Second Chances: Chapter 36

A/N: It's time.

This chapter's universe isn't exactly the canon universe, because I'm pretty sure something like this would have been mentioned had it happened on the show, but it's so close to canon that we're going to go with that.

Enjoy.

Stardate 51155
March 2374
U.S.S. Voyager
Delta Quadrant

*The time is 0800. The time is 0800,* the computer's voice announced, and Lt. B'Elanna Torres immediately sat up in alarm. 0800? Why the hell would the computer wait to wake her until 0800? Her alarm had been set for 0600 for almost a year, necessary to get in either a run or mok'bara session before having to wake Izzy for daycare. She couldn't remember the last time she had set an alarm for 0800, and didn't remember doing so the night before.

It was dark in her room, much too dark, and it took her a minute to figure out why.

Her window was gone.

There should have been light streaming in from the window. It was almost summer at Mars Station, and the sun would be rising when her usual alarm went off at 0600; even with the curtains drawn, it should have been bright in her room by 0800, but the only illumination came from a light bar above her headboard.

A light bar she didn't have.

"Computer, lights, 50 percent," she ordered as she looked around the room. Nothing was familiar. The night stand should have had two framed holos—one from her wedding, one of her and Izzy in Madagascar—and a stack of PADDs, but all she found was a combadge. That painting Tom had found in Australia was missing. Izzy's toys somehow always migrated into her room—

Izzy.

"Izzy?" she called out, hearing the panic begin to creep into her voice. "Computer, locate Isela Paris."

*There are no crewmembers named Isela Paris on board,* the computer informed her.

"On board?" she echoed.

*Restate query,* the computer replied. She sighed in frustration. And fear.

"Computer, where am I?"

*Lt. B'Elanna Torres is in her quarters, deck 9, section 12, U.S.S. Voyager, NCC—*

"Voyager?" Torres interrupted.

*Restate query,* the computer replied.

Voyager. She was on Voyager? But…how? And if she was on Voyager…

"Computer, locate Tom Paris."

*Lt. Thomas Paris is in his quarters, deck 4—*

"Computer, stop," she ordered. She needed to think.

She was on Voyager. Tom was on Voyager. She had quarters on Voyager, but they weren't with Tom. Which made less sense to her than the fact that she was on Voyager, a ship that had disappeared and presumed to have been destroyed three years ago.

She wasn't going to get any answers sitting in "her" quarters, arguing with the computer.

She picked up the combadge on the nightstand and turned it over. It had her name and Starfleet ID on the back, but somehow, felt different than it should have. "Torres to Paris," she said, pressing on the combadge.

She heard the line connect and then heard a groan. *C'mon, Torres,* her husband's voice complained. *We're on beta shift. We were at Sandrine's until... I don't even remember what time. Let me sleep.* She opened her mouth in disbelief at hearing him and before she could say anything, he seemed to wake up. *B'Elanna,* he asked slowly, *do you know where you are?*

"No," she said honestly, surprised and a little ashamed of the quiver of fear in her voice in the single syllable.

*Stay right there,* he said. *I'll be there in a minute. Paris out.*

She didn't stay right there, but she also didn't leave the quarters. They were small—a bathroom with a sonic shower off the sleeping area, a living area with a couch, chair, coffee table, and a kitchen area that mostly consisted of a replicator—and after thirty seconds of exploring, she curled up on the couch, her knees close to her chest and her temple on her knee.

What the hell was going on?

She startled at the sound of the announcer chime. "Come in," she said a second later, and then there he was. Tom. Wearing that old uniform, the uniform he had been wearing when she kissed him goodbye before exiting Voyager.

He entered just far enough to let the door close behind him, and for a long second, they just stared at each other, and then she did something she hadn't done since Owen brought those two damn admirals to the TPG three years before.

She sobbed.

He seemed at a loss for a second, and then crossed the room and put his arms around her, and for the first time in three years, B'Elanna was held by her husband.

She didn't think she had cried long before she pulled herself back and wiped at her eyes. Tom was looking at her like he didn't know what to do or say, and she didn't know what to do or say about that. "Is this Gre'thor?" she finally asked, and watched as the bewilderment on his face increased.

"No," he said slowly.

"The Barge of the Dead, then?" she asked. "I thought it would look more…barge-like, but considering, I think Voyager might be appropriate."

He frowned. "Are you talking about Klingon mythology?" he finally asked, and she realized that for all of the times she told him she'd be traveling down to Gre'thor to kill him again, she never really told him the whole mythology. And so she did, explaining Kortar and his condemnation, the Barge of the Dead and the collection of souls, the gates of Gre'thor and redemption to Sto-vo-kor.

"We're not dead, B'Elanna," he said. He paused, then asked, "What was the last thing you remember, before waking up this morning?"

She rubbed her forehead, still not knowing what was going on, but beginning to get the idea that Tom had a better idea than she did. "I blew out another replicator trying to integrate it into the Jem'Hadar ship, so I called it a day early," she said. "I picked Izzy up from daycare. I wanted to work on the shuttle, but it was a nice day and Izzy wanted to go for a hike, so we walked around the Station for an hour or so. Then I replicated dinner, put Izzy to bed, and worked on my thesis for a few hours. I went to bed somewhere between zero-two and zero-three."

He looked like none of the words she had just said made any sense to him. "Where do you live?" he asked.

"Mars Station," she said impatiently. She wanted to tell him that she had left, but then came back, because Mars was their home, but this didn't seem like the time. "Tom. What's going on?"

