Second Chances: Chapter 40

Stardate 51161
March 2374
San Francisco, Earth

B'Elanna held firm to her decision not to have dinner with John, choosing instead to burn off too much excess energy by going on a longer and faster than necessary run with Sydney. "If this is what happens when you take two days off, maybe you should try not running the week before Tromsø," Sydney commented after their 25 kilometer run, bent over at the waist as she tried to catch her breath. B'Elanna chuckled.

"I also just had a month off," she reminded her sister-in-law. "I think that was everything I had. There's nothing left for Tromsø."

"Nice try," Sydney replied, straightening up. "Want to grab something to eat?"

"Don't you have some important meeting to go to or something?"

Sydney checked her chronometer. "It's 1800. And Saturday," she pointed out.

"In that case, don't you have kids to feed or something?"

Sydney shrugged. "Jens is here," she pointed out. "I'm giving him some father time."

"Well, I don't have that luxury," B'Elanna replied. "And I spent two days away. I'm going back to your parents' house to spend some time with my daughter."

Sydney sighed. "That makes sense," she agreed. "Let me know if you want another run before you head back to Mars."

B'Elanna beamed over to the closest transporter station to the Paris house, and as she turned the corner to their street, thought of the story another Tom Paris had told her. He had been sitting out on the front porch, drinking a beer on the day he was released from Starfleet Medical after a shuttle crash, and she had seen him and dragged him to her brother's—Deven's—birthday party.

She stopped on the front porch and stared at the two chairs there, trying to remember if she had ever seen anyone sitting there and trying to picture Tom doing so. She had still been at the Academy, so he had been young, either an ensign or a lieutenant, jg. Maybe the same age as her Tom when she had the terrible idea of surprising him at his apartment when she had been on Mars to interview for an engineering course, and had unintentionally interrupted his date.

Strange to think that there was an alternate universe where she didn't stop by his door, didn't see his bewildered expression across the table over coffee as she tried to apologize for being a holy terror when he was her company commander. Where was that B'Elanna now? Had she still talked to Owen late in the evenings during the Survival Strategies course until she was tired enough to fall asleep? Had Owen still commed Tom when she was in a coma? Had Tom still dropped everything to go to Earth to be by her side? Had Tom still asked to be reassigned to San Francisco, still helped her with her recovery, still blurted out that he loved in her in the middle of an argument about pushing herself too hard? Had they gotten married, had Izzy? Had that Tom disappeared with Voyager, too?

That wasn't relevant, she reminded herself, wasn't her reality.

Alicia turned from where she was watching the grandkids playing in the back yard when she heard the door open out onto the deck. "How was your run?" she asked as she gave B'Elanna a hug. She made a face as she pulled away. "You should probably get cleaned up before dinner."

B'Elanna smiled, but before she could make a joke about not being fresh and clean after a 25 km run, Izzy had spotted her. "Mommy!" she squealed, changing directions to launch herself up the three steps onto the deck. B'Elanna intercepted her and pulled her off the ground into her arms.

"I missed you, little monkey," she said as she held Izzy in a hug.

"Miss you, too," Izzy replied automatically. She made the same facial expression Alicia had. "You smell bad."

Both B'Elanna and Alicia laughed at Izzy's characteristic bluntness. "I just went for a run with Aunt Sydney," B'Elanna protested. Izzy frowned, not knowing what to do with that information. "But I guess I can take a shower before dinner."

"Owen's not home yet," Alicia informed her as she set Izzy back down on the ground. She glanced at a chronometer and frowned. "He's been in meetings and didn't know when he'd be back."

"On a Saturday?" B'Elanna asked, and Alicia's expression became almost uncertain.

"It's about Voyager," she said after a long pause, and B'Elanna understood.

"He wants us to start looking for them," she said. Alicia nodded, then sighed.

"If it was a decade ago, he would have gotten support in seconds," she said. "But because of the war, and the Borg attack, and how depleted the Fleet is from those…" Her voice trailed off, and she gave her daughter-in-law an apologetic look. "It's a bit of a harder sale."

