Blast Furnace

The Arrow That Springs From the Bow – 1/1 (Valen/Delenn)

May 12th, 2008 | →

“The Arrow That Springs From the Bow”
A Babylon 5 Story
Erotica: Valen/Delenn
A Blast Furnace Production
Copyright (C) 1998 by A. Manley Haight

This story is not in any way intended to infringe on copyrights held by J. Michael Straczynski, Babylonian Productions Inc, or AOL Time Warner Productions. This story may be distributed only with prior permission of the author, and may not be posted to any archive, ftp site, or web page without the written permission of the author. This story is distributed for the individual personal entertainment of persons of legal age for viewing sexually explicit material in areas where such viewing is legal, and is not subject to purchase or sale by anyone.

“I am like the arrow that springs from the bow; no hesitation, no doubts.”
Sinclair, “War Without End”

“Some Cupid kills with arrows; some with traps.”
Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” III,c. 1599

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Delenn couldn’t bring herself to cry over John’s grave. The tears had all been shed. She thought sometimes that they had mostly been cried while he was still alive. In some ways his passing had been a release, because he had not continued to suffer the torment of his people and the terrible burden of what he had been forced to do to keep the peace, not only on his homeworld, but among the stars, too.He was a year gone. It had been too soon, much sooner than it should have been. The strain of his life had only given them five years together. And then she had had to move on. Her beloved John had, at last, passed beyond the veil, into the land where no shadows fall.The morning was new, fresh and bright where she stood on the hill. The grass was long and supple, moving in the light breeze as the sun rose over the mountain range in the east. Back the other way was the valley of Tuzan’la, where Tuzanor spread to fill the bowl like a thousand crystal pearls tossed from the heavens.

She could see, far across the valley, the flash of sun reflected from the vast windows of Valen’s house. It was like a second small star over Tuzanor, a blaze of truth and immediacy that made her gut clench. So much could happen in twenty years, since that first moment on the Valen’tha just before the war with Earth had ended. John had been part of her, body and soul, but he had not always been the only one who could complete that union with her. Valen’s house flamed in the dawn, blinding her, but it wasn’t until she heard the voice behind her that she closed her eyes.

“Delenn.”

“My lord,” she said quietly.

“Does it not please you to be home?” The voice was gentle, deep and masculine, a voice she knew from her dreams, her prayers, her most profound yearnings. She could not turn around to face him. She couldn’t bear his magnificence, even though it had been unavoidable when she had arrived three days ago.

“More than you can know,” she said, feeling her tears quiver in her voice. It was not for John that the tears came now, and they were not tears of sadness.

“I did not summon you to Minbar to remind you of old pain,” Valen said. He had an Old World accent, rich and sensuous, and spoke the modern tongues with a preternatural ease.

“I know. Please, my lord, do not apologize for being what you are. I could not bear that.” She heard Valen come up behind her, walking quietly in the grass. He came close, but didn’t touch, his body blocking some of the breeze. She shivered in spite of it, his warmth gentling the sudden breath of madness that rose in her chest.

“I’m sorry about John,” he said. She shook her head slightly to let him know that the deep sorrow in his voice did not need to be there.

“It fades, my lord,” she whispered. He seemed to understand in the next moment, and his tone changed completely.

“I don’t feel close to you as I once did,” he said, his own agony suddenly, wrenchingly obvious in his voice. “Since my return, you have looked at me only as your master and prophet. Am I nothing else to you? Can you no longer think of me as a man?”

“I think of nothing else,” was her soft, aching reply. “My lord, I cannot, I…” She tried to move, to get away from him before she could no longer bear it. Both of his hands grabbed her shoulders, holding her. The grip was strong, insistent but gentle.

“I am reflection,” he said, his voice low and hot, burning her. “I am the mirror you will not face. Are you so terrified of what you will see of yourself in my eyes? Are you so terrified of what you will see of me there, too?” He made her turn around to face him, and she kept her eyes down. “Look at me,” he commanded. “Look at me, Delenn’se!”

She could do nothing but obey. His eyes picked up the sun, fiery gold in the morning light. She tried not to see what was there, tried not to let that astonishing brightness into her. It was searing, honest, stripped naked of all pretense and illusion. She saw her own raw yearning for him, her shame in it, her terror of this truth. It was made all the more unbearable by the fact that she saw his own longing, answering her.
“My lord, we cannot,” she whispered.

“Delenn,” he said warningly. She tore out of his grip, turning away from him again.

“I will not shame you this way!” she said savagely, trying to hold back the scream that wanted out of her throat. “I will not make you shi’noku with this.”

