A/N: An older story of mine, Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, shows how B'Elanna handles Miral's issues with her Klingon heritage. She, of course, has a much different perspective on the issue than Tom does, so I'd encourage you to read that one as well if you haven't before! Please see the acknowledgments in my first story in the series, Fresh Start. For your convenience, here's a list of the stories in the series so far:

1. Fresh Start

2. Running to the End

"Ow!" Tom yanked his hand back from the heavy skillet. He'd forgotten it had been in the oven for the past half-hour. He rushed to the sink and opened the faucet, thrusting his hand under the cold water.

A few moments later, Tom's hand was still throbbing and Joe was peering over his shoulder. "I got you the dermal regenerator."

"Thanks, buddy." Tom took the small device from his son and passed it over his reddened fingers and palm.

Joe poked at the shepherd's pie that occupied the offending cookware. "You burned the top."

"Yeah, I know," Tom said with a sigh, regarding the charred potatoes. "Maybe I can scrape off the black bits."

"That'll be like, all the potatoes. I think you should just give up on cooking tonight and replicate burritos." The eleven-year-old returned to his seat at the kitchen table and his PADD. "You've been pretty distracted today. Did you even look in the mirror when you got dressed? That vest is bad."

Tom ignored the gibe and glanced up at the ceiling. "It's too quiet up there."

Joe shrugged. "Isn't that a good thing? I am done with that music. I don't know who this Morrissey guy was, but what the hell? Did they not know how to treat depression back then?"

"Language," Tom said automatically, still straining his ears for any evidence of what was going on in his teenager's bedroom.

The second he heard the thump of B'Elanna feet hitting the stairs, Tom moved into the front hallway. His mouth had barely opened when B'Elanna waved him silent. Grabbing his arm, his wife pulled him into her office and shut the door. "She doesn't want me to tell you the details."

Tom's shoulders slumped. "Oh. OK. Well, I guess as long as she's talking to you about it, that's all that matters."

"Will you stop pouting?" B'Elanna said. "I'm going to tell you. I just don't want Miri to hear us."

Their daughter had just been dumped.

Tucker had been her first real boyfriend. There'd been a few boys before him — but they'd just been "hanging out" per Miral. Tucker was the first one that had taken her out to play the latest holonovel, that had come over to do homework with her, that she'd gone solo to the beach with. But last night she'd come home from The Burgery with ketchup on her dress and tears in her eyes.

"Tucker broke up with me," she'd wailed to her startled parents before refusing to say anything else and closing herself off in her bedroom with a slam of the door. The Smiths had started playing (loudly) almost immediately afterwards.

Miral had refused to leave her room since. "Kitten?" Tom had called through the door this morning. "I made you some waffles. Do you want to come down to eat?"

"No! I'm never coming out again!" There was the thunk of something hitting the door for emphasis — Miral's long preferred form of non-verbal punctuation. Tom guessed a stuffed animal by the mix of soft thud and the click of what he imagined was a plastic eye. He left some waffles by the door (which the dog scarfed the second Tom's back was turned) and figured he'd try again at lunch.

That time, she threw a shoe.

"I'm so glad you introduced her to the 'joys' of twentieth-century depressive pop," B'Elanna commented when Tom once again came back down the stairs alone. "Let her have her space. She'll come out when she's ready."

But when dinner time approached and Never Had No One Ever started playing for the umpteenth time, B'Elanna couldn't take it anymore, either. "That's it," she said, slapping her book against the kitchen table. "I'm getting in there if I have to take the damn hinges off the door."

Now, nearly forty-five minutes later, B'Elanna could finally tell him what the hell had happened to his baby.

"It's just as well, anyway," B'Elanna said as she finished the story. "It's not like either of us liked Tucker that much. How does a seventeen-year-old get that full of himself?"

Tom frowned. "I feel like I'm missing something. Tucker just told her he'd 'grown beyond their relationship' and left her at the diner? This is the kid that trapped me in the kitchen for an hour telling me what an awesome parisses squares player he was and how 'it takes a lot more skill than when you were a kid, Mr. Paris.' He likes to talk. He likes to expound, really. What are you not telling me?"

B'Elanna looked at a point somewhere over his shoulder and let out a deep sigh. "OK, there's more to the story. But I don't want you to make a big deal out of this. Miral doesn't want you to make a big deal out of this. So just… do me a favor and stay calm, OK?"

"Well, that's not helping!" But he sat on the edge of B'Elanna's desk and swore he wouldn't overreact.

The promise got harder and harder to keep as B'Elanna filled in the blanks. Miral and Tucker had dated for about two months, but until this week, had never played parisses squares together. "I'm a starter on the varsity squad," he'd told Tom on their first meeting. "I don't want her to get hurt."

