Second Chances

A/N: It's been a looooong time, I know. It's been a long time since I've written anything, and I miss it. I don't know why, but I re-read First Impressions over the holidays, and I remembered that I had started a companion piece, so... I'm dusting it off, and I'm hoping that if I begin posting again, I'll actually get around to finishing it. I don't even know if anyone still reads Voyager fanfiction. It's been almost 20 years since the series finale, but if you are reading this, thanks, and I'm going to do my best not to leave you out to dry.

Anyway, this is the sequel to First Impressions, so if you haven't read that, I definitely recommend you read it first, or this will make no sense. And since it is an AU, there are going to be some things that are consistent with canon, but some that are different (such as how and when Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant).

If you're new to my FFN, welcome. There are plenty of Voyager stories for you to enjoy. Most of them AU (I love playing with characters and moving them different places), but some that fit within canon as well.

Chapter 1: Stardate 54464.57
2377
Delta Quadrant

Lt. Tom Paris sat still for a long minute after the simulator finished running the program, surrounded by the darkness of the holodeck.

Well, that didn't go so well.

He sighed. "Computer, reset program, randomized inputs within parameters, and hold for my command," he ordered. A split second later, the program repopulated, displaying the bridge of Voyager, empty except for him in his usual seat at the conn, the setting annoying familiar after hundreds of times running through the program. The whole program from start to finish was only 47 seconds, but it was to prepare him for the most important 47 seconds of flying of his life.

It would either take Voyager home, or destabilize a cascading singularity enough to destroy the known universe. No big deal.

He took a deep breath. "Computer, start program in ten seconds." He flexed his fingers one last time, then perched them over the controls, ready to go as soon as the program started.

The inputs, randomly generated based on the parameters the Pathfinder program had provided them, were generous this time around, creating an artificial singularity—he initially called it a wormhole, but the physicists at Pathfinder went into far so much depth explaining why it wasn't a wormhole that he didn't repeat that mistake, lest he have to hear that monologue again—with almost a kilometer of maneuvering space on either side of the ship, and 47 seconds later, found himself at the end of the simulation after a successful flight.

As soon as the program paused at the end, the doors to the holodeck slid open, revealing Lt. Joe Carey. The chief engineer stopped a few steps into the holodeck and studied the display on the simulated view screen. "Successful flight," Carey observed.

"You missed the heat death of the universe two minutes ago," Paris said sourly, then shrugged. "I'm at about 90%," he said.

"Ninety percent is pretty good," Carey replied.

"I'd feel a little bit better if that other 10% was just failure, not death and destruction of everything known," Paris replied. "The wider you can get that singularity, the happier we'll all be."

"Pathfinder is pretty sure the 10% would just be a small black hole, not the end of the known universe," Carey said with an amused eyeroll. "But I'll keep that in mind." Paris registered just how exhausted his friend looked, and realized he probably looked the same. They had both been working fifteen to twenty hour shifts every day for the last three weeks to prepare for this jump. There had been over a thousand modifications that had had to be made in engineering and to the navigational controls, and between those and the simulations, there hadn't been much time for anything else. Including food and sleep. "We're at T minus 12 hours. The captain ordered all but a skeleton crew to spend that time resting. I volunteered to be the one to drag you away from here and make sure you get something to eat," Carey continued. Paris knew that what the engineer said made sense, but the more irrational part of his brain was telling him that the more he practiced, the better prepared he would be. Carey seemed to know what he was thinking and how to sweeten the deal, though. "I was running through the final diagnostics with the Pathfinder team on the data stream. We finished, but the transmission window will be open for another seven minutes. Torres is still on the line."

He jumped up from his seat quickly enough that the simulated chair spun around behind him. "Computer, end program," he ordered, already out the door and headed toward astrometrics.

He found the image of his wife still up on the screen, her attention down at her console. She looked up at the sound of the door in astrometric sliding open and smiled. "Joe said you've been running simulations non-stop," she greeted. "You look like it."

He couldn't help but smile at his wife's characteristic bluntness. "I've used up almost all my replicator rations on raktajino," he replied, only half joking.

"How have the simulations been going?" she asked.

