Second Chances: Chapter 38

Stardate 51157
March 2374
U.S.S. Voyager
Delta Quadrant

Lts Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres were on parental leave, so Tom and B'Elanna dressed in civilian clothes instead of uniforms, which suited B'Elanna just fine. She didn't want to get dressed in that old, baggy uniform and didn't even want to look to check to see what her rank was. Or even if she had a real rank or another provisional rank bar.

Captain Janeway was in her ready room and brightened when Tom and B'Elanna entered. Tom immediately thrust Ben into her arms. "Good morning, Benny Bear," she cooed. "Are you being good for your parents?"

"No," Tom grumbled, collapsing into the couch by the viewport. Both B'Elanna and Captain Janeway looked at him with eyebrows raised, then at each other and smiled, and even though B'Elanna hadn't met Janeway until the day before—and that was a different Captain Janeway—she felt a connection to her.

"You said it was urgent," the captain said, now down to business, her eyes going from one lieutenant to the other. Tom gestured for B'Elanna to explain.

"There was some sort of...quantum fissure," she said, not sure how to explain. She handed the tricorder over to the captain. "I belong in an alternate reality."

Captain Janeway shifted Ben in her arms as she accepted the tricorder, the way that mothers learn how to do, even though B'Elanna was pretty sure she didn't have any kids of her own. She studied the tricorder for a minute before nodding. "Okay," she said with a definitive nod. "When did this start?"

B'Elanna blinked in surprise at being believed so readily. "Uh, yesterday, sir," she said. Janeway winced, and B'Elanna quickly explained, "I woke up on a different Voyager, and then was here today."

Janeway turned to Tom. "And our B'Elanna was here yesterday?"

He gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm pretty sure, but it's also possible I've become delusional from so little sleep. She didn't say anything about being in an alternate universe, at least, I don't remember her saying anything, so if she was, it was close enough to this one that she didn't notice."

Janeway turns back to Torres. "Where do you belong?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm a project officer in the Construction Battalion at Utopia Planitia," she said. "I live on Mars Station with my daughter. Tom was a test pilot and was with Voyager for the first mission. The ship disappeared in the Badlands three years ago. They were officially declared dead last year."

Captain Janeway's face crumpled, just for a second, at the words, and then as soon as it was there, it was gone. "And you've been moving through alternate realities for the last two days."

Torres nodded. "This is my second one," she confirmed. "But the Tom on yesterday's Voyager said it had been going on for a week."

Janeway glanced down at the tricorder again, as if it might have the answers they're looking for. "There's no way to say what started it," she said, "but it sounds like the fissure is expanding, drawing in new realities and new B'Elannas each day."

"So how do we stop it?" Torres asked. "And how do we get each of us to the right place?"

"I'm going to need some time to study this," the captain replied, holding up the tricorder. She handed Ben back over to Tom. "I need to talk to B'Elanna for a minute," she said as a dismissal. He nodded and rose.

"I'll meet you back in your quarters," she offered, but he shook his head.

"I'll be in the mess," he said. "We're working on getting this guy a little better socialized to the crew." As if knowing they were talking about him, Ben gave a loud gurgle of excitement. "Yes, we're going to spend some time with more people," Tom said to him as he exited the ready room.

Torres watched him leave before she turned back to Captain Janeway, her eyebrows raised. "Two black coffees," Janeway ordered into the replicator, and Torres' eyebrows raised again. She certainly wasn't going to turn down black coffee, but she preferred raktajino. She wondered if maybe that wasn't true of the B'Elanna Torres who lived there.

Janeway gestured toward the sitting area next to the viewport, and they sat with their coffees. "Tell me about your career," Janeway said conversationally, and Torres took a sip of her coffee while trying to figure out where to begin, and figured she might as well start at the beginning.

"I graduated from the Academy in June of 70," she began. "I was assigned to UP as a research engineer. My first assignment was the implementation of bioneural gel packs to the propulsion system. I was involved in the last phase of that for Voyager." She took another sip of her coffee. "After Voyager left, I was transferred to the Theoretical Propulsion Group, but my time there was cut short by medical issues during my pregnancy." There wasn't enough time for that story, and she had just met this woman. "I was at Starfleet Engineering for almost a year before I transferred back to Mars to be with the Construction Battalion as the repair company commander. At the end of my command time, we got a Jem'Hadar ship."

"That's the Dominion, right?" Janeway interrupted. "From the Gamma quadrant?" Torres' eyebrows rose as she did the mental arithmetic; when Voyager disappeared, the Jem'Hadar and the Dominion were still in the Gamma quadrant and not yet considered much of a threat to the Federation. At least, not in her reality. "I was the Chief Science Officer at Starfleet Operations before given Voyager," she explained. Torres nodded; that made sense.

"I became a project officer with the goal of fixing up the ship, learning everything we could from it about Dominion tech, and preparing it for missions."

"Missions?" Janeway asked.

"We're at war with the Dominion," Torres explained. Janeway looked sad at that news, but gestured for Torres to continue. "We fixed up the ship, took it out, and captured another. Now my team is working on fixing up that one, and I'm finishing my thesis on comparative systems engineering."

"You've accomplished a lot in a short period of time," Janeway observed. Torres shrugged.

"I just try to do the jobs in front of me," she said, and the captain smiled.

"At least we know that that's a B'Elanna Torres trait that's consistent," the captain said. Her smile faded. "You said the Voyager crew has been declared dead," she said, her voice lower. Torres nodded.