B'Elanna could do the math. Voyager had had a crew of 153. There were billions of individuals in the Federation whose lives depended on the defeat of the Dominion.

At bedtime, Izzy managed to get three stories out of B'Elanna without even trying, and then she stayed there until she felt her small daughter's breathing become rhythmic with sleep. She heard the murmurings of voices, too low to make out words, as she left the grandkid room.

Both Owen and Alicia stopped talking when B'Elanna entered the kitchen. "That good, then," she said.

"Finding Voyager doesn't help us win the war," Owen replied with a sigh, undoubtedly having heard those exact words several times over the course of the day. B'Elanna didn't say anything as she picked up a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet and held it up, eyebrows raised. "I'll get the glasses and ice," he said in response.

For several long minutes, they sat there and sipped their whiskey, and even though they didn't have comfortable chairs, or whiskey, or any sort of climate-controlled environment, it reminded B'Elanna of sitting by the fire during Survival Strategies, her classmates all asleep from exhaustion. First they had just sat, and then he had asked her polite questions about what she was doing her research on, and before she knew it, he had asked how Tom was as a company commander and it seemed that no topic was off-limits.

"We did one training exercise where we ran up and down Sato Hill. Winner got a pass from early morning PT the next morning," Cadet Torres had said. Admiral Paris chuckled slightly.

"And I'm guessing you were the first back down," he said.

"I was," she replied. "I just couldn't believe he thought that was a valid exercise."

That time, Admiral Paris laughed out right. "He did that to benefit you," he said. Torres had frowned.

"It's not like I needed a pass from morning PT," she replied.

"No, you didn't," Admiral Paris agreed. "You needed a confidence boost."

"And why would he give me one?"

Paris thought about his answer for a minute. "Tom likes challenges," he finally said. "But only if you don't tell him that you're challenging him. He will find the hardest courses to fly, climb the steepest hikes, or fix up a busted shuttle, just because it's there. But the second you tell him that you want him to do it or that'll it be good for him, he'll refuse."

Torres frowned. "Is that why you told him not to take the assignment as a test pilot?"

Paris froze. "No," he finally said, his voice low and full of regret. "No, that was a foolish old man who honestly thought that he should—or could—tell his adult son what to do. I'm glad he let me see how wrong I was. Being a test pilot is good for him. Probably because it's the stupidest challenge he could find."

"What was she like?" B'Elanna asked, breaking the silence.

"She told me to tell you how lucky you are," Owen replied. B'Elanna raised her eyebrows and poured herself another generous glass of whiskey. She didn't feel lucky most days, but then again, she was a respected leader and graduate student, sipping whiskey with an admiral in San Francisco, her daughter upstairs in bed; she wasn't in the Delta quadrant and nobody thought she was dead. "She doesn't have your confidence," Owen continued. "And she's vulnerable in a way that I've never seen you."

"She's more alone," B'Elanna said, and Owen nodded.

"Her father left her, just like yours did," he said. "She never patched things up with her mother. She left the Academy, joined the Maquis, and got sent to the Delta quadrant."

"Her Tom loves her," B'Elanna said. Owen nodded.

"And she loves him, but…"

"But they're different."

Owen nodded again. "She said that her Tom had been kicked out of Starfleet, spent some time as a mercenary, spent a lot of time drunk, spent some time in jail." The 'detours' that Tom had talked about. "He and his father hadn't talked since he was kicked out of Starfleet. I asked her to tell her Tom that I miss my son, and I'm sure that his father feels the same way. There's nothing Tom could have said or done that would make him any less my son."

She took another sip of her whiskey, feeling the warmth on her tongue. "He's tougher than Tom," she said. "No," she amended a second later. "Not necessarily 'tougher.' He's rougher than Tom. He has harsh edges that he hides with a glib sense of humor, but under that, he's Tom. He's a good man, but he has armor."

"So does she," Owen said with a nod. "They'll make a good pair, but one of them might kill the other before they figure out how."