Home is Where the Heart Is
Posted on May 26, 2014 @ 7:19pm by Commander Jacob Crichton & Ambassador Xana Bonviva
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 8:40am
Mission:
The Tangled Webs We Weave
Location: EARTH
Tags: Xana, Jake, Family
Home Is Where The Heart Is =
(cont'd from "Unusual Circumstances")
LOCATION: Venice, Italy, EARTH
SCENE: Bonviva Villa
STARDATE: [2.14] 0415.1103
TIME INDEX: Dusk
Jake Crichton shimmered into solidity on the outskirts of the family estate of his estranged wife. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, which contained a few changes of clothes and some personal items he didn’t want to leave behind. A life spent in space had made Jake an expert on traveling light.
He’d considered being beamed down closer to the villa- there was security, of course, including pattern-scramblers to prevent unauthorized visitors from being transported onto the grounds, but Jake knew the override codes. But Jake thought the walk would do him good… and there was a part of him that wasn’t looking forward to this.
Ever since he’d been in-system, Jake could feel Xana more strongly than he’d been able to in months. He was making an effort to shut her out, both for his sake and for her own; he didn’t want to intrude on her privacy. He felt strange coming back here, the home he and Xana had shared for a few brief months after their marriage, before duty had called him back to space. It was a peaceful place, and very beautiful, but Jake had never felt totally comfortable planetside. Things were so wide open down here. Jake was used to corridors, maintenance shafts, turbolifts. Closed-in places.
**Maybe that’s me,** Jake thought. **Closed-in.**
Jake rounded a bend and saw the main house. He slowed his pace, taking in the view. Xana was there, and Ben, his son. Jake hadn’t seen Ben in coming up on two years.
**You should be excited. Why are you afraid?**
Jake thought of his own father. Brian Crichton was a good man, but rough around the edges. He was a spacer through and through; he’d taught Jake most of what he knew about life in deep space, and what it was to be a man and a father. They hadn’t always gotten along, and in fact had spoken only a handful of times in the years after Jake had first attended Starfleet Academy, but Jake bore the man no ill-will. Brian Crichton was a man who was set in his ways, who had come to understand the galaxy in a specific way and saw no reason to challenge that understanding.
When Xana had gotten pregnant, Jake had worried about the kind of father he would be. He didn’t want to be like his own old man: rough, gruff, immovable. He wanted to be supportive, he wanted to be understanding. And when he’d held Benito in his arms for the first time, Jake knew that he could be all those things for his son.
And then, he had left.
It wasn’t as cut and dry as that. Jake certainly wasn’t abandoning his son. He and Xana had been struggling. The aftermath of the Dominion War had left a lot of open-wounds, not to mention a lot of work to be done. Xana and Jake had each buried themselves in their jobs, trying to avoid the issue in the vain hope it might go away on its own. Jake was getting restless, they were talking less and fighting more… and then, the offer for a posting aboard a ship had crossed Jake’s desk.
And Jake had taken it.
“A temporary assignment,” he’d told himself. “Just a few months off-planet. It will help.”
It will help. Right. That’s why Jake felt like a stranger here.
Jake made his way up the main drive, to the house. He held his breath at the threshold, then reached out and rang the bell. It was an old-fashioned doorbell, the kind with sonorous chimes that sounded from somewhere deep inside the walls. They banged and gonged for what seemed like a long time, slowly fading back to quiet stillness.
The door opened.
Dahlia was standing there, her expression neutral. Jake was shocked at how much she had grown, how much she looked like her mother. She stared at him for a long moment.
“Um,” Jake said. “Hi.”
The 9 year old's breath hitched; then she launched herself into his arms with such force that it sent Jake stumbling backwards a half step. Dahlia buried her face in his chest, arms wrapped around him like steel cables, and for a moment Jake wondered if she was trying to tackle him to the ground.
It was his uniform becoming wet that almost undid him.
“Dahlia?” he asked softly. There was no noise, no loud sobs, his uniform just increasingly became wetter. Awkwardly he put arms around her, this girl that he held so many times when she was little but was so unfamiliar now. Suddenly he felt like they were back on GATEWAY, when she was a toddler and he'd hold her after a nightmare and Xana was gone. “Dee, come on, it's ok. Shhh, it's ok.”
With that she held on tighter, if possible; Jake wondered if Dahlia thought she could physically anchor him to EARTH this time.
