By Elizabeth Ann Lewis

Part 3

Chapter 7

Mingala woke, sitting bolt upright in bed, and immediately wished she hadn't. She was quite certain that she felt her head fall in slow motion from her neck to tumble across the floor. Reaching up, she realized it was still attached, and was somewhat disappointed. If it was attached, she had to feel it throbbing. Her stomach was attempting to take up residence in other parts of her body than its accustomed abode, but returned each time to her middle, disgruntled with its efforts and not shy about complaining about it. Her eyes were sealed shut, convinced that the bright light was hiding around a corner and was just waiting for her to open her eyelids to pop out and blind her.

The incessant beeping of her communicator was making her pulse throb in sync with it. Eyes still closed, she stumbled out of her bed and ordered, "Silence!" Obediently, the communicator went into visual alert mode, blinking instead of beeping.

Mingala slit her eyes open enough to see a small bottle and a note on the table. "Oxy pills," the note said. "Take as soon as you wake up. And drink a big glass of water."

Her stomach threatened to set off for body parts unknown again at the thought of actually having to digest anything, but Mingala persevered, swallowing the oxygen pills and a couple of painkillers she had. In a few minutes, the pain subsided and she could open her eyes all the way. She stripped off her smelly clothes and took a long, luxurious hot shower, washing her long hair.

Half-way through the shower, she began to shake. It kept up as she pulled on a robe and dried her hair. Just a small, fine tremor that ran through her body, making her unexpectedly clumsy at simple tasks. She sat at the table because her legs wouldn't hold her up and brushed her hair, trying not to think and failing.

What was she supposed to do now? Such a simple question to be so devastating. Her entire life, her entire existence had been focused on one goal, and now it was permanently out of her grasp. For so long she'd dreamed of being in a position of power, a position to help her people. After President Santiago's death, that urge had intensified; she trusted Clark about as far as she could throw him.

But now... she wasn't a good enough liar to pretend she hadn't seen everything she had seen here, hadn't learned everything she had learned. And starting over at this point was impossible. Any non-isolationist party on Earth would automatically distrust her. She had been the enemy for too long. Never mind the fact that the chances of getting elected through one of those was somewhere between slim and none.

Her political career was over before it had even begun. And she didn't know what to do now.

Groaning, she crossed her arms on the table and buried her head in them. If she hid in here long enough, would everything just go away and leave her alone?

The door chimed melodically. She sighed. "Go away!" Insistently, it signaled again. "Leave me in peace!" The alarm became a clarion, ringing almost continuously. Frustrated and feeling her headache begin to come back, she called out, "Come in, damnit!"

It slid aside to reveal Ximenn, who wasted no time in coming in and letting the door slide shut behind him. He did stop short when he saw her slumped at the table. "What are you doing?"

Mingala dropped her head to the table again and let her loose hair cover her face. "Having a crisis," her muffled voice told him.

"Have it later," he advised. "You're making a great many people nervous by your obvious change of heart."

"What does it matter?" Mingala asked. She pushed herself upright and pulled her hair back so it was out of her face. Quietly, without looking at him, she said, "I'm calling off the negotiations."

"You're what?" Ximenn demanded.

"I can't do it any more. TFC will just send someone else, I'm sure, but I can't do it. Congratulations," she said bitterly. "You won."

Ximenn didn't speak for a moment. "That's not how I wanted to win," he said, almost inaudibly.

"I was wrong." The words were simple and wrenching. "I can't pretend to be blind. I've seen too much here. I was wrong, and that's not the worst of it." She raised her head to look at him. "The worst thing is that I convinced so many people to hate. I thought I was just being logical. I thought I knew what was right, that this made sense. I thought I was impartial. And with the weapons of fear and hate and ignorance, I convinced people that I was right. And they won't believe me now when I say I was wrong."

Pausing and taking a deep breath, Mingala finished with the worst. "They followed me into hatred. They won't follow me out again." She bent her head again, letting her shining hair shield her face.

Moving silently, Ximenn stood behind her chair. Placing his hands lightly on her arms just below her shoulders, he didn't say anything, merely stood there, his presence warm and comforting. After a long moment, she took a deep breath and raised her head. "What do I do now?"

"You begin again."

"I was afraid you'd say that," she said, her tone rueful.

Ximenn's hands slipped up to her shoulders, pressing lightly. It was a long pause before he spoke. "I was young when the Earth-Minbari war ended," he said, "too young to have participated in any part of it. I had been born and raised in the religious caste, and thought I would live out my life serving my people that way. But the older I grew, the more I realized that I was not where I was meant to be."

"You left?" Mingala said, surprised.

"It never was as absolute as making a decision, yes, no, stay, leave. It was simply realizing that I had no decision to make, that I must follow my Calling. Leaving everything I knew was hard. Staying would have been worse."

