Second Chances: Chapter 15
Stardate 49299
March 2372
San Francisco, Earth
Commander Ivar Johansen was clinking on his glass with his spoon as he rose from his chair. "May I have everyone's attention?" he asked as the conversation died down. "We all know why we're here, and I know Lt. Torres specifically asked that no fuss is made about her promotion, but we do have to have at least a little bit of fuss." The crowd, consisting of the other engineers in Johansen's group at R&D, as well as Owen and Alicia Paris, Nicki Sanders, and the three other members of the Torres family—as well as Izzy, who at that moment was trying to make a run for the door, before she was caught by one of the junior engineers—chuckled at his words. Johansen turned to the guest of honor. "B'Elanna's time with the group had an unusual start," he began, getting even more laughs. "It's not every day we get a transfer from the Theoretical Propulsion Group, that's for sure, but when B'Elanna needed a team with a bit better proximity to Starfleet Medical than Utopia Planitia could provide, we were very glad to have her come on board." She nodded her thanks, hoping that was it, but of course it wasn't. "And even though she's only been on the team for a year, it's felt like much longer. Especially to those who make the mistake of asking her a question before her third mug of coffee in the morning." She gave him a mock glare, but joined in on the laughter from everyone else. He raised his glass. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Torres. A well-deserved promotion of a brilliant engineer and fine officer." The others toasted to that. "It's now customary to stand at this part," Commander Johansen said with a smile. She gave him a long-suffering smile and rolled her eyes in return, rising before Commander Johansen placed the new pip on her collar. Her hand went to it automatically; it felt the same as the old, black one, even though she knew it looked different.
"Thank you, Commander," she said. He had warned her that she would have to give a speech; she had scowled and grumbled something under her breath when he said that, but she had known he was right. "And thank you, everyone. I never would have imagined I would end up with such a great team of engineers. Owen, Alicia, Nicki, thank you for taking me—and Izzy—in. It certainly hasn't been the year any of us thought it would be, and I don't think I could have gotten through it without you." It had been a year, almost to the day, since Starfleet's last contact with Voyager. In another week, it would be the one-year anniversary of Admiral Owen Paris escorting two other admirals to her work station in the TPG to tell her that Voyager had disappeared, and in one more year, they would officially declare the ship lost and her crew dead.
She couldn't believe it had been a year. She still felt Tom's absence acutely. She missed him even more when she looked at Izzy, while simultaneously being grateful to have a piece of him.
"Commander Johansen and I have been working on something that we've been keeping from the rest of you—"
"Are you going to sing a duet?" Lt. Nancy Alessio interrupted.
"Nobody wants that," Torres replied, not missing a beat and earning some chuckles. "No, it's much less painful than that. Izzy and I are going back to Mars." You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that had fallen over the table. "I'm taking command of a repair company at the Ship Yard."
It was the engineers who broke the silence, all with congratulations and well wishes. It didn't escape B'Elanna's notice that none of her family seemed so excited; she had known she should have talked to them about the move before announcing it at her promotion lunch, but she had been afraid they would talk her out of it.
It had been a year. It was time to start living her life again. And she shouldn't have to feel guilty about that.
The celebration had continued that evening with a family dinner at the Paris house; the Wylands had just arrived on Earth a few hours before and the Sanders family was in from Denver, making for a lot of chaos and a lot of cousins for Izzy to run around with. She had started walking the month before, at seven months old, and started running about half an hour later, and it was obvious to everyone that Izzy's mobility was a source of annoyance for Sydney, as Alex was four months older than Izzy and preferred scooting around to walking.
After dinner, Owen retreated to his study, as he often did, and after another glass of wine with Alicia, Sydney, and Nicki, B'Elanna tried begging off to get back to their apartment in Hawaii to get Izzy down to bed. To no one's surprise, Alicia was quick to volunteer to put Izzy down in Tom's old room, the room where B'Elanna, and then her and Izzy, had lived for those several months after Voyager disappeared. B'Elanna knew that this was Alicia's way of getting them to stay the night, because she knew that B'Elanna wouldn't wake her daughter if she was sleeping.
Resigned to the situation, B'Elanna headed off to Owen's study. Like she always did when she was in that space, she studied the bookshelves and the holos on them. He regularly rotated the pictures, and she wasn't surprised to see that both Alex and Izzy were now displayed. Her eyes stopped at the one holo that he never changed, the last that had been taken of Tom, two weeks before he left on Voyager, when they found out she was pregnant and had taken the shuttle to San Francisco to tell his family in person. Nicki had been so excited that she had beamed over with the kids, and Ainsley had been busy the whole night documenting everything with her new holoimager. "Mars was our home," she said, her eyes still on the smiling faces of her and her husband. "We really loved it there. We had our jobs, our friends, places to climb and places to run. We weren't planning on leaving so soon. Or at all. We were looking forward to raising Izzy there." She finally looked over at her father-in-law. "I need to start living my life again."
"I didn't know you were interested in taking command," he replied, and she realized that he was hurt that she hadn't talked this over with him.
"I wasn't," she said. "I'm still not convinced that having me a leadership position isn't the worst idea anyone's come up with, but Ivar started pushing it as soon as the promotion list came out." She gave a slight smile. "He was concerned about how non-traditional my career path has been," she said dryly, which finally made Owen smile. "I started in a research position, and the went to a subject-matter expert position on the Voyager team because of my research on the integration of those damn bioneural gel packs with propulsion systems, and then I went into another research position, and now I'm in another research position. Most engineers start in junior billets on ships or as team leads at ship yards. I have no maintenance, repair, or leadership experience as a full lieutenant, and there's no way I'd make it past lieutenant without those. I'm going to run out of billets I'm eligible for. Ivar wanted me to take a ship position, either a team lead on a big ship or as a deputy on a smaller ship, but he couldn't find any openings on any of the larger ships and I wouldn't be able to take Izzy on a smaller one. And I'm not leaving my daughter." There was an edge of warning in her voice, making sure he didn't suggest that he and Alicia would be happy to watch Izzy while she did a ship rotation. "Captain Sisko requested a few months ago that I go to DS9, to add to the Klingon presence in Starfleet uniforms to help deal with the Klingon presence in Klingon uniforms that were around due to this damn conflict they have with the Cardassians. It only took one transmission with him to convince him that a mongrel raised on a Federation colony was not what he needed if his goal was dealing with the Klingons. And I don't know what he expected I'd be able to do as an engineer." She had heard that Lt. Commander Worf had been permanently transferred to the station; she had never met the security officer, but sure he was a much better fit for what Sisko was looking for. "So that obviously didn't go anywhere. One of Ivar's former Academy roommates is Commander Adam Winters, the construction battalion commander on UP. Ivar commed Winters, who just happened to be looking for a new company commander. And then it took another month to talk me into it."
"It's a good opportunity for you," Owen finally said. He sighed. "You do know Alicia's going to find a way to blame me for this."
She smiled at that, because she knew it wasn't true. Alicia had raised three kids around Owen's Starfleet schedule. They moved between ships and stations when Sydney and Nicki were little; by the time Tom was born, Owen was a captain, and Alicia and the kids largely lived on Earth while Owen went on missions. And then she watched as each of her children put on that same uniform and do largely the same thing.
If anyone understood how to have a family in Starfleet, it was Alicia Paris.
"We're not going to be on DS9," she reminded him. "Izzy and I will only be a three hour shuttle ride away. It'll be like we never left."