Second Chances: Chapter 43
Stardate 51387
June 2374
Tromsø, Norway, Earth
B'Elanna and Izzy stepped out of the transporter station in Tromsø, and B'Elanna immediately looked around in confusion and checked her chronometer.
"Yes, the local time is almost 2200," Sydney commented with a grin from where she had been waiting for them, looking up at the sky. "The sun won't set up here for another month. Welcome to Tromsø."
"Piggy-bag ride!" Izzy demanded of her aunt.
"Izzy, you don't need a piggy-back ride from Aunt Sydney," B'Elanna said with a sigh. "We're going through a phase," she said to Sydney.
"You know what, Izzy?" Sydney said. "I used to give your dad piggy-back rides. Hop on."
"You're not helping," B'Elanna said with another sigh, although she did enjoy the mental image of a pre-teen Sydney giving a toddler Tom a piggy-back ride. Sydney grinned as best she could with Izzy's arms tight around her neck.
"The fun of being an aunt is getting to spoil other people's kids," she said, then winced as Izzy pulled back hard against her neck. "Although now I'm wishing I brought Kajsa. She loves to give piggy-back rides."
"She kicks, too, so have fun with that," B'Elanna said dryly and rolled her eyes.
The marathon started at 2030 the next day, and the combination of the incredibly flat course and actually training for this one—with the exception of the month on the Jem'Hadar ship—B'Elanna and Sydney improved on their time from the Starfleet Marathon, coming in at two hours and forty-five minutes, more than a twelve-minute personal best for B'Elanna. "Gods, you're going to kill me," Sydney complained. She was still on her feet, but bent over at the waist, an expression of pain on her face.
"Me?" B'Elanna asked incredulously. "This was your idea! You're the distance runner!"
"I'm twelve years older than you!"
"Don't give me that," B'Elanna said warningly. "I was there when Ulshanov said distance runners don't hit their peaks until their forties."
"You have an extra lung!" Sydney continued, and B'Elanna wheezed out a laugh.
"You complain almost as much as your brother."
Sydney laughed as she straightened. "C'mon," she said. "It's close to midnight, and we have the Midsummer celebration to get to."
After getting cleaned up—and a hypo of anti-inflammatories for both of them—they headed out to the Midsummer celebration in the Wylands' neighborhood, a large bonfire visible even in the midnight sun, the sounds of Norwegian folk music audible from blocks away. "That's my sister-in-law, Anneliese," Sydney said, nodding toward the stage, where a blond woman was playing the fiddle. "That's a Hardanger fiddle, traditional in Norwegian folk music."
"Mommy!" B'Elanna knew that voice, and prepared herself to intercept Izzy as the toddler-sized projectile headed her way. She lifted Izzy in her arms, which were surprisingly sore from the run. Her daughter was wearing some sort of traditional Norwegian dress, probably one of Kajsa or Stephanie's old outfits, her dark curls braided tightly around her head in a crown.
"Who braided your hair?" B'Elanna asked, amazed that anyone could make her sit still long enough for an elaborate hairstyle.
"Kajsa!" Izzy said excitedly. "An' I saw weindeew! They real!"
A second later, a frantic Kajsa appeared, giving a sigh of relief when she saw Izzy in her mother's arms. "Sorry, B'Elanna," she said. "She got away from me."
"She does that," B'Elanna assured her niece. Like Izzy, Kajsa was wearing some sort of traditional Norwegian dress, her long blond hair in an elaborate braid. "Good job on braiding her hair."
Kajsa beamed at the compliment. "Thanks," she said. "I did Steph's, too." She pointed off toward her sister, whose purple streaks in her platinum hair made geometric designs in her braided crown.
Jens came over and stole Sydney to dance, some teenaged boy came and asked Kajsa to dance, and B'Elanna released Izzy to run around within the confines of the party while she collapsed into a chair next to the bonfire, her legs too sore for much else.
"I am far too old for this," Sydney said about half an hour later, collapsing down into the chair next to her, a wide grin on her face belying her words. She was in a good mood, which was hardly surprising. Sydney was happiest when running or immediately after, and she had been looking forward to getting to spend time with her husband after being separated for more than two months. "Have you eaten? The salmon is great. So is the reindeer sausage. And the lefse. Just don't eat the lutefisk."
"The what?"
"Fermented fish," Sydney explained. B'Elanna made a face.
