Second Chances: Chapter 3

She didn't know where she was going; all Lt. B'Elanna Torres knew was that she had to get out of there, get out of the room with the three admirals bearing news that was bound and determined to change the outcome of her entire life. She had to get away from them and get away from any reminders of the words they had just spoken to her.

Easier said than done. Mars Station wasn't that big. And for the last fourteen months—her entire married life—she had been living and working there with Tom. The apartment, favorite restaurant, favorite bar, friends' apartments…they were all places she shared with Tom, the man she had planned on sharing her life with, the man that contributed half of the DNA to the baby she had inside of her. She couldn't go anywhere without being reminded of that, and remembering that would only remind her of those words she had just heard. And we're still doing everything we can to find her, but after a week of searching—

Without knowing how, she managed to make her way to the one place on the planet that was uniquely hers, without any of Tom: the running trails. At one point in time, she had been a frequent visitor to the trails that started at the Station and went out onto Mars proper, back when she was a cadet who needed to run on the long weekends when she would visit Tom on Mars. Shortly after they were married and she was living on Mars, she regularly hit the trails, but as work requirements increased and time separated her more and more from her days on the track team, her visits became further and further apart.

She didn't bother replicating workout clothes—or even good running shoes—before she took off, trying to outrun her thoughts. But the further she ran, the faster and more furious the thoughts came, and before she knew it, she was running hard and fast because she was angry, honestly enraged at the universe and anyone and everyone contained within. She was mad at Commander Rohder for admitting the admirals to her workstation to give such bad news, for leaving them there to talk alone and closing the door quietly behind him; at Admirals Trigleth and Mayer, for being the bearers of bad news; at Owen, for knowing before she did and thinking he knew how to handle the situation; at the Maquis, for running off into the Badlands; at Captain Janeway, for requesting Tom's help in piloting Voyager; at the Cardassians, for creating the Maquis problem in the first place.

At Tom, for getting himself lost and possibly killed.

Don't you die on me, Flyboy. I'm only getting married once.

Just the thought of the words she always spoke to Tom before he headed out for a test flight—and again, right before Voyager left dock, not to be seen again—caused her to pick up her pace even more.

Fourteen months. They had been married for fourteen months. That was less than one Mars year. They hadn't even experienced all the seasons together.

She couldn't believe they never would.

She slowed to a walk when she realized that she had been crying, and then just about lost it, trying to catch her breath from her run and between her sobs. He had said she wouldn't be doing this alone. He had promised.

No. He hadn't promised. Tom didn't make promises; he had always made that abundantly clear, the adamant words of a boy who had had one too many promises broken by Starfleet schedules and obligations. It even made it into his wedding vows: I'm not going to stand here and promise you that I will stand by you forever and will by your side as long as you live, because I don't know if I can. But I am going to promise you that I will always try my hardest to do just that.

The one promise he had ever made to her, and while she honestly believed that he had done just that, she couldn't get over how angry she was. He had gotten on that ship and disappeared, leaving her alone—pregnant and alone—on Mars. He had told her she wasn't going to be doing this alone!

She had run further than she anticipated, and for someone who had been doing as little running as she had lately, and in uniform, and fifteen weeks pregnant, she knew she didn't have the energy to run back. She briefly debated requesting a beam-out to the head of the trails, and then decided against it. It was a nice day out, and there were still few people out. Walking back could give her the time alone she desperately needed.

Unfortunately, it also gave her too much time to think, and again, the more she thought, the angrier she got. She was starting to believe that Klingons had only two stages of grief: denial and anger. And she was currently experiencing them at the same time.

When she got back to the head of a trail, she was surprised at how close it was to a familiar coffee shop, one that was uniquely Tom's and not hers; it was where he went to get work done when he needed to avoid the distractions of the Test Pilot Division and their apartment. She had only been there once, and it was years ago. Even though she knew it would be filled with those memories she had been trying to so hard to avoid, she found herself walking to it without knowing why. For a few long minutes, she stood just inside the door, looking around the small space and thinking of how much impact that place had the events that unfolded from the point she had last been there. Finally, she headed over to the replicator. "Raktajino, hot," she ordered. "Cancel that," she said a second later. Dr. Gault encouraged her to limit herself to one caffeinated drink a day, something she usually scoffed at, but she figured the baby had had enough stress for one day and there was no need to add excessive caffeine to that. "Raktajino, hot, decaffeinated," she said instead. It pretty much ruined the point of raktajino, but there were more important things than Klingon coffee.

She sat at the same table she sat at last time, a booth by one of the large front windows, and could just see Tom sitting across from her, a bewildered expression on his face as she apologized for how she had acted during her entire plebe year and how much work she had created for him as the company commander. It was the fall semester of her second classman year, during a break between space walks and the Junior Survival Strategies course that almost cost her her life, and she had been on Mars to interview for a short training course and decided on a whim to see her old company commander while she was on the planet.

She smiled at the memory of how she had unintentionally interrupted a dinner date, but then the smile faded as she remembered the conversation and everything that had come after. If she hadn't stopped by his apartment, if they hadn't had that talk in that coffee shop, none of what had come after would have happened. He wouldn't have requested a reassignment to San Francisco during her hospitalization, wouldn't have been there when she needed someone to vent to about feeling so weak during her rehabilitation, they wouldn't have had the chance to fall in love and get married.

Fourteen months. They had had fourteen months as husband and wife.

She couldn't believe it, and didn't want to believe it, but she knew on an intellectual level that it had to be true, that Tom was truly…gone. They didn't send two admirals to talk to the wife, no matter who her father-in-law was, until they were fairly certain that 'missing' meant 'dead'. It wouldn't be official, not for another two years, but barring some sort of miracle, she would officially be a widow in two years' time.

At the age of twenty-four. With a toddler.

She had only drunk half of the decaffeinated raktajino, but found she didn't have an appetite for it anymore. She rose from her seat, recycled the mug and the remaining coffee, and left the coffee shop.