“Do not say that word in my presence,” Valen snarled. “Do not speak to me of that filthy taboo. When I was human I just thought you didn’t feel the way I did. I had to become Minbari before I understood, and then you were not in my life anymore. You were allowed to marry John. This is no different.”

“It is different. He was not you.” Her voice shook. “I will not profane you with this. I will not.”

“You dare to tell me that the way you feel about me is profane?” Valen said, his voice rough with disgust. “Do I profane myself by feeling what I feel for you? Is it sacrilege for me to have the thoughts I do? Blasphemy for me to tell you of them?”

She heard his footsteps in the grass again, and tensed, not daring to move either to flee or face him. His body touched hers this time, warm up against her back, and his hands rested on her shoulders. She shuddered, knowing she couldn’t stop the reaction, and closed her eyes as Valen lowered his mouth to nuzzle her gently. She could feel his warm breath through her hair, on her neck and ear. “Oh, no ritual, Delenn. I’ve spent my whole life living by ritual, creating ritual where necessary. You and I have used it as an excuse, hiding in the maze of endless propriety. When I was human I hid from you, behind my rank, behind my species. Most of all behind my terror. I will hear no more excuses from you. I destroy them, now, in both of us. Make love to me, Delenn’se. Let me make love to you.”

Her knees almost gave way.

“My lord?” she said, the words coming out more like a gasp. He laughed quietly against her neck, a sensuous, resonant sound that she could feel through her body where they touched.

“You used to call me Jeffrey,” he said, his voice like fire and smoke, close and private for her alone. “Say yes, Delenn’se.” She could hear his smile in his voice, and turned in his embrace, resting against his chest to look up into his face. His mouth was so close to hers, his smile gentle. His lips parted slightly but he didn’t move to kiss her. It was obvious in his eyes that he would have welcomed it if she had.

She realized she was holding him, her arms around his back, and he was embracing her gently. She wondered if she should have been shocked that she was touching Valen like that, but he was warm and sensual and felt so good that she didn’t want to let go.

“Yes,” she whispered. She should have released him then. Oh, gods, it was Valen she held in her arms. Yet, she could not escape the other truth of him; that they had known each other before, in a life that now seemed so very far away. The feelings remained…buried and ignored for so long because their lives together had been interrupted. She had gone on to marry John, and to love him with all her being. Valen had also married, and had children — something she and John had never been able to do. Somewhere in that deep past, she knew him as Jeffrey. Perhaps there was enough between them that she could have called him Jeff, though she had never dared.

She couldn’t let him go, from her embrace or from her life. She was ashamed, because she was no longer full Minbari and for her to be with him in this way was forbidden. But she couldn’t let him go, and pressed herself against him, burying her face against his throat, taking in the warm smell of his skin and his clothes. She could have kissed him…just pulled his head down to hers desperately and taken the sweetness she dreamed of late in the night. But she knew if she allowed herself to taste his mouth, here, like this, she wouldn’t be able to stop at just that. Such public displays, even here on the grass in the hills where they were not likely to be discovered, were unthinkable.

He pulled away from her, and looked down into her eyes with his own flaming like the sun. She knew that he was right about the maze between them, the walls that they had made. She should have pulled away from his strong embrace, tried to refuse the soft brush of his lips on her mouth, because she was so afraid of shaming him. She didn’t move. On the hill, then. For all to see, if they dared.

“You are so magnificent,” he whispered. He did not kiss her yet, did not have to for the power of what he was to take hold of her. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to reconcile it all, the hot, male scent of him, the low resonance of his voice, his hands holding her with love and awe. She was trembling by the time he reached her neck, and he brushed her hair away gently to kiss and nip at her soft skin. It was almost unbearable, and she held back a cry of delight and hunger, giving herself to his strength because her own had deserted her.

Her cry would have been unseemly, but she heard him laugh against her throat. All at once she realized what he was doing — to both of them.

“You’re…taunting me,” she breathed. “Oh, I can’t…”

“Can’t what?” His voice was impossibly vulgar just in the sound of it, making her gut clench deliciously. “Can’t conceive of biting me? Can’t imagine clawing my back as I sheathe myself in you, both of us down on the grass? Is that what lurks in the back of your mind and you dare not show it to me?”

It was the sound of that voice, low and teasing and sultry, that made her lose all control of her senses and judgement. She pulled back just so she could take his mouth with hers, demanding his reply, starving for the pleasure of his tongue against hers. He grunted, a laugh and a snarl together, and opened his mouth for her, tasting her, devouring her.

