Synopsis: Set during various periods of time post-"Endgame."
Miral Paris, the daughter of B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris, and her friend Andrew Kim, the son of Harry Kim, are preparing to enter Starfleet Academy. But after eighteen years of friendship, things between them are starting to change – and their parents struggle to deal with what that means for the future.
Chapter 2: Earth, San Francisco, Torres-Paris Family Residence, 2396
"Miral! Time to go!" B'Elanna called, leaning on the wall for support. Kahless, she groaned inwardly. What a mixed bag of emotions. She wondered if her own mother had felt similarly when she left for the Academy. Where the hell is Tom?
"Mom, are you okay?" L'Naan asked, peering at her mother's pallid face.
"I'm fine," B'Elanna lied dismissively.
"Right, Mom," L'Naan said, flopping down on the sofa. "She's going to be fine, you know. The Academy's only ten minutes away from here. Besides, Dad's there, Harry's there, the admiral, and Icheb…Miral's not exactly braving the unknown."
"I know," B'Elanna replied, hands on hips. She continued staring down the corridor toward the bedrooms. "Miral Paris! Final warning!"
Miral emerged at last in green pants, a black and white striped shirt with elbow-length sleeves, and a green vest. She had a duffel bag over one shoulder. Her light brown hair curled gently to her shoulders, and her forehead ridges made slight shadows across her golden face. B'Elanna stared, trying to commit the image to memory. She knew the next time Miral was home, the girl standing in front of her would be replaced by a uniform-wearing, protocol-following young woman.
"Mother, are you crying?" Miral asked.
"No."
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Torres never cries," Tom told Miral as he entered the living room. He gently wiped a tear from under B'Elanna's eye with one long finger as he smiled lovingly at her. "Are you two ready?" They nodded. "Hey, L'Naan, will you take a holoimage?"
"Dad, come on," Miral protested.
She was silenced by a look from her father. He put his arm around her, and B'Elanna did the same on the other side as L'Naan took the holoimage. Then Tom took his daughter's duffel bag for her, and they headed out.
At the transport center, B'Elanna slipped a box about a half-meter cubed into Miral's bag. When her daughter looked at her quizzically, she explained, "Just open it later."
"Is it a stuffed targ?" Miral rolled her eyes. "Mother, I'm eighteen."
"Mine brought me good luck until I was twice your age," B'Elanna said defensively. "Just trust me."
"And just what exactly happened to yours?"
"Well," B'Elanna explained, "it got destroyed when the Borg destroyed the Delta Flyer, but –"
"And then you were assimilated, right?" Miral raised an eyebrow at her.
"Okay," she said, eyeing Tom for support, "yes, I was assimilated, but in fairness that was our plan all along. If you manage to get half as far across the galaxy with your Toby as I did with mine, you'll thank me. Just wait."
Miral smiled. "Okay, you win. I'll keep it with me."
"Munchkin, don't be afraid to ask Admiral Janeway for help," Tom advised, sneaking a padd into her duffel bag. "And Harry. And behave." He crushed her in a tight embrace.
"Dad, it's not as if I'm going off to another planet. We'll probably see each other every day. I might even be on your flight team."
"Do you think you're good enough?" Tom teased. He looked at her seriously. "I'm glad you changed your mind about going. You're going to be a great officer."
Tom emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the orange apron tied around his waist, and found B'Elanna sitting on the sofa with a large padd on her lap. "What are you doing?"
"Looking at some old images," she replied absently.
Tom sat down next to her, put an arm around her automatically, and pulled her against his side. He took the padd with his free hand. "Miral's naming ceremony?" He laughed. "Do you remember what a rotten day that was?"
Mariana Island Two, 2378
"We picked a great day for this," B'Elanna grumbled as she tried to shield Miral's infant head from the torrential downpour.
"It would be logical to relocate the ceremony indoors," Tuvok suggested.
"There's not enough room for everybody, and, damn it, the whole crew needs this," Captain Janeway insisted. "Replicate umbrellas. We're doing this."
