Early morning finds Gwen back in a place she hasn't seen for centuries: her deserted island in the Atlantic. It's the day after she was made whole again, and right now she feels a little TOO whole.
She remembers waking up in the dreaded infirmary and seeing Ethan looking down at her, and remembers him asking how she felt, and her pausing, forcing a little smile, and answering "good," when what she REALLY felt like was screaming and screaming and punching him or setting him on fire or something as all of Rage's memories flooded into her head and combined with Lady Supreme's. But years of discipline and practice at repressing her emotions saved her, and he had no idea the trauma she was going through. Not to mention she didn't REALLY want to punch him or set him on fire!
And then Jennifer had come in with some food, looking a little green and nauseous, and Gwen knew it was because Jennifer was pregnant, and Gwen just wanted to burst into tears and scream at her and set HER on fire, too, as a first reaction, but of course she didn't.
Fear and panic had set in for a moment, but she held on until the two left her alone, and then she couldn't hold it back anymore and a flood of weeping just suddenly took her over...all of Rage's grief over watching Divis' death as she floated high above helplessly...the shock at seeing that Damage was still alive...and then the sorrow and hopelessness when he told her that he and Jennifer were together...her strong desire to be dead in that moment...her strong temptation to fly to where Divis' clones were waiting and command them and the aliens to destroy the earth with her...and then the resignation that the Supreme team wouldn't let her get too far with that, and she wanted to go out on her OWN terms, not theirs.
Gwen had laid there on the bed curled up in fetal position crying in frustration and sorrow for quite a while, wondering how she was going to be able to function now, and then something amazing happened: she felt better.
She removed her hands from her face and laid there silently, feeling a part of her heart mend. And then she realized: Nielssons don't cry! At least that's what her dad had drilled into their heads growing up. Maybe that's why they were all so fucked up! Maybe if they'd just been allowed to vent in ways that didn't involve violence they would have been...normal.
She laid there pondering this until Ethan and Jennifer came to check on her and see if she wanted to return to New York for the celebration, and...she did want to go!
But then when she'd seen the place where Divis' blood still stained the ground, she'd broken down again--although not as bad this time. Ethan had been so patient with her--even when she made the request to be the one to dispose of Divis' body. He'd taken her to where it was...
Back on the island, Gwen is sitting in the sand with her back against a palm tree and a spiral notebook and pen on her lap. She picks up the pen and starts writing.
"Hello journal my old friend, I've come to talk with you again. Only this time I'm writing on paper so I can burn it when I'm done. This is an idea my ex-therapist had--to write down things I don't want other people to know, and then burn the pages, and I'd feel much better. So here goes."
"It's very odd having two sets of memories and feelings. Yesterday Viktor and Nicolai and I flew Divis' body back to Russia. We found a forest near his hometown of Kiev and dug a deep grave and placed him in it. Viktor and I bawled our eyes out, and then Viktor used his laser-eyes to write "Beloved Father" in Russian on a slab of stone, and we placed the stone on Divis' his chest and then covered the grave over so no one could find and desecrate it. We all stood there for a while and I held Viktor and we cried some more, and then we returned to New York where everyone was celebrating Divis' death, and people came up to me and thanked me for killing him. Surreal."
Gwen takes a deep breath and continues writing.
"We novas left the humans to celebrate in New York while we returned to Terra Nova and had our own celebration. I was definitely up for getting drunk at this point-- I'd still never been drunk, but I was up for the challenge. Brody and I and Lance and some of the others started the infamous drinking contest that got Brody and Watcher in trouble the last time! (gobble-gobble!)"
"Luckily Jennifer didn't want anything to drink this time because of her nausea. If she'd tried to drink we would have had to stop her because of her pumpkin-in-the-oven, and we didn't want to reveal the surprise to her just yet!"
"By the end of the game it was just Brody and I-- as expected-- and then Brody passed out and I won...of course! I don't know why, but I seem to have a bit of a tolerance for the old nova beer! At least I finally got drunk!"