“Dahlia! Cookies are done! Mama said--” Benito yelled as he went running around a corner making the superhero cape he wore fly. Suddenly the tall azure boy with dark hair narrowed his violet eyes, made tiny fists at his side and set his little jaw.
Last time Jake saw Ben he was not quite 2; now he was 4. If Dahlia was no longer a little girl that he remembered, then it occurred to Jake that Ben was suddenly developing into a person. Before Ben had just been a cute little chubby amorphous toddler but this was a *person* in front of him and it struck Jake that he knew so very little of his own son.
The woman who rounded the corner would (if asked) said that Benito was, except for the eyes, a small version of his father. Instead she knelt down and tapped a finger on her son's slim shoulder until he looked at her.“Benito, the cookies are for our family. *All* of us.”
Anger, Jake would have sworn it was anger that drove the little boy. It wasn't until he did a double take that he noticed the slight tremble.
**He's scared of me,** he realized. **Well he's not the only one terrified here.**
“Ben--” he tried.
Benito then turned and ran inside. They could all hear his feet running upstairs and eventually a door slam shut.
Xana muttered something dark under her breath. “I'll go.”
“No, he's probably in my room. He likes going in there first cause he thinks you won't look there,” Dahlia sighed. She warily looked up at Jake as if to ascertain that if by letting go was she losing her only chance to see him again this decade. Jake just nodded at her. Then Dahlia went running up the stairs yelling for Benito. Jake wasn't sure but he thought he heard his sweet Dee bellow and threaten baby Ben with all kinds of torture that would have made the Dominion proud.
Clearly 2 years was a long time to be gone.
Benito wasn't the only one nervous. Xana had purposely came home early to get ready for this; and then was in such a bundle of confusion that she couldn't figure out what to do first. So when Benito begged for cookies, she dove into that with him. And “dove” was an apropos word when baking with a 4 year old – she now had flour all over her black slacks and red gauzy blouse and she was pretty sure there was chocolate on her face somewhere. She had hoped to look better than this, she was vain enough to want to look better.
**Why? Do you want him to see what he's missed? Or do you want him to stay? What does it matter? It's not going to be enough,** she thought to herself. **Enough for him or for you. It's never enough.**
So she sighed, ran a hand through the white hair that was a mess, and said, “Welcome home.”
“Xana,” Jake said. For a moment, he wanted nothing more to go to her, take her in his arms, plunge his hands into her shock-white hair, hold her against him and let everything that stood between them be washed away in a flood of hormonal indulgence. It had, after all, been awhile… despite temptation, Jake hadn’t been with anyone else since he’d married his wife. And in this moment, with her hair a mess and her clothes covered in chocolate and flour, Xana was as beautiful to Jake as the moment he’d opened his eyes in that sickbay on GATEWAY Station, so many years ago.
The moment passed.
“I… prepared the guest room upstairs for you,” Xana said. “If you want to put your things away.”
“Uh, yeah,” Jake said. “Sure. Right.”
“Dinner should be ready in an hour,” Xana said, and she turned to go back into the kitchen.
“Xana…” Jake started. Xana stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“If you figure it out, let me know,” Xana said, and left Jake standing alone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIME INDEX: Later
Dinner was good. Jake was used to replicated food, and he’d somehow forgotten how good the real stuff could taste, and how much he enjoyed his wife’s cooking. Dahlia had eventually coaxed Benito out of his room, but the kid had passed dinner in almost total silence, pushing piles of food around on his plate with a disinterested expression until Xana had given him an icy glare. Ben obediently picked up a single asparagus and chewed it dully.
For her part, Dahlia almost never stopped talking. She was full of stories: things she had done at school, friends she had made, adventures they had shared. Jake listened to them all with a smile. Dahlia’s enthusiasm had always charmed him, and when she had finally run out of stories, he happily answered an almost endless series of her questions about the work that he’d been doing for the last few years.
Eventually, Xana stood to clear the table. Jake stood to help.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“I don’t mind-” Jake started.
“They haven’t seen you in almost two years,” Xana said. “Stay. Talk. I’ll clear.”
So Jake stayed, and enjoyed the pleasure of Dahlia’s exuberant company (as well as Benito’s stony silence) for another half an hour until Xana finally came back in.
“It’s getting late,” she said. “Dahlia, would you please take your brother upstairs and help him get ready for bed?”
“But mom, Jake was telling me about the time he caught a Talosian cheating at poker!” Dahlia protested. “The Talosians forgot that standard poker decks only have four of each card, so when he drew his second 3 of clubs, he realized the whole hand was just an illusion!”
