It's You
Posted on Nov 26, 2016 @ 1:28pm by Ambassador Xana Bonviva
Edited on on Nov 26, 2016 @ 1:29pm
Mission: Aftermath
“It’s You”
=/\=
Location: DRAYTON’S DREAM
Scene: Compartment -> Main Area
STARDATE: [2.16] 1126.0330
They could have planned this better. It was the theme that Jake and Xana had been living lately.
The space on Raxl Drayton’s ship was limited -- two bunks in a small compartment. Four broken-hearted people sharing a small space was probably not the brightest idea that they had.
Ben furrowed his brow for a minute. He was sprawled on the bottom bunk, momentarily stopped from playing with his toy shark. “I don’t understand. How is will our lives be different?” Looking at his parents he said, “Dad always had his ship and Mama always had her planet.”
Dahlia kept tossing a ball back and forth to the ceiling from her perch on the top bunk. “Ben, we talked about this. It’s going to be different.”
Jake stifled a sigh from where he sat on the steps to the compartment and met Xana’s eyes where she was curled up sitting on the floor, ostensibly reading about Hussein Karimi’s career since she last saw him years ago, but her eyes were gliding were over the words.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Can I talk to Mom?”
Xana exchanged looks with Jake. It was the first time in nearly 10 hours that Dahlia had stopped her sullen looks and abrupt words towards her parents.
“Yeah, come on Ben,” Jake said as he got up to stretch. “Let’s see what trouble we can get into.”
Ben got up and muttered something but went along with Jake.
Xana stood up as best she could to find her daughter flipped over on her stomach facing her. “Dahlia?”
There was a shaky inhaled breath before Dahlia got out the words she had been preparing. “I hate you.”
There was a peculiar heavy feeling that came with opening her heart 11 years ago when the doctors told her she was going to be a mother. And every day since then it had rushed to be filled with hopes and dreams, fears for the future, and that once her daughter was born lived entirely outside Xana’s body. But Xana learned that her heart could keep beating outside her body.
Now she learned that her heart could be bruised, broken, and destroyed independently of her body.
“Did you hear me?” Dahlia asked.
“I heard you,” Xana nodded with deceptive calmness. Swallowing the lump in her throat she said, “Dahlia, we know this is hard for you and Benito to understand.”
“Ben is too young. But I understand,” Dahlia replied. “It’s because of you I don’t have *my* dad. And it’s because of *you*, I don’t have my stepdad, that Ben won’t have his dad. This is all your fault.”
Inhaling sharply at the emotional quagmire that they were stepping into Xana said quietly, “Jake and I decided this together--”
“My dad died because of you,” Dahlia pointed out.
Xana looked up for a moment; this moment she had been dreading for 10 years not at all thinking it would come now. Lowering her head she asked, “Who told you that?”
Dahlia gave her a look. “I read it.” When her mother said nothing she quoted from memory, “Commander Eugene McInnis died during the Second Dominion War on the Gateway Station-2 while facing off against a Challenging that looked like his wife, Ambassador Xana Bonviva. Rather than shoot the Challenging earlier in the fight, McInnis threw himself and the Challenging at the last minute on a bomb and saved the station and killed both of them.”
The Bolian/Human held back the tears, her insides shaking. “You should not have read that.”
“I was assigned something from Modern History. I picked the Second Dominion War.” Dahlia looked at her mother. “My father died facing a Challenging that looked like *you*. My stepfather is leaving *you*. It’s *you*.”
Xana leaned against the cool shuttle wall. She was known for her quick, agile mind, being able to say witty words with the snap of her fingers; but everything failed her now. Leaning in to the bed she asked, “It’s not like that, Dahlia. I know it’s--”
“--hard for me to understand,” Dahlia finished off with a glare. Inhaling she said, “You said yesterday I had earned the right to say something. Did you mean that?”
The mother almost rolled her eyes but didn’t. “Well if there’s more you want to say, of course you can.”
“I want to live with Jake, not you,” Dahlia announced.
Xana stopped for a moment. “The point of this is that you can live with both of us.”
“But not at the same time. And I know what you said, now this is what I’m saying,” Dahlia explained slowly, as if her mother was a particularly dense Horta. “I want to live with Jake.”
Xana let out a shaky breath and backed away slowly. “I-I-I-you know. I think this is something I shouldn’t be here for.”
As her daughter gave her an odd look, Xana walked out of the compartment and climbed into the main area. Aside from being able to stand fully upright, it was where Jake and Ben were sitting by a window looking out the window. Not wanting to interrupt whatever they were up to, she looked around trying to find somewhere else to be--
“Xana?”
She turned around to see Jake getting up to come over to her. He started to raise his hands, as is if to put an arm on her shoulder and then dropped it. Still the concern was there, it never left his face. “What is it?”
She closed her eyes, her dark blue tongue touching her parched lips. Taking a steadying breath she whispered. “Dahlia...well I think you need to talk to her.” Opening up her eyes she said, “Remember how we said they could tell us anything? Well she did.”
Jake looked over to the compartment and then back at Xana. In the space of that heartbeat, Xana became wistful, realizing how much she had come to rely on Jake over the last 8 years...how was she going to cope now without him? Of course they had spent so much time apart but it was a comfort to know she could find him if she needed him. She hadn’t because it had been a hassle and then there was frustration...but she could have. Now she wouldn’t be able to.
But Jake was in the present and not off in recriminations. “What was it? Is she--”
Xana explained, “She needs to talk to you.”
As Jake must have picked up something from how she looked or felt because thankfully he left to check on Dahlia; Xana went over to Ben who was looking out the window. “Mama?”
Sighing as she scooted on the floor next to Ben. “Yes?”
Ben curled up on top of his mother. “When we go live with you, will you cook again?”
Wrapping her arms around her son she said, “Yes.”
“Whatever I want?”
“You still have to eat your vegetables.”
“Oh.” There was a pause. “What about pizza?”
“Yes I’ll make pizza.”
“What about fries?”
“Sure, I can make that.”
“Milkshakes?”
“Were you deprived when you were on the PHOENIX?”
“How about meatloaf and mashed potatoes?”
“Benito, it’s going to be a long ride if you keep making a list of food,” Xana smiled into her son’s hair.
Ben yawned as he snuggled. “I just figured if you made a lot of food then Dad won’t leave. He doesn’t eat good on the ship. Don’t tell him I said you cook better. But I figured it you can cook then he’ll stay,” he said while falling asleep.
Xana said nothing while holding her son as she snuggled him while looking out on the stars.
=/\=
Location: EARTH
Scene: Venice, Italy - Bonviva Villa
Most depressing homecoming ever.
The kids begrudging jumped off the boats that were the main transportation in Venice and walked up the stone walkway to the steps of the villa as their parents followed them.
“I’m going to my room,” Dahlia announced as she bounded up the steps.
Ben followed her. “Wait for me.”
There was a long awkward silence that descended as Jake and Xana having to stand there not sure what to for a long moment. “I should probably go upstairs and say good night,” Jake explained. Rubbing the back of his neck he said, “The - uhm - guest bedroom…?”
“Yeah, go ahead. Everything should be as last time,” Xana sighed. “I’ll stay up reading for a bit.”
Xana sat up for a long time in the living room, trying again to prepare herself for politics and not thinking about her fractured family.
=/\=
NRPG: Depressing - check. Gets the dysfunctional family back on Earth - check.
=/\=
Sarah Albertini-Bond
the voice of
Xana Bonviva