"I'm at about 90%," he said, repeating what he told Carey. "If you can get Joe a good, wide singularity, I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing."

"Ninety is a lot higher than any of the test pilots at R&D could get," she pointed out. Her face tightened for a split second. "We're going to monitor your progress from about a light year away. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" she said forcefully.

"That's my goal," he assured her.

"That's good," she said. "Don't you dare die on me. I'm only getting married once, Flyboy."

His throat tightened at the once-familiar words, last heard almost seven years before. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on it," he managed.

"That's good," she said, her voice as heavy as his felt. "Because if you did, I'd have to go down to the gates of Gre'thor myself to kill you again."

He swallowed a few times before trusting himself to speak. "It's going to work, B'Elanna," he said forcefully. "It has to."

"I love you, Tom," she said. "And it's about time for you to start pulling your weight on this whole parenting thing."

He smiled at that, at the thought of his daughter he had only ever met through the data stream. "I love you, B'Elanna. I'll see you soon."

He reported to his duty station two hours before the scheduled flight through the singularity to run one last diagnostic, his father's safety lectures from when he was learning how to fly as a kid ringing through his head. Always check over your equipment, his father always said, and he always listened—until he got to his teenage years and thought he knew better.

He only made that mistake once. He wondered if that shuttle was still on the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

"Mr. Paris, Mr. Carey," Captain Kathryn Janeway said. "This is your show. Are you ready?"

*Affirmative, Captain,* Carey said from Engineering.

"Yes, Ma'am," Paris added cheekily. He was focused on his console, but could almost feel her slight smile.

"Janeway to all-hands," the captain said, opening a comm channel. "The next time I'll be addressing you, we'll be back home in Federation space. It has been my honor to have served as your captain for the last seven years. Mr. Paris, Mr. Carey, you have the conn."

Paris took a deep breath, and heard Joe doing the same eleven decks away. *Deploying singularity in five, four, three, two, one.*

The singularity opened. Paris took the first two seconds to scan the singularity; they were in luck, more than 500 meters of working room on either side of the ship. Not the widest it could be, but he had also never failed a flight with this much space. "Entering singularity," he announced.

Forty-five fairly anticlimactic seconds later, it was over. "Mr. Kim," Janeway ordered.

"Scanning," Ensign Harry Kim said from the back. "We are... exactly where we're supposed to be. We're in Federation space! And we're being hailed. By the Mackay."

"On screen," Janeway ordered, and then there was Admiral Owen Paris on the view screen.

"Welcome home, Voyager," he said. His eyes traveled down to his son before returning to the captain. "My team's already analyzing the data from the singularity," he said in response to Tom's unasked question. "We're a little over a light year out from your position. We'll be there in about eight hours."

"We'll leave the light on for you, Admiral," Janeway promised.

The ship wasn't moving, so there wasn't much for the chief helmsman to do; Captain Janeway had given him the time off, which is used to eat, shower and collapse hard on his bed. The next thing he knew, she was on the comm. *Lt. Paris, meet me in Shuttle Bay 1.*

"Aye, Captain," he said quickly. There would be only one reason for the captain to ask him to meet him in the shuttle bay, and for as much as it would be nice to see his father again after almost seven years, that wasn't who he was looking forwarding to seeing.

Paris and Captain Janeway stood on the other side of the force field for what seemed like forever, and then it appeared. The Mackay, which Tom knew he would never be able to hear the name of without smiling at B'Elanna's description of Owen's process of naming it: although small, it was technically a roundabout. Roundabouts were named after rivers. Pioneer was a synonym for Pathfinder. The Pioneer River in Australia had been briefly called the Mackay River.

She said it took him two weeks of pouring through documents about rivers throughout the Federation to come up with the name, and that mental picture had made him laugh out loud as he had read her letter.

And now it was here. His father's yacht. Complete with his "team," which as far as Tom could tell, was one engineer.

B'Elanna.

The shuttle bay door closed, and then the force field lowered, and it took all of his willpower to not run forward and begin pounding on the hatch until it opened.