Miral, apparently, had never informed him that she'd played on the North American Junior Olympics parisses team (they'd taken silver) but had given up the sport two years ago when it conflicted with basketball.

Three days ago, Tucker finally agreed to play her one on one.

She'd wiped the floor with him.

"But Miral said Tucker was a good sport about it!" Tom interjected. "Even took her out for a congratulatory ice cream afterwards."

"I guess it was just an act," B'Elanna said. "Or maybe the issue is that his teammates found out."

Tucker was claiming their breakup had nothing to do with the parisses game, but suddenly he felt Miral was too loud, too excitable, too much in everybody's face. The real kicker, though, was when he'd said this to her: "Maybe you'd be better off if you didn't embrace your Klingon side quite so much."

Tom's hands clenched into fists as B'Elanna went on to tell him that Miral had thrown her drink in his face in response, and Tucker countered with: "See? I can get past the ridges, Miral, but you really need to chill out."

"That smarmy son of a bitch," Tom muttered, starting to pace the office like a captive tiger. "I'll kill him. I'll show him you don't need to have any Klingon blood to rip someone limb from limb."

"Tom," B'Elanna said as she rose from the chair and blocked his path. "I think this might be what Miral was afraid of. We need to let this go. He's a jackass, Miral knows it now, and we're all better off."

"Are you kidding me?" Tom threw his hands in the air. "This doesn't piss you off? You aren't mad at all?"

"Of course I'm mad," B'Elanna snapped back. "I'm pissed as hell. But what exactly am I going to do about it? Posturing aside, Tom, I don't see either one of us actually beating up a teenage boy."

"What if we just rough him up a little?" When B'Elanna did nothing but raise a disgusted eyebrow in response, Tom resumed his pacing. "But… we have to do something. It's not OK for him to talk to her like that! 'I can get past the ridges.' Maybe we should talk to his parents. They can't be OK with—"

"Tucker told Miral when they first started dating that his parents didn't approve." B'Elanna dropped back into her chair with a heavy sigh. "Bigotry starts at home, after all."

Tom's stomach hit the floor. He'd known, thirteen years ago when they'd moved to San Diego, that some Terrans might have… issues with his family. He wasn't totally naive — he'd known Earth wasn't the universally tolerant utopia the Federation PR team liked to claim it was. But even still, he'd had a steep learning curve.

When the kids were little, it was easy to blow off the whispers and looks as simple ignorance: "It's just kids being kids," he'd say to B'Elanna. Or sometimes: "They just need a little educating. Let me talk to them." In most cases, an awkward conversation had been all that was needed.

But there was also the coach of the opposing soccer team that tried to get Miral barred from playing because her genetics put her at too much of an advantage. Or the third grade teacher that took Joe's shyness as lack of intelligence. "You should push him towards a more physically oriented path. Play to his strengths." And now, apparently, that ignominious group included Tucker and his parents.

"So that's why Miral always brought him here," Tom sighed. "I thought it was my cooking."

B'Elanna gave him a sad smile. "I'm glad you're handling this so well. Miral really doesn't—"

"Oh, I'm going to handle this all right," Tom interjected. "I'm going to talk to his parents after dinner." B'Elanna started to protest, but he wasn't backing down this time. "I would have thought I'd have to beat you to the door! How can you just sit there and let them treat Miral like this?"

B'Elanna stood with a lurch, the desk chair skittering away from her. "Hey," she said with a hard poke to Tom's sternum. "I am not 'just' doing anything. I'm the one with the ridges, remember? I'm the one who's had to deal with this bullshit for the past forty odd years, so you don't get to tell me how to react."

Tom ran his fingers through his hair and rocked back on his heels. "Sorry. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm just… pissed. And sad. She shouldn't have to deal with this. You shouldn't have to deal with this. I want to do something about it."

"Wouldn't we all?" B'Elanna said. "But one thing I've learned is there are times to fight and there are times to walk away, and this is the latter. Tucker and his parents are nothing to us. Who cares if they're xenophobic assholes? Honestly, I don't even think Tucker believes any of that crap. He was just trying to get a rise out of her."

"That makes it worse!"

B'Elanna shrugged and returned her desk chair to its usual spot. "Maybe. But it's just as well. Miral and Joe are going to be dealing with this kind of thing their whole lives. They both need to learn how to handle people like that."

Tom sank back onto the desk top, his face and shoulders drooping. "But I don't want them to have to."