"In my reality," she pointed out. "They looked for Voyager for months," she said. "There were a few other ships that disappeared near the Badlands around the same time. Until the end of the Maquis, every Starfleet ship that went near the Badlands included in their report that they didn't find any evidence of Voyager or any other missing ship. Nobody has."

Janeway looked out the viewport for several minutes as she processed this. "Do you know the families of other crew members on Voyager?" she finally asked.

"Some," Torres said. "I'm not exactly a social person."

Janeway smiled slightly at that. "Does the name Mark Johnson mean anything to you?"

Torres took a deep breath. "These aren't the same people you know," she pointed out. Janeway nodded and looked at her expectantly. "He was Captain Janeway's fiancé," she finally said.

"Fiancé," Janeway said, almost in disbelief. She shook her head. "We've been married ten years," she said. "We have two daughters, Phoebe and Juliet." She had a framed holo on her desk, which she rose and retrieved. It was definitely Captain Janeway, although her hair was longer, and definitely a version of the Mark Johnson whom Torres had met a few times, and two girls, maybe five and three when it was taken, so now maybe the same ages as the Carey boys, although Torres would be the first to admit that she was terrible at guessing kids' ages and Izzy's rapid development didn't help that. The elder—Phoebe?—had flaming red hair and a confident smile that mirrored her mothers' perfectly. The younger, with her father's dark hair, wasn't looking at the holoimager, her attention focused on the golden retriever in front of her.

"The Mark Johnson in your reality," Janeway asked, almost haltingly. "How is he?"

Torres looked down at her coffee and took a deep breath. She couldn't lie to this captain, not after the kindness she had shown her and the obvious closeness she had to her own B'Elanna Torres. "He got married in December," she said. "I don't know him well, but he seems to be doing well. He still has Molly."

"Molly?"

"Captain Janeway's dog," B'Elanna explained, and Janeway smiled.

"Phoebe named our last dog," she said. "His name's Moppet." Her eyes went back to the viewport, now sad. "I suppose I knew that, as far as the Federation is concerned, we'd be dead," she finally said. "It still hurts to hear."

"It hurts to live it, too," Torres replied softly. "I don't know what happened to the Voyager in my reality. I don't know if they're lost or truly dead, and now I'm more in the middle than I have been since it went first missing." She also looked out at the viewport. They were at warp, but even if they weren't, she knew she wouldn't recognize the stars beyond, so far from her own. "But that uncertainty is my life, Captain, and I have to get back to it."

Captain Janeway nodded and rose, holding out her hand for B'Elanna's empty mug. "Let me take a look at the data and see if I can help," she said. "You have full access to our astrometrics and engineering data. Review everything you need to. I hope someday, you find your Voyager."

Janeway walked B'Elanna to the mess hall, where Tom was sitting against a viewport, asleep, while various crew members were passing around and gathering around the infant. The two women again shared a smile at the sight. "You never saw your Tom as a father, have you?" Janeway asked, realizing. Torres shook her head.

"No," she said. "But I knew he'd be a great dad."

"I didn't think I could love Mark more than when I married him," Janeway said. "And then I saw him as a father. I hope you get that chance, B'Elanna."

She spent the day pouring through the data, much as she had done the day before, trying to memorize everything about this Voyager and their trip to and through the Delta quadrant, hoping to use it someday to find her own Voyager. As it had been the day before, Tom rarely left her side, helping her sift through data, the two of them passing Ben back and forth depending on which parent he seemed to prefer in a given moment, and B'Elanna wished it had been two years previous, the baby had been Izzy, and the reality the one she was accustomed to.

"If he's still alive, he misses you," Tom said out of the blue. B'Elanna looked up from the console she was studying in surprise, to find him studying her with an intense expression. "I can't imagine a version of me that would let any version of you go without a fight."

Tom had promised her that during their wedding vows, and while the Tom she had met the day before wasn't in a relationship with the B'Elanna in his reality, she suspected he felt the same way. He said that they both had baggage, that life had taken some detours, but the thing about detours was that you eventually got to your destination, even if it took a little longer. She didn't know exactly what this Tom had had to fight through to get his B'Elanna—a shuttle crash, angry words, Starfleet manipulating her into a mission she had no business being on—but he felt so strongly about the woman who was now his wife that her going missing had gotten him behind the helm again.

This Tom—and the Tom the day before—were different than her husband. Her Tom had led a relatively easy life—his family loved him, he had the best education, got the assignments he wanted, married the woman he loved, had been excited about his pending child before he had disappeared. This Tom had a vulnerability hers didn't, and an openness the one the day before hadn't had, but in all of them, she could tell that what made Tom, Tom was still here. "There's not a version of me that would give up on any version of you," she said. "If he's out there, I'll find him."

He nodded. "I know you will."

On impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "You have a good thing going here, Paris," she said. "Don't screw it up."

"I don't intend to," he informed her. "But I do have a track record of being incredibly dense sometimes."

She found herself chuckling at that. "I told Tom all the time that I married him for his looks," she confided, and he grinned.

"B'Elanna tells me that at least once a week."

She wanted to tell him so much more, wanted to warn him about post-partum depression and what he should watch out for in his B'Elanna, wanted to explain how it was both fun and frustrating to be responsible for raising a child, but she didn't get the chance. One moment, she was standing there in that Astrometrics lab, and the next, she was in a transporter room in what appeared to be a research facility at Starfleet Headquarters, Owen Paris in front of her with a concerned look on his face. "Owen?" she asked hopefully, and her father-in-law turned expectantly to a science officer standing next to the transporter chief.

"The quantum signature matches," the ensign finally declared. He looked up and smiled at Torres. "Welcome home, sir."