As promised:
Mar. 28th, 2005 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catLennier, religious angst, and gratuitous Easter imagery. Really gratuitous Easter imagery.
In the first year of his exile, he found the Grey Council's ship drifting burnt and abandoned among the stars since the civil war, and stood for the first time where Valen's soul once hung in a battered and broken human body. There was no revelation left to find; only his own hands, covered in ashes.
In the second year, two young acolytes recognised him despite the purple robe that should have hidden him as a Warrior and asked for wisdom. "A man," he said, "an enemy, a Shadow agent who knows their plans to attack, is brought before you in chains and will not speak. What would you do?"
"Torture him," they said.
He told them that Valen was human, that he had no reason to love the Minbari, that all their prayers and rituals were tributes to a lie. "If he was never truly born, he need never have died," he said. "If he came for us and not for the Vorlons, he would have stayed long after their war. But he is dead."
They did not turn away. "We should carry out his burial rites," one said.
He told her to go alone.
In the third year, he knelt in Sinclair's private garden in Tuzanor and knew they would not come; if Valen needed the burial rites then he was truly dead, and if he was truly dead then he did not warrant the honour burial rites would give. It was morning, and he was alone, demanding answers of empty air. "When did you become Valen?" he asked. "At your birth, at your torture, at your death?" And then, when the silence became too much to bear, "What happened to your soul? If you never inherited it from another, if it existed only in your body over a thousand years, then it would have broken into a million pieces at your death."
The answer came in a voice that was not Sinclair's, and was not his own, and perhaps in being no-one's it could belong to them all: This was when.
His acolytes were shocked to find him waiting there, dressed once again in a white acolyte's robe of his own, helping them to gather the cloth and incense they had dropped in their fright. "I was wrong," he said. "In life, his teachings were theirs to claim. In death, he gave himself to each of us. There is no ending here to mourn."
And it was not peace, it was not answers to bring before Delenn, it was not the end of his journey. But it was forgiveness, and perhaps in forgiveness he could begin.
In the first year of his exile, he found the Grey Council's ship drifting burnt and abandoned among the stars since the civil war, and stood for the first time where Valen's soul once hung in a battered and broken human body. There was no revelation left to find; only his own hands, covered in ashes.
In the second year, two young acolytes recognised him despite the purple robe that should have hidden him as a Warrior and asked for wisdom. "A man," he said, "an enemy, a Shadow agent who knows their plans to attack, is brought before you in chains and will not speak. What would you do?"
"Torture him," they said.
He told them that Valen was human, that he had no reason to love the Minbari, that all their prayers and rituals were tributes to a lie. "If he was never truly born, he need never have died," he said. "If he came for us and not for the Vorlons, he would have stayed long after their war. But he is dead."
They did not turn away. "We should carry out his burial rites," one said.
He told her to go alone.
In the third year, he knelt in Sinclair's private garden in Tuzanor and knew they would not come; if Valen needed the burial rites then he was truly dead, and if he was truly dead then he did not warrant the honour burial rites would give. It was morning, and he was alone, demanding answers of empty air. "When did you become Valen?" he asked. "At your birth, at your torture, at your death?" And then, when the silence became too much to bear, "What happened to your soul? If you never inherited it from another, if it existed only in your body over a thousand years, then it would have broken into a million pieces at your death."
The answer came in a voice that was not Sinclair's, and was not his own, and perhaps in being no-one's it could belong to them all: This was when.
His acolytes were shocked to find him waiting there, dressed once again in a white acolyte's robe of his own, helping them to gather the cloth and incense they had dropped in their fright. "I was wrong," he said. "In life, his teachings were theirs to claim. In death, he gave himself to each of us. There is no ending here to mourn."
And it was not peace, it was not answers to bring before Delenn, it was not the end of his journey. But it was forgiveness, and perhaps in forgiveness he could begin.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-29 10:13 pm (UTC)The answer is actually technically true - if Valen was reincarnated as a Minbari (and eventually as Delenn), then he really did become Minbari in death. But it's also of course true in a larger sense - once his body no longer exists, it is no longer relevant what species it once belonged to.