Vix was torn in despair. She closed her eyes, and made the most difficult decision in her life. Her thumb hovered over the trigger.
“Kristen…” a voice echoed. Vix looked up in alarm. No one had ever used her real name since she joined the FBI. She turned her head toward the source. There was a ghostly figure deeper into the trees. “Kristen,” it repeated.
The voice was familiar this time, but it couldn’t be. He was dead.
“Kristen…” in array of light, the figure materializes into a middle aged man. Vix knew who he was. “Don’t do it,” he said with sadness in his expression.
“Ben… father?” she asked, shaking. The man nodded solemnly. “No,” Vix said back away. “This is just a dream, you’re dead.”
She drops her PDA. “You’re not real,” she venomously stated. She turns around and exposes her left wrist, sticking out her middle and index finger on her right hand. She was going to tap out of this dream.
“Wait!” his voice softly echoed, momentarily pausing Vix. “Kristen, remember the day we went out boating? You caught your first fish on the first cast you ever made.”
Vix slowly moved her hand away from her wrist. She remembered.
“You were so happy then. We took a picture together to frame that very moment. You almost fell off the boat because you were bouncing around in joy,” he slightly chuckled.
Tears filled her eyes. Vix looked around her shoulder. “You promised you’d return,” she said accusingly, recalling the last day he left her.
“I know... I’m so sorry,” he pleaded. “I want you to understand…”
“WHAT IS THERE TO UNDESTAND?! YOU DIED!” she blurted out of anger, staring at him eye-to-eye. “I had to watch the last person who cared, buried.” Vix took a deep breath. “Then I was told that the very same monsters that murdered my family killed you too! I want them all dead, DEAD!” Vix fell to her knees sobbing uncontrollably. She felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
“Kristen, I want you to be happy with your life. I need to tell you something.” Vix’s sobs started to subside. She looked into the soft kind eyes of the person that she once called father. “All those stories that I told you about how some sappy person went around saving werewolves. They’re real. Although, I hope I wasn’t really that sappy.” He smiled briefly. “That was me. I did what I could to protect not only humans, but lycanthropes as well. I upheld that fragile treaty between the FBI and lycanthropes till the day I died. I wanted you to understand that I did my best to return, and it breaks my heart to see you suffer for so long because I didn’t.”
Vix couldn’t believe what she was hearing. After everything she’d done, the anger, the vengeance, the hatred, the exterminations, was all a misunderstanding. She believed she was continuing his work. “I everything I did… was for you…” she whispered.
“I wanted to save you from leading a miserable and tormented life. I thought if you knew the truth that you would be at peace. I didn’t know that you would take it the way you did.” He looked down as sadness returned to his face.
Vix’s mind wrought was with the agony she carried throughout her life. She falls forward on her hands. Her silver keepsake that was once her father’s dangled from her neck. “I.... I can’t…” she rasped. “I can’t. What I have done… is unforgivable.”
“Kristen, I forgive you. Let it go…” he echoed, “…for me.”
Vix stared at the ground for what seemed like hours, thinking, reflecting on every memory she knew. Finally, she sits back up. Her hand moved to the detonator she was clutching. She twisted the base cap off, letting the batteries fall onto the leaf laden ground. With all her might, she tossed the empty detonator as she stood up.
With a blink, Vix found herself standing behind the tree she ran across to a moment before. She looked at her hands. She was still holding her PDA and the detonator. She realized that it was all a daydream. She pocketed her PDA and stared at the detonator, her hand trembled. She noticed that her silver necklace had come out of hiding and lay exposed on her chest. She grasped it with her free hand.
In an almost similar display in her dream, she opened the base of the detonator and threw it into the woods. Turning around, she ran toward the cathedral.