"It was pretty late at this point. Ethan said he'd tuck Viktor in (very amusing when you realize the two are the same height!), and Jennifer said she'd start cleaning up since everyone else was passed out, hehe. I volunteered to carry the drinking-losers to their beds-- which Jennifer found VERY amusing since I was pretty unsteady on my feet, myself."
"I took Brody first because I figured if I bashed his head into something it wouldn't hurt him too much! I was contemplating how I could use his unconsciousness to my advantage prank-wise all the way to he and Jennifer's quarters, but it was hard to think through the drunk-fog."
"I laid him on their bed, and sort of...got dizzy and ended up laying next to him haphazardly. I laid there for a minute, and then reached over and touched his hair and watched him breathing the deep breathing of the drunken-and-passed-out. And then I started whispering all the things I'd kept hidden in my heart all these years. I told him how heartbroken I was, and how long I'd loved him, and how jealous I was of Jennifer, and how much it hurt me to watch them together."
"And it felt SO good to get all of that out-- even if he couldn't hear me. And I suddenly had an impulse and I rolled over and kissed him. He mumbled something and put his arms around me in his sleep and sort of drunken-kissed me back, and all this joy and elation washed over me! And then I realized that he thought I was Jennifer. And I had a moment where I thought I would just stay right there and see if he wouldn't notice that I wasn't Jennifer and see if he'd...you know...want something from me. And I didn't CARE if Jennifer walked in and found us like that! Then she'd be as hurt as I was when I saw them kiss in the officers club of the Endeavor!"
"And then this sorrow washed over me when I thought of seeing Jennifer hurt and crying and feeling betrayed, and I was horrified at the knowledge that it would ruin our friendship, and me and Brody's friendship, and me and ETHAN'S relationship, and I quickly rolled off the bed ungracefully and ended up sitting on the floor, and I just started bawling my eyes out because me and Brody couldn't be together, and I don't think I've ever cried that hard in my life. That was YEARS worth of crying right there."
"And even in that moment I had a hope that Brody would wake up and ask me what was wrong and I could pour my heart out to him, or that Jennifer would walk in and I'd tell her that I WASN'T over Brody and I guess I better move out and go somewhere where I'd never see the two of them again, and I just cried and cried."
"And then the crying kind of tapered off, and...I felt better. I stumbled back to my feet, and I helped roll Brody under the covers, and I told him I wished that guys and girls could just be friends without all these complications, and I wished I could just turn these feelings off, and then I finally left the room."
"I went back to the party-room and stood in the doorway and watched Jennifer carrying bottles and cans to the trash, and I fixed this look of pure resentment on her that I'd been wanting to give her for years, and...it made me feel better...and then guilty. Then she turned around, and I quickly switched the look on my face but I probably looked really funny, and she asked me what was wrong, and I said I wasn't feeling too good and thought I might throw up. She laughed and told me it served me right, and asked if she could do anything for me, and I told her I was just going to go to bed and I'd send Ethan in to carry the rest of the passed-out bodies to their rooms, and I found Ethan in our room waiting for me, and I felt this huge remorse for what I'd done when I saw the love and compassion in his eyes. He tucked me into bed, and went to help Jennifer, and I passed out and woke up about an hour ago. I told him I was having a challenge adjusting to all my new feeling and memories and needed to get away for the day, and so I'm here."
"Ethan looked really worried and wanted to call the telepaths back to have them just erase all of the Rage-issues, but I told him absolutely not. I want to work this out the old-fashioned way. I actually feel a lot better than I did yesterday. I don't know how much time it's going to take to resolve things, but I do know that each time I let myself really FEEL the emotions and mourn and try to work them out that I make progress. I'm not going to make the same mistakes I did before I erupted."
Gwen sits looking at the page for a minute, and then tears it out of the notebook and sets the notebook beside her on the sand. As she holds the page in her hand, it suddenly starts smoking and then catches on fire. Within seconds it's completely consumed, and the wind blows the ashes out of her hand.