“Talosians?” Xana asked, arching an eyebrow. “Really, Jake?”
“*I* called them butt-heads,” Jake said. “Dahlia just inferred they were Talosians.”
Dahlia giggled, and Xana smiled despite herself.
“Well, there will be time for Jake to fill your head with lies tomorrow,” Xana said. Her eyes settled on Jake’s. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Jake nodded. Then he looked to Dahlia and winked. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about how I defeated a rogue Borg AI with a logic loop and a thermos of raktajino.”
“I can’t wait!” Dahlia said. She hopped out of her chair, then took Benito by the hand. “Come on, Ben. Say goodnight to Jake.”
Ben stared at Jake for a moment, his expression unreadable. Dahlia poked him in the side.
“Ben!” she said.
“It’s okay,” Jake said. He smiled at Ben. “Goodnight, Benny-Bill. Maybe we can talk some tomorrow?”
“That’s not my name,” Ben said quietly. He slid out of his chair and stalked silently upstairs. Dahlia looked at Jake.
“He’ll come around,” she said.
“Thanks, Dee,” Jake said. He smiled at her weakly. Dahlia, with perception beyond her nine years, kissed Jake on the cheek and gave him a reassuring squeeze.
“Night, Jake,” she said. “Night, mom.”
Dahlia followed her brother upstairs, and then, for the first time in nearly two years, Jake Crichton was alone with his wife.
“I suppose we should talk,” Xana said.
“Yeah.”
“What are we, Jake?” she asked. “On paper, we’re married, but-”
“Wow,” Jake said. “Just dive right in, huh?”
“Oh, did you want small talk?” Xana asked, taking a seat at the table across from Jake. “Sure. How have you been? Quite the weather we’re having-”
“Xana,” Jake started.
“Have you heard they’re reactivating the DISCOVERY?” Xana continued. “Oh, what am I saying, of course you have, seeing as you’re the Chief Engineer…”
“Xana, stop it,” Jake said.
“Good, then we’re done with small talk,” Xana said. “So what’s the deal, Jake? Your children don’t see you for two years, and as soon as you get back you’re already halfway out the door again.”
“It’s my job,” Jake said defensively. “And it’s not like your career isn’t as time-intensive as mine.”
“I sleep under the same roof as them every night,” Xana said. “The furthest away I get is LUNA, and I’m still home by dinner most nights.”
“And if you were reassigned?” Jake asked. “If the Federation needed you to fly off to some backwater world to negotiate some crisis-”
“This isn’t about what I *might* do,” Xana said. “This is about what you did.”
“*You* asked me to leave.”
“I asked you for some space,” Xana said. “You went *into* space. I guess I must have slurred my words.”
“Same difference,” Jake frowned.
“It is not,” Xana said. “Not at all.”
There was silence between them for a moment. Xana seemed to be avoiding Jake’s eyes, as if she was afraid what she might find there. Or, perhaps, afraid of what Jake might see in her own.
“Why the space?” Jake asked. When Xana didn’t answer, he continued: “You didn't want to be married.”
“That's not true,” Xana said quietly. “I loved being married.”
“Loved? So we're past tense?”
“What do I love about it now?” Xana asked. “You being gone for years? I don't think so.”
“I'm gone for years because that's what you wanted,” Jake said. “What you expected.”
“I wanted you home.”
“You wanted me home,” Jake said. “You expected me in space. You expected me to go off and…”
Jake stopped himself, but the damage was done. Xana’s eyes met his, and they were cold.
“Say it,” she said. Jake didn’t reply, so Xana finished the sentence for him. “Go off and die. Yes, sorry, I didn't want to identify another husband's body. Silly me, when we were building a life I thought it was somewhere safe.”
Jake sighed. He had known this confrontation would be difficult, but it was going even worse than he’d expected. “Everything has to be on *your* terms,” he said. “There is no *our* terms.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have come with me,” Jake said. “But no. You have your job. You have to stay here. So you steamroll over mine.”
“Jake, I-”
“You’ll pick up and move wherever the Federation needs you, if it’s for your career,” Jake continued. “Romulus. Cardassia. That’s why you were on GATEWAY to begin with. But when it comes to me, when it comes to *my* career, I’m being selfish.”
“Jake, my job is *safe*,” Xana said. “There aren’t temporal anomalies or radioactive nebulas or-”
“Or Dominion warships?”