Mingala nodded, resting her hands on top of his. "I know. I know."

"Listen to me." Moving to her side, he knelt beside her chair to look directly in her face. "You are in danger," he said fiercely.

"I know." Mingala clasped her hands in her lap and looked down. "No one on this station is likely to forget quickly that I wanted to throw them out of their homes."

"True enough, but that's not what I meant. You claim that you led your followers into hatred. Believe me when I say that they already had found their way. And they will hate nothing so much as a heretic."

Mingala shook her head. "No one will bother with me. I'm of no use to anyone anymore. Except myself, at least."

"Just... be careful. Please."

"I will," she promised. Sighing, she turned her head and realized that her communicator, obediently on silent mode, was blinking to indicate an incoming call. "That will be Gideon," she predicted morosely.

Without waiting to be asked, Ximenn rose and crossed out of the line of sight of the monitor. Steeling herself, Mingala tapped the communicator to accept the call.

Gideon's face appeared, white with restrained fury. "Where were you last night? Why didn't you return my call?"

"Out," Mingala answered shortly. "And I just woke up."

"What did you think you were doing? What game were you playing? I saw that interview. Are you *trying* to destroy everything we've worked for?" Gideon's questions tumbled over each other, growing in agitation and anger with every word.

"I was telling the truth, Gideon," Mingala said quietly. "I opened my eyes here and saw things that I had never seen before. It... caught me by surprise during the interview."

"You know better than that."

"I do now." She glanced off to one side and saw Ximenn standing with his arms crossed and a slight smile curling his mouth. It helped.

All at once, Gideon became the epitome of solicitude and comfort. "I should have listened to you when you said you didn't want to be interviewed. My dear, if you were confused, you should have confided in me. I could have helped."

"I needed to work things out for myself," Mingala said.

"Well, you don't need to worry about that interview," Gideon told her consolingly. "I fixed it."

"You... fixed it." It wasn't quite a question. Not anymore.

"Of course. It still is a little... confused, on your part, but the worst of it has been edited out. It aired this morning. I was trying to reach you last night before it aired, but..." Gideon waved one hand as though to dismiss the thought. "I will talk to you later, my dear." His face blinked off the screen.

Mingala stared blankly in front of her for several moments, trying to absorb what had just happened. Closing her eyes, she dredged an old bit of poetry from her memory. "'Between the thought and the action falls the shadow'." Looking up at Ximenn, she shook her head. "I'm lost in those shadows. I don't know where reality is anymore. I trust those I hated and fear those I trusted... I don't know where I am." Anguish and confusion lined her face and colored her voice.

"You are on one side of those shadows, and those you fear are on the other. For you, hatred, separation, destruction was a thought. For them, it is action." Moving forward again, he held out his hands to her. "Come."

She rose and took his hands, letting him pull her to a space of empty floor. At his request, she settled herself easily on the ground. "Close your eyes," he told her, passing his hand down to press them shut. With her unseeing, emotion he did not dare let into his voice radiated through his eyes. He could not take away her fear, her trepidation for the future. But if nothing else, he could give her the gift of a moment of tranquility. "Imagine yourself in peace. There is nothing for you to fear. Where you are it is serene and quiet. Think of nothing. Focus your whole being on each beat of your heart. Nothing more. There is nothing to fear..."

A face flickered onto the screen. Gideon nodded. "Yes," was all he said.

And then broke the connection.

That's when things went downhill.

"Gahhhhh!" Margo slammed her hand next to the vidscreen, and snarled at the face on the comset. "What do you mean, it got yanked and re-cut? Edgar!" There was nothing about the attack, nothing about Mingala's bitter take on Earth's isolationist policies, nothing worth saving had made it into the interview airing on ISN. It was enough to make her bite someone, despite being way too old for that kind of behavior.

"Orders from the higher-ups, Margo. You know the drill---"

"I know, but it was good, damnit! Who over there had the clout to mess with it this bad?" ~And why?~ she wondered, but was afraid she knew the answer.

"Someone who has something on the Executive Producer, that's all I know." Her boss sighed, his perpetually depressed face looking even longer than usual. "Word is that PsiCorp and TFC *both* called the head office."

"You're kidding me," she said blankly. "You have to be kidding me..."

"Margo, I would've loved to air it as it was, but we're just going to have to wait 'til the heat dies down. We won't give 'em any warning, and maybe we'll be able to let the public see it when there aren't so many people paying attention to what we're up to."

Margo listened to him with half her attention, scowling harder at the wimpy ending to the interview. "Sophie's going to want to kill both of us. You're just lucky she can't get there to rip strips off your hide herself. *I'm* the one who's onstation with her. She's going to flip when she finds out. And probably ask Ms. Chang a few nasty questions, the first chance she gets."

