Tom lightly stepped into his family's apartment. It had been a long day for him. His new position at Starfleet couldn't have been more custom made for the pilot, working as a consultant for multiple teams designing new shuttles and systems for those shuttles. But the days had become long over the last few months. He took in the messiness of the living room before setting down his small travel bag and called out "Where are my girls?"
"Daddy! Daddy!" small feet slapped against the wooden floor as his daughter ran through the living room avoiding the toys strewn about. "Up!" the girl commanded, small arms outstretched and grabbing the material on her father's pant leg.
"Up, please," Tom corrected, while still leaning over and picking up the small mess of arms and legs before him. He held her tight and prepared to take the toddler to bed. "Okay, Miral. You know the drill. Time to go to bed." Before the small curls burrowed in his shoulder could start her pouty lip protests, Tom took long steps toward his daughter's bedroom and began to hum a nursery rhyme directly in Miral's ear. Feeling her breathing slowing and evening out, Tom added a second verse to his song. By the end, he lowered a now deadweight Miral into her crib. He raised the gate, but knew it would be no match for his daughter in the morning. 'Or middle of the night' he mused to himself with a sigh. The easy girl was down. Now her mother.
Tom kept up his quiet footfalls as he went further into the apartment. The lights were dimmed in their bedroom but he could see the light from a PADD lighting up the ridges on his wife's forehead. "How's my other favorite girl?" he asked softly. Although B'Elanna worked from home more often than not, her hours had been long recently as well.
"Give me a couple minutes Tom, I need to finish this read through," she pulled her knees in tighter to her chest.
Tom ventured to the closet and peeled off his uniform in exchange for boxers and a white tee. Seeing B'Elanna was still reading, he stepped into the 'fresher to relieve himself. While washing his hands, he looked over to the small red basket on the counter. The basket that was slowly taking over their life. Tom picked up the hypospray on top and looked at the readout and current dosage. They were a few days away from another test. Another chance to get their hopes up. Another chance to fight and blame one another. But the fact was neither of them was to blame. Both had clean bills of reproductive health. Their luck at conceiving Miral so effortlessly in the Delta Quadrant had spoiled them both. When they were ready to start trying again, it was six months before they had sought out the advice of medical professionals. At first, they had attempted to use a reproductive specialist but B'Elanna had hated sharing their personal life so much to strangers, they shortly found themselves as some of the few patients Voyager's former EMH still saw personally. That was a year ago. Every month they did this dance. B'Elanna monitored herself diligently, Samantha watched Miral on the day of B'Elanna's ovulation (Klingons had frustratingly short ovulation cycles). Tom would use as much vacation time as he could and they would spend the day in bed. The first few months these were the most stressful, but now the two almost looked forward to these days, lounging around watching television and pausing for sex as often as they could handle. It almost became a game, to see if they could beat last month's record. This month was a little different, as the Doctor had delicately suggested the couple take a few months off if a pregnancy didn't happen.
"Tom," B'Elanna called out. She was organizing her work on her desk while leaning over to stretch out her shoulders and back. "How was work today?"
"Long," Tom replied automatically. "Did you take Miral to the park today? She went to sleep almost instantly".
B'Elanna smiled. "We did go to the park and she made a friend with a small dog named Percy. She must have chased that dog for an hour straight".
Tom scrunched his nose, "I love that she is so friendly with animals, but I worry that she doesn't play with the other kids".
"I know. She is just so much bigger than the other kids her age and the kids she is the same size as don't want to play with her. She's almost eighteen months and can easily pass for a three year old human. I just wish she had someone like her to play with". She sat down on her computer chair and looked at her hands resting in her lap. "I really hope it works this time, Tom".
Tom got down on a knee to be right below B'Elanna's eye level. "I don't know if this is going to work or not. We didn't realize how heavily the odds were stacked against us. Even if we don't have another child, I am so happy to have you and Miral. And if we need to move out of San Francisco to be around kids more like her, we will. I only want to do what is best for the two of you. My two perfect Klingons".
Tears glistened in B'Elanna's eyes. The excess of hormones she was issuing herself daily made tears almost a constant in her life. She used to fight them, but they no longer bothered her as much. "Tom. I'm tired. I'm tired of testing myself multiple times a day. I'm tired of getting bad news. And I'm tired of disappointing you".
"Hey, hey" Tom began before B'Elanna could finish her sentence. He went from being on his knee to a crouched position pushing his forehead into his wife's. "You have never disappointed me". He raised his right thumb to wipe an errant tear. He wasn't sure whose eye they came from, but it didn't matter. Encouraging his wife to stand, he wrapped her in a tight embrace and paused. "I would love to have more kids with you. I truly would. But if it isn't going to happen that way, I am okay. That doesn't mean we give up on the whole thing". He gave his words a moment to soak in. "Things have never gone easy for us. But if you can hold an engine room together for seven years in the Delta Quadrant, we can get through this. If we can't science the science, we will engineer it". B'Elanna looked up with confusion swirling in her brown eyes. "Okay, not my best analogy," Tom admitted. "But if we can't have another kid, let's look at alternatives. We can look at adoption. We can look at kids close to Miral's age. Especially interspecies children. Miral would have someone to not only play with now, but someone who she can relate to on multiple levels". Even saying the idea aloud excited him. He and B'Elanna had never been known to do things the normal or easy way.
B'Elanna looked at her husband a long time while formulating a response. Her knee-jerk response was to continue to blame herself for her inability to conceive a child like she had before. But the twinkle and excitement in Tom's eye as he mentioned adoption as a possibility was infectious. She and Tom were misfits in their own lives and the second chance Voyager offered them had been such a blessing to them. What if they could be a second chance for a child? "Well," she began cautiously, "The Dominion War had a lot of casualties. I bet there is still a need".
"We don't have to decide right now," Tom responded, "But I want you to know how real of a possibility it is".
B'Elanna gave a small smile at her husband and felt almost as if a burden left her in that moment. Never a day went by when she didn't stop to think how lucky they were to have each other.