Hedging Her Bets pt11
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2004 1:40 pm
Part 11:
Los Angeles - Langley’s House
The sun was rising so different from his home world and yet so similar. Accept that today there would be no bombs dropping around him, no armies to assault him, and no dead friends to mourn. Today all there would be were questions. The questions that had haunted him for a long time, who am I? And what’s the point? My name is Garen and I know nothing of who I am. A warrior for longer then most of the people on Antar had lived; I have been forced to do things both honorable and repulsive. Still these questions plague me, eternal doubts as I fought for a King growing in an incubation pod on a world half a galaxy away.
Since the instant Khivar’s plans were confirmed, every action, every breath of my life, became horrifyingly clear. He holds every advantage in supplies, troops, and position. There is an old tradition on both Antar and Earth that old warriors reaching their final battle could sense when the war would claim their lives. In hours, the final battle for Antar and Earth would be joined bringing about a petulant dictator’s final hours, or the last gasp of freedom for two worlds. But even with all my experience I can not figure what course the future would take.
I know I can survive if I just took off and ran, but I have no desire to do that. Survival had long ago become a secondary thought to me. All that was left for me was honor and death. Death was the final, ultimate peace, and subject to the whims of those who have never seen friends die. Death was the only peace that would ever truly last. Off to the side as the rising sun began fading into the clear blue of the morning sky I could feel a person watching me. I don’t need to ask who, Langley stepped next to me before I would need to ask.
“Your habits never change.”
I turn to look at Cal as I speak to him. My doubts about myself are nothing compared to my doubts of him. “What do you want?”
“To annoy you,” Langley said as his eyes glared at me.
“So I guess that means you haven’t change ether.”
“I’ve changed more than you can imagine, more than I ever wanted to, and I want you to remember that.”
“Why should I? You think you can scare me little brother? While you have been here sitting on your ass. I have been out there in battle. I have watched good people die because of Khivar. So tell me Cal, sitting here on Earth in relative safety could possibly make you upset?”
“You still don’t get it. You don’t get what every human in this country understands since the age of eight! That you do not get freedom by taking it away! You fight for freedom, but treat your soldiers like cogs in a machine. You took away the only freedom that means a damn to a soldier. The freedom of choice! If I had been asked do you think I would have turned down the mission? That I wouldn’t have agreed to go?”
“I didn’t know, and I couldn’t take that chance. But either way I expected you to do your duty as I would expect any soldier to do their duty.”
“And what about your duty to your soldiers to not treat them like things? You treat soldiers like they're nothing more than items to be used, and you are no better than Khivar!”
I felt my fist spring forth like a sledge hammer against Langley’s face again.
“I would watch your tongue, or the king might find out you had an unfortunate accident.”
------
Max watched Liz’s chest rise and fall as she slept. Here Liz’s face was relaxed, and without the concerns that during the day there was so much that weighed them down. He wished she could have more moments like this, and in his heart he made a promise to give them to her. She had given everything to him, and he would not make her regret that choice.
Just then her eyes fluttered, and opened. “Max?” she asked in the early morning haze.
“I was just watching the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“How much longer till we have to go downstairs?”
“We have a few more hours. Go back to sleep.”
Just then a mischievous smile appeared on Liz’s face. “Actually I have other ideas.” A few seconds later the only thought Max could have was, I love this woman.
------
Maria sighs as an all too familiar sound began echoing down from the upstairs. 'Jesus Christ do they ever sleep?' Maria stopped that thought right there. Max and Liz had been through so much that she should allow them to do…well. 'Okay stop this Maria. You know what you’re really avoiding thinking about right now.' Before she’d gone to sleep last night, she had listened to Michael and Garen, and she’d never seen Michael so relaxed. Not even around Max was Michael so unguarded.
He was possibly the closest to Michael’s real father that she would ever get, and she was afraid that after all she and Michael had gone through that if he gave her a negative review Michael might leave her. So she was trying to be on her best behavior, and not let her mouth lead her into trouble. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anyone who could help her since Liz was upstairs and otherwise engaged. Isabelle was avoiding all contact with anything alive as she grieved for her husband. And Alex had been taken away from her by the blonde haired bitch.
