Mother's Day

Posted on May 10, 2015 @ 8:10pm by Commander Jacob Crichton & Ambassador Xana Bonviva
Edited on on May 10, 2015 @ 8:10pm

Mission: The Lights of Hyperion

= Mother's Day =
(cont'd from "The Adventures of Captain Smooshy...")



LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Bonviva-Crichton Quarters

STARDATE: [2.15] 0510.



She told herself not to look.



Sometimes, it was easy not to. There were the kids, plus Gavi and Erika. There were odd jobs around the ship, volunteer teams who'd been busy with everything from supplies inventory to routine maintenance in the lesser-used parts of the ship. And now with all the refugees to deal with, the work had quadrupled. There was always something to do, some way to keep busy, some way to distract herself.



But it didn't make the *need* go away. It just saved it up, and at night when she should have been asleep with her husband, she would lie awake or she would get up and go to the next room and try to read, listen to music, do *anything*. Anything to make that urge to look go away. It didn't matter what she tried, or how long she put it off.



Sooner or later, she would look.



**Why are you doing this to yourself?** Xana asked as she activated the console. Jake was asleep in their bedroom, and she could hear soft snoring coming from the childrens' rooms. It was one of the few times that things were quiet in their quarters, and Xana found the stillness both comforting and lonely. She hovered her fingers over the keyboard and felt a million miles away from everything.



Xana held her breath. She pushed the button.



The screen lit up the hopeful blue emblem of the United Federation of Planets. Even though she'd burned a lot of her bridges when she'd escaped with Jake and the kids, some of Xana's old passwords and backdoors still gave her access to some restricted Federation comm buoys. Bureaucracy could always be counted on to move at a glacial pace, and Xana was glad nobody had thought to lock her out yet, but she used a few tricks Jake had taught her to make sure the connection was encrypted. She didn't want Edgerton and his army of psychopaths backtracking the signal to the PHOENIX's location.



The search query was saved in the system. Xana had searched for it 27 times in the last three days. With practiced ease, she activated the search again. The results compiled quickly, and the title of the requested file splashed itself across the screen in block letters:



SIEGE OF BOLARUS - TACTICAL REPORT.



**Just close it now,** Xana thought. **There's nothing you can do.**



But she didn't believe that, no matter how many times she repeated it. She scrolled through the report, and just as the section she'd been looking for slid into view, she closed her eyes.



**Don't look,** she thought again. **There's nothing in here but pain. Why do you keep putting yourself through it?**



She couldn't answer that. Jake would probably tell her it was her sense of duty, but Xana sometimes thought she just had a nasty masochistic streak. **You're doing this to punish yourself,** she thought, **because you think you *deserve* to be punished. Because you're not there.**



Xana opened her eyes. The heading she'd been looking for was almost dead center on the screen before her:



CASUALTIES, ESTIMATED/CONFIRMED.



Every time, the number was higher. She knew that made a chilling sort of sense- there was a war on, after all- but some tiny flicker of hope always seemed to remain, a hope that she might one day open up and find that the numbers had *reduced*. That someone had made a mistake, that there was at least one less orphan in the galaxy than the analysts had projected.



It was possible. War was hell on the record-keepers. Evacuations of major Bolian cities had been hastily assembled in the wake of the Romulans' initial attack. People could have gotten on the wrong transport, separated from the ones they loved, or simply been stuck inside the city until a rescue could be mounted. There was always so much incomplete information during war, usually filled in with guesswork and pessimism, but not every story had to end in heartbreak.



Wasn't it possible that *some* of them could still be alright?



But every time Xana looked, the numbers grew. And grew, and grew, and grew.



**Are you daring yourself?** she thought, angry in spite of the tears that formed at the corner of her violet eyes. **Trying to see what number will finally be high enough to take you away from your family? Trying to see how much *guilt* it would take to torpedo everything you've fought to hold on to?**



Xana wasn't sure. All she knew was that she *had* to look, even though she never felt better afterwards.



"Xana?"



She turned, and saw Jake coming out of their bedroom. He looked worried. This wasn't the first night he'd found her, sitting at the computer with tears in her eyes. He didn't have to ask what had upset her.



"I woke you," she said, wiping the tears away.



"It's okay," Jake said.



"No, it's not," she said. "You have another long day tomorrow."



