Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek: TNG, nor do I own Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon." Not making money off this, as great as it would be to write fanfics for a living.

Chapter 1- Babies

Wes and I agreed to babysit while my parents go on a well-deserved date-night. It's hard watching them be as exhausted as I'm always seeing them.

They get a year of parental leave, which is nice. It's also ironic thinking of them being on "leave" while still being on the ship. I wish they left the quarters more, I really did. Their situation looks really lonely and isolating, but at least they have each other.

They've just left. My siblings, who are now 10 months old, are in their high chairs. Side note, high chairs get really gross really fast. Anyway, they have this baby food that's meant for the transition to solid food so it's like these complete nutrition pellets that are pretty soft and remind me of pet food. It's baby kibble, essentially. My parents gave me strict instructions to not help them eat because they need to learn to put the food in their mouth themselves. Judging by their tone I had to wonder if they were symbolically trying to tell me something.

Annnnd Ana just threw a pellet at Max. Max threw a pellet back. Back, forth, back, forth. I hope this isn't foreshadowing to the type of people they're going to be for the next 18 years. Although then I'd look like a better child in comparison because there's only one of me.

Of course breaking up the food fight makes them both cry, and then I'm cuddling Max while Wes is cuddling Ana trying to make them both stop.

"I almost want to stun them with your phaser to make them stop." I joke to Wes.

"Honesty, yeah." He replies. Of course we weren't actually going to do that.

There's a song Mom sings to them, that she sang to me. But it's in Betazoid so I don't want to mess it up. So I sit on the couch and get both twins in my lap and go for dad's go-to.

"Fly me to the moon

Let me play among the stars.

Let me show you what it's like,

On Jupiter or Mars."

By this line they were calmed down so I place them on the floor to play with their toys. Wes sits next to me, puts his arm around me, and we kiss.

"You have a pretty good voice!" He says, surprised.

I tried to suppress a chuckle, but I couldn't help it.

"The choir teacher at Rixx Prep was the strictest, meanest, most demanding teacher there. Not the math teacher or the literature teacher, the choir teacher! I needed an arts class and it was the hardest one!"

This made Wes laugh. "Is that why you got yourself kicked out?" He jokes. "To get out of choir?"

"Naw… so." I gather my thoughts. "There was the usual stuff of skipping class and partying and the like. That stuff used up my warnings and suspensions."

"How do you get suspended at boarding school?"

"I had two week-long suspensions that I had to spend at my grandmother's house. She dealt with a lot of the school stuff cause she was on the same planet, and stuff. Anyway, as much of a partier as I was, I always looked out for people and wanted them to be safe, putting their safety above mine! So I harbored many the drunk and hungover classmate in my room, secretly of course."

"So you had a mini sick-bay in your room." Wes smiles.

"It gets better. So, people who are drunk or who have…misused… certain flora of the planet, are at risk of injuring themselves. But they can't go to the school nurse because then the school would find out that they were doing things they weren't allowed to. So this one kid, who lived in the room next to me, punched a window."

"Ooo." Wes made a cringe noise with a cringe expression.

"And he couldn't go to the nurse because then the school would know we were… rule breaking. So I picked all the glass out of his hand and cleaned the cuts. I then sewed up the tendon he'd cut in the process and all the places where the glass had been taken out of. Sewing supplies stolen from one of the art rooms, of course. I had to break myself in. It was kind of fun. No, fun's not the right word. Invigorating."

"Wow!" Wes replied.

"I did the same thing to someone else's head after their head went through a window during a fight."

"How many windows did you guys break at that school?"

"Just 2." I reply, a little too casually. "They made us do custodial stuff to work off the cost of replacing them." I burst into laughter. I shouldn't, but I do. "So they finally expel me because I was "harboring misbehaved students" and because I knew all the not-allowed stuff everyone did and never said anything."

"Then why were your parents so pissed?" Wes asks. "That sounds like something they'd be proud of."

"Because of the way the school described it in their "Disciplinary Report." It was vague and skewed to make me look as bad as possible. The day I got back to the ship I wanted to explain my side of it but they kept cutting me off. They were going to ground me for the rest of the school cycle. But during dinner I got my side in and then they felt bad and lifted it. Then they could be kind of awkward, I think from the guilt of being mad at me for helping people. It's weird, they in part were disappointed I wasn't at that school but I could tell they kind of liked having me back."

"Do you think the twins will go?" Wes asked.

"I don't know, I can tell my mom's already trying to connect them with the culture more. But I can't remember when I was a baby so maybe I wore these Betazoidian baby clothes and heard her speak to me primarily in Betazoid too. The effort she's making, though, is hard to ignore."

"Like she's compensating?"

"Yeah."

We pause and watch the adorable twins playing.

"You know why they sent me?"

"Culture, right?"

"Well, there was the culture aspect, and the safety aspect after Rubican III and Aldea." I pause. The memories were a little… intense. "But what pushed them over the edge was my mom had this bottle of sacramental wine. Being 15 and an idiot I just saw it as access to booze and drank all of it and had to go to sick bay." I pause and cringe. "And what I did was culturally insensitive and blasphemous and appropriative but I had no idea what it was. And of course I pled ignorance because I was genuinely ignorant. And that was the last straw."