Second Chances: Chapter 47

Stardate 54474
October 2377
U.S.S. Voyager
Alpha Quadrant

Lt. Tom Paris and Ensign Harry Kim took their relief for lunch at the same time. "So what's it like, having your family here?" Kim asked, in that awkwardly hesitant way he had, and Paris couldn't help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of the question.

"It's a little surreal," he said, which was the only way he could think to describe it. "I could do without the lectures from my dad, too," he muttered. Harry wisely didn't say anything to that.

Paris went directly to the replicator, but Kim actually picked up a tray from Neelix's kitchen. "I feel bad for him," Kim said as he joined him at the table. Paris chuckled.

"You're a better man than me, Harry," he said.

Harry didn't always join him for lunch; they were friends, both bridge officers and on the senior staff, but they had their own groups of friends that they were closer to. Paris usually hung out with the self-proclaimed "old folks" of the ship, those who had families and children back home, whereas Kim spent most of his time with his fellow junior officers. At least, he had for the first two years, and then started spending more and more time alone with the deputy chief engineer, Lt. Sue Nicoletti. Paris won that betting pool when they finally announced their engagement after three years of denying that their relationship was anything serious. "No Sue today?" Paris asked as he speared a vegetable.

"She's back on gamma shift, since Joe has to be on alpha," Kim explained. Back when Harry and Sue started dating, Joe had switched shifts with Sue, taking gamma so she could be on alpha shift. He preferred the night shift anyway, or so he said, and liked to end his day with the senior staff meeting instead of starting it that way. Tom teased him about being a hopeless romantic, but did split his winnings in replicator rations. After all, there probably wouldn't have been a wedding if it hadn't been for Joe giving up alpha shift.

"The downside to being the chief engineer: dealing with the 'consultant' from HQ," Paris joked. "Ah, speak of the devil," he said as Carey entered the mess hall. "Did you lose a lieutenant commander?" he asked as Joe joined them at the table.

Carey looked toward the door, as if just realizing that Torres wasn't behind him. "She's running a diagnostic on one of the systems that Seven installed."

"You let her get distracted," Paris said, sighing dramatically. "Rookie mistake. Now she's going to be in your engine room until we dock."

"What about you?" Carey asked. "Did you lose a six-year-old?"

"She's spending time with Naomi," Paris replied. "Poor Sam." He grinned suddenly as he remembered a conversation in the Flyer. "She asked Patrick if he wanted to be her boyfriend."

Carey laughed. "Well, the girl has taste," he joked.

"He turned her down, though," Paris continued. "Said he needs to focus on school."

Carey laughed again. "He must get that from Sarah," he said. "No way I would have turned down a pretty girl."

B'Elanna appeared five minutes later, seeming excited about whatever it was that she had got distracted about. "This ship is going to keep me occupied for years," she said as she sat down. "The integration of Starfleet and Borg technology—"

"Don't forget all the other tech we picked up on the way," Carey chimed in.

"Oh, I haven't," she said, still sounding excited. She turned to Paris, still smiling. "How was your morning?"

"The joys of flying in a straight line at warp," he quipped. She raised her eyebrows.

"You're in a mood," she said.

"Just annoyed at Dad," he said. She snorted and turned her attention back to her food.

"And they said it will take time to fall back into old patterns," she commented wryly. "Captain Janeway invited us to dinner tonight," she informed him. "Well, Owen and Izzy and I," she amended. "But she said you're welcome to join."

"Thanks," he said dryly. She rolled her eyes at him.

The rest of the duty shift was uneventful, and dinner was fine. Captain Janeway apologized for taking so long to have them over, but she knew B'Elanna would be busy in engineering and wanted to wait until they moving again. She also apologized for hosting dinner in her quarters; the captain's mess had been converted into Neelix's kitchen shortly after they began their journey home. Tom had had dinner in the captain's quarters several times over the years, always an informal affair with other crewmembers; this was more formal, but strange. He doubted most formal dinners with admirals were in the captain's quarters, or involved six-year-olds, or that the said admirals had been captains and mentors of the said captains when they were junior officers.