Kyle had disappeared, and wasn’t talking to anyone right now. So now her melodramatic imagination was working overdrive. Just then Garen came into the kitchen from outside. He seemed to be just about ready to explode when he saw her with a spoonful of cereal half way to her mouth. Had it been anyone else the scene would have been incredibly funny. “So, you’re Maria.”
“Yeah, look I just want to…” before she could finish Garen interrupted.
“Quiet till I’m done speaking,” Maria flinched at his harsh attitude.
“I don’t like, I don’t dislike you. I really at this moment do not have time to care either way. And I have no desire to expend the effort to get to know you. That is of course unless you want to watch Khivar kill every last one of your race?”
Maria looked at Garen in the eyes her temper in full swing at his crass manner. “You arrogant obnoxious jackass,” she said just before slapping Garen in the face with her left palm and walking straight into Michael.
“I do apologize for setting your girlfriend off, but I’m not going to be here much longer. I just want to make sure she’s worthy of you. Actually from what I’ve seen Michael, you are not worthy of her.”
------
Isabelle didn’t do anything to make her presence know, it just was. Her grief surrounded her more then any veil or black dress. Her walk, her posture, her eyes all gave her away. She would receive no comfort, no outreached hand, no love. She would share her pain with no one. Not Kyle, Michael, Maria, Liz, or even Max. Alex had been Liz and Maria’s friend not just her boyfriend. They were her last links to him, and so she had let them be close, well as close she would let anyone who wasn’t Alex.
But Jesse had been different. He had been hers’ alone. With him she had been able to have more then shared grief, and had found love again. Jesse had rebuilt her heart without removing Alex from it. Yet, she had kept him distant from the rest. Afraid that he would be taken like Alex had. She had even distanced herself from Max and Michael. It hadn’t been enough. She had lost him as she had lost Alex, but this time there was no comfort with friends. No shared grief. She would not allow it. Even now Jesse would still be hers and hers alone.
------
Kyle could not sleep. His dreams were a strange mix of nightmares and a conversation between Alex, Jesse, and him. He was not sure which caused him more pain, the images of Alex and Jesse telling him to go to Isabelle, or the more horrific images that plagued him. Images of a world that could not have been Earth and fields filled with dead bodies.
He felt less in control of himself then when Tess had mind warped him. He found himself outside the room Liz had been placed in when she was unconscious. No one, not Liz, not Michael, and not even Max had dared to enter this room. The imposing figure of Isabelle Ramirez now seemed more like a broken Barbie doll. She had cried herself to sleep, desperately clinging to the picture of Jesse.
Again almost as if he were watching himself from somewhere else Kyle picked Isabelle up and placed her down on the bed. He gently brushed the side of her face moving a few stray strands of hair away from her face. So beautiful even now, Kyle thought. Suddenly at that moment his arm began to crackle in green energy, and then just before the green energy touched her skin Isabelle woke up.
“Kyle?”
------
The sound of hard passionate sex going on made both Michael and Maria groan.
“God do they ever stop? I mean they go on and on for an entire night. Don’t you think they should sleep?” Maria shouted.
Michael just sighed. “Don’t look at me like that Maria.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, for the love of god! I know you. You want to go up there. I, on the other hand, have no desire to Max and Liz doing whatever it is they do.”
“Fuck you Michael.”
“Ahhh, young love,” Garen laughed.
“Funny Garen,” Maria said as she shot him a menacing glare as she left the kitched and head up towards the sounds.
“You have a passionate woman there Rat…Michael. But then again you always did love a challenge.”
“A challenge? Boy is that the understatement of the millennium,” Michael said as he dropped his head and followed Maria.
----
Maria began pounding on the door to Liz’s room. “Oh, for the love of god! Liz! Come on take a break!”
“Maria, what are you screaming about?”
Maria started talking before turning to face Liz. “You and Max going all…Wait, what are you doing over there?”
“Isabelle was in there, remember?”