"And they say Klingon food is bad." Then she made another face. "Even though Klingon food is bad."
Sydney chuckled. She looked ready to say something else, but then a woman tapped her on the shoulder and asked her something in Norwegian, and she replied in kind. "I didn't know you speak Norwegian," B'Elanna commented after the other woman walked away.
"I've been married to Jens for fifteen years," she said, amused. "I was bound to pick up a few things in that time." She smiled. "We used to come here more than San Fran when we were home on leave. Kajsa actually did kindergarten here in Tromsø when we were between ships."
"Then why did you move to San Fran this time?"
Sydney shrugged. "I like being close to work," she said. "And I don't do well when there isn't night. Or day." She paused and took a drink from her beer. "Jens loves this place, and so do the kids. Muriel—my mother-in-law—she's a physicist, studies the magnetosphere, I don't remember if that came up already or not last night—she commed Kajsa every time they could see the aurora over the winter, and Kajsa beamed over to spend hours looking at the sky." She tilted her head back and stared at the sky, as if she could see anything other than the fact that the sun was still out past midnight. "But while this is Jens' place, mine is San Francisco." She took another drink of her beer. "Kajsa got into Tucker," she said, her words coming out in a rush. "So it just makes more sense to be in San Francisco."
Elizabeth Tucker Preparatory Academy, an elite prep school in San Francisco, probably harder to get into than Starfleet Academy, was where Sydney, Nicki, and Tom had all gone for secondary school. B'Elanna thought about the alternate universe she had visited, the one where that B'Elanna Torres had grown up down the street from the Parises, and wondered if that B'Elanna had also gone to Tucker. She wondered if the families were close enough that prep schools and which were the best would be something that they would discuss. "That's great," she said. "She must be excited."
Sydney beamed in that proud way parents do. "She is," she confirmed. "They have a great Parrises Squares team, and she's been training for try-outs." She glanced over at B'Elanna. "What about Navi? What secondary school is she going to?"
"She's already halfway through secondary school," she reminded Sydney. Navi was in the Federation School System, not the Earth School System, and the curriculum was more individualized and geared toward non-human students. Kajsa and Stephanie could have stayed in the Federation School System when they moved back to Earth, thanks to their years of schooling in space, but Sydney and Jens thought the Earth system and the extracurriculars they could do would be good for them. Kajsa lived and breathed Parrises Squares, and Stephanie was involved in every musical and theater extracurricular she could find. If they were still on Mars when kindergarten rolled around, Izzy would be in the Federation School System by default; if they moved back to Earth, she'd probably go through the testing to find out which system would be better for her.
"How's your thesis coming?" Sydney asked abruptly, and B'Elanna wasn't sure if she was genuinely curious or if she wanted to distract from any envious feelings about fourteen-year-olds who were more advanced than her fourteen-year-old.
The truth was, her thesis wasn't coming well, because it wasn't coming at all. She had made the corrections Dr. Hospod had suggested, but it had taken her weeks, and hadn't even looked at it since, despite more suggestions coming in from her other advisors. She knew she needed to work on it, needed to get a working draft before she went to to Qo'noS to conduct training, but she had a hard time bringing herself to care. "It's coming," she lied.
She had been too focused on learning anything and everything she could about the Dominion communication network to care about a technical manual of a ship.
Lt. Glass had submitted his report to Starfleet Ops a week after Torres had gotten him her summary of how their network worked; Ops had acknowledged receipt, but didn't say anything further about whether or not they wanted anyone to pursue it. They had given Owen a stellar cartographer and two astrophysicists to sift through the data from the alternate universes, in efforts of building maps of the Delta quadrants, but that was as far as they would go into any search for Voyager. Not while there was a war going on and resources were needed elsewhere.
B'Elanna's eyes went up to the sky, like Sydney's had, and then to the musicians on the low stage. Jens' sister was still playing her fiddle, and now Jens and Stephanie had joined the group, singing the words to the Norwegian folk song. Jens, who was usually so stoic and stiff, had a surprisingly good singing voice and was smiling proudly at his younger daughter, who was beaming over at him, so obviously pleased at being able to perform.
If Tom was out there, he deserved to have those moments with his daughter. Izzy deserved to have those moments with him, and B'Elanna wanted to witness them. And she couldn't bring herself to care about writing a technical manual while that possibility existed.