Death and Marriage

Posted on Mon May 24th, 2021 @ 1:58pm by Kindra Graham & Alden Loxley

Mission: Back in Black
Location: Kindra's Shuttle/Fortune's Echo
Timeline: Day 31

"You, uh..." There was a - 'pregnant' definitely wasn't the appropriate word here - pause. "You have a wife?"

Alden felt the ice hot stab of an emotional knife and winced at its ability to still cut deep. Years, it had been six years and still Anouk could do that to him. His gaze didn't falter with his heart though, his visual focus still on those soft brown eyes and the young woman stood before him. She'd seen the literal scars of that short and ill-fated relationship, but Kindra didn't know that yet.

"Had," he answered with a simplicity that resounded like a cymbal in the silence that lingered until that word was spoken. And with effort, Alden added as coolly as he could muster. "I had a wife. She died in the war."

Kindra took a moment to absorb that revelation and do the math. The Unification War ended six years ago. Alden would have been quite young. An Alliance Officer would have been at least his age now, probably older. She'd seen the scars, even if she hadn't connected their origin at the time. He may have married his torturer. Except, she knew, love was more complicated than that.

"Oh, Alden, I'm so sorry. There are no adequate words," said Kindra with sincerity and concern. She recalled what had brought her comfort after losing her mother, then Walter. "I once heard that grief is love cut off from the beloved, with no place to go. But when you remember someone, they are never truly gone." With the hand that still rested on his arm, Kindra took his hand and nudged him gently toward the sofa. "Will you tell me about your wife?"

"It's okay," he said, with the quiet politeness of someone who had said those words in response to that sentiment a good few times before and he let the beautiful young woman lead him to the sofa without a fight.

"I know," Alden added, his gaze lowered. Because Kindra was correct, there was nothing anyone could say that made that loss easier to bear, but words spoken in regards to the information meant something purely by being given. "I think," he continued, voice low and steady now as his eyes locked with the companion's. "That's part of the problem. She'll never be truly gone."

Kindra's forehead wrinkled. Grief usually revolved around what was lost, not what was retained. She herself resented the secrets her parents had kept from her, but Walter and her mother had loved her and she trusted they each did what they thought was best, even if they were wrong.

She wanted to ask what he meant by the problem, but first Kindra pressed her last question. She needed to understand Alden's internal conflict. "Tell me about your wife, Alden. Like... what did you love about her? Or... how did you feel when you were with her. Were there important things left unsaid between you?" Kindra searched his face and took both of his hands in hers. "What is it about your wife that haunts you now?"

It was this extra little step into the clusterfuck of his romantic past that brought Alden to an evasive stop. He sat down, eyes gazing up at the shuttle's ceiling and tried to drag his dignity and composure back under control. This had suddenly become very much about him, and he didn't like that one bit. Anouk was his private nightmare, his complicated emotional puzzle box and Kindra... Kindra had been an all too brief escape into sex and happiness that had been cruelly stolen while he slept. He didn't want to combine the two in this moment, didn't wish to see their faces side by side. It hurt too much.

"It's complicated," he said, evasively. Then against his better judgement, he looked down and met those soulful brown eyes. Ta Ma Duh... "It ended badly." A hand went from Kindra's gentle grip to his own neck, long fingers reaching beneath shirt fabric to find the tip of an old, jagged scar. "She was Alliance, I was..." Alden screwed up his face and shook his head. "How bout we talk about you?" He asked, head canted, right hand still at his back, eyes filled with pain.

Kindra held Alden's fathomless blue gaze for long moments. There was a deep pain there that went far beyond the grief of a widowed spouse. An immense hurt he wasn't ready to explore and purge. At least, not with her. Kindra barely contained the impulse to reach out and pull him into a comforting embrace, but settled instead for squeezing the one hand she still held. "You can simply say you don't want to talk about her. I wouldn't pressure you into doing something you didn't want or weren't ready for."