She had long since stopped trying to figure out exactly who she was in love with. A human ambassador? The greatest leader of their people? A voice in the prophecies? It was said Valen had many faces, many hearts. He was Compassion, Respect, Delight…he was Terror as well and they often forgot that part of it, even though its lesson was the hardest and most important. She had wondered what it would be like to know the man at the core of it. The possession of his mouth, his incredible strength against her, told her much about that man.

He did not kiss the way a human did, the way John had. John had taught her something of the human custom in this, and she had taught him the Minbari way. They had found some kind of unconscious middle ground, as only married couples could. She knew Valen in this moment, not for anything so concrete as his kiss, but for the cry of his passion that only her soul could hear. That was familiar. Even half-human, she had been stronger than John, and she had gotten used to withholding that strength during their lovemaking. Valen was the one now withholding strength from her. She could feel it in the way his body shuddered and his hands moved slowly on her back.

Even his kiss, almost bruising, was gentled. Not that she minded the roughness. John had sometimes been rough with her. The first time, he had apologized, and she had used her greater strength to flip him onto his back and show him how little she minded, much to his surprise. She still remembered his hungry cries and his laughter.

The Valen spoken of in the histories seemed gentle and compassionate, but she had never forgotten that the histories also called him Terror. She had studied this all her life, seen it reflected in Sinclair’s personality when she had known him as Commander of Babylon 5. There had been much more…she could still hear his whisperings to her in his delirium on the Valen’tha, just before the war had ended. Sometimes she still woke in the night, gasping, with the power of it, even though the Shadow War was long gone, and Sinclair’s destiny had been found.

But had it been completed?

Oh gods, he was biting her neck, carefully, slowly, his breath hot against her skin. He let go and licked the spot briefly.

“Delenn,” he breathed, almost a moan. She knew what he was going to say, to ask, and she knew she couldn’t bear to let him speak it aloud. Their people had always been conscious of power differences, between individuals as well as between civilizations. His place was to own her, to dominate her. Such possession was often rough, but he would not claim that without knowing for certain she wanted him to.

“I am Minbari, my lord,” she whispered, lifting her head to kiss the side of his jaw softly. That was enough, and Valen caught her mouth again in a deep kiss.

“Am I your lord?” he wondered when he drew back. “Even now?”

“Yes,” she said. He smiled as she pushed his cloak from his shoulders, and he caught it to let it down to the ground lightly. “And that is as I wish it.”

“You’ve wanted to know for a long time,” he said, seeing her delight at the prospect of getting the clothes off of him. “Let me show you then. Let me make it a gift to you.”

He bared a man’s muscular beauty to her, the fullness of maturity and the hardness of a warrior’s life. She held her breath, watching him, arrested by the pure cream color of his skin and the cerulean khe’re markings on his belly and groin. It was a strong blue for a man in middle age. She would have expected it on much younger men than him. It was exquisite. He was scarred lightly in a few places, the marks of his soldier’s life even as a Minbari.

She had to move closer, to touch the handsome, warm cock between his legs that was emerging slowly from its sheath. She had been surprised by how much John’s penis had been similar to a Minbari’s, with its sheath and general shape. The differences, though, made her heart quicken as much now as then, because after so long she was once more with a Minbari male, who had his own sweet distinctions.

He shivered at her touch, holding still for her, his cock responding to the caress to stiffen more in her hand. She let go just as it began to tremble, but the sensation of her hand drawing lightly up his stomach sent more fire to it, and in a few moments he was fully erect, aching, without her even touching him there. She was acutely aware of her robes between them, and even as she had the thought, Valen’s hands were already on her, removing them.

She felt starvation in his urgency, and he had to stop twice to hold her against him for a long, searching kiss. He was reaching for her soul with it, his arms strong and warm around her. He tasted sweet, like fruit he must have eaten that morning, and she gasped when his hands slid down her flanks to push the rest of her clothes away. He savored her long shudder as his hands found the curve of her bare hips and buttocks. She was almost feverishly warm, a welcome sensation in the cool morning air.

His ache to be inside her was a hard pulse in his blood and thoughts. He had spent a century away from her, feeling her so close to him even over that distance of time and space. She was pressed up against him, her face resting in the hollow of his neck, her hands hesitantly stroking the muscles across his back and shoulders. For a few moments he just held her, taking in the reality of his own presence here in this time, and the solidity of her faith and devotion to him. Then he released her briefly to retrieve his outer cloak, spreading it out on the ground for them to kneel on. She joined him eagerly, resuming her fascinated caress of his body. The chrysalis machine had changed her, but her humanity was less apparent than some humans believed. Her breasts were a little fuller, but her nipples were pale blue, her skin much fairer than most humans’ would have been.