He seemed to think about his words for a minute before speaking. "There's been a quantum fissure," he finally said. "You're in a different universe than you're used to. We've had a different B'Elanna Torres here every day for the last week. We don't know why, and we don't know why any of you are only here for a day. And we don't know how to stop it and get people back where they belong."

She stared at him in disbelief, even though she knew that what he was saying was the only explanation that made sense. She took his chin in her hand and turned his jaw, seeing only unmarked skin where there should have been scars faint enough that she was the only one who knew what they were. She took his right hand and turned it, palm up, and again, saw only unmarked skin where there should have been a raised scar.

This was not her Tom.

She let his hand drop, and then rose from the couch and paced around the small quarters, processing what he had said. "I'm in an alternate universe," she said. "One where both of us are on Voyager, and it didn't disappear."

"We did disappear," Tom interjected, and she spun to face him, her eyes wide in surprise. "We were transported to the Delta quadrant. We're around 60,000 light years from Earth."

"Sixty thousand…" she whispered.

So impossibly far away, and yet, if this Voyager had been sent to the Delta quadrant…

"Is Captain Janeway the captain of this Voyager?" she asked, and he nodded. "I need to talk to her," she said, her voice picking up tempo. "I need as much data as I can get."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you said that each of me only stays here for a day," she said. "So I have less than a day to learn everything I can about what happened to this Voyager, just in case the same thing happened to the Voyager in my universe."

"Why?" he asked again.

She stared at him for a long minute, debating what to say, or even where to begin. "I want to find Voyager," she finally said. He looked like he was about to say a smart-ass remark, so she continued before he got the opportunity. "I was an engineer on UP. My husband was a test pilot and Voyager needed a pilot that could take a Starfleet ship into the Badlands. They told me three years ago that the ship had disappeared."

"Your husband," he said, his tone halfway between a question and a statement, and she smiled slightly.

"Lt. Thomas Eugene Paris," she informed him, almost enjoying the strange look of confused panic on his face. "And he's never met his daughter."

Tom hadn't left her side as she went to talk to Captain Janeway, and then to the astrometrics lab to try to memorize as much data as possible about Voyager's journey and the events that had impacted it. He hadn't been able to convince her to take a break for lunch, but did lure her away for dinner with promises about what her alternate self was like.

They ate in his quarters, on account of him not liking what was on the menu in the mess hall—some sort of casserole with some sort of rind—and then he kept to his promise, explaining to her why she had a provisional rank bar of a lieutenant, junior grade—she had been Maquis? If that wasn't proof of an alternate universe, she didn't know what was—and then told her some stories of the things her counterpart had done. She had dropped out of the Academy, but had somehow became the chief engineer. Was split in two people, one fully human and one fully Klingon. Worked with him Ensign Kim to break the warp ten threshold. Spent time on the holodeck with friends and was in a pretty heavy flirtation with her own Tom Paris.

"You love her," B'Elanna said softly. He looked up sharply and looked ready to deny it, but then looked away and nodded. "Have you told her?"

"She knows," he said, and she frowned.

"Have you told her?" she repeated. "Because if you think she somehow magically knows how you feel without telling her, I can be pretty sure you're wrong. I didn't even know my Tom was interested in me until he told me that he loved me. Twice."

He smiled, but it was sad. "She was… embarrassed. A few months ago. There was some sort of… chemical imbalance, things got out of hand, and we almost had sex on an away mission. She wanted to forget the whole thing and I wouldn't let her. I told her that I'm not going to scare off that easily. The ball is solidly in her court now, and I just have to wait to see if she picks it up."

Now it was her turn to smile, and it was wistful. "My Tom did the same thing," she confessed. "Just be patient. Don't push her too hard. She will. If she's anything like me, she will."

He studied her for a minute. "You're different," he finally said. "You're… lighter."

"I think I have less baggage," she said, which was a weird thought, considering that she was a single parent with a missing husband and a demanding job that never let up. But she must have been lighter, because she had been able to rise up over whatever caused her counterpart to drop out of the Academy, hadn't been at war as a Maquis, had found a way to be herself without letting her temper get in the way.

Had fallen in love, had gotten married, had a baby, found a new family who loved her and supported her and never left her alone.

"You're different, too," she said. "You have an edge that Tom doesn't have."

He nodded. "Life took some detours," was all he said, and she wondered if those detours explained why he was still a lieutenant, junior grade when her Tom had been promoted to full lieutenant long before.

"What would you do if I were him?" Tom asked, abruptly and curiously. She raised her eyebrows and smirked.

"I don't think that's fair to any of us," she said. He looked confused, and then his cheeks turned pink, and she felt victorious at being able to embarrass a Tom Paris.

"What you would say to him, then?" he asked quickly.

She took a deep breath, trying to sort out her thoughts. "I miss him," she said, then looked at the other Tom. "I miss you," she said, now as if she were talking to her own husband. "You have a daughter, Isela Miral Paris. Nicki started calling her Izzy as soon as she was born, and it stuck. She's a great kid, Tom, although she's so much like you that she drives me up the wall. She's happy all of the time, especially when driving me up the wall." She smiled slightly. "I know you didn't want me to have to do this on my own, and, Kahless, I didn't think I'd be able to, but we're doing okay. Your parents and your sisters help. When Nicki isn't being a pain in the ass." She took a deep breath and made herself look into his blue eyes. She didn't know how to read that expression on his face, because it was one that her Tom never had. Something that was almost pity, but something harder. "We're going to find you, Tom. We're going to find you and bring you home, and you're going to get to take Izzy out on her first shuttle ride. I'm not going to give up on you. You promised me that you would always do everything you could to be by my side, and I'm promising you the same thing."