Tom shook his head with a slight smile. "Yes, ma'am."
Harry arrived on scene with a small cap for Miral, which he gently wiggled onto her head. He leaned close to her face, now shielded from the rain by the blue hat. "There. Now the rain isn't so bad, is it?"
B'Elanna craned her neck to see Miral's reaction. "I think she likes you, Harry."
Harry looked up at B'Elanna, a wide grin across his face. He was in love; he knew it. His only hope was that his friends' daughter would love him back. He let Miral's tiny fingers curl around one of his own and righted himself. "I think everyone's ready."
"This is stupid," B'Elanna told him and Tom. "I don't know why we're doing this."
"It's good for morale," Chakotay said. "Besides, isn't it important to preserve tradition?"
"Chakotay, it's cold and windy, and we're standing in the middle of a field getting rained on."
Tom put a hand on her shoulder. "Sounds pretty Klingon to me." He and Chakotay exchanged smiles as B'Elanna's scowl deepened.
Just then a huge clap of thunder and bolt of lightning interrupted them. Janeway tried not to jump at the noise. Tuvok raised an eyebrow. Miral launched into an ear-piercing wail. Harry rubbed her back and winced at the sound of her screams. A gust of wind sent most of the gear they'd laid out flying, and several crew members raced across the field to catch it before it blew away. Tom sighed and tried to avoid B'Elanna's 'I told you so' stare.
"Miral didn't stop screaming for hours," B'Elanna recalled, laughing.
"At least L'Naan's ceremony was more orthodox," Tom reminded her. "Until that holographic Klingon touched my father."
B'Elanna laughed loudly as the image came back to her mind. "You really should have warned him that a tap with a d'k tahg knife is a congratulatory sign."
Tom grinned. "More fun to watch him try to incapacitate a hologram. It's nice to know that admiralty didn't affect his combat skills." He scrolled to the next image. It was Harry smiling wildly as he held baby Miral. "She really loved him when she was a baby, didn't she?"
"He really loved her, too," B'Elanna said.
Tom flipped to the next image. It was one of Miral learning to walk while B'Elanna sat on the floor with her legs splayed, her hair in a total mess, holding onto her daughter's waist. She had one hand raised toward the imager in the universal "don't take my picture" gesture that Tom had ignored.
"Weren't you making dinner?" she asked him suddenly.
"It's nearly ready. Do you want to come sit at the table while I finish? That is, if you're done being sentimental about your daughter's departure?" His blue eyes sparkled in mirth.
B'Elanna's brown ones narrowed. "I am not being sentimental."
"Yes, you are, but I like it." He rose and extended a hand. "Come on." He helped her to her feet and kept hold of her hand as he led her into the kitchen.
"Where's L'Naan? Is she eating with us?"
"She's at Lenaris's. It's just us."
B'Elanna smiled into his face, the blue eyes that still pierced her soul, even after nearly twenty years of marriage. His smooth skin had grown a little looser, and the small creases around his mouth that accentuated his smirk had grown deeper. And, of course, the hairline about which he was so sensitive had risen dramatically over the years, but his essence hadn't changed. He was still, to her, the same man who had once tried to woo her in the backseat of an ancient ground vehicle with rock-and-roll playing on the radio.
"You're still beautiful," he said, as if echoing her thoughts.
"Still? You mean, even though I'm old now?"
Tom merely smiled. He remembered a time when he would have taken the bait and tried to convince her that she had mistaken his words. He would have watched her grow hostile, and they would have sparred bit. The more he apologized, the more hostile she would become; sometimes he would grow angry and frustrated too, to think that she misunderstood him. It all made for great foreplay, but he was too old for such antics. He liked to think that he knew how to manage – even appreciate – her volatility better now than when they had first gotten married. "Exactly," he said, taunting her with raised eyebrows.
Her eyes narrowed again, and she threw her napkin at him. "Well, what are we eating?"