"Don't worry about that," Jake said, and he sat beside her. She leaned up against him, and he put his arm around to pull her close. They didn't speak. Jake only sat there, and let Xana cry as he ran his fingers lightly through her hair. He trusted that she would talk when she was ready, and Xana loved him for that. It was a long time before she'd composed herself, when the weight of those horrible numbers she'd seen finally seemed to ease.



"This can't go on," she said, quietly.



"It won't last forever," Jake said. "Once we expose Edgerton's conspiracy, we--"



"That's not what I mean," Xana said, looking up into her husband's pale blue eyes. "I mean, *I* can't go on like this. I can't go on doing nothing."



"What do you mean?"

When you with someone for a long time, conversations were repeated. So Xana shook her head sighing, "Let's go to bed."

Jake hugged her closer for a moment, tucking her into his side for a moment. "You're not happy," he said after a long moment.

Xana recognized that voice, it was what she liked to refer to as Jake's "engineer's voice"; the "we have a problem and it must be pulled apart, fixed and put together better than it was before".

Their bed suddenly looked warm and very far away.

"You want to help Bolarus," Jake mused. "Do you want to go back to EARTH?”

The bed looked further away. “Ok, you know basic cartography of the galaxy better than I do,” Xana replied. “Earth is here,” she said holding out her right hand, “You know in the Alpha Quadrant.” Swinging her left hand out she said, “And Bolarus IX is here in the Beta Quadrant.”

“I know,” Jake grinned. “Been to both. Multiple times. Like the barbecue on both actually.”

“And we’ve just reduced two cultures down to a restaurant review--” Xana sighed.

“Which deep down you appreciate, so don’t lie,” Jake teased, “and I made you smile.”

Xana, who was indeed smiling a little at that, simply returned to the point at hand, “Why am I going to the Alpha Quadrant where I am a walking target when there’s a need for Bolian help in the Beta Quadrant?”

“Because it’s where you have the most resources and if we’re going to uproot our family then we should at least make it worthwhile for all of us,” Jake pointed out. Tilting his head to the side he considered, “But you’re right, if we’re going to do this we should do this right. We’ll go to Bolarus IX. I’ll tell Kane in the morning.”

Their quarters were blissfully quiet for once so the finality of Jake’s words hit her like a torpedo. “Okay fine - wait what? Huh?” When Jake just smiled at her Xana blinked her violet eyes and admitted a painful truth, “I don’t know what in 99 hells just happened.”

Jake smiled at his wife for a moment. Opening up his arms he let her curl up in them, much like Dahlia did (although she was protesting lately she didn’t need to, thank you very much), he let his tired wife curl up for a moment. “We’re going to Bolarus IX.” Squeezing his wife’s hands he said, “All of us.”

“It’s not safe for the kids,” Xana yawned.

“We’ll make it safe,” Jake argued. “And besides we’re a family, they stay with us.”

There was a long quiet peaceful moment in the quarters, so quiet that Jake could have been fooled into thinking Xana fell asleep. He stretched out on the couch and was figuring out how much sleep he could squeeze in before his next shift before he heard Xana whisper, “But you don’t want to go.”

Jake thought for a long time about their quarters, about how despite being cut off from the Federation and Starfleet how happy he was here. He had his family, his work...

“But you do,” he sighed. “You need to be doing something...you need to be doing something for Bolarus IX. I get that.”

“You’d be miserable.”

So for a long while, or at least what seemed to be a long while (it was hard to tell without consulting the computer to ask what time it was), they went round and round like that, huddled up in a sleepy pile debating being miserable and travel and their future until finally Jake did something he almost never did.

“Xana, I mean it --,” the engineer began.

“Don’t--” the former politician warned lifting her sleepy head from his shoulder. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep or aren’t prepared to break.” Smiling wanly she said, “Trust me on that.”

Leaning into Jake until their foreheads were touching in an old Bolian gesture of love, Xana sighed. “Oh Jake, don’t you know...it would mean the world to me if we all went. And I want so much to go--”

“Then we--”

“But you’d be miserable. And then in a few months, or maybe a year, it would be like before,” Xana sighed. “And then you’d go, and I would be angry and hurt, and it would just start all over again.”

“You stay up every night, looking for survivors. I can practically hear your brain making plans, debating what they’re doing,” Jake argued. “I’m worried for you doing that night after night. And then day after day you’re bored here.”

