Second Chances: Chapter 44
Stardate 51401
June 2374
First City, Qo'noS
Izzy was almost too big to carry on her mother's hip, but B'Elanna wasn't willing to have Izzy loose in an unfamiliar environment, and the transporter station in First City was certainly an unfamiliar environment for an almost-three-year-old who had never left the Sol system. "I wanna walk!" Izzy protested.
"Izzy, you won't walk. You'll run, and you'll get lost," B'Elanna said patiently, knowing that Izzy was far too young for reasoning. "After we get checked into the hotel, we'll go for a walk, okay?" She didn't get a reply from the pre-schooler, which was often as close as she got to assent.
"Lt. Torres." She looked up from Izzy to see a tall man in a Klingon Defense Force uniform. "I am Lt. Orak of the Klingon Defense Force Engineering Academy. I am your liaison while you are on Qo'noS."
"Why does everyone think I always need liaisons?" Torres muttered. She adjusted Izzy on her hip. "This is Izzy Paris."
"Hi," Izzy greeted cheerfully, her grumpiness of a minute ago forgotten.
"Hello," Lt. Orak greeted her with a nod. "Welcome to Qo'noS. My daughter is about your size. I can arrange a meeting for you tomorrow, if you would like."
Izzy turned to her mother, her eyes wide with excitement, and B'Elanna smiled at her, even as she wondered how that would go. Izzy had never seen a Klingon child, and B'Elanna doubted Lt. Orak's daughter had ever seen a part-Klingon child, and the two might treat each other as oddities that couldn't be understood. Her experiences with Klingon children when she was on Qo'noS as a child were far from positive. Then again, there were few things Izzy enjoyed more than spending time with people her own size, regardless of what they looked like or where they came from. "I'm sure Izzy would love that," Torres finally said to Orak. He nodded his approval, looking almost pleased, and Torres reminded herself that for all the negative impressions she had of Klingons, parenthood was respected, valued, and taken seriously in Klingon culture.
"Colonel K'Goho would be honored to have you and your daughter dine with her family tonight," Orak continued.
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire," Torres muttered. All of a sudden, it was like she was a kid again, arriving on Qo'noS from Kessik IV with her mother after John had left. She couldn't remember how long they had lived there—more than a few months, less than a year—but could remember how overwhelmed she had felt the whole time and how Miral had scolded her and criticized everything she had done, eventually enrolling her in classes at a monastery to teach her honor and discipline in hopes that she would finally learn how to act in social settings.
She hadn't liked Kessik IV, but could still remember her relief at going back. Even though, to this day, she didn't know why they went back.
"We would be honored," she replied, swallowing down the hesitation and the desire to just go to the hotel and stay there until it was time to begin teaching, isolating her and Izzy from everything that currently surrounded them.
Isolation. It was her default, and that small little extrovert she was holding was usually the only thing that kept her from it.
"She will send someone for you this evening," Orak replied with a nod. "She had been an associate of your mother. I am sure you will have much to discuss." Torres doubted it, but kept that to herself.
To her pleasant surprise, the dinner went well. Izzy was quite a bit more talkative than Klingon children usually were, but she tried almost all the food and didn't complain about any of it. Colonel K'Goho was the head of the Engineering Academy; turned out, teaching Klingon engineering recruits was very similar to teaching Starfleet mechanic students, and the two shared stories of some of the more entertaining situations their students had found themselves in.
Lt. Orak brought his wife and daughter, Otsis, the next morning when he came to the hotel before showing her the Engineering Academy and her teaching space. Torres watched the introduction between Otsis and Izzy with a little concern and a little skepticism. "Hi!" Izzy greeted happily. Otsis didn't respond, but did smile back at her. Izzy tilted her head to the side as she studied the other girl, and then with the lack of boundaries that came from being three years old—in a few days—she reached forward and touched Otsis' forehead cautiously. B'Elanna flinched, but didn't say anything, and then Otsis did the same on Izzy's forehead. She wasn't sure if Otsis thought that maybe it was some sort of greeting, but the two girls smiled at each other and then both began chatting to the other. In languages the other didn't speak, but neither seemed to even notice, and B'Elanna felt her tension go down a notch.
