fic, B5: Change
Feb. 26th, 2019 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseFandom: Babylon 5
Characters: Delenn and Mayan (friendship)
Rating: G
This could be read as AU, given that as far as canon is concerned we only know that Mayan visited B5 twice, both times in the first season, first in "The War Prayer" and then again (off-screen) in "Eyes." This fic posits a third visit, at the beginning of the second season.
When they were young, Delenn had always been the quiet one, the timid and shy one who needed reassurance and feared doing or encountering new things.
How different we are now, Mayan thought as she walked through the strange and winding corridors of Babylon 5, avoiding the turn-off toward her old friend's quarters for the fourth time since her arrival on the station. I know the way, but my feet refuse to follow. My mind continually makes excuses, finding one reason and another to walk in another direction and delay, delay, delay the moment of meeting again the most familiar person in my world, and finding her changed.
If she had written it herself in a poem, she might have thought it a good literary device, but in reality, it was highly unnerving. Most of all because it required admitting that she was genuinely afraid to see her oldest friend again. Afraid of her own reaction, true, but also...
Perhaps she will not want to see me.
And there was the worst of it -- the shiver of embarrassing, horrifying hope that was raised by that thought. Hope that when she finally worked through her own fears, Delenn would not be there in her quarters, that her aide would turn Mayan away with polite but meaningless words about duties and obligations and how very busy she was with the business of being the Minbari ambassador to this place, and how sorry Delenn would be to have missed her, but it simply could not be avoided. Her trip was so short, she would surely not have time to try again before the ship back home was to leave, and then she could carry on with a clear conscience, knowing that, well, she had tried her best, hadn't she? They both had. But their lives both were very different now than they had been as children and young women, and perhaps, after all, it was to be expected that, having gone in such wildly different directions with their paths in life, they could not find the time to be as intimate as they had once been.
So much easier, to think all of that, than to admit that Mayan was quaking inside at the thought of being in the same room and feeling an aching gap between them, a rift that could never be healed. The thought had lingered in Mayan's mind ever since she heard of the decision that Delenn had made, the choice to take prophecy into her own hands and make of herself something other. Something that Mayan feared she would not recognize... or, worse yet, that she would indeed, and would see in her oldest and dearest friend now the shape of the people who had attacked and branded her. It was enough to have to see the guards who had been assigned for her protection during the duration of the visit hovering around her, watching her as much as they watched everyone around her. She had made it her mission to be polite, to treat them with a blend of distant friendliness and benevolent condescension that had served her well with the less desirable of her audience members in the past, but mostly she wished they were warriors of her own kind. Those, she would not have felt quite so unprepared to deal with, and would not have felt so much need to pretend interest in the design of the station, or the items laid out on a merchant's tray in the Zocolo. A detachment Minbari warriors would not have concerned themselves with wondering why Shaal Mayan was delaying in her errand by wandering aimlessly about the station. Such thoughts would be beneath them, and therefore she would be safe from the strain of constant pretense.
They don't want to be here with you anymore than you want them here, she thought to herself as she caught one of the women stifling a yawn and a glance at a chronometer. This honor guard is Delenn's doing, her way of showing you honor without deigning to make an appearance herself. Back in the old days, they would have met each other at the transport station after even the brief absence of a holiday away from temple, not sent guards to meet the other at the gate...
"Mayan!"
She freezes, and in this moment she is too frightened to turn around. She would know that voice anywhere, but she knows, too, that the creature calling to her with it is no longer the girl she grew up with, not entirely. It is not her precious Delenn anymore, but a half-stranger who many say is no longer even Minbari.
The moment stretches, and Mayan feels it like the long and yet short pause before stepping onto a stage. There is a time, there, before the first eyes are on her, where she feels loose and unmoored, as if she could forget all her training and her practice, as if decades of singing teela in front of audiences will wash away and she will be once again the student who first stood in front of a group of strangers and felt as if the hard-won words would stay bottled up inside her forever.
Then she did what she always did, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the light -- only this time it was turning, and meeting just the one pair of eyes that have always mattered most.
"I'm so glad that I happened on you here," Delenn continued as time started up again. "I was afraid I would be trapped in that abysmal council meeting until you had already gone to bed, and not be able to speak with you before your transport leaves tomorrow morning."
She was changed. Her coloring, the shape of her face, the beautiful crest minimized and covered beneath long, dark Human hair, all made Mayan's body tense with discomfort. She couldn't stop looking at the way the strange, pink skin crept up the lower edges of Delenn's crest, or the way the shape of her brow bone had eased back, making her eyes look shallow and unshielded. And the hair -- what possible purpose could such stuff serve? How annoying it must be to manage it day after day, and the way it hid the beautiful blue triangle at the top of her skull...
"Was your journey difficult? You seem tired." Delenn's eyes -- oh, but those were still hers, the same sea-green eyes that Mayan had envied so much when they were young! -- narrowed slightly, and she tilted her head in that way she'd always had when something struck her. "Or worried? Nothing has happened again, has it--"
"No, nothing." With an effort, Mayan smiled and held out her hands. "I am only tired, as you said -- this tour has been long, and it will be good to get home in a few days, and sleep in my own bed for a while, and rest before I begin to work on new compositions again."
