Check The Vows

Posted on Feb 06, 2015 @ 12:10pm by Ambassador Xana Bonviva
Edited on on Feb 06, 2015 @ 12:10pm

Mission: Limbo

"Check the vows"




=/\=

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”

--Erica Jong

=/\=

Location: USS PHOENIX

Scene: Jeffries Tube 5-C-7

TI: Before Jake goes to Limbo

“You wanted to talk.” The CEO of the ship looked at the panel above him with a glance as he could will it will with his blue gaze. When that didn’t work he took out a hyperspanner, “I am here and believe it or not you have my mostly undivided attention privately and not on ALL COMM. This actually works. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago.”

Xana Bonviva frowned at that as she climbed up the narrow ladder to the landing where her husband was. “You mean aside from my growing fear of enclosed spaces and how engineering thingys seem to stop working when I’m around.”

As a fuse for no apparent reason *popped* when his azure wife’s face appeared next to him Jake concede. “Your technological know-how and ability to kill things on sight are remarkable talents and I do appreciate it—“

“You do?” Xana asked.

“Two words: job security,” Jake grinned. As the CEO began the process of shutting down nearby panels he said, “So what was so important that you decided to shut down my Jeffries Tubes?”

The Bolian/Human looked around the enclosed area before sighing. "Is this place secure?"

"It's a Jeffries Tube on an under-staffed ship. Honey, not to put too fine a point on it, there's not exactly too many secure places but outside of the waste-recycling center this is the next best place I can think of. So what's up?"

Jake kept his words light intentionally, but he knew that for Xana to make her way here before his launch this wasn't a "Oh I'm going to miss my husband so let me give him a send off kiss" kind of good-bye. Nor was it a "Holy Hells, the kids are acting up, why don't you take them with you on this endeavor?" meetup that they having. This was something else.

"How did you know I would want to go--"

"I've had to create a program to keep erasing your logs since someone can't figure out yet how to do that," Jake said cutting her off. "By the way, Dahlia is officially surpassing you in this field."

Xana gave a careless shrug. "She's always been frightening bright when it comes to these things," she sighed. There was a long weighted pause as she put two and two together. Looking over at Jake she asked, "You helped Dahlia create the program?"

"It'd be easier to explain my 9 year old erasing her mother's logs in a fit of technological irresponsibility than me being an accomplice to my wife's abusing her former position," the engineer pointed out softly. "You're looking up records that you no longer should have access to and everything I know about him makes me afraid to ask to why." Now Jake flipped over onto his stomach and looked at his wife. "Why? What is your connection to this Seth character?"

Xana looked down the ladder she was still perched on and felt her lungs constrict. "I hate Jeffries Tubes."

"Right," Jake sighed. Doing an Army crawl backwards he said, "Come down and follow me. I've got to go to the next panel anyway." The Human engineer crawled back enough and held out a hand to help Xana crawl into the tube. Once they got to the next panel, Jake flipped onto his back once again and said, "No more popping fuses as you talk."

Xana rolled her violet eyes but the joke did more to calm her nerves than her poor attempts at regulating her breaths. Instead she spoke in low tones in Jake's ear about a trial that took place years ago, where she acted as Seth's defense in abstensia but to no avail; he was stripped of his citizenship. She continued on how no one had still heard from him but from time to time she kept up with leads of Rawyvin Seth; that as Secretary of Starfleet it was her job to do so.

Then suddenly one day, almost 1 year ago, she came home to her villa and there he was playing her piano; an ephemeral thought come to life. No one else was home, just her and Angus...and Rawyvin Seth.

"Did he...were you..." Jake asked quietly as he searched his wife's face. Truthfully, he wasn't sure what he was asking, just that something had to be asked.

"I'm not sure what you're asking but the answer is no," Xana sighed. Her face took on a thoughtful introspective quality. "He fancies himself a great seducer but changes at the slightest provocation to sociopath. He never hurt me, not really. And I never had the desire to take things further."

Jake closed his eyes then. "I'm not sure I can hear more," he muttered.

Xana tapped his nose until he opened up his eyes. "You have to." Nodding up to his beloved fuses, wires, and panels she said, "Focus on that if you have to."

Crichton sighed and fixed the next panel and listened. He listened to his wife explain how she tried to use Seth to uncover who was behind his return to the Alpha Quadrant.

"Turning him in didn't seem like a viable option," Jake couldn't help but bite out. "If only you had known to go to the authorities. Oh wait you were the authority here--"

"I miscalculated," Xana admitted. "Now can I continue?" When Jake didn't say anything she continued on. She told him one day she went to pick up Ben and Dahlia at school but they weren't there...

"What?!" Jake said.

"Let me finish," Xana explained. And so she did -- she explained Seth's warning that someone else was also being used by Edgerton, someone else without Seth's morality. "Believe it or not, Seth would not hesitate to harm or kill me. But he did draw the line at the kids," she sighed.

"Or so he wanted you to think," Jake pointed out. "How do we know--"

"They weren't known associates," Xana explained. As Jake stared at the console his wife whispered of Edgerton's plans, hazy connections to Seth that she was trying to connect more concretely...and how Edgerton tried to tie it all back to Xana via the Khitomer mission she alone authorized Seth for to bring back Evangeline Montoya.

"So now he does have an associate," the engineer frowned. "Which you gave him." When Xana said nothing, Jake put it all together in his mind. “This is why there was a trial back on EARTH - one which you said was about--”

“Si--”

“And that got Edgerton’s Intel Star removed.”