"Hey." B'Elanna chucked him gently under the chin. "Cheer up. It's not that bad. Not anymore. Most people are fine with me and the kids. It's nothing like what I had to deal with on Kessik. So why don't you forget about those jerks and go do something helpful?"

"Like what?" Tom said, eyes still downcast. "Burn another dinner?"

"No," B'Elanna said, slipping her hands around his waist. "Like go upstairs and tell your daughter she'll get over her broken heart eventually. And remind her that some men aren't totally useless. Some of them turn out pretty OK, actually."

Tom smiled at her. "I think there's a compliment for me in there somewhere." He pressed his lips to hers. As they broke apart, he touched her cheek. "Remind me what I did to deserve you."

She smirked at him and pulled back, gesturing at his clothes. "I can tell you what it wasn't — getting that vest. I'm serious, Tom. This one is really awful. Maybe you should ask the Doctor to check your eyes."

Tom straightened the offending item with a sharp tug and made a face at his wife before heading out the office and up the stairs. This time when he knocked on his daughter's door, he got a tearful sounding, "Come in."

Miral was still in her pajamas, her long chestnut hair tangled in a messy braid. "Hi Daddy," she said with a sniff as she sat up in her bed.

Tom said nothing but instead just folded her into his arms and let her cry. "I'm sorry, kitten," he murmured when she quieted.

"Why are boys so terrible?" she moaned into his chest.

"They aren't all terrible. Or," Tom amended, "they don't all stay terrible. Some of them grow up pretty decent. I think that's why your mother wanted me to come up here. I'm supposed to be proof that you shouldn't lose hope."

"Were you terrible? When you were seventeen?"

"Sure I was," he said, inwardly cringing when he considered the various things he'd gotten up to at seventeen. Hopefully Miral wouldn't ask for specifics. "Most teenagers are. I mean, I don't know that I was Tucker-level awful, but I definitely made my fair share of boneheaded decisions."

"Mom told you everything, didn't she?"

"She usually does."

Miral snuggled tighter into his embrace. "Daddy? Can I ask you something?"

"Anything." He gave her a gentle kiss on the head when she still didn't speak.

Miral sat up, wiping the hair and tears off her face, but she didn't look him in the eye as she spoke. "If you had known Mom, back on Kessik. Or if she had grown up on Earth. When you were both teenagers, I mean." She picked her head up then and Tom saw the new tears start to form. "Would have you thought she was pretty? Would you have been able to look past her forehead?"

Before he was a parent, Tom thought he knew what a broken heart was. But what he'd discovered the moment he'd first laid his eyes on a tiny, brand-new Miral, was that he'd rather have his own feelings crushed a hundred times over before seeing one of his children in the kind of pain his daughter was in. He flashed back to that moment, over sixteen years ago now, when B'Elanna had nearly altered their daughter's appearance forever. He had no regrets — he wouldn't change a single hair on Miral's head if given the chance — but, for perhaps the first time, he could understand B'Elanna's temptation.

Tom cupped his hand around his daughter's cheeks as his own tears started to fall. "No, Miral. I would have never looked past your mother's ridges." He saw the hurt and confusion flash in her eyes and he pulled her in until she was nestled back in his arms.

"Let me finish. I would have never looked past her ridges because they are part of why I love her. They're a part of what makes her beautiful — just as much as her eyes, or her mouth, or…" Parts one does not discuss with one's child, Tom considered. Course correction. "Or any other part of her. And nobody that's worth your time is going to look past yours, either. Promise me you'll try to remember that."

"I'll try, Daddy. It's just… hard sometimes."

"I know, kitten. I'm sorry." He held her for a bit longer, until he was sure her tears weren't going to start again and then pulled them both to standing. "OK, I think it's time for you to come out of this room and let me put something in your stomach. I burned the shepherd's pie, but we can replicate something for dinner. Anything you want. Your choice."

"Not hamburgers."

"Definitely not."

Miral bit her lip. "Those waffles this morning did smell pretty good. Do you think, maybe… I know you probably ate them for breakfast, but…"

"Say no more," Tom said. "Waffles, it is. On one condition. No more Smiths."

Miral rolled her eyes. "Fine."

"After dinner we'll find you some good revenge music. Gloria Gaynor, maybe. Or Alanis Morissette," Tom said, throwing his arm around her shoulder as they walked towards the stairs. "Let me ask you a question, though. What do you think of my new vest? Your mom's not a fan."

"Because she has eyes, Dad."

"Hey! It's not that bad, is it?"

Miral paused at the top of the stairs, running her fingers over the brightly patterned cloth. "It's terrible," she said, then grinned at him. "And it looks perfect on you."

The End

Coming next week! Grounded - the story that started this entire series.