Second Chances: Chapter 55

Stardate 52018
February 2375
Hawaii, Earth

Tom's voice was running through B'Elanna's head as she ran through Ka'ū Forest on her recovery run.

He had sent her his personal logs with the first transmission they received from Voyager, and for the first two weeks after they arrived, that data chip sat unacknowledged on her dresser. They sent letters back and forth—they received messages from Voyager every nine days and a few hours—and she enjoyed that correspondence, enjoyed sending him stories of Izzy's antics and frustrations with her teaching schedule, enjoyed getting his stories of the Delta quadrant, and rolled her eyes at the holoprograms he ran with his friends. They answered each other's questions; her questions were mostly about what his days were like and the things he had seen, his questions generally more concerned with the people in their lives—what Izzy liked, if it was true that Nicki had joined Starfleet and why, how his parents were, what his nieces and nephews were up to, if Sydney was still demanding and Jens still boring.

But that data chip with his personal logs… Even though they were married, the thought of going through someone else's personal logs felt… weird. Weird enough that she finally brought it up to Dr. Bayrote, which prompted a lot of annoying questions to 'explore how that made her feel' and 'understand why it made her uncomfortable' and a bunch of other phrases she rolled her eyes at. Finally, he reminded her that Tom had sent them to her on his own volition, so it was clear that listening to them wouldn't be an invasion of privacy. And then there was a lot of talk about how much they both had changed over the last four years and how having a common place of understanding would be key to figuring out how they could live together again when he got back home. "Realistically," Dr. Bayrote had asked, "how long is it going to take to find a way back home?"

"Barring any sort of undiscovered wormhole or them stumbling across a race that has perfected transwarp and is willing to share?" she asked dryly, earning a node from Bayrote. "Two years, at the earliest," she replied, the same thing she had told Owen and any other brass who asked. "Five is probably more likely."

"Then you have two to five years of imperfect modes of communication to get to know each other again before you're face-to-face," Bayrote had said. "Might as well start with the personal logs he sent you."

And so, she was currently working her way through his recordings.

She herself made at least a couple of sentences of annotation in her personal logs every night, often just a brief recounting of the events of the day, but he always had been much more sporadic about his entries, sometimes going weeks without a word, only to dictate long, rambling entries once he came back. He tended to use it like a therapist who didn't ask annoying questions, exploring his thoughts and feelings in those log entries.

She wasn't surprised that he had recorded long entries into his personal log almost every day of the first month Voyager was in the Delta quadrant. He had been angry, mostly, but also sad and frustrated, and she had been angry, sad, and frustrated with him as she listened to those log entries. At first, she listened to his personal logs during every run she didn't do with Sydney, but apparently screaming in frustration as she listened to Tom railing at the computer about being stuck 70,000 light years from home on a ship he hadn't wanted to be on in the first place wasn't good for her speed work. Ulshanov told her she could listen on her recovery and long runs, but that she should be focusing on her run—and not her displaced husband—during speed and tempo runs.

She had had a few choice words for him for that comment; he had coached her for enough years that he hadn't even blinked at them. And by the next day, she acknowledged—to herself only—that he had a point. Since then, Tom had only kept her company on slower runs.

Which, to be honest, was the only time Tom could keep her company if he was running with her, so it worked.

*It's August first back home,* Tom was saying. She hadn't even realized that she had listened to seven months' worth of logs in the last seven weeks. *Dr. Gault wasn't sure exactly when the baby would come, but it's sometime around now, which means I'm now a father. Probably. With a kid on the other side of the galaxy I might never meet. I wish I hadn't insisted on not finding out if it's a boy or a girl. Maybe if we knew what we were having, we would have started talking about names. Hell, while we're wishing for things we can't have, I wish I was home with them.

*Since we didn't have time to talk about names, I've been trying to guess what B'Elanna would name a baby. Naming a baby—naming another person—isn't really something I've ever thought much about. Syd and Nicki used to talk about what they would name their kids. Of course, then Syd married Jens and Kajsa was named after his grandmother, but she eventually got around to Stephanie. And I have no idea where any of Nicki's kids' names came from, but they should consider themselves lucky that she decided against Ethyl and Orville. I never thought about it before. Kids, marriage… those were abstract ideas, things that future Tom would probably do, but the details about how that would happen were never really something I thought about.

*And if B'Elanna had any ideas of what she would name kids, she never shared them with me. Even though we talked about having kids and did actively work to get pregnant—that part was fun, at least—it's like we never thought about that next step, about having a small person we would have to name and take care of. I've tried to guess what names B'Elanna would like. Probably nothing Klingon, unless she's gotten a lot more into Klingon culture in the last seven months. I don't know if there are any family names that are passed down in her family, but maybe she would name a girl Isela, after her grandmother. I would call her Izzy, and that would drive B'Elanna crazy, because that's not her name and we should call her by her name. As far as boys, though, I have no idea, other than not John. Gods, I hope she wouldn't name a boy after me. The last thing this universe needs is another Thomas Eugene Paris. I like the name Nathaniel. Nate. Nate Paris? Maybe that doesn't go as well as I thought.

*I don't know why, but I feel like it's a girl. If, someday, my son is hearing this log, sorry, son. It's not that I wouldn't want a boy, wouldn't love a boy… I just… feel like it's a girl. She'll probably look like B'Elanna. I hope she looks like B'Elanna. Do quarter-Klingons still have ridges? I could probably ask the Doc, but he already acts like it's a bother every time I go into Sickbay, even when I'm doing routine maintenance on his program.

*I hate that B'Elanna has to do this alone. Not just because I'm missing out on, well, everything. I don't want her to think of me the way she thinks of her father. I told her she wouldn't be doing this alone, and I hate more than anything that I lied to her. I know she's going to be a great mother. I know the idea of motherhood scared her, between her father leaving and how much she and her own mother fought, but she loves fiercely and completely. There's not a thing in this universe that is going to be able to harm our baby with B'Elanna watching over them. I'm glad that she's there for them even though I can't be. And I hope she forgives me for not being there for her.* He sounded like he wanted to say more, but the next thing B'Elanna heard was, *End log.*

She had stopped running without realizing it, and was further surprised by the sting of tears in her eyes. "I forgive you, Tom," she murmured, and she wondered if she hadn't fully forgiven him until that moment. "And I can't wait to see you as a father." To Izzy, and maybe someday, to another kid.

Two to five years. She could do that wait. They could do that wait.