Brazil, University of Sao Paulo, Office of Professor Chakotay
Chakotay didn't want to throw the young student sitting in front of him out of his office, but the persistent beeping of his computer console was making him antsy. He suspected it was Kathryn calling, and frankly he'd rather be talking to her than listening to Laura McKinley's flimsy excuses for why her report on the Aztec culture was late.
"All right," he said when she finally paused for a breath. He'd already learned more about her personal life in the last ten minutes than he ever wanted to. "Get the report into me by Friday, okay?"
"Thank you, Professor," she said with visible relief. She scrambled out of his office, as if loitering might cause him to change his mind.
With a slight smirk, Chakotay tapped the still-beeping monitor to see the unexpected face of Commander Icheb staring back at him.
"Icheb, this is a surprise."
"Hello, Professor," came the response. Twenty years of post-Borg, post-adolescent socializing with humanoids had greatly improved Icheb's monotone, though he still didn't look or sound fully expressive. Chakotay took it on faith that it was a friendly greeting. "Admiral Janeway just got called into a meeting, so she asked me to contact you."
"Oh, what about?"
"The new crop of cadets that began today. We just returned from orientation." Icheb half-smirked. "Since we don't begin the semester in the middle of the summer like you."
"The last week in August is hardly the middle of the summer," Chakotay retorted with delight. One thing that had greatly improved over the years was Icheb's sense of humor. "When I'm starting vacation in May and you're still grading exams, we'll see who has the last laugh."
"At any rate, we thought you'd be interested to know that one Cadet Paris has enrolled in my Introduction to the Borg lecture."
"Miral? She's going to be in your class?"
Icheb nodded. "And Cadet Kim has already requested consideration for the flight team."
Chakotay whistled slightly. "He wants to work with Tom? Voluntarily?"
Icheb nearly laughed. "I'm equally surprised."
"And Kathryn told you to com me with this gossip?"
When Voyager had first returned to the Alpha Quadrant, Chakotay and Seven of Nine – Annika, she preferred so as not to provoke ire from families of those who had been assimilated – had lived together for a brief time on a remote colony. At the time, Chakotay found her fascinating and beautiful and vulnerable – the way discovering her human emotions chinked her Borg armor, he thought, was positively endearing. But it soon became clear they wanted different things out of life, and Annika had returned to Earth, leaving him devastated. He had essentially lost touch with the entire Voyager family, except B'Elanna (and, by default, Tom). His relationship with Kathryn was sorely strained, at first by what she'd sensed as a kind of betrayal on his and Annika's behalf and later by the uncomfortable position she was in of having to choose sides. Icheb, who had always been Seven's protégée, and Chakotay had ceased communication.
Seven's death a few years later had caused them all grief, but in some ways it had reunited them. Kathryn and Chakotay had made amends and slowly found their way back to the synergy they'd had on Voyager – now, of course, with Kathryn willing to openly declare her affections. Slowly Icheb had come to rely upon Chakotay as a friend and mentor.
And now they were both teaching. They weren't really rivals, but it was still fun to tease each other a little. With Icheb and Kathryn working in such close quarters – and now with the next generation of Paris and Kim at the Academy as well – it was, as Kathryn liked to say, "all in the family."
"Actually," Icheb told him, "Admiral Janeway told me to remind you to be home by 1900 or else she'd cook dinner herself."
"We can't have that," Chakotay said gravely. "Hey, Icheb, do you want to eat with us?"
San Francisco, Starfleet Academy, Dormitory Room of Cadet Miral Paris
"I don't like my roommate," Andrew declared, striding into the room and plopping down on the nearest bed.
Miral only slightly glanced up from the padd she was reading. "Already? You've only had twenty minutes with him."
"He's messy," Andrew groused. "There's already a pile of clothing in the middle of the floor." He realized she was not paying attention to him and tried to look over her shoulder at the padd, but she pulled it away abruptly. "What's that?"
"A letter from my dad," she told him. "Will you go away? I want to read this in private."
"Miral, are you crying?" Andrew peered at her face. "I think you're crying."