"You haven't already?" Delenn's lips quirked in a mischievous smile. "I have never known you not to be working on something..."
"Well, only a few jotted notes. Impressions. I cannot really compose while I travel. Not well, anyway."
"Then I am not keeping you from your work, and I insist that we go back to my quarters and take tea together. That will help you to feel more like yourself."
The hand that folded Mayan's own into her elbow was almost the same as the one she remembered -- still small and soft and warm and familiar -- but their posture, here, was strangely reversed. Almost always, in the past, she had been the one to tuck Delenn's hand into her own elbow or wrap it in her fingers. I was right to think she had grown braver than me. Or that I've grown cowardly...
As they walked, Mayan snuck sideways glances at her friend, measuring the difference and similarities until, with one look, she found Delenn watching her, too. Unfamiliar color rose on Delenn's cheeks, but she held the gaze in a way that was unmistakably her own, and Mayan remembered suddenly all the times when timid, gentle young Delenn had turned out to have a spine of steel that her brash and loudmouthed friend had never quite expected. "The change is not so great you don't know me anymore, is it, Mayan?"
Proud as she was of her skills as a performer, Mayan could not be surprised that her facade had failed against Delenn. Delenn had seen her build up her performance slowly, over decades -- of course she knew how to see through it, through her, right to the quivering, grasping core of herself. It made her feel small, and naked, but also deeply ashamed of how she had feared for her own feelings on seeing her dear friend, forgetting entirely what Delenn would be feeling at such a strange and difficult time.
"Of course not." Mayan slipped her hand down Delenn's sleeve to knit their fingers together, and squeezed. "I would know you anywhere, any time, in any life."
Characters: Delenn and Mayan (friendship)
Rating: G
This could be read as AU, given that as far as canon is concerned we only know that Mayan visited B5 twice, both times in the first season, first in "The War Prayer" and then again (off-screen) in "Eyes." This fic posits a third visit, at the beginning of the second season.
When they were young, Delenn had always been the quiet one, the timid and shy one who needed reassurance and feared doing or encountering new things.
How different we are now, Mayan thought as she walked through the strange and winding corridors of Babylon 5, avoiding the turn-off toward her old friend's quarters for the fourth time since her arrival on the station. I know the way, but my feet refuse to follow. My mind continually makes excuses, finding one reason and another to walk in another direction and delay, delay, delay the moment of meeting again the most familiar person in my world, and finding her changed.
If she had written it herself in a poem, she might have thought it a good literary device, but in reality, it was highly unnerving. Most of all because it required admitting that she was genuinely afraid to see her oldest friend again. Afraid of her own reaction, true, but also...
Perhaps she will not want to see me.
And there was the worst of it -- the shiver of embarrassing, horrifying hope that was raised by that thought. Hope that when she finally worked through her own fears, Delenn would not be there in her quarters, that her aide would turn Mayan away with polite but meaningless words about duties and obligations and how very busy she was with the business of being the Minbari ambassador to this place, and how sorry Delenn would be to have missed her, but it simply could not be avoided. Her trip was so short, she would surely not have time to try again before the ship back home was to leave, and then she could carry on with a clear conscience, knowing that, well, she had tried her best, hadn't she? They both had. But their lives both were very different now than they had been as children and young women, and perhaps, after all, it was to be expected that, having gone in such wildly different directions with their paths in life, they could not find the time to be as intimate as they had once been.
So much easier, to think all of that, than to admit that Mayan was quaking inside at the thought of being in the same room and feeling an aching gap between them, a rift that could never be healed. The thought had lingered in Mayan's mind ever since she heard of the decision that Delenn had made, the choice to take prophecy into her own hands and make of herself something other. Something that Mayan feared she would not recognize... or, worse yet, that she would indeed, and would see in her oldest and dearest friend now the shape of the people who had attacked and branded her. It was enough to have to see the guards who had been assigned for her protection during the duration of the visit hovering around her, watching her as much as they watched everyone around her. She had made it her mission to be polite, to treat them with a blend of distant friendliness and benevolent condescension that had served her well with the less desirable of her audience members in the past, but mostly she wished they were warriors of her own kind. Those, she would not have felt quite so unprepared to deal with, and would not have felt so much need to pretend interest in the design of the station, or the items laid out on a merchant's tray in the Zocolo. A detachment Minbari warriors would not have concerned themselves with wondering why Shaal Mayan was delaying in her errand by wandering aimlessly about the station. Such thoughts would be beneath them, and therefore she would be safe from the strain of constant pretense.
They don't want to be here with you anymore than you want them here, she thought to herself as she caught one of the women stifling a yawn and a glance at a chronometer. This honor guard is Delenn's doing, her way of showing you honor without deigning to make an appearance herself. Back in the old days, they would have met each other at the transport station after even the brief absence of a holiday away from temple, not sent guards to meet the other at the gate...
"Mayan!"
She freezes, and in this moment she is too frightened to turn around. She would know that voice anywhere, but she knows, too, that the creature calling to her with it is no longer the girl she grew up with, not entirely. It is not her precious Delenn anymore, but a half-stranger who many say is no longer even Minbari.
