From: Sarah Albertini-Bond (serendipity77_at_gmail.com)
Date: Thu Dec 20 2007 - 20:59:01 PST
"The Angry Widow" <continued from "Fare Thee Well"> =/\= Location: GATEWAY STATION – 2 Scene: Temporary Quarters "Xana, what's gonna happen now?" Xana Bonviva looked over at Peyton Svenson, who at 13 years old already looked like a younger version Commodore Troy Svenson. And most days Peyton longed to be like his father (although the teenager would never admit to such a thing) and tried to act like him; but today…Peyton was just a young man unsure of everything around him. They had been moved to temporary quarters. Dahlia had finally, thank the gods, gone to sleep; so that left Xana with the Svenson boys. She had called a family meeting – it was something she and Gene had started when the boys had come to live with them. To have them feel like they were truly a part of their family and in a nod to their growing towards adulthood. They thought it best to allow the boys a safe space to express themselves without being judged. That had gone…well it was an interesting experiment to say the least. But perhaps tonight it was needed. "What's gonna happen now…well tonight we sleep," Xana said quietly, trying to lay out in simple terms for the boys and herself what they had to do. Licking her dry lips she tried to move her thoughts to beyond tonight. "I imagine tomorrow well…I imagine people will talk to us soon. I wouldn't be surprised if a Counselor came by to see how we're doing—" "That weird cat-guy is gonna come back isn't he?" Mikey asked. "Mowree, and yes he'll probably come," Xana replied. "And then…well then there will be a funeral. And I'll have to bring Gene back to BAJOR." The boys shared a glance with each other then and Xana could practically see their thoughts. "Yes, I will take you home to EARTH too. Guys, I don't know how long it's going to take but I will get you home." After that the boys stumbled out of the living room and towards the bedroom, leaving Xana alone with her thoughts. Some time had passed before Peyton, in replicated pajamas, came out looking for a glass of water. "Peyton," Xana said softly, "I was just reading something and I wanted to ask you about it." "Okay," he nodded. "Security wrote up a report as best as they could explaining what happened," Xana said softly. She paused for a moment before saying, "They said you and Mikey realized that when Angus growled at the Changeling that it wasn't me so you grabbed Angus and Dahlia and ran out." Peyton shrugged his shoulders at that as he drank the water. "Yeah." "You saved Dahlia and Angus," she said softly, "and you saved each other." She gave him a look then, "Thank you. I don't know what I would have done without any of you." Peyton looked around for a bit trying to figure out what to say. "You know…you're not really like my dad. At all," the teenager said. "I don't know why he said we should live with you cause you're nothing like him. But there is only one thing you both agree on." Xana, more curious than anything, contemplated that. Peyton was very observant – her and Troy Svenson really weren't all that alike except that she adored his sons and Troy realized this. Yet she couldn't figure out what Peyton was referring to. "How are your father and I alike?" "You both always told Mike and me that we had to look out for family first before we did anything else." Peyton shrugged at that. "I figured if both of you say that then it's probably really important. That's all we were doing Xana – looking out for family." =/\= Scene: Morgue It wasn't all that unusual of a request – although the timing was off. Somewhere around midnight Xana walked into Sickbay and quietly asked to see her husband's body. This was always a tricky area, the surviving had a right to see a body legally, but psychologically it was a gray area. Still the staff had no real reason to refuse Xana her request so they brought her into the morgue and pulled out Gene's body. They gave her a stool to sit on if she so needed it and wheeled out a body. Pulling back a white sheet, Xana looked at the remains of her husband. "Can you give us a moment?" she asked quietly. The officer on duty nodded and walked to the back of the room in case the azure woman needed anything. Xana looked down at Gene's body. The worst of the damage, from what she could tell, was in his torso although the doctors had tried to sew that up for the funeral. But it was Gene…even if she wanted to deny it, she couldn't. "I know the doctors are probably going to call for the men in white coats soon, with me talking to a dead body," she whispered, "but I could always talk to you and it doesn't seem quite right that I shouldn't do it one last time." She waited a moment gathering her thoughts. "I'm not going to cry over you anymore Gene. I can't – I just physically can't. But more importantly I won't. I'm tired but I have so much I need to do, and I can't do it all while crying. "Do you remember the first time we slept together?" she asked quietly. "I remember being in your arms and you asked me about my dreams and I wouldn't tell you so I asked you about yours. And you told me about wanting a ship of your own, the pride of the fleet. You wanted to be the poster boy for Starfleet – save lives, be a hero, become a legend in your own