"I am not."
"Yes, you are! Wow. I didn't think you cried."
"Everyone cries, Andrew," she snapped. She was still holding the padd against her chest so he couldn't see it. "Are you going to go away or not?"
"Nope," he said, lying down on the bed. "I hope this isn't your roommate's bed because I intend to get comfortable." He kicked off his boots and let them drop to the floor. As she stretched out on the bed, he felt a slight lump under a blanket and pulled it out. It was a stuffed Toby the Targ. "I didn't know you slept with a stuffed animal."
She yanked it from him and clutched it to her chest. "I didn't until now."
"This is a whole new side of you."
Miral let out an exasperated sigh. "Honestly, you're more annoying than L'Naan!" She went back to reading.
From the bed, Andrew smiled at her outburst. He meant what he'd said: in the eighteen years he'd known her, he was fairly certain he'd only ever seen her cry as a direct result of acute pain, and even that was pretty infrequent – she was tough. He had every intention of witnessing the event to its completion. Besides that, he was curious to know what Tom Paris could have said that was so heartfelt. And he felt a little letdown that his own parents hadn't given him a tear-inducing letter.
"What does it say?" he asked after a few minutes, his voice softer.
Miral came over to the bed and lay down next to him. She held the padd between them so they could read together. "Log entries he's made to me since I was born. I read the first five years already, and now he's writing about me starting school."
Personal Log, Lieutenant Tom Paris, Stardate 61289.4
Well, munchkin, you start school today. You've been attending school your entire life, but today is the first day that you'll have homework and get graded on your performance. When you were born, your mother and I were responsible for teaching you about the universe around you. Now someone else is. You've always been so curious, always asking questions and trying to find answers to problems. An engineer, like your mother. I think you're going to be the best student in the class. I really want you to be a pilot, but I bet you end up following in your mother's footsteps.
Andrew looked at Miral, who shrugged. "Guess my dad's not quite as omniscient as I thought."
"You an engineer? Wow. That's like my dad predicting I'd be a Parrises' square champion like him."
Miral made a face at him. "You know, Drew, most people would be embarrassed that they can't win Parrises' squares even once. You talk about it like you're proud."
"It's a despicably violent game that civilized people shouldn't be playing," he said lightly. "Present company included. Let's read another entry."
Miral skimmed through the padd to look for another entry that might be interesting.
Personal Log, Lieutenant Commander Tom Paris, Stardate 67982.2
We're leaving the Enterprise. Your mom and I have talked about it for a long time, and we've decided that moving to Earth will be good for all of us. The truth is, there's a job I really want there. We came aboard the Enterprise for your mom's career, and now it's my turn. You and L'Naan will have safe, comfortable lives on Earth, and your mom is going to work as the assistant liaison to the Klingon Empire. You'll probably get to visit Qo'Nos a lot. It'll be good for all of us.
Well, that's true, but I still feel incredibly selfish. You're not old enough to understand this, but maybe one day when you read this, you will be. On the Enterprise, I'm just the guy who occasionally flies the ship. I wait for orders to engage the warp drive. I make course corrections that someone else determines and gives me. Mostly, though, I'm the chief engineer's husband. I haven't really felt important since we left the starbase, and even then, I was just part of a team. A really good team, that was doing something I loved, sure, but I haven't felt really important, on my own, since Voyager.
Wait, that's not entirely true either. I have felt important on my own. I've been your dad. I was glad my duties on the Enterprise didn't interfere with taking care of you and L'Naan. My dad was too busy with his career to do the kinds of things we do together, and I didn't want to repeat that with you. That's why I feel selfish about moving to San Francisco. I'm worried that someday you'll look back and think I moved you from the only home you'd known just so I could abandon you for Starfleet.
"Did you feel abandoned when you left the Enterprise?"
"No way," Miral said confidently. "It was great. Dad was home all the time, and you and I could hang out, and I got to see Grandpa and Chakotay all the time. I'm glad we moved here." She tapped the padd. "I feel like I need to reassure my dad, though. I hope he still doesn't think that."