With a chagrinned and slightly forced smile, she looked down at their interlaced hands. "I believe we have been talking about me, and we came to the obvious conclusion that for a companion, I'm utterly incompetent at identifying my own emotions. Oh, and we also just discussed how thoroughly I failed in my one attempt at a real romantic relationship." In his cabin, Alden'd made it clear he wasn't interested in giving her a second chance. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then glanced up at him and shrugged. "Sure. We can talk about me. What else do you want to know?"

He sat there, awkward as hell, trying to get a grip on his heart and soul while just wishing she'd give him a hug and not make him speak anymore for a while. Didn't happen. Kindra's eyes seemed to search for answers as she gave Alden's fingers a friendly grip and offered him an easy out. But there was no simple exit from the Anouk Situation, and Alden knew it. Kindra had been an escape, the first person he'd truly let see him since his wife's death, and she'd left in the night with only a note in her wake. He wasn't sure how to reconcile that event with the letter and the love being offered now, not in any way that would be fair to either of them at least.

"I..." he said, failing to get beyond simply holding Kindra's hand and bowing his head. "I'm sorry," Alden added. "I just can't talk much about... Anouk..." Maybe if he was really drunk, just maybe. But stone cold sober, here and now, with those deep brown eyes to be lost in? Too much emotion.

A wobbly smile greeted Kindra's self-critical observations and Alden looked up from under his eyebrows and gripped the companion's hand tightly. "You've really never had a real romantic relationship?" He asked outright, voice quiet and expression somewhat humbled. "Some reason I kinda figured with all that choice, a few folks would've featured?"

Kindra tucked the name of Alden's wife into her memory and held it, like she held his large warm hands in hers, and hoped that eventually there would be a time when Alden was ready to talk about Anouk with her.

"No. I, uh… just the week I spent with you." She smiled, recalling her indulgent joy with a charming pilot who swept her away like a seductive force of nature. Then her eyebrows knit together in thought. "A romantic relationship with me - as a companion accepting client contracts - would be complicated. A lot of hard conversations, compromise, and negotiation needed to hold a romance together. I reckon that'd be too much to ask for." Kindra leaned closer, still holding tight to his hand, and whispered, "May I hug you?"

For the thousandth time since she'd shown up on Santo, Alden's mind leapt back to the week Kindra was referring to. The rosy wonderfulness of that beautiful, talented and highly skilled young woman giving him her undivided. Those feelings of blissful happiness and complete freedom to be. That magical time when everyone and everything beyond their tiny sphere of togetherness had ceased to ping up and interrupt them. And then the crashing inferno of waking up that last morning.

"You really gotta stop making that decision all on your lonesome," Alden whispered back, wrapping long fingers about those delicate ones that wanted to save him from himself. "I could definitely handle a hug," he added, keeping that low, barely audible tone as her Kindra's scent and proximity teased his senses.

Kindra slowly untangled one hand from his and ran her palm up his arm to his shoulder as she leaned closer for that hug, a little awkward sitting side-by-side on the settee. She hesitated, face inches from his, and looked his dark blues. Since finding him on Santo, had she asked him - straight-up and direct - if he still wanted her? No, dammit. Like he said, she was still deciding for them both.

"Could we... do you..." His intoxicating spicy, masculine scent added to the butterflies in her stomach. What if he said no? What if she never gave him the chance to say yes? Kindra swallowed and tried again, low and husky. "I want us to start again. Or start over. Alden, would you consider giving me... giving us... a second chance?"

It - she - was overwhelming in every way in that moment. Her voice, that mutual need wrapped in old emotions and battered heartstrings, her touch, her very present and firm promise of warmth. Alden abandoned the need to remain seated and simply, effortlessly, folded sideways to lie with his face against her shoulder, then slipped to rest said heavy head in Kindra's lap, his legs curling up alongside him so as to fit in the short space along that shuttle sofa.