The moment stretches, and Mayan feels it like the long and yet short pause before stepping onto a stage. There is a time, there, before the first eyes are on her, where she feels loose and unmoored, as if she could forget all her training and her practice, as if decades of singing teela in front of audiences will wash away and she will be once again the student who first stood in front of a group of strangers and felt as if the hard-won words would stay bottled up inside her forever.
Then she did what she always did, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the light -- only this time it was turning, and meeting just the one pair of eyes that have always mattered most.
"I'm so glad that I happened on you here," Delenn continued as time started up again. "I was afraid I would be trapped in that abysmal council meeting until you had already gone to bed, and not be able to speak with you before your transport leaves tomorrow morning."
She was changed. Her coloring, the shape of her face, the beautiful crest minimized and covered beneath long, dark Human hair, all made Mayan's body tense with discomfort. She couldn't stop looking at the way the strange, pink skin crept up the lower edges of Delenn's crest, or the way the shape of her brow bone had eased back, making her eyes look shallow and unshielded. And the hair -- what possible purpose could such stuff serve? How annoying it must be to manage it day after day, and the way it hid the beautiful blue triangle at the top of her skull...
"Was your journey difficult? You seem tired." Delenn's eyes -- oh, but those were still hers, the same sea-green eyes that Mayan had envied so much when they were young! -- narrowed slightly, and she tilted her head in that way she'd always had when something struck her. "Or worried? Nothing has happened again, has it--"
"No, nothing." With an effort, Mayan smiled and held out her hands. "I am only tired, as you said -- this tour has been long, and it will be good to get home in a few days, and sleep in my own bed for a while, and rest before I begin to work on new compositions again."
"You haven't already?" Delenn's lips quirked in a mischievous smile. "I have never known you not to be working on something..."
"Well, only a few jotted notes. Impressions. I cannot really compose while I travel. Not well, anyway."
"Then I am not keeping you from your work, and I insist that we go back to my quarters and take tea together. That will help you to feel more like yourself."
The hand that folded Mayan's own into her elbow was almost the same as the one she remembered -- still small and soft and warm and familiar -- but their posture, here, was strangely reversed. Almost always, in the past, she had been the one to tuck Delenn's hand into her own elbow or wrap it in her fingers. I was right to think she had grown braver than me. Or that I've grown cowardly...
As they walked, Mayan snuck sideways glances at her friend, measuring the difference and similarities until, with one look, she found Delenn watching her, too. Unfamiliar color rose on Delenn's cheeks, but she held the gaze in a way that was unmistakably her own, and Mayan remembered suddenly all the times when timid, gentle young Delenn had turned out to have a spine of steel that her brash and loudmouthed friend had never quite expected. "The change is not so great you don't know me anymore, is it, Mayan?"
Proud as she was of her skills as a performer, Mayan could not be surprised that her facade had failed against Delenn. Delenn had seen her build up her performance slowly, over decades -- of course she knew how to see through it, through her, right to the quivering, grasping core of herself. It made her feel small, and naked, but also deeply ashamed of how she had feared for her own feelings on seeing her dear friend, forgetting entirely what Delenn would be feeling at such a strange and difficult time.
"Of course not." Mayan slipped her hand down Delenn's sleeve to knit their fingers together, and squeezed. "I would know you anywhere, any time, in any life."
no subject
Date: 2019-02-27 01:45 pm (UTC)Ohh I like this, this was really nice! Great use of Mayan POV here, I really like the voice you've given her. She sounds so insecure and uncertain and it makes a great contrast against Delenn. And it gives her kind of a hyper-attentive details feel - that probably serves her well in her vocation as a poet but also plays in nicely to her looking Delenn over and just being kinda really freaked out. The slow categorisation of all Delenn's changes has an almost-dread to it. I also like that Mayan actually isn't keen on what she sees, at least not at first - she clearly cherishes those memories of her and Delenn, and she's happy to see her old friend obviously but torn with how much has changed. That must be difficult. She's come to support her friend but at the same time this is really something beyond the pale for the Minbari generally and certainly for Mayan who knows Delenn so personally, and I like that this fic makes that clear. This is another hard undeniable proof that things are so different and changed from their prior closeness and connection as children, and Mayan's almost a little lost in the changes, maybe wondering whether the closeness and connection she knew is also subject to change. I'm glad Delenn sets her mind at ease :D
I also like how you shift the tense in the moment that Delenn calls her name - it's jarring and has a neat effect! For Delenn it's a first meeting post-transition, but for Mayan it's literally a moment out of time.
Really nice work!! Thanks for sharing :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-27 07:47 pm (UTC)I really liked it. The emotions Mayan is feeling as she circles and paces and avoids are so well conveyed and relatable, especially the internal war between not wanting to examine her feelings, and her poet's need to examine everything. She can't NOT be honest about this.
But she gets so wrapped up in the physical change that she can't see though to DELENN underneath, and it's only when she realises that Delenn sees her that it breaks though. It's really well done.
Hope you write the epic romance version some day too.