"Did you read the most recent one?"
Miral skimmed again to the end of the data. "Here. He made this last night."
Personal Log, Commander Tom Paris, Stardate 74279.09
You're leaving for the Academy tomorrow. I know it's crazy to feel this way, since you're only going to be living a few buildings away from where I work, but I'm scared and nervous and excited and sad. You're ready for it. I know you are. You've turned out to be bright and confident and smart and sophisticated, and I know you're ready to take on the world. But you're also still my munchkin. I still remember the first time I held you. You were so fresh and new. You looked exactly like your mother, but part of me couldn't believe you had really come from us. I still remember your first word. I thought it was Klingon, but your mom told me it was just a baby noise. I remember the first time you ate pizza, and your whole face lit up. You were my daughter, all right. And now you're going off to start a new life. I know you feel grown up and feel like you know yourself, but you're not fully formed yet. The Academy will change you. You'll come home a different person. So in some ways this is like saying good-bye to my munchkin because I know the next time I see you, you'll be someone else. You'll be Cadet Paris. This recording isn't going well at all. This isn't what I wanted to say –
Miral tapped the screen off in the middle of reading. Andrew sat beside her, silently, letting her take in her father's words. Finally, she turned to him. "I really thought he was just going to tell me stories about the trouble he got into as a cadet."
Andrew smiled. "We've heard all of those before. Maybe he thought he would try to tell you some of the things he never has."
Kim Family Residence
"Well, it's just us now," Libby said, walking aimlessly around their living room. She rubbed her arms. Their house felt bigger somehow, draftier, emptier.
"It's not as though Andrew is a loud child," Harry remarked, "but it's really quiet in here, isn't it?"
Libby nodded. She put her hands on her hips and looked at him. "Now what?"
Harry shrugged and patted the sofa beside him. "I don't know. We just keep doing what we've been doing."
"Did you think this day would ever come?"
"Nope."
"Do you feel old?"
"Yup."
Libby frowned and sat down. She pulled Harry's arm around her and leaned into him. "When we had Andrew, I never imagined that he would actually grow up."
"Hey, Lib," Harry said, "remember the day we brought him home?"
Libby grinned, picturing it all in her mind. The day they got married, trying to have a child, the day they found out they were expecting a son. The day they brought Andrew home from the hospital and started a new life. Sharing firsts with Tom and B'Elanna as they raised Miral at the same time. Lording it over them when Andrew was able to walk first. Chalking it up to Klingon DNA when Miral was able to eat solid food first. Celebrating the kids' first birthdays at the same time.
"I miss him already."
"We were terrible parents," Harry said. "Really terrible. I thought baby-sitting Naomi Wildman had taught me enough about children."
"I wasn't exactly new to children either," Libby pointed out. "But those first few weeks were really challenging, weren't they?"
"Weeks? Try years."
"Oh, come on, Andrew is a dream child," Libby said. "Think about the Powells. Or Miral and L'Naan. You know I love them, but sometimes I am really thankful Andrew's nothing like them."
Harry laughed. "Don't tell B'Elanna that."
"No way. She'd take a dagger to my throat." She leaned contentedly against his frame and sighed. "Remember when you brought him to work when he was crawling?"
Harry smiled. "And he crawled away from everyone in the department and right into a maintenance conduit? We looked for him for an hour before it occurred to us to use the internal sensors to search for his lifesigns. Starfleet's best and brightest, and we couldn't even figure out how to find a missing baby."
"I could have turned you into mashed potatoes when you told me about it," Libby said. "The thought of my brand-new baby running free around a maintenance conduit."
"Hey, he was fine," Harry said. "Maybe it was because I brought him there all the time that he wants to be an officer."
"He's so like you – so disciplined and bright and obedient. He's going to make a great officer." Her voice was neutral; this was not mother's pride speaking but simple truth. Harry nodded in agreement.
"I just hope he can help Miral stay in check."