One month later...
Gwen lands softly on the sand of the beach, the same spiral notebook and pen tucked under her arm. She trudges over to her favorite tree and sits under it and starts writing again.
"I'm doing a lot better, I'm happy to report! I can talk about Divis without my voice hitching at all, or me getting defensive when someone says something negative about him, and Viktor's doing a lot better now, too. He's totally taking to Ethan, and doesn't cry at night anymore--at least that I can hear."
"And I can watch Brody and Jennifer together and feel excitement for them. I've even been plotting with Brody on how we should tell Jennifer that she's pregnant! Brody's been renovating the old Nova Island, and picked out a building he wants to turn into a house...or mansion, more like...so I suggested making one of the rooms into a nursery and decorating it, and he put me on the decorating-committee! I got Radar to tell me what she's having-- a girl!-- so I've been sneakily buying pink baby-crap and setting it up when neither Brody nor Jennifer are there. Brody said he doesn't want to know the gender yet. I guess he'll be finding out soon, heh-heh-heh!"
"Sure, I have days when I 'relapse,' so to speak. Me and Brody will be teasing each other about something, and I'll feel this ache in my heart, but it's all good. It's all part of the healing-process."
"A couple of weeks ago I was feeling sad because I didn't have anyone I wanted to talk to about what I was going through because it was too soap opera-ish, and then I realized I could go talk to Lance. He was kind of weirded-out about me trying to 'girl-talk' with him and didn't want Ethan to get the wrong idea, so that ended up sucking! But then we started talking about getting the XWF going again, and I said I'd be his partner, and we made an appointment to spar the next day! I asked what his life-plans where, and he said he wanted to join the psion-force of the military and try to find him a nice military-girl to marry and have 'rug rats' with! HAHAHA! So I spent the rest of the time teasing him about 'Lance-ettes' and such, and he finally chased me out of his room! Even though I didn't get to talk about anything I came there to talk about, I left feeling a lot better, so there you go!"
"I also had a really good talk with Ethan. I told him that I really liked the new him-- how much more open-minded and relaxed and joking he was-- and how he reminded me of the Ethan I first fell in love with, and we talked about our first date, and our first kiss, and other first things, and it was really nice!"
"I also told him that he has a tendency to be really controlling, and if someone wants to do something that he doesn't agree with he tends to issue inappropriate ultimatums to try to get them to change their minds. He was a little surprised when I called him a 'control-freak,' but then he finally admitted that I was right, and he promised never to make any 'inappropriate ultimatums' ever again, and he agreed to talk things through open-mindedly if I promised never to keep things from him, and I told him that sounded good to me!
"I also told him my belief that there's no such thing as black or white, just varying shades of gray. He kept referring to Divis as 'evil,' but I told him there's no such thing. I told him stories of Divis tucking Viktor into bed, and reading to him at bedtime, and how when it was my turn to tuck Viktor in Divis would remind me to hug and kiss Viktor for him. I told him about how when Viktor would have nightmares Divis would be the first to hurry in to check on him. I asked Ethan if that sounded like 'evil' to him."
"Ethan was pretty quiet after that question. I told him that we are products of our environment and upbringing. I asked him to consider what would have happened if Divis had landed in that cornfield in Littleton, Kansas, and Ethan had landed in that field in Russia."
"Ethan is so eternally patient and long-suffering with the new me at times. Here I come to him with a son that Divis fathered, and Ethan takes Viktor right in and adopts him like his own. Ethan stays by my side when I cry and vent and heal. He tells me how beautiful I am. Ethan is the eye of the hurricane. Sometimes I don't know how he puts up with the stuff he puts up with from me...now that's love, baby!"
Gwen smiles and slowly tears the pages out of the notebook while looking off into the distance a little distractedly. After a minute she glances down at the pages she's holding, and then folds them up and puts them back into the notebook instead of burning them. She takes a moment to look around at her little tropical haven, and then takes off into the sky.