She didn’t know what Valen expected, but to his eyes the differences would be obvious. She shivered, wondering if she pleased him, but when his gentle hands settled on her shoulders, his thumb stroking softly, she saw his cock tremble, hardening further, and that was all the proof she required. Her musculature was not exactly like a human’s, but to Valen it was a glory, her body supple and powerful. He wondered if he were as pleasing to her, but she seemed distracted by the swirling, azure markings that painted down into his hairless groin, her fingers tickling softly at the bulge of his retracted testicles, coaxing them down into her palm gently. He rumbled softly, deep in his throat, and he saw her smile although she did not look up.

“Would you believe me if I told you that you are beautiful beyond measure?” she asked, and he knew she had been thinking the same things he had. His testicles were in her hand, full and sensitive. He purred quietly before answering.

“The things I feel in your touch tell me everything,” he said, and she did look up at him then, hearing how completely he understood her just from her caress of his body. “I feel not just your love, but your regret, too. Guilt. Shame. Passion.” He shuddered. “The weight of it fills me and suddenly I’m you…” She put her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers for another hard kiss, this one full of desperation. There was violence promised in it somewhere, violence begged. She bit his lip as she drew back, and saw his eyes flame. “I can be that, Delenn,” he said. “If you claim it.”

I am Terror!

“Yes.” She had been surprised that she dared to bite him like that, but her need for him had been a demon howling at the gate for so long she could not remember any respite. The sound of his voice had shattered her, offering himself to her this way, warning her. He lunged forward to bite her, his arms going around her to pull her to him, his mouth engulfing her throat. It hurt, sweetly and with a brightness she could not have explained. She cried out, owned by him in that moment in the same way he had owned her with his power all her life. He bit again, into the soft flesh under her jaw, his harsh snarl resonating into her bones.

She could only whimper, her hands around his back, nails digging into his muscled shoulders. John had been too egalitarian to understand this, too gentle of a man in his private life, in spite of his ability to command the Army of Light. But Valen had been its creator, and by the point of his hand it had been the hammer and sword of the Minbari people for a hundred years. That aggression had never needed to be summoned, but it had often needed to be leashed. He did not draw blood, but he was licking the sensitive places he had bitten, still rumbling quietly.

She was arching her body against him, feeling his cock brush her stomach, wet with his own desire. The feel of it made her clutch at the backs of his shoulders. And then he pushed his hips into her, deliberately, slowly rubbing himself against her belly, making that low sound in his chest. She gave a soft whimper, and suddenly felt herself being lowered to the ground on her back, his hands behind her, holding her easily. He would not harm her, or let any harm come to her, but when he took her wrists and put them down by her head, she shuddered hard.

It was not strange to her that Valen would be dominant, or that she would so fiercely want him to be. He understood why she needed it, and he was long accustomed to filling the roles his people asked of him. He found joy and rough pleasure in this one, settling himself between her thighs as her legs wrapped around him. He rubbed her sex lightly with the tip of his cock, feeling her squirm beneath him, gasping, trying to lure him inside to complete the union her body screamed for. His heart was racing, his own body shuddering closer to completion just from watching her respond to him.

“Be still,” he rasped, desperate for the control to finish this the way it needed to be done. He had no hope if she kept wriggling like that — it made him mad with lust. She tried to obey, trembling as he began to push into her, but that first moment of him spreading her open made her cry out and she couldn’t stop her hips from rising to meet him. He moved with her, preventing himself from sinking deeper, and growled. “Be still,” he commanded hoarsely. Her hips sank back to the ground but she couldn’t relax, the muscles in her legs and back taut like steel.

“I…can’t — oh!” she panted as he moved again, slowly sheathing himself.

“You will,” he said, certain of it. He could feel her pulse through his cock, her muscles clenching him hard, rippling. Her mouth opened in a soundless howl as she took more of him, and when he was halfway in, he paused. “Look at me, Delenn.”

She was amazed by the tension and hunger in his face, every cell of his being concentrated on holding back the release that pressed at him with a blinding force. Was she so provocative? Just the sight of it made her sex tremble around him, and he groaned. She tried to rise from the ground again, needing more of him, his impalement of her a delicious point of heat that consumed her awareness. He did not let go of her wrists, but his voice pinned her just as surely. “Be still,” he whispered again. “Be still.”

The words dissolved into a growl of determination, and he moved his hips in some way that sent a wave of fire through her and she had to clamp her legs around him to stop herself from bucking against him again. He was pushing into her again, making the size of his cock felt with exquisite slowness. His breaths were quivering, and he shifted his weight on his knees slightly to change the angle of his penetration. She felt something rise in her belly, an emotion so intense she suddenly feared it, and she tried to free her hands to hold him. He wouldn’t let her go, and she met his eyes with her own wide ones.

