A/N: I just wanted to thank everyone that has been kind enough to leave a review - I really appreciate it and I'm happy to see that people are enjoying the story. Any Fringe fans out there? There is a very small tribute to that show in this story.

Three days. It was three days before they had any concrete information about what happened to Tom's team, and what their captors wanted.

When Owen and Julia arrived on Mars, he went straight to the colony's HQ to get what information he could. Unfortunately, it wasn't that anyone was keeping information from Tom's family - it was that there was none to be had. They had missed their check-in, no one had been able to contact them, and there wasn't a trace of their whereabouts or their shuttle.

Owen was able to tell B'Elanna what Tom's mission had been. He and the CO of the Tyr, Damaris Khau, were supposed to meet with a Starfleet Intelligence operative that had infiltrated a ZFT cell nearly three months ago. Lieutenant Prieto had feared the cell's leader was onto her, and had sent an encoded message a week ago requesting extraction. It was a high risk mission, and it was imperative that the full extent of Starfleet's undercover mission in the ZFT not be discovered; that was why they had restricted Khau's team to just the two of them.

B'Elanna had been livid when she heard. "Two people? To extract a spy from a highly guarded terrorist base? That's just fucking brilliant!"

"B'Elanna, darling - language," Julia Paris said calmly from their sofa. "Miral just went to bed."

Your son is missing! B'Elanna wanted to scream. Do you ever get upset about anything? She recognized that at least half of the rage she felt towards Julia was misdirected though, and managed to keep her verbal response to a brusque, "I need some air. I'm going outside."

One of the best things about living on a terraformed planet was that the weather was nearly always perfect. It was a cool, clear evening, and as B'Elanna stood in their small garden, she could see Mars' larger moon, Phobos, just above the horizon.

"She means well," she heard Owen's low voice say as he stepped onto the patio.

"I know," she said tersely.

Owen came up behind her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "It's how she deals with it - the uncertainty of having so many of the people she loves in the 'Fleet. She likes to control what she can."

"I've noticed," B'Elanna grumbled.

"Actually," Owen said quietly, "Some people even think I'm the more difficult one."

B'Elanna laughed a little as she rested her head on her father-in-law's chest. It was no secret to anyone that Tom and his father had a rocky relationship. Things were much better between them since Voyager had returned from the Delta Quadrant, but Owen was still prone to thinking he knew what was good for his son better than Tom himself did, and Tom was still prone to resenting his father's attitude and interference. When B'Elanna first met the Admiral (as Tom still called him when he was in one of his snarkier moods), she had been fully prepared to dislike, or at the very least distrust, the man; given all the pain he'd once caused her husband.

But it turned out she hadn't disliked Owen Paris at all. Maybe it was because she wasn't his child, or maybe it was because he made an extra effort for the wife of the son he'd been estranged from for so long - but Owen had been exceedingly kind to her from the day they met. He'd also been impressed by her engineering skills and accomplishments on Voyager - after she'd accepted the position, Arhan told her it was Owen that had contacted him personally to recommend her. She had a tenuous relationship at best with her own father - John Torres was a doting grandfather to Miral when he visited, but B'Elanna found herself simply incapable of trusting him like she felt a daughter should a father. She couldn't rid herself of the notion that he might disappear again at a moment's notice. She just never expected that it would be Owen that would fill much of the hole John's absence had created.

She worried, sometimes, that Tom would become resentful of the relationship she and Owen had built over the years. Tom was always watchful and protective of his wife when John was around - B'Elanna tried to imagine how she'd feel if instead the two of them were friends, if they laughed together or went places without her. A couple of years ago, she asked Tom point blank if it ever felt like a betrayal, how well she got along with Owen.

He had laughed at her, but softly because of the baby sleeping on his chest. Miral had had a nasty respiratory virus at the time, and would only sleep if her father was holding her. "Betrayed? No, B'Elanna, I don't feel betrayed."

Annoyed that he wasn't taking her seriously, she had glared at him. "It doesn't bother you at all?"

His smile had turned a little sad then. "I didn't say that. But it doesn't bother me because it's you. It just bugs me a little... because it's not me."

They had talked a lot that night, quietly sharing old pains and new worries as their sick child rested peacefully for the first time in days. B'Elanna couldn't remember the last time they'd had a conversation like that. They had both been busy lately, between caring for Miral and their respective jobs. She wondered if she could have prevented all of this - maybe if she'd bugged him more to tell her what had been troubling him about his posting on the Tyr. Or if she'd been open with Tom after Arhan had left - told him how she was worried Starfleet was deliberately holding her back and she was considering resigning - would he still be missing now?

On the afternoon of the third day, B'Elanna was with Miral in the garden, as she peddled her little tricycle around the patio. "Momma, we go on the road now?"

"No, Miral, Momma wants to wait here for Grandpa to come back." Owen had been at HQ all day, doing what he could to help find his son.

"Momma, where is Daddy? Daddy takes me on the road! I want to go on the road!" The toddler was off her tricycle now, glaring at her mother. Miral was endlessly chatty, and sometimes dangerously inquisitive, but usually agreeable for a three year old. The tensions of the last few days were wearing on everyone, though.

"Miral!" she snapped. "I told you, he'll be back when he's back. Stop asking me!"

"B'Elanna."

Fantastic, B'Elanna thought, Julia hears me the first fucking time I lose my temper. A new thing for her to comment on later to Owen when she thought B'Elanna was out of earshot. But when she turned to her mother-in-law, the look on her face was not one of disapproval.

"Owen just called. There's news."