"Do you think it was Chang herself who called this one in?"

Margo stopped and considered. "No," she said after a moment. "No, I don't think she did. She didn't have time, for one. And she wouldn't have changed her mind so fast. I hope."

Someone had gotten their hands on the interview before it aired. That was the basic issue. Someone at ISN had viewed it, handed over the footage to an outside agency, gotten them on the horn to the Exec Producer, gotten the interview recut and aired the recut version. In less than twenty-four standard hours.

Sighing, Margo flipped off the vidscreen with an angry jab. "All right, fine. I get it. But I am now officially warning you that you're going to get a few more complaints in the next day or so."

"Margo--"

"Take a Tums, Edgar. I'm going to have this out with Professor Hampton before that twisty rat goes off-station. And then I'm going to have Sophie re-interview Mingala, get her real views on tape again, at which point ISN will either air the piece or I'll sell it to the Minbari!" Margo flipped off the comset without signing off, grabbed her camera case and stalked for the door, determined to make sure that whoever pulled that nameless Executive Producer's strings only had a temporary victory.

"You said that. And I said I was not going to let you wander about this station alone."

"I'm just going from Green Sector to Red Sector. Mr. Garibaldi said I would be fine."

"Mr. Garibaldi," Ximenn said with awful precision, "has been known to be wrong."

Mingala laughed again, much calmer than she had been. She had no idea how much time she'd spend sitting cross-legged on the floor with her hands in Ximenn's, but she felt like she had slept twenty hours straight. She'd never meditated before in her life, but she felt better than she could ever imagine. She'd have to do that more often, she decided.

With a practiced gesture, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and quickly braided it into one long tail. It gleamed dark against the yellow satin she wore, swinging loose as she flipped it back. Stretching her hands before her, she was surprised to find that they were not shaking. "I'm not going to enjoy this," she said, frowning.

"Probably not," Ximenn agreed. "But consider the alternative."

"Jumping a transport and disappearing for parts unknown?" Mingala asked hopefully.

"No."

"I know, I know," she sighed. "I have to tell him. I know I'll never be able to make him understand, but... he's my teacher. My mentor. I owe it to him to face him and tell him that I can't do this anymore."

Together, they walked through the corridors. As they approached Gideon's room, Mingala slowed and stopped. "You'd better go. This is going to be difficult enough. If he sees you with me..."

Ximenn nodded. Without another word, he placed one hand over her heart and bowed, then turned and walked away.

Mingala walked the scant few feet to Gideon's door -- and found herself incapable of asking for admittance. She had nothing in her defense but the conviction that she had been wrong before and was right now. Gideon would not be able to change her mind, she knew she would not be able to change his, but somehow, someway, she was going to have to make him understand that she couldn't be a symbol for their cause anymore, that she no longer believed it. She knew she had to do this -- but she dreaded it.

A sound behind her made her turn, her nerves raw. For a moment, she saw the figure and thought Ximenn was still hovering over her.

Then she realized it wasn't Ximenn. And whoever it was wasn't alone.

The lights above reflected on the long metal bars the two Minbari held, gleaming quicksilver along their length. Mingala cringed back against Gideon's door, then turned and rang for entrance. And rang again. And again, until the summoning call was a constant peal. "Gideon!" she screamed, frantically beating on the door in terror. "Help me!"

The first blow shattered her ribs. She could feel them rip inside her when she involuntarily drew breath on a gasp of pain. She bent, clutching her side in mindless agony. The metal bar struck her knee next, crumpling her to the ground. She flung one hand up, uselessly, trying to ward off the attack, and caught something about one of her attacker's throats. His face flickered, pale, then dark; smooth, then stubbled. Then a dark, hairy hand flashed before her eyes, knocking her grip loose.

Huddled on the ground, she crossed one arm above her head in pitiful defense. She couldn't move the arm on the side where her ribs were broken. One of the metal bars was brought down on her arm, and it went numb. She couldn't hear her own voice begging for mercy. She never felt the blow that destroyed her consciousness.

When he heard her scream, he knew his instincts had been proven right.

Backtracking at a dead run, he saw two Minbari with long bars beating Mingala, who lay still and silent at their feet. Turned at his roar of fury, they took off down the corridor and disappeared around a juncture. But when he reached it, there was no one to be seen.

Desperate at the delay, it seemed to take hours to return to her side. Mingala lay in a broken heap on the ground. Blood stained the yellow satin of her clothes, seeped dark and crimson from under her hair. One arm was twisted at an awkward angle. She did not move when he called her name. Her skin was pale and cold, but he could find a faint pulse beating in her throat.

Above her, the door to Gideon's rooms slid open. Gideon took one step outside, looked down, and cried, "Murderer!"