After dinner, the three of them went back to his quarters, where B'Elanna curled up in a chair with a PADD to check on a diagnostic or something, and Tom replicated some popcorn before grabbing his computer console. "Can we watch cartoons again?" Izzy asked excitedly. B'Elanna chuckled from her seat in the corner.

"Wonder where she gets that from?" she murmured. Tom grinned over at her.

They watched cartoons for over an hour, B'Elanna alternating between rolling her eyes and smiling at their giggling, before she declared it was time for Izzy to get ready for bed. "Just one more," she pleaded.

"You already got your 'one more,'" B'Elanna pointed out. "Go brush your teeth."

"Dad?" Izzy asked pleadingly. He chuckled and shook his head.

"Nice try," he replied, "but I'm not nearly foolish enough to fall for that one. Brush your teeth." She gave an aggravated sigh, but made her way toward the bathroom.

Once they got Izzy tucked into bed on the couch, the parents likewise got ready for the night. "What did Owen say this time?" B'Elanna asked as she settled into bed. Tom sighed.

"He reminded me that this is going to take time," he said. B'Elanna frowned.

"Well, he's not wrong," she said. "Ninety percent of my discussions with Dr. Bayrote over the last two years have been about 'managing expectations' and 'preparing for conflict.'"

"So, forty-five minutes out of one fifty-minute session?" he teased. She rolled her eyes.

"I do attend counseling sessions," she informed him. "Apparently, proximity helps. It's harder to say no when I'm already in San Francisco." She hesitated, then said, "He suggested family counseling once we get settled. Not with him—he doesn't do family counseling, and said it would a conflict of interest, anyway. There's a family counselor on Mars, if we go that route, or one of the counselors at Starfleet Medical if we stay on Earth."

He exhaled as he thought about it. It made sense; neither he nor B'Elanna was the same person they were when Voyager left UP, and Izzy hadn't even been alive, but he really hated talking about his feelings with anyone. He needed to figure out how to fit in their lives, though, and if that took professional help, he was going to do it. "That's a good idea," he acknowledged. B'Elanna's eyes widened in surprise.

"Owen must have said more than just that," she said, "or you wouldn't be agreeing to counseling so easily."

He sighed and nodded, and relayed his conversation with his father to her, everything from B'Elanna and Izzy not needing him to the family taking B'Elanna's side if he screwed it up, and when he was done, she smirked. "You Paris men are so dramatic," she teased. He opened his mouth to protest, but she covered it with her hand. "I don't need you," she said. "Izzy does," she added. "Girls need their dads. I speak from experience on that. I also know that kids don't need parents who fight all the time." She stopped and thought for a minute, then took a breath, her eyes returning to his. "I want this marriage to work, Tom. I want this family to work. And for some bizarre reason, that family includes your parents and your sisters and the full collection of Izzy's very, very blond cousins. And no offense to Owen, but I know there's no way Alicia is going to let him kick you out of the family for any reason." She frowned, then smirked. "We've never done things the easy way, Tom. Why start now?"

He smiled and kissed her. "Why start now?" he agreed. He remembered something else she had told him. "Do you really want another baby?" he asked.

"Yes," she said simply, then made a face. "Not right now," she amended quickly. "But yes, if we decide that we still like each other and can live with each other, then I want another kid. But I'm going to make you pull your weight this time."

"Deal," he agreed.

"And no," she quickly added, "I didn't go through all this work of finding you and bringing you back home just to have another baby. Or for Izzy to have her father. I did it because I wanted to. Because I wanted you back. And because I promised that I would always fight for you and never give up on you. I never stopped loving you, Tom."

"And I never stopped loving you," he replied. "Or believing in you. If anyone could find us and get us home, I knew it would be you."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm glad I could give you hope for those first years, but you need to stop thinking I have some sort of engineering superpower."

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "You did find us and got us home. Where was I wrong?" She rolled her eyes again and he smirked. "We're almost at when you found us," he pointed out.

She nodded. "Owen came through," she said. "He pulled the right strings to get me transferred from UP to Pathfinder. The orders came through a week after my thesis was published, and they even transferred the teaching credits I still needed for my master's degree from the Tech Academy to the Academy. I've never seen anything in Starfleet move that quickly, so I guess Operations was eager to get me working on figuring out the Dominion communications network. They barely gave us time to pack before it was back to Earth for Izzy and me."