“Well if you’re in there? Then whose in…”
Los Angeles - Langley’s House
The sun was rising so different from his home world and yet so similar. Accept that today there would be no bombs dropping around him, no armies to assault him, and no dead friends to mourn. Today all there would be were questions. The questions that had haunted him for a long time, who am I? And what’s the point? My name is Garen and I know nothing of who I am. A warrior for longer then most of the people on Antar had lived; I have been forced to do things both honorable and repulsive. Still these questions plague me, eternal doubts as I fought for a King growing in an incubation pod on a world half a galaxy away.
Since the instant Khivar’s plans were confirmed, every action, every breath of my life, became horrifyingly clear. He holds every advantage in supplies, troops, and position. There is an old tradition on both Antar and Earth that old warriors reaching their final battle could sense when the war would claim their lives. In hours, the final battle for Antar and Earth would be joined bringing about a petulant dictator’s final hours, or the last gasp of freedom for two worlds. But even with all my experience I can not figure what course the future would take.
I know I can survive if I just took off and ran, but I have no desire to do that. Survival had long ago become a secondary thought to me. All that was left for me was honor and death. Death was the final, ultimate peace, and subject to the whims of those who have never seen friends die. Death was the only peace that would ever truly last. Off to the side as the rising sun began fading into the clear blue of the morning sky I could feel a person watching me. I don’t need to ask who, Langley stepped next to me before I would need to ask.
“Your habits never change.”
I turn to look at Cal as I speak to him. My doubts about myself are nothing compared to my doubts of him. “What do you want?”
“To annoy you,” Langley said as his eyes glared at me.
“So I guess that means you haven’t change ether.”
“I’ve changed more than you can imagine, more than I ever wanted to, and I want you to remember that.”
“Why should I? You think you can scare me little brother? While you have been here sitting on your ass. I have been out there in battle. I have watched good people die because of Khivar. So tell me Cal, sitting here on Earth in relative safety could possibly make you upset?”
“You still don’t get it. You don’t get what every human in this country understands since the age of eight! That you do not get freedom by taking it away! You fight for freedom, but treat your soldiers like cogs in a machine. You took away the only freedom that means a damn to a soldier. The freedom of choice! If I had been asked do you think I would have turned down the mission? That I wouldn’t have agreed to go?”
“I didn’t know, and I couldn’t take that chance. But either way I expected you to do your duty as I would expect any soldier to do their duty.”
“And what about your duty to your soldiers to not treat them like things? You treat soldiers like they're nothing more than items to be used, and you are no better than Khivar!”
I felt my fist spring forth like a sledge hammer against Langley’s face again.
“I would watch your tongue, or the king might find out you had an unfortunate accident.”
------
Max watched Liz’s chest rise and fall as she slept. Here Liz’s face was relaxed, and without the concerns that during the day there was so much that weighed them down. He wished she could have more moments like this, and in his heart he made a promise to give them to her. She had given everything to him, and he would not make her regret that choice.
Just then her eyes fluttered, and opened. “Max?” she asked in the early morning haze.
“I was just watching the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“How much longer till we have to go downstairs?”
“We have a few more hours. Go back to sleep.”
Just then a mischievous smile appeared on Liz’s face. “Actually I have other ideas.” A few seconds later the only thought Max could have was, I love this woman.
------
Maria sighs as an all too familiar sound began echoing down from the upstairs. 'Jesus Christ do they ever sleep?' Maria stopped that thought right there. Max and Liz had been through so much that she should allow them to do…well. 'Okay stop this Maria. You know what you’re really avoiding thinking about right now.' Before she’d gone to sleep last night, she had listened to Michael and Garen, and she’d never seen Michael so relaxed. Not even around Max was Michael so unguarded.
He was possibly the closest to Michael’s real father that she would ever get, and she was afraid that after all she and Michael had gone through that if he gave her a negative review Michael might leave her. So she was trying to be on her best behavior, and not let her mouth lead her into trouble. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anyone who could help her since Liz was upstairs and otherwise engaged. Isabelle was avoiding all contact with anything alive as she grieved for her husband. And Alex had been taken away from her by the blonde haired bitch.