There was another long pause before Jake sighed. “Well we’re both right.”

“Yeah we are,” Xana smiled. Sighing she said, “I didn’t realize I’d become so bad. I’ll stop--”

Jake grinned, “A politician I knew once told me not to make promises I couldn’t keep.”

“Stupid politicians,” Xana muttered.

There was another long pause before Xana curled into Jake again, the realization of what was before them dawning on her consciousness. “You knew this was going to happen didn’t you?”

“I meant what I said, I would have gone with you,” Jake sighed as he held on tighter to Xana.

“Dahlia and Benito?”

“I won’t let them stay up too late, no extra chocolate or holovids on school nights,” Jake sighed as looked up to the ceiling dreading that conversation.


"Gavi and Erika can come with me," Xana said. "I'll take them somewhere safe before I go to Bolarus. They're not happy here either, Jake, and I want to get them out of the line of fire."


"That's for the best," Jake said. “I know the kids will miss Erika but she’s been chaffing--”

“It’ll be good for her,” Xana nodded.

There was another long paused, only punctured by the occasional sounds of snoring from the dog or targ.

“Do you ever think we’ll get our act together long enough to actually live together like a normal couple?”

“Maybe someday,” Xana smiled.

“Well then,” Jake said, as he leaned in to kiss his wife. “Here’s to someday.”

=[/\]=

It took Xana only a day to pack, but she lingered for longer, spending as much time as she could with the kids. Jake did his best to be around, taking time off when he could to be with her, but there were so many demands on his time that it was difficult for him to get away. They managed a quiet dinner here, some time in the arboretum there. Their time together was short, but sublime. On those days, with her family, Xana almost forgot why she was leaving.

The kids hadn’t taken the news well, of course. Ben had cried. Dahlia took the news stoically, as though she were disappointed but not surprised. Xana could hardly blame her; the poor girl just couldn’t hang on to anyone for long, it seemed. First her father, then Jake, and now her mother…

But Xana was determined. Jake would care for Dahlia and Ben, would love them and protect them, better than anyone else in the galaxy. But Xana wanted it to be a galaxy worth growing up in, a galaxy as free from pain and loss as was in her power to make it. She knew she could make a difference there. Kane and the PHOENIX crew still had their mission, but Xana was needed elsewhere. It was as simple as that.

Kane had actually been rather understanding. He was distracted, of course- all the new faces aboard meant new troubles, and there was the larger situation with Edgerton to consider as well- but when Xana had told Kane she intended to leave, he asked her into his Ready Room and heard her out. It took some convincing, the Irishman had always been stubborn. Xana argued that having a contact behind Romulan lines could be useful to Kane and whatever he could salvage of the *real* Federation at Elandipole, and that had been enough to sway the captain’s opinion.

And so, on their last night together, Xana cooked a meal for her family. Everyone pitched in. Ingredients were hard to find, but there was enough fresh produce on the arboretum that they were able to enjoy something real. Xana put the kids to bed and read them a story, then another, then another. Finally, Dahlia and Ben were asleep. She kissed them each gently, made sure they were tucked in, and lingered at the doorway, taking a long look at her sleeping children. She felt tears on her cheeks and she finally turned away.

Jake was waiting. They embraced, standing in each other’s arms for a long time.

“You’ve got everything?” Jake asked quietly.

“Yes,” Xana said. “I double checked. Twice.”

“I was hoping you were going to say no,” Jake said.

“Take care of the kids, Jake,” Xana said.

“I will,” Jake said. “I promise.”

“And be careful.”

“You too,” Jake said.

“I will.”

Shouldering her bag, Xana took a final look at her husband, at the quarters they had so briefly shared about the USS PHOENIX. They would be apart once again, but at least this time, they parted in love, as man and wife.

“Goodbye,” Xana whispered. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

=[/\]=


NRPG: And then we came to the end. Thank you, Sarah, for agreeing to do this last past, and for all of the posts that came before. We will miss you!


Xana has officially disembarked, taking Gavi and Erika with her. Jake, Dahlia, and Benito are staying aboard.


Sorry if the title of this post is one last twist of the knife, I couldn't resist. ;-)



A Joint Post By...


Sarah Albertini-Bond

Xana Bonviva


and


Shawn Putnam

a.k.a.

Jake Crichton

Chief Engineering Officer

USS PHOENIX