Something Like This

Posted on Nov 26, 2016 @ 2:13am by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Nov 26, 2016 @ 2:15am

Mission: Aftermath

= Something Like This =

(cont'd from "Colors And Their Meaning")



LOCATION: BOLARUS IX

SCENE: Xana's Apartment

STARDATE: [2.16] 1125.2304



How do you tell children something like this?



Dahlia and Ben were seated on either end of Xana's too-small couch, Ben looking bored, and Dahlia looking gravely suspicious. All that Jake and Xana had told them was that they needed to have a discussion - it was that word, "discussion", that had put Dahlia on her guard - but the emotional temperature of the room was hard for any of them to ignore. Ben was still too young to see a gut-punch like this one coming, but Dahlia had been hurt before, and she was old enough, and had lost enough, to know that sometimes you get the rug pulled out from under you even by the people you love and trust most in all the world.



Jake and Xana stood before their children, not significantly farther apart than they might have any other time, but farther enough that it was the first thing Dahlia noticed. She kept her tongue, either because she was wise beyond her years (which both Jake and Xana thought, often), or because she couldn't quite bring herself to verbalize the conclusion she'd already reached.



"KIds," Jake started, trading an uneasy glance with Xana. Even now, he was grateful to have her here, to have her strength to help him through this. This would be the hardest part of a painfully hard process, and he didn't think he would be able to get through it without her to lean on. Even so, Jake found it was hard to begin. With the eyes of his children fixed on him, Jake found his mouth going suddenly dry.



He swallowed, and found the will to go on. "We have something we need to talk to you about."



"Are we going back to Earth?" Ben asked. "I don't like it here." He was half-melted into his seat, much like had been during his ride aboard Raxl Dreyton's ship only a few days earlier. Beside him, Dahlia was staring with rapt attention. With her eyes, she seemed to be pleading with her parents not to go on.



"Yes," Xana said, thinking this would be as good a place to start as any. "I've taken a position with a political campaign back on Earth. It will be a lot of work, but I should be there for dinner and bedtime most nights. We'll be staying at the villa again, like before."



Dahlia, her suspicions only growing thanks to her parents' stilted approach to this discussion so far, leaned forward. "All of us?"



"We're leaving for Earth tomorrow, aboard the same ship," Jake said. "But... your mom and I..."



No word, no turn of phrase that would take the hurt away, and so nothing to do but just say it, make it real.



"We're separating."



No real reaction from Ben; he probably didn't understand what they meant. Dahlia, though- she sank back in her seat, her eyes instantly watery with tears. It was the answer she'd expected, but that didn't make it any easier to take. Seeing her reaction - the way she'd seen the gut-punch coming even as she felt certain such a thing could never come from her parents - broke Jake and Xana's hearts.



"Why?" Dahlia asked, not looking at either of them.



Funny how, when the question was posed so directly, Jake and Xana both found themselves fumbling to answer it. They exchange another glance, as if looking for reassurance that they'd made the right decision. With their adult perspective of the galaxy, Jake and Xana intellectually understood why they had arrived at this conclusion, but now they had an idea that their justifications would ring painfully hollow if they spoke them aloud.



"That's not a question with an easy answer," Xana said finally. "There are reasons, but you may not understand all of them right now."



"You don't love each other anymore?" Dahlia asked.



"No, of course not," Xana said. "Jake and I love each other very much."



"So why?"



How do you tell children something like this? How do you look them in the eye and explain that, in the real world, the world outside of fairy tales and happy endings, that sometimes love simply wasn't enough?



"Sometimes you can love too much," Xana sighed. She wiped a tear away from the corner of her eye. "Sometimes, it's not fair to ask someone to... to live up to that expectation."



"That's stupid," Dahlia frowned. Xana knew it wasn't, but in this moment, it sure felt stupid.



"Is Daddy leaving again?" Ben asked, his voice pitched high with dawning fear. He'd started to grasp the nature of this conversation, and though he was still too young to have a serious appreciation of the concept of divorce, he remembered what life had been like when Jake had been off on the USS SHERWOOD, far away from home.



"Yes," Dahlia said sullenly.



"I'm resuming my commission with Starfleet," Jake nodded. "That means I could be sent anywhere, far far away from Earth. As much as I would love to have you with me, that means your mother wouldn't see you, and that would hurt her, very much."



"So she could come with us too," said Dahlia.