Since they didn't have a Jem'Hadar ship on Qo'noS, the teaching space was an instruction holosuite at the Engineering Academy. The holoprogrammers at Jupiter Station had created an entire holographic ship, down to every last relay and juncture, and everything projected as planned in the Engineering Academy's training suite.
Torres had shown now several dozen people how to run and repair key systems of the Jem'Hadar ship, but this was the first time she was responsible for teaching a class that would cover all the engineering aspects of it, and despite her reservations, it went well. Just as her conversations with Colonel K'Goho had implied, engineering students were the same regardless of what uniforms they wore. Torres had been ready to argue and defend herself if any of the officers or students had given her any attitude about her mongrel status; there had been some hesitation on the first day, but there was no way to know if that had anything to do with her bloodline, her Starfleet uniform, or the fact that she was teaching in Federation Standard and using a universal translator. After that, they had been completely respectful. Well, as completely respectful as one could expect from officers and mechanics in the Klingon Defense Force. They certainly kept it entertaining.
Teaching took up ten of the 26 hours of the day, five of the six days in a Klingon week. There was a day care at the Engineering Academy that Otsis went to for a few hours a day; Izzy was more than happy to join her and the other kids in the morning, and Rad'enn, Lt. Orak's wife, was more than happy to take Izzy as well when she picked up Otsis. Torres picked up Izzy from Orak and Rad'enn's house after class, often staying for dinner. In their free time, B'Elanna and Izzy explored Qo'noS—the mountains, the caves, the giant ocean, the Sea of Gatan—the places B'Elanna remembered Miral showing her when she was a child. Except for that monastery. She felt no need to go back there.
She remembered hating those months on Qo'noS, hated everything about the planet and the people who lived there, saw it as everything that was wrong with her, everything that made her father leave. She had been concerned about bringing Izzy to a place that she associated with so many negative feelings, but just like always, Izzy made everything new again. Her eyes widened with every new sight and she greeted everyone with a bright smile, just like always. And between her mornings in daycare and her afternoons playing with Otsis as Rad'enn taught opera, B'Elanna was pretty sure that Izzy knew more Klingon than she did.
She taught ten hours a day, she entertained her daughter for another six or so, she went running, she slept longer than she usually did at home, she worked through the equations to try to understand how to get the Dominion communications network to serve as a homing beacon for ships on the opposite side of the galaxy, and somehow, despite the fact that she was using it to teach her classes, she couldn't find any time to work on her thesis.
Torres avoided reading her comms from Winters or her advisors while she was on Qo'noS, so she wasn't terribly surprised to find over a dozen messages asking for progress reports when she finally opened them on the Thunderchild, which had swung by Qo'noS to pick them up on its way back to UP for routine repairs. She looked up from the PADD to watch Izzy singing something that sounded like it was trying to be Klingon opera to the stuffed targ Otsis had given her when they left—Izzy had given Otsis a Flotter in return—and smiled. Her daughter had inherited her inability to carry a tune, although Tom hadn't exactly contributed a wealth in that regard, either. Tone deafness aside, learning and speaking Klingon had really improved Izzy's annunciation over the last month, now sounding more like the four- or five-year-old she resembled and less like the three-year-old she was.
Her smile turned sad as she watched Izzy sing to that stuffed targ. She remembered the looks on both Jens' and Stephanie's faces as they sang at the Midsummer celebration back in Tromsø. Stephanie was a born performer; B'Elanna doubted she had had a tone-deaf moment in her life, but it wasn't Izzy's lack of singing abilities that she regretted. It was the lack of those father-daughter moments.
And just like she felt watching Jens and Stephanie back in Tromsø: if there was a chance, no matter how remote, that Tom was still out there, that she could find him and bring him home, that they could have those father-daughter moments, how did anything else matter?