2. Pre-'Waking Moments' – Stardate 51440
"This is where I had my first skiing lessons. On the slopes in the real Austria, I mean."
Tom gazed around fondly at the Alpine resort and B'Elanna had to admit it did look pretty. The sun blazed down on the immaculate white snow that blanketed almost every surface in sight. Quaint wooden chalets brightly painted in every conceivable colour dotted the lower reaches of the valley floor. On the large, open terrace where Tom and B'Elanna had entered the program, holograms – of varying proficiencies – were putting on their skis, laughing and joking around, some then making their way along a designated path to board the chairlift. Up on the mountain directly ahead, skilled skiers raced down the steepest and most challenging slopes at what appeared to be breakneck speeds.
Despite her thick ski suit and the thermal base layer she'd borrowed from Voyager's extreme environment expedition supplies, B'Elanna shivered. "Was it really this cold there?" The wind chill factor wasn't helping. The program hadn't been running for more than two minutes and her face already felt frosty.
"Well, I don't remember the exact temperature," said Tom. "I was only a kid. Seven or maybe eight years old. I came with my grandparents – on my mom's side – and a couple of cousins. We stayed for a week and I didn't want to go home at the end of it."
"Sounds like a nice vacation. If you like this kind of climate."
"Oh, it was. It was great. Good fun, good food. And we came back during the next four or five consecutive winters." The wistful look drained from Tom's features replaced, for a moment, by a hard frown. "Then my dad put an end to it. He wanted me to spend my entire school vacation studying at home. I snuck back a few times though. Just for an afternoon here and there when I thought my parents wouldn't notice."
With their skis slung over one shoulder and poles gripped in the opposite hands they started the long trek towards the top of a shallow rise that Tom had earmarked as 'suitable for the complete novice'. Tom had, to B'Elanna's exasperation, insisted that they replicate real equipment rather than use disposable holographic gear. What he really meant by 'real' was equipment fabricated to an early 21st-century specification, which, he claimed, would use less replicator rations, though B'Elanna was convinced it was purely an aesthetic choice.
"I got caught once," Tom went on. "A conference finished early and my dad came home to find the house empty. I tried to argue that I was using the ski slopes to learn about Newton's Laws of Motion, but he didn't believe me."
"I'm not surprised."
"He grounded me for a whole month."
B'Elanna couldn't hold back a disparaging laugh. "You think that's bad? My mom once grounded me for an entire semester."
"An entire semester? What did you do to deserve that?"
"I got into a fight at school. I didn't start it and … you know, I actually thought she'd be proud of me for sticking up for myself."
"And she wasn't?"
"No. It didn't reflect well on her. She was always concerned about us becoming the focus of negative attention, what with us being the only Klingons on the planet."
For that, Tom had no immediate comeback, and they walked for the next minute or so in silence but for the crunch of their boots in the soft snow beneath them. B'Elanna pulled her goggles down over her eyes. She had no problem with the intensity of the light, but the extra coverage would help her retain a little more body heat.
"Here," Tom said, halting then and lowering his skis to the ground. "This is the spot."
B'Elanna stopped beside him, a knot tightening in her stomachs. How many times had Chakotay attempted to persuade her to go skiing on the holodeck? And she'd refused point blank every time – out of an instinctive feeling that it really wasn't for her. But with Tom she'd given in on just the third or fourth invitation. Now that they were here, she genuinely wanted to have fun, preferably without making a fool of herself in the process. To make their relationship work in a closed in environment such as Voyager, they needed to find and develop plenty of overlapping interests. She was more than willing to make compromises, but could offer no guarantees that she would enjoy everything that Tom found fun – however much he tried to stoke her enthusiasm.
In the same patient tone she'd heard him use a hundred times when explaining complex navigational or piloting problems to less educated individuals, Tom guided her through putting on her skis, at times pitching the lesson as if he were talking to someone who'd never ever seen snow before. To be fair, there was a world of difference between understanding the physics behind motion on the snow and putting that theory into practice while trying not to fall over. Tom knew that: he surely didn't intend to come off as condescending.
A couple of hours later and she'd mastered the most basic technique. She had a long way to go to catch up with Tom's two decades of experience – skiing wasn't something they'd be able to enjoy on an equal footing for some time. But it was proving more enjoyable than she'd expected it to be: another reminder that, when visiting the holodeck with Tom, she would do well to leave at least some of her preconceptions at the door.
"I still can't believe you've never tried this before."
"We didn't have ski resorts on Kessik IV."
"At the Academy then."
"I preferred to spend my leisure time at the running track or sitting on a Californian beach."
"Your mom never took you when you visited the Homeworld?"
As his eyes were covered by his goggles, B'Elanna could not immediately tell if Tom was joking. But, as no hint of a smirk began to show on his lips, she had to conclude he was serious. "Klingons skiing?" she said, after a pause, adding, "Can you imagine it?"
Tom shrugged. "Well, why not?"
"Klingons avoid snow and ice wherever possible. That's why not," B'Elanna replied, trying to keep her growing irritation out of her voice. "They don't use snow for recreation."
"But skiing's not just a form of recreation. It's a mode of transport. That's how it started on Earth. I just thought maybe-"
"On Qo'noS there are no residential areas above the winter snow line and there are no permanent settlements near the poles."
On Qo'noS – at least in the areas B'Elanna had visited – the temperature was always on the right side of freezing. But that was where her affinity for the planet ended. While Tom had been enjoying himself on what sounded like a series of idyllic family gatherings, she had been suffering through torturous encounters with her mother's relations: always the odd one out, smaller and more timid than her same-aged Klingon cousins – an oddity to be paraded in front of her cousins' surly friends. While Tom had been feasting on the likes of apple strudel and dumplings, she'd been trying not to vomit back up the gagh and racht that was thrust in front of her at every Klingon mealtime. She'd lost so much weight over one summer vacation that, on her return to school in the fall, the school nurse had called in B'Elanna's mother, worried that B'Elanna might have contracted some Klingon illness while off-world. Miral had not dealt with the embarrassment of that encounter well.
"I'm sorry," Tom said. "I wasn't trying to annoy you."
"Oh, I'm not annoyed," B'Elanna told him, pleased with the amount of nonchalance she'd been able to inject into her tone. Again, it was difficult to read Tom's expression, but, if he was unconvinced of the truthfulness of her answer, he wasn't disputing it. And it wasn't really him she was annoyed with, not exactly. Her annoyance was with the unpleasant memories his questions had dredged up and with the emotions they'd brought to the surface. With how she could be, for an instant, transformed back into that seven-year-old girl and feel again the inadequacy and humiliation.
Tom thought he understood what she'd gone through as a child: that they'd had parallel experiences and that the pressures he'd been subjected to from his father were comparable to those unattainable demands she'd faced from her mother. But Tom's ambitions and those his father held for him had overlapped to a large extent. Even without the paternal coaching, Tom would have had a strong drive to make something of his life. He'd not had a parent wishing him to achieve the unachievable: a parent expecting him to behave like a Klingon in a half-human body. How could he really understand?