Kyle had disappeared, and wasn’t talking to anyone right now. So now her melodramatic imagination was working overdrive. Just then Garen came into the kitchen from outside. He seemed to be just about ready to explode when he saw her with a spoonful of cereal half way to her mouth. Had it been anyone else the scene would have been incredibly funny. “So, you’re Maria.”
“Yeah, look I just want to…” before she could finish Garen interrupted.
“Quiet till I’m done speaking,” Maria flinched at his harsh attitude.
“I don’t like, I don’t dislike you. I really at this moment do not have time to care either way. And I have no desire to expend the effort to get to know you. That is of course unless you want to watch Khivar kill every last one of your race?”
Maria looked at Garen in the eyes her temper in full swing at his crass manner. “You arrogant obnoxious jackass,” she said just before slapping Garen in the face with her left palm and walking straight into Michael.
“I do apologize for setting your girlfriend off, but I’m not going to be here much longer. I just want to make sure she’s worthy of you. Actually from what I’ve seen Michael, you are not worthy of her.”
------
Isabelle didn’t do anything to make her presence know, it just was. Her grief surrounded her more then any veil or black dress. Her walk, her posture, her eyes all gave her away. She would receive no comfort, no outreached hand, no love. She would share her pain with no one. Not Kyle, Michael, Maria, Liz, or even Max. Alex had been Liz and Maria’s friend not just her boyfriend. They were her last links to him, and so she had let them be close, well as close she would let anyone who wasn’t Alex.
But Jesse had been different. He had been hers’ alone. With him she had been able to have more then shared grief, and had found love again. Jesse had rebuilt her heart without removing Alex from it. Yet, she had kept him distant from the rest. Afraid that he would be taken like Alex had. She had even distanced herself from Max and Michael. It hadn’t been enough. She had lost him as she had lost Alex, but this time there was no comfort with friends. No shared grief. She would not allow it. Even now Jesse would still be hers and hers alone.
------
Kyle could not sleep. His dreams were a strange mix of nightmares and a conversation between Alex, Jesse, and him. He was not sure which caused him more pain, the images of Alex and Jesse telling him to go to Isabelle, or the more horrific images that plagued him. Images of a world that could not have been Earth and fields filled with dead bodies.
He felt less in control of himself then when Tess had mind warped him. He found himself outside the room Liz had been placed in when she was unconscious. No one, not Liz, not Michael, and not even Max had dared to enter this room. The imposing figure of Isabelle Ramirez now seemed more like a broken Barbie doll. She had cried herself to sleep, desperately clinging to the picture of Jesse.
Again almost as if he were watching himself from somewhere else Kyle picked Isabelle up and placed her down on the bed. He gently brushed the side of her face moving a few stray strands of hair away from her face. So beautiful even now, Kyle thought. Suddenly at that moment his arm began to crackle in green energy, and then just before the green energy touched her skin Isabelle woke up.
“Kyle?”
------
The sound of hard passionate sex going on made both Michael and Maria groan.
“God do they ever stop? I mean they go on and on for an entire night. Don’t you think they should sleep?” Maria shouted.
Michael just sighed. “Don’t look at me like that Maria.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, for the love of god! I know you. You want to go up there. I, on the other hand, have no desire to Max and Liz doing whatever it is they do.”
“Fuck you Michael.”
“Ahhh, young love,” Garen laughed.
“Funny Garen,” Maria said as she shot him a menacing glare as she left the kitched and head up towards the sounds.
“You have a passionate woman there Rat…Michael. But then again you always did love a challenge.”
“A challenge? Boy is that the understatement of the millennium,” Michael said as he dropped his head and followed Maria.
----
Maria began pounding on the door to Liz’s room. “Oh, for the love of god! Liz! Come on take a break!”
“Maria, what are you screaming about?”
Maria started talking before turning to face Liz. “You and Max going all…Wait, what are you doing over there?”
“Isabelle was in there, remember?”
“Well if you’re in there? Then whose in…”