time. "I didn't tell you what I wanted because what I wanted was so much simpler. I wanted a husband. I wanted children. I wanted a home I could come to every night and have people who loved me be there too. I wanted laughter and love and…I wanted that dream. And I wanted you in it." Xana paused for a moment and waited. "My own parents abandoned me when I was a teenager, just around Peyton's age actually. And it *crushed* me. I kept expecting people to leave me for years after that. Finally I realized I couldn't undo the past but I could damn well make sure the future wouldn't be like that." Inhaling Xana looked down at Gene. "So what happened? You made me fall in love with you, you damn fool. I fell in love with a man who was chasing a dream that I could never give him. Oh you loved me, and you loved Dahlia, and you loved the boys when they came to live with us but you never gave up your dream of being a hero. Here's the thing Gene if you haven't figured it out already – to be a hero means you have to give up on all those things like family and love. Whatever I could give you, and the Gods know I tried to give you everything I had in me and more than I ever thought possible of giving, I did. But it wasn't enough for you. "*I* wasn't enough for you. *Our family* wasn't enough. And that hurts. It hurts to know that I loved a man who loved me but was more in love with something else," Xana said. Xana paused for a moment, her thoughts flying around wildly. "You never told me what happens to Bajorans after they die. I think they meet the Prophets but I don't know. Did I ever tell you what happens to Bolians? They go to either heaven or they go to one of 88 hells. It makes Dante's Inferno look like Paradise if you ask me. And do you know what the worst hell is? It's the hell where people get to watch the pain that they've put their loved ones, the ones still living go through. That's right – your eternal damnation is now up to me, if my gods are right. "One of the myths of my people is "The Angry Widow". She doesn't have a name – that's all she's called. She was madly in love with her husband and supposedly him with her. But he left her to chase after crystals and gold and he died then right after leaving her, never finding the riches he so desperately wanted. Oh and the wife was so angry that she cursed him as he went into the afterlife because she felt like that all the love she gave him while he was alive was wasted. She gave him gold and crystals but he was too blind to see it because it wasn't tangible – it was in the form of love. So she made a bargain with the gods – she asked them if she could live forever, only so she could make him suffer. We believe she still lives on, doing unimaginable things and he writhes in hell, tormented by the woman he left behind. "Gene, I told you once that I believed I was an avatar – a daughter of the houses of the God of Pain and the Goddess of Love. And I believe that. But I swear by my gods, I will become The Angry Widow. And I will make you pay. You are going to go to hell and watch me suffer. And you will suffer knowing that Dahlia is going to grow up without you. Women who don't know their father's love grow up terribly tormented – I know this from my own life. We grow up wondering how any lover could really love us if our own father couldn't see fit to stay. And she will know that you voluntarily left her to be a hero. And she's going to learn that being a hero is just another word for being selfish. Real heroes don't go looking for glory and they don't want to leave. Real heroes are the ones who stay behind and do the hard work every day. "So…you're going to learn what it was like to be me. You're going to watch me be The Angry Widow. I will bury you and bring the boys back to their father. And then I will go out into space and kill every member of the Dominion I can find. I will avenge your death in a way that would make you proud. But you will watch as I risk my neck, and our daughter's neck, to do this. You will watch this and will be able to do nothing about it. They will call me a hero and I will be anything but." Xana swallowed a lump in her throat as she leaned in. "Gods help me, Gene, but I still love you. I love the man I first fell in love with who charmed me while we talked about carnivals and won me a kaola bear. I love the man who said he'd wait for me while I'd figure out my heart. I love the man who screamed to the heavens and did a dance the day he found out he was going to be a father. And I love the man who greeted me each night with a kiss. I love *that* man. And that man is you. But you were also terribly selfish and I will make sure you're damned for that." With that the Bolian/Human nodded to herself, pulled the sheet up over her dead husband and left the morgue. =/\= NRPG: This is a new phase for Xana – she's no longer going to be the happy person that she has been for the last…6 years (wow, that's a long time). The love of her life died and she's so angry and hurt she can't see straight and I doubt she will for a long time. =/\= Sarah Albertini-Bond Xana Bonviva GATEWAY STATION - 2 There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the netherworld. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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