“Well I was right about that,” Xana pointed out fiercely.

The spouses were head to head but their bodies were pointed in opposite directions as it can only ever be in Jeffries Tubes. Jake looked at Xana and asked, “Why? Why did you set off Seth like that?”

Xana said nothing for a long time as reached into some murky morass deep inside of her that was all too familiar inside her. “I knew what it was like to feel hated, to do terrible things and find yourself in an unending cycle and no way out. To have almost had it all and then wake up one day, to see the stranger in the mirror and know that stranger is you.”

Jake said nothing; he wanted to argue it wasn’t the same. That whatever seriously questionable decisions his wife had made they weren’t on the same sociopathic-murder-spree level of Rawyvin Seth.

“There was a glimmer of humanity in him. I know you don’t believe me,” she sighed, “but there was. And I wanted to reach it.” There was a long span of quiet before Xana said, “Society has a right to protect itself, but it doesn’t have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish, but not a right to kill. I’ve killed and I’ve been wrong to do so and those deaths are on me. I don’t want another death on me.” Leaning in she said, “I think you agree with me. Because you also know what it’s like. You *know*.”

The engineer said nothing, letting his own painful memories of the Second Dominion War wash over him. “I didn’t become a monster. A lot of people didn’t become monsters when faced with--”

“You had people who reached out to you,” Xana argued. “What if you had no one? I mean *no one*.” When Jake said nothing, just studying his tools, the Bolian/Italian sighed, “I just wanted to let you know why I was going; what you were going into. He won’t hesitate to use force, but if you can reason with him that will be your best bet.”

Jake said nothing for a long time. Finally he raised his eyes up to his wife’s face where she was studying him with a calm look on her face. “Why? Why tell me all this? You’re not supposed to,” he pointed out. The more he thought back over their conversation the more it him -- a secret trial, all of Seth’s crimes, Xana’s morally questionable choices that *no one* knew about -- there was a pile bigger than the socks that his son hid under his bed of things that Jake shouldn’t know about. “Why?”

Xana looked at Jake. She thought of the years she missed him, how yes he ran but yes she pushed. She thought of the oaths she took…

“I promised to be your wife, for better or worse, love and honor you, some stuff in the middle, until we died.” When Jake looked up she said softly, “It’s the most important oath I’ve taken, I was wrong to say it wasn’t.”

Accepting the unspoken apology Jake smirked, “Some stuff in the middle?”

“I was hot and I had a heavy dress on and had already gone through one ceremony that day with Daisy before we had our ceremony, look I agreed to it all didn’t I?” Xana joked. Rolling her eyes she said, “Look if I haven’t killed you after all these years, it seems really unfair someone else gets to do so.”

“You said until death until we do part,” the engineer teased in a voice that would have done their kids proud.

Xana grinned. “Check the vows, Crichton, I never said I wouldn’t be the one to kill you.” Giving him a kiss she said, “I just don’t want someone else to do it first.”

=/\=

Choose your allies carefully: it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.

-L. Neil Smith

=/\=

Scene: Transporter Room

“Ms. Bonviva, please wait.”

Xana turned around while Angus waited patiently. “Lt. Dalziel, what do I owe the pleasure?”

The CNS watched the civilian dressed in black yoga slacks and gray wrap top. The azure woman had a black bag slung over her shoulder as well. “Going sightseeing?”

“Angus needs to be walked,” Xana parried.

The Bajoran appearing Counselor smiled at that. “Good one,” she replied back equally quick. Looking around she leaned in and said conversationally, “I spoke to your husband.”

The Bolian/Human pursed her lips and narrowed in her eyes at that. “I will kill him, it’s still within the vows,” was all she said.

“I won’t even pretend to understand that,” Eve replied, although her lips quirking up belied that comment. “No he saw a quote in my office and he thought we should talk about it on the way down.” When the former Secretary raised her eyebrows, the Counselor continued on, “There are no bystanders in life….Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.” As she looked at the other woman, Eve held out a hand for Angus to sniff; once he did she petted the German Shepherd/Rottweiler’s head. “He thought you would appreciate that.”

There was a long pause as the women studied each other. “On the way down?”

Eve adjusted her own civilian clothes. “I heard LIMBO is famous for it’s Ladies Night.” Gesturing to the transporter PADD she said, “Shall we?” She watched the other woman climb the steps to the PADD and the dog easily climb next to her. Eve took her place next to Xana and whispered, “You know you did technically announce you were going to kill Commander Crichton before. I could just throw you in the Brig for that and be done with this.”

“First rule of ladies night out on LIMBO is we don’t talk about what happens ladies night out on LIMBO,” Xana smiled. “Including that.”

“Second rule of ladies night out on LIMBO is we don’t talk about ladies night out on LIMBO,” Eve joined in.

“Third rule is--”

“--there is no third rule.”

Coming to an unspoken agreement, Eve nodded to the Transporter Chief. “We’re ready.” With that the two women disappeared in a blue beam.

=/\=

NRPG: I was going to write more but I think this is way long enough. But hey - Xana (and now Eve!) are on LIMBO! At some point I’ll try to write for Montoya.

BTW - the quote in Eve’s office is from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Shawn/Susan: Hope I did ok with your characters!

Anyone - I’m around for a JP!

=/\=

Sarah Albertini-Bond

Xana Bonviva

Civilian