"I... can't," Xana said. "I have work to do on Earth. There's... I'm no good to anyone, on a starship."



"You'd be good to us," said Dahlia. Xana winced; children could cut deep, when they wanted to.



"I know that you don't understand all of this," Jake sighed. "The crisis may be over, but it will be a long time before the Federation is fully healed. If it's going to get there, it's going to need good people working where they can to get it back on the right track. As much as we love each other, your mother and I belong in different worlds."



"You belong with us," Dahlia scowled. "We all belong together."



How do you tell children something like this? How do you look your daughter - adopted or not, she's your *daughter*, and you love her as much as your son - in the eye and explain that her love for you wasn't enough to make you whole? How do you tell your kids that, as deeply as you care for each of them, you still always find yourself in the backyard, staring up at the stars and wishing you were among them?



"Dahlia..." Jake started, and realized he didn't have a way to finish that particular sentence.



"I don't want you to leave, daddy," Ben said. Now he was crying too, and the sight of it brought tears to Jake's own eyes.



"Things will be different," Xana admitted. "But not so different. We haven't all been together for a long time now. You know that. This doesn't mean we love you any less, it just means we're being honest with each other about..."



She wanted to say "about how far we're willing to go to make this work", but realized that would make things worse. She felt awful, with their children staring them down like unsympathetic judges. She wanted to be *among* them, seated between them and holding them close, rather than standing before them and feeling too guilty to touch them.



"We could be together, if you wanted, "Dahlia said. "But you're too afraid. That's stupid, and you're both being cowards."



"That isn't fair," Jake said. He hated the words even before he was finished speaking them; what a fine thing, him speaking to her about fairness when she'd had this horrible mess dumped in her lap through no fault of her own.



"Please don't leave," Ben whispered. His own eyes had dropped, and tears were dripping steadily into his lap. "I love you, daddy."



"Oh, Ben," Jake said. "It's only for a little while. When your mom and I work something out, you'll get to spend time with both of us. I promise."



"But we won't be together," Ben said. Jake had to admit, as objections went, his was pretty hard to argue against.



"No," Jake admitted weakly. "We won't all be together. I'm sorry, kiddo."



"If you were really sorry, you wouldn't be leaving," said Dahlia.



How do you tell children something like this? How do you ask them to choose which version of their parents they preferred: the ones who were together, but unhappy, restless, feeling like they were always going stir-crazy in their own skins... or the ones who were apart, but more essentially *there* than they ever could be in the lives they were leaving behind? How can you shift such a burden to them? How can you expect them to even understand such a choice?



"I know this doesn't make sense to you," Xana said. "We don't expect you to... to understand, or even to forgive us, not right away. But please, give it some time. I promise, you'll see that nothing about how we feel about you two has changed. I promise that both of us would still do anything for you, and that there is a life on the other side of this decision, and that we'll each do anything we need to do to make that life a happy one."



"Except stay together," Dahlia said, tears streaming down her cheeks. Ben was openly crying beside her, and she put an arm around him and drew him close. She stared at her parents reproachfully from over the boy's head, and they could read the unspoken question in that look:



How could you do this to him? How could you do this to us?



"I'll be going back to the villa with you," Jake said, his eyes on the floor. He found he could no longer raise them any higher. "Then, I'll be leaving for awhile. Not forever. I promise, I'll see you again before I leave Earth. I swear."



He had a feeling the only part of that sentence that landed was the phrase "before I leave Earth", and neither Dahlia nor Ben did anything to disabuse him of this notion.



"Is there anything you want to say?" Xana asked. "You've earned the right."



"Why bother?" Dahlia sniffed, as she held Ben even tighter. "You won't listen."



"Dahlia," Xana started, her motherly concern finally overriding her sense of guilt. She stepped forward, wanting to put her hand on her daughter's head, but Dahlia recoiled from her touch. She took Ben by the hand and stormed past them, into Xana's tiny bedroom. A moment later, they heard the door's locking mechanism engage, and the muffled weeping of their two children.



Jake and Xana were left, staring at the featureless metal door, not daring to look at each other, either out of fear of crying or, more likely, fear of losing their resolve. Underneath the doubt, underneath the pain they knew they were causing their children, each of them knew this was the right thing to do.



Didn't they?



There is no good way to tell children something like this.



=[/\]=



NRPG: Any dry eyes left in the house? :-P



Shawn Putnam

a.k.a.

Jake Crichton

Chief Engineering Officer

USS PHOENIX