Eyes closed, mind racing, Alden focused on that red-darkness for a long moment, steadying his nerves and calming his thoughts enough to rationalise. That letter. Those words. This woman. Could he risk this again? NO - screamed his heart and head. DON'T DO IT. And yet, here he still was, wrapped in the scents of sounds that defined Kindra in her entirety.

"We could play together, maybe?" He asked, eyes still firmly shut. "Your harp. My guitar." He could risk that, then see how it went from there. Maybe. Probably. Just for a little bit.

Kindra moved with Alden to shift over on the short sofa to make more room for him to lay curled up with his head on her lap. The change in position dramatically altered their interpersonal roles - from equal partners in a potential relationship, to caregiver and care recipient. Parent and child. Companion and client.

His nonverbal response to her question was a resounding NO.

Kindra stroked his head, simply holding Alden for long minutes. Maternal, comforting, undemanding. Silently in pain. She had reached too far, asked for too much, and his rejection hurt. She was too emotionally exhausted to address her feelings, so she tried instead to sort out her thoughts. Perhaps Alden's no was for the best. As Alden's lover, she'd need to tell him about her trouble with her stepbrother and Walter's will and risk bringing that trouble to him. But, as nothing more than a companion renting his shuttle, explanations were not required. If Jim Buccleuch got too close, she could just leave the Echo and confront him on her own if need be… and this time she'd say goodbye properly.

A tear slid down her cheek before Kindra realized it was coming and brushed it away. She tipped her head back to blink rapidly at the shuttle's ceiling until she regained control of the coming flood.

Voice soft and layered with acceptance, she murmured, "Your guitar, my harp, playing music together. If you want to," - the tentative and reluctant way he'd offered, especially in comparison with the enthusiasm Kindra remembered so well, sounded to her like he did not want to - "then, yes I'd like that. But, another time, okay? Just now I need…" Kindra swallowed against the sudden constriction in her throat, barely maintaining her fragile hold on the flood. She gently extracted herself from Alden and the sofa and went to stand by the shuttle's door, arms wrapped around herself and gaze cast to the floor, a not-subtle invitation for him to leave. There was only one person Kindra could truly depend on to take care of her, to comfort her. "Will you excuse me, Alden? I, uh, need some time to myself."

He'd made it worse and Alden knew it. Worse for him, worse for Kindra too. Her silence, the way her fingers touched his hair, his ears, lingered at his face... He wanted that emotional closeness again, the chance to love completely, he wanted to trust and risk and lose himself in this woman. But... she'd already left once because it was too complicated and Kindra was giving those exact same reasons again. Companion. Pilot. Hard compromises. Sharing. Negotiation.

As her voice broke that heavy quiet, Alden felt rather than heard her truth wrapped about Kindra's words as she fought back sorrow. He'd hurt her. She'd hurt him. Surprised him too, which was interesting. And here they both were, caught in the distance between worlds, trapped in a Firefly for a few weeks at least. He smiled at the irony and injustice of it all, but there was no humour in his expression.

Boots pushed to the ground and forced him to stand up as Kindra asked him to leave in the politest way Alden had ever encountered. He could hear the tears behind her request, the need for him to be gone. Nothing to say that would help...

"Another time," Alden softly agreed. He pushed her letter into his pocket as his gaze sought hers and failed to find it, then walked slowly towards and silently past the only other woman he'd wanted to risk a real relationship with in six years. Seemed like a good time to recalibrate the Echo's sensors behind a securely locked door in the bridge and hope against hooe that no one else needed a chat. Then, without turning back to face Kindra, he spoke once more, his voice catching on the last three words.

"I meant it," Alden said. "I want to."

That sentiment was followed by the heavy, quick sounds of his boots descending the metal steps (two at a time) back down from the shuttle and onwards, away out along the gangway.

Kindra waited for Alden's footfalls on the steps to recede, then shut the shuttle's heavy door with a clang and sealed it closed. At least she was safe, for now. And alone, as always. Kindra sank to the shuttle's floor, knees drawn up to her chest, cold metal door against her back, and wept.

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