negotiations needed to be verbal; sometimes visibility mattered as much as anything else.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Neroon said, evidently thinking along the same lines. 

“If you’ve made other commitments, though, consider yourself excused.” In the complicated network of family and clan and command allegiances, it wasn't wholly inappropriate for someone in Tirain Sha to tell Neroon to go, but a direct order from Branmer would still overrule that.

“No, I’ll go. Although I’ll travel from home directly rather than return here, if you don’t object.” 

“Of course,” Branmer said. “You can tell Alyt Mirann she convinced you.”

“Is that what she told you.”

“She also mentioned something about you competing yourself in a previous tournament, which I don’t think I recall.”

Neroon barked out a laugh, but there was a genuine smile underneath it. “You weren’t there, you were still a priest then. Or a cadet priest, whatever it is they have. It was years ago. I was part of the duelling teams - which Star Riders did win, which I am sure Mirann would fail to tell you - and Kalik was serving as a judge for the flight display competitions. I didn’t know Kalik well at that point. We’d been formally introduced, I think we’d met twice. And I was young and rather keen to impress her and somewhat over-confident in my own abilities. So I changed places with one of our clan for the first display rounds.”

“And.”

“And, I came last. Out of twenty-two. I was disqualified on penalty points.” 

He wouldn’t have expected Neroon to be so good-humoured about coming last out of twenty-two at anything. “Was she impressed?”

“No. But she did agree to come and watch the duelling, so, in the end. And as I said, we were young.”

They stopped at the junction of corridors where Neroon, with a journey of several hours still ahead of him, would need to leave for the transports. “ Cadet priest, ” Branmer said.

“I really should learn all the proper Religious caste titles one day.” 

“Go home, acolyte Shai Alyt,” Branmer said, and Neroon laughed and saluted goodbye.

---------------------------

He did walk home by himself. From here, he always did if time allowed. A few hours would take him from the port to his own home without much hurry, and it was a way to be alone, under a real sky, in a way he rarely got the opportunity to do any more.

The path was an old one, winding out from the flat land of the docks through low buildings and tall grasses before joining the course of a river it followed down into the city. He didn’t need to walk for too long before the crowds and noise of the docks had died away. Here, in late afternoon in summer, the few roads he saw were close to empty, the goods yards running at half capacity for the quiet season. Wild flowers grew out over the path and burst into soft white gossamer seed when his shoulder brushed past them. 

He thought of what Neroon had said about that other Moon Shield tournament, years ago. Easy enough to imagine a younger Kalik serving as one of the external judges; she was an exceptionally talented pilot, born with wings in the Warrior caste saying. And easy enough to imagine a younger Neroon, who had always rather liked an audience, having the arrogance and over-confidence to try something like that. But the idea of Neroon doing something like that to impress Kalik, the idea that they had ever had the sort of relationship that included dramatic showy gestures at all, that was harder to picture. For a long time he’d assumed their marriage was an arranged match that had never quite taken. 

Well, what would you know, he thought. There’s whole universes held inside hearts. And Neroon’s life had everything appropriate to his position and status, after all: a match with another powerful family, a home in one of the old compounds, children who as infants had been carried through a warship for their naming day, as had been tradition since Valen. (Unlike Branmer, who had one failed betrothal and his old city apartment, declining all the kind offers and pointed suggestions to change either.) And he’d rarely heard Neroon and Kalik argue or indeed speak to each other in anything other than polite formality. Next to all that, you don’t seem to like each other, what happened? was probably not a question worth raising, and almost certainly not one Neroon would thank him for bringing up. 

And yet, remembering how Hazi’s wife had greeted her with such joy, it was difficult not to wonder.

His route reached the river path, narrow and paved. The river itself was barely more than a stream at this point and patched with shade below overhanging trees. The path followed its winding curves as it broadened, picked up tributaries, rumbled and roared over weirs. 

Long ago in the city’s history this was an industrial river, with the clamour and smoke of factories where there were now footpaths and calm. Even now as the woodland gave way to settlement some of the buildings carried deliberate echoes of the old mills that would have once stood there. 

As his path took him deeper into the city itself, the clamour and colour of busy streets seemed louder, brighter somehow, than he remembered. It was getting late, now. The sun was low in the sky, and long shadows stretched out over the path ahead of him. 

He turned through districts of older houses, joined the path that turned into a high spanning arc of metal lattice over a station and curved around into steps that zigzagged down through steep terraces, and back onto the narrow streets that led to his own building. 

Not quite, though. First, a detour to a small temple nearby.

Inside, at this time of year and this time of day it was close to empty, with only a few quiet figures and a sacristan at the side painstakingly sorting and cleaning and stacking candles. Sometimes it didn’t feel so long ago that Branmer had done that work himself; sometimes it felt like a distant faded memory. 

He didn’t need a candle to pray here, anyway. He found a space out of the way, sat cross-legged, and used the point where the triangular floor tiles joined to focus his mind as he spoke the words for night prayer. It was a little early but not too early, even if he hadn’t been keeping ship time still. 

He wasn’t obliged to keep any of the daily prayers now. There wouldn’t even have been time to keep all of them and divide the whole day accordingly as he’d done as a priest. But the first and last prayers of the day he still held onto - or rather they held him, marking waking and sleep, the brackets around each day. Especially here at the end of a journey, anchored home at last.

And then, shades of gold and ochre at the edge of his vision as the sacristan was suddenly standing before him. “Can we help you with anything?” the man snapped, in a tone that suggested the preferred help would come in the form of directions to the exit.

Branmer looked up. 

“Oh! Sorry.” The sacristan bowed, a little abashed. “You aren’t usually wearing all the full armour like that.” 

“I only got home today,” Branmer said. “I’ve been on a ship for many weeks. As my role requires.”

“Of course,” said the sacristan.

“Protecting the homeworld.”

“I said sorry , Branmer.”

Branmer got to his feet, slowly. “I would hate to feel we were not welcome here.”

“It’s just. We don’t really get many Warrior caste here on the plain days now.” He rubbed at his face. “And. We had some trouble recently and everyone’s still a little on edge.”

“What sort of trouble?” Although he could probably guess, couldn’t he. “Was it Star Riders? I can speak to someone.”

“No, no, it’s fine, it’s settled. They were just young really. Daring each other on. But, I interrupted you.” And he bowed again before turning to leave.

“Wait,” Branmer said. “ Was it Star Riders?”

“Fire Wings. It’s settled, Branmer. Please.” 

It shouldn’t be settled like this. Far too much got overlooked now. But against his anger, if not his better judgement, he let it go. “Since you’re here,” he said. “You’re from the south. Have you heard of any of the Sisters of Valeria accepting visitors? Outside the usual cycles, I mean.” 

“For what reason?”

“I don’t know.”

The sacristan tapped the fingers of one hand against the other, thinking. “From family?”

“A daughter.”

“They might for daughters. It depends on the house. It does happen. But it would be unusual.”

Back out into the city streets, the glow of building lights was starting to replace the fading sun. He turned for home.