“I can’t, I can’t!” she gasped. “Please — ”

“Shh,” he shushed her, pushing ever deeper, filling her. “Stay with me, Delenn. I’m here.” He could not continue to invade her forever. In another moment he would be sheathed completely and there would be nowhere else for this feeling to go. “I’m here,” he said again, and she realized all at once it was a warning, his voice revealing the strain of his taut body. “No more waiting for us. No more hiding. This is what you have demanded.”

“Oh Valen!” she howled, arching up against him, trying to shove against his body but he was as unyielding as stone. It was an oath as much as a cry to him.

“Yes,” he snarled. “I am Valen.” He was buried in her, their bodies joined in a point of flame, and his eyes were open to her in the moment his climax hit him. She saw the man he had always been, a core of justice, strength, passion, fierceness.

His breath caught and a shudder ripped through him as he leaned down to take her mouth again in a sensuous, gentle kiss. His hips trembled as he let go into her, and he groaned into her mouth, quiet and low. She would never know why it wasn’t until that moment that she realized that Valen was in love with her. That her very presence made him hard. That he could barely control himself just entering her, without ever even thrusting. It scared her more than anything she had ever faced, that she had this power over him, that he would surrender to it more easily than she would.

She joined him then, breaking away from his kiss to cry out with her full voice as her own climax gripped her. He whispered something in one of the ancient languages, a language no one spoke anymore. It had the sound of encouragement, of affection, and he let go of her wrists so she could embrace him. He was purring when she regained some sense of where she was, and he finally let his instinct take over to slide his cock in and out of her a few times in pure relish. She growled, surprising him, and stroked his face and throat.

“Oh, in Valen’s name,” she gasped. He laughed at that, a full, hard chuckle of awareness of the scale of that joke.

“Swear by Broahm, if you wish,” he panted, withdrawing from her gently to flop down on his back next to her. “He died a thousand years before my time.” He let out a tremendous, rumbling sigh of pleasure and contentment. She chuckled and rolled onto her side to put one arm across his chest, saying nothing for several long, delicious minutes. The stiff breeze still ruffled grass on the hilltop, and the sun beat down on their bodies warmly.

“Do you really believe you are making me shi’noku with this?” he asked softly as she traced the outline of one of his pectorals. Her hand stopped and she put her palm flat on his chest.

“I do not know,” she whispered. “A part of me says yes. Another part knows only that I have loved you all my life. If I loved you while you were human, did that not also make me shi’noku?”

“It is a foolish custom,” Valen said, and she raised her head to him, attentive to his opinion, to his wisdom. “We cannot interbreed with other races. Genetics won’t allow it. Even you and I could not. The purity of our people is something I have always advocated, but fanatics and scholars over the centuries have distorted my intent. They think I am talking about genetic and racial purity. I speak of purity of mind, of thought and action. I speak of the truth speaking through us. The truth speaks through us, Delenn, you and me. I was in love with you when I was human, when I did not know what I was to become, when I did not remember that we had met before on the Valen’tha.”

“I have tried not to think about that,” she said, her voice wrenching him, “but I am afraid to forget such a mistake, afraid of the ignorance of forgetting.” She had whipped him, had tortured him, thinking he was nothing more than a stinking, sweating animal from a race of animals who had murdered Dukhat, her master. Valen turned to her, kissing her jaw and neck.

“Did you not know you had my forgiveness for that, Delenn’se?” he whispered against her throat. “Always, Delenn. Always, I forgive you anything.” She lost herself in his forgiveness, in the sweet warmth of his body and his mouth on hers. She stopped thinking about the past, trying to comprehend this incredible now that had come to her.

“There’s a stream at the bottom of the hill,” she murmured idly, “where we could wash.”

“I know,” he said, laughter dancing in his eyes. “I’ve played in that stream hundreds, thousands of times. That was a long time ago, of course.” She laughed, the sound thrilling him.

“Played?” she said archly.

“Oh yes.” His voice was full of mock seriousness. “Alone and…not.” She tried to imagine him standing in the stream, alone, pleasuring himself in the dappled sun through the trees. He would lean back, the climax overwhelming him, his shout of ecstasy filling the woods as he spent himself in the coursing water.

“Let us go, then,” she said, getting to her feet, still naked and showing no embarrassment in it. Valen stood with her, leaving his cloak and the rest of their clothes on the grass. “I want to watch you…play.” He chuckled deep in his chest as they walked down the hill together, into the late morning sun.
The End

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Babylon 5, Fanfic

 

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