“Right,” Xana said, letting out her breath in a whoosh.
“That’s over now,” Jake said. “With the war, I guess I can see how we all lost sight of it, but Xana… I’m not a soldier. I’m an engineer. An explorer. We’re supposed to come in peace.”
“You know that isn’t always how it works,” Xana said.
“What guarantees can I make?” Jake asked. “Yes. Something might happen to me out there. But you think I don’t worry about what might happen to you? For god’s sake, Xana, you’re a high-ranking Federation official. You think you don’t have a target painted on *your* back? That the enemies of the Federation wouldn’t jump at the chance to ransom you off, or worse…”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that it was different. That she didn't go running into danger like he did. That she knew he wanted the adrenaline rush of being on the front and she didn't. That the dangers that came with her job were a side effect, not the main thrust of the job. And she knew she was right and Jake couldn't argue against that.
Spin, spin, win. Talk faster, squeeze in as many salvos as quickly as you could to get your point across. Frame the argument so that it appears there's no other option. That's what she did – keep spinning the facts, keep jabbing the opposition, until she won an argument. She had done it for years and was damn good at it. It had kept more than would be opponents of the Federation at bay and helped her rise up in her job.
But this wasn't an enemy of the Federation or even a political opponent. It was her *husband*. Somehow this didn't feel like “to love, honor and cherish”.
“Xana?”
She didn't meet his eyes but looked over at his left hand, and saw he wasn't wearing his ring anymore. She thought nothing else would have hurt her but that did. She still wore hers and she wondered when he stopped. She wondered why he stopped. Then again given what he said tonight, it wasn't like she gave him much of a reason to wear it.
Looking up at his eyes, she wanted to apologize for being so afraid and angry. She knew she was partially responsible for this wedge between them, she should try to remove it but she had no idea how. She wanted to hold him close and be held, and let that be enough for now. She wanted to tell him to screw it, that they could go to bed and they'd figure it out in the morning.
For once, though, she simply didn't have the words to ask for any of that. Face down enemies of the Federation? Sure. Ask your husband for another chance? Not as easy.
“I'm tired, Jake,” she said, her voice cracking. Everything showed on her face and her violet eyes shimmered. “I'm so damn tired.”
“I know,” Jake sighed. He could feel her fatigue, doubling up against his own. “Me too.”
“So what do we do?” Xana aked.
“Do you still love me?”
“Gods, Jake,” Xana said. “Of course I do.”
“And you trust I still love you,” Jake said. It wasn’t a question; the nature of their bond made such questions automatically rhetorical.
“Love isn’t the problem,” Xana said. “It never was.”
“Then maybe it’s the solution,” Jake said. He stood, and knelt beside her, resting his hand on hers. “*You’re* my home, Xana,” Jake said. “You and Ben and Dahlia. Now and forever.”
“Jake, I don’t want to lose you,” Xana said, tears rolling down her blue cheeks. “I’m so afraid of it that I sometimes think I’d rather not have had you in the first place.”
“That would have been simpler,” Jake said, leaning his head against Xana’s. “But you know what? Whatever else happens, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. And I don’t think you would either.”
“No,” Xana said. “I wouldn’t.”
They sat like that for a moment, in silence, hands clasped, simply enjoying the feel of the other one there. They had each felt the absence quite acutely over the last two years, and for now it was enough that they were together again at last.
“There’s still things to talk about,” Xana said quietly.
“Later,” Jake whispered, and kissed his wife. After a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him back. Neither of them knew what the future would bring. Nothing had really been “solved” between them, no accord had been reached, no treaty brokered. But for now, it didn’t matter. They kissed, and loosened the vice-grip they’d each been keeping on their emotions, their bond flaring to life between them as strongly as it ever had, and it’s warmth seemed to burn away all problems, all concerns, until there was nothing left in the whole galaxy but each other.
For tonight, at least, it was enough. In fact, it was more than enough.
============================================================
NRPG: Bit of a length post, but then Jake and Xana had a lot to talk about! Great posts from everyone so far, looking forward to the next one!
JEROME: I’ll get Jake to the spacedock in my next post, hopefully by early next week.
A Joint Post by…
Shawn Putnam
a.k.a.
Jake Crichton, Commander
Chief Engineering Officer
USS DISCOVERY
And
Sarah Albertini-Bond
Secretary Xana Bonviva
Secretary to Starfleet