And then it opened on its own, and for the first time in almost seven years, she was there. She was there, in his arms, squeezing him so hard that he was sure his spine was going to break. "B'Elanna," he said, and he realized that until that moment, he hadn't believed it was going to happen. He hadn't believed he would ever see her again, ever get to hold her again, to kiss her again, and the weight of the moment hit him hard. He kissed her with everything he had. "You did it, B'Elanna," he murmured. "You brought me home."

"We did it," she corrected. "Together. We did it together. It always works better when we work together." He smiled at that and kissed her again.

"Tom." He turned at the sound of his father's voice, ready with a smart greeting, but his words died on his lips.

Turned out, his father's "team" consisted not only of an engineer, but also a six-year-old. "Izzy," he managed, and it only took three strides before he was at her. He wanted to pick her up and twirl her around, but knew that for as central as she had been in his thoughts since before her birth, he was still little more than a stranger to her. Instead, he knelt down so they were at eye level. He pushed a stray dark curl behind her ear as she watched him, her hazel eyes slightly weary and definitely tired. "Hi, Izzy," he managed. "I'm so happy to meet you."

"Hi, Dad," she replied, and to his surprise, she launched at him, wrapping him in a hug that was strong enough to leave no doubts of her Klingon heritage, and the realization that he was holding his daughter caused him a shock that was almost painful.

"I've waited way too long to give you a hug," he finally said.

"Me, too," she replied. She frowned when they pulled away. "Why are you crying?"

"Because I'm happy to see you," he said. "And your mother."

"And Grandpa?"

He looked up at his father's barely concealed snort of laughter. "Grandpa, too," he said with a chuckle. For good measure, he gave his father a hug when he rose.

"Kathryn will take Izzy and me on a tour of the ship," his father said. "We'll meet up with you and B'Elanna in the mess hall for dinner in a couple of hours."

He knew what his father was saying and suggesting, and had no intention of arguing with him. "We'll see you then," he confirmed. He turned to leave, then turned back. "And, Dad? I really am glad to see you."

Paris didn't really know what to say as he walked his wife toward his quarters, so he went with his tried and true method of stating the obvious. "Congratulations on the promotion, Commander," he joked as the turbo lift took its sweet time to deck four. She chuckled and touched her collar, and the evasive way everyone had been referring to her for the last couple of months—by her first name, or just her last name without rank, or in the case of Admiral Paris, as "his team"—made a lot more sense. He just didn't know if it was to surprise him or spare his feelings.

"You noticed," she said, sounding amused.

"I always knew you'd outrank me sooner or later," he replied with a smile, and truthfully, it didn't bother him in the least.

"Technically, you've been a lieutenant commander for two years," she informed him. "Captain Janeway has been keeping the promotion boards up to date through the data stream. I think she's the only one who hasn't been promoted at least once in the last six and a half years. There's probably going to be a big joint ceremony at some point." She quirked a smile in his direction. "I know how much you love ceremonies," she said, amused.

"Oh, I love them," he said with mock seriousness. "It's been a long time. I'm not the same man you married."

"Thank Kahless for that," she joked, and then they were at his quarters.

For a minute, both stood there and stared at each other. "This is really embarrassing to admit," he finally said, "but I've been going through a bit of a dry spell. It's been six years, seven months, and twelve days since I've had sex."

She laughed, a real, genuine laugh he had been waiting six years, seven months, and twelve days to hear, and kissed him the way she did on their honeymoon. "I think we'll figure something out," she said with that glint in her eyes that he absolutely loved.

Afterwards, they laid in bed, and after he caught his breath, he twirled her hair in his fingers. It was shorter than it had been, and she was wearing it straight now, but it was still her hair, and he still couldn't believe she was there. "I need to know what it was like," he said.

"It'll get better with more practice."

"Hey!" he protested. "But that's not what I meant. Your life, the last six and a half years... I need to know what it was like."

"Tom..."

"This isn't me punishing myself," he assured her. "We've had a lot of time apart. Nothing will change how much I love you, but we both know the next few months will be hard. I need to know what your life has been like so I can know how to best fit back in it."

She looked ready to protest, but then relented. "It was hard," she admitted. "I was so angry at first. Part of me wanted to hate you. All of me wanted mourn you, but I was too busy with the whole universe going to hell to even do that."