A certain point in space...

Buffy fans can have a little gaslighting

at least the way i interpret the episode, while he told himself about the valen reveal in the letters from 900 years ago, he didn't tell delenn. her letter tells her that he's the one who will take babylon 4 into the past, and what he needs her to do... but he signed it only as jeffrey sinclair.

(perhaps he has naturalized himself to the minbari way of doling out important information in small pieces.)

in her quarters, she's grieving his loss as a friend, not processing a fundamental change in her spiritual understanding of the universe.

then, on the white star, when he tells her (in minbari) that he knows the future...

it comes together.

and then the way she reflexively drops her gaze as minbari do out of respect for someone with higher status... (if only for a moment)

i love this moment soooo so much, please appreciate it with me.

bonus flashback to the very first time they looked at each other face to face, when he was captured at the battle of the line...

i know you. i know who you are. i know you.

anyway if you need me i will be thinking about this and nothing else for the next four to six business days.

BUT

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.