Second Chances: Chapter 14
Stardate 54468.5
2377
U.S.S. Voyager
Alpha Quadrant
"Turns out, hybrids are predisposed to mood disorders," B'Elanna said with a wry smile as she crossed the room to recycle her empty mug. "There's the whole social isolation and not fitting in, but really, it's biology. Neurotransmitters and receptors are on different genes, and sometimes we get neurotransmitters and receptors that don't fit each other. I get depressed, which sometimes makes me lash out in inappropriate anger." She rolled her eyes. "Who knows what my childhood would have been like if I had gotten proper medical care?" she asked rhetorically. "Navi gets manic, which I think she manipulates on purpose to get more done. T'Pana has OCD." As if anticipating his question, she said, "Izzy's neurotransmitters, so far, seem to be working just fine. They're keeping an eye on it in case that changes in puberty." Another roll of her eyes. "Yet another thing to look forward to as she hits her teenage years. And all of this discovered because I had a breakdown."
"It's not every day an engineer gets to say she revolutionized hybrid psychiatry," Tom joked. "And, sorry that my father can be such an asshole. In my defense, I warned you about that."
She chuckled. "That was the last time he did that," she said. "He really has been keeping out of our careers and lives unless we ask. You'd know if he didn't. He would have secured your next assignment the moment Pathfinder's first commlink connected. And every datastream thereafter, you would have had a message from Starfleet Command asking if you were ready to assume your next billet yet." He chuckled and nodded in agreement, but didn't say anything further about next assignments. "Anyway, complete neurotransmitter scans are now part of every hybrid medical exam," she continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "Dr. Bayrote apologized profusely when I went in, saying he should have picked up on it the first time I had been clinically depressed. I'm just glad I got the help I needed."
"I'm trying to imagine Navi manic," Tom said, "but I keep picturing an eleven-year-old kid. I guess she's now… seventeen?" B'Elanna nodded. "Getting ready for college?"
B'Elanna snorted. "Getting ready," she scoffed. "What part of knowing Navi makes you think she'd do anything in the right timeline? No, she's a third classman at the Academy and wants to go to the Medical Academy next. She's already doing research in Dr. Zalun's lab. Hence the manipulating her manic tendencies on purpose." She still rolled her eyes in that way she had when talking about her half-sister. "She still flies," she informed him. "Nothing like you did. There were no try-outs for Nova Squadron for her, but she's enjoying seeing how many piloting certifications she can get before graduation. She's up to three." He nodded, impressed. Most cadets barely managed to complete their shuttle certification before they left the Academy. "She plays the flute in the symphony and has a boyfriend. He's terrible."
"I'm sure he's not that bad," Tom said with a smile.
"Oh, no, he is," she countered. "I'm not worried about it. She's a smart kid and will figure it out eventually. We all make terrible dating decisions as teenagers. After all, I dated Burke."
His smile faded at the name. "He died," Tom said, and she frowned at him.
"What?"
"Burke," he explained. "His ship was also captured by the Caretaker. They were a small science vessel and got hit pretty hard. He ended up promoted to first officer by default." He frowned, trying to figure out how to condense that story. "They crossed a line, morally, and then he decided to circle around and cross it again when his captain surrendered to Captain Janeway and he tried to mutiny, and it's a long story that I'm sure is going to come out in various inquests, but he died."
"Oh," she said, her eyes wide as she thought about that for a minute. "Well, like I said. We make terrible dating decisions as teenagers." He wanted to chuckle at that, but the thought of the Equinox didn't put him in a chuckling mood, and she seemed to pick up on that. "Do you have to get ready for your briefing?"
He glanced at the chronometer. "Nah, I still have time. I do need more coffee, though. Someone kept me up all night." They hadn't slept at all, which was fine—B'Elanna never needed much sleep, and he planned on taking a nap after the staff briefing, while Izzy was on her tour with Naomi Wildman and B'Elanna was torturing Joe in engineering. "Dr. Bayrote was able to help with your depression?"
She nodded. "Gene therapy," she explained. "I can now make the right neurotransmitters. It really was life-changing. I don't feel like I'm fighting with myself anymore. Going back to work after parental leave really helped, too, and so did running. About a week after I went back to work, Syd commed and said she was going to run the Starfleet Marathon in the spring and asked if I wanted to run with her. Coach Ulshanov made training plans for both of us—we were both post-partum, she wanted to change up her training after a couple of disappointing marathon finishes, and I hadn't raced a marathon before. It sounded like a good challenge. And I really missed having something to train for."
"You hadn't done a marathon?" he asked with a frown. "What about the Academy Marathon?" Now that he was thinking about it, he had no memories of her complaining about that annual trek out to Danula II and the torture that every cadet had to suffer through.
She shook her head. "Track is exempted from that. It's in April, when we were in full competition mode. Not the best time to be running forty kilometers."
"That's right," he murmured. He remembered the gloating of one of his classmates, a top sprinter on the track team who could run a hundred meters pretty damn fast, but probably couldn't manage a single kilometer, much less forty, without having to take a break. "How was running with Sydney?" Sydney was built exactly as one would expect of a marathoner: she was tall, very thin, with seemingly no body fat, and she was fast. She had been the first woman to cross the finish line at the Academy Marathon each of her four years at the Academy and at one point had consistently finished in the top five whenever she raced. On the other hand, B'Elanna was a lot shorter and was built for strength and speed, not endurance. But she also had an extra lung, two additional heart chambers, and was twelve years younger than his sister. They were probably nearly equally matched.
"A lot more fun than I thought it would be," she said. He wasn't sure if he believed that; he was pretty sure Sydney was incapable of having fun. "She gets really sarcastic after the first twenty or so kilometers. And she's happy when she's running. It makes her a lot more tolerable. We've done a marathon together every year. We take turns picking the race. She likes to run in the cold, so I return the favor by picking the hottest races I can find."
"Can I join?" he asked with a smile. She snorted.
"You can join on the vacation and help Jens take care of the kids while Syd and I are running."
He groaned. "Jens is the most boring man in the universe," he complained. "I can't believe they gave him a command. How does anyone on that ship make it through a duty shift without falling asleep in their chairs?" She chuckled but didn't counter his words. The man really was intolerable. He guessed it fit, though. Personality would be wasted on Sydney.
He should probably start being nice to his sister, now that he was going to be seeing her again.
Family was complicated.
And speaking of family… "Was that when you and John started talking again?" He knew from her letters over the datastream that she had some sort of relationship with her father, but he also knew that she called him "John," never "my father" or "Dad."
"I was ready to write him off," she confessed, "but it was important to Navi that we had some sort of reconciliation. She was really insistent on it. She told me about a year ago that it had been driving her crazy that she could spend time with me, and spend time with John, but she didn't feel comfortable talking about either of us to the other. It was slow and painful at first. Izzy and I had dinner at their house about once a month, and there were times none of us would say a word the entire meal. And there were other times I ended up screaming at him and leaving halfway through. But we reached an understanding. We'll never have a normal 'father-daughter' relationship, we all know that. I may be less depressed and less angry now, but that still doesn't change the fact that I was depressed and angry for a long time because of what he did. But he really loves Izzy, and she loves him. I did invite him and T'Pana to my promotion lunch when I made full lieutenant, but that was mostly because I had news that I didn't want him to have to hear second hand from Navi."