Second Chances: Chapter 58

Stardate 52324
June 2375
Hawaii, Earth

There were a dozen three- to six-year-olds running around the beach, and B'Elanna Torres felt ready to pull her hair out.

Izzy's birthday was still a few days off, but since it fell on a Tuesday, they were having her birthday party early. And turning four, Izzy felt that she deserved a real party, with her friends from school and daycare and the soccer team Ainsley coached in Denver. And the next thing she knew, B'Elanna was spending her Sunday afternoon serving cake and ice cream—and beer to the parents—while the adults all watched to make sure none of the kids drowned in the ocean. Some parents paying closer attention to their kids than others, as always happened at these parties.

It didn't escape B'Elanna's notice that between soccer, school, daycare, and the kids of the few friends B'Elanna did have—such as the Careys—Izzy had more friends than she did. Or that for as much as she barely tolerated these events, Tom would have loved them.

After the presents were opened, the cake consumed, and the guests back to where they came from, the family descended. First it was the teenagers; Ainsley was already there, having been busy documenting the party with her holoimager. She called Kajsa and Navi over when she was done; Sydney was leaving the next day for a tactical survey of various starbases along the Romulan border and was taking Kajsa, which would occupy most of her summer holiday, and Navi would be leaving on Thursday to Vulcan to meet some members of her long-dead grandfather's family for the first time. The three of them liked to hang out together in Hawaii, mostly because B'Elanna usually left them alone to do whatever they wanted. They were pretty low-maintenance; Kajsa and Navi kept Ainsley's more wild tendencies tamped down, and she was usually content to take holos as the three of them sat out on the beach or paddled out into the ocean when it was calm.

The three 15-year-olds greeted B'Elanna and Izzy before setting out for the beach, and B'Elanna and Izzy soon followed, Izzy playing with one of her new toys and B'Elanna reading a novel. She couldn't remember the last time she had just sat on the beach with a novel; certainly before she had graduated from her Master's program in May, before they had moved back to Earth, before a Jem'Hadar ship had showed up in the classified space dock at Utopia Planitia almost two and a half years before. She knew there were other things she could be doing—she was at a fun step of rebuilding the impulse engines of the S-class shuttle, for one—but today, she was going to have a lazy Sunday afternoon on the beach.

And then Nicki commed. *Hey, can I come over?* she asked without any preamble.

"Would it make any difference if I said no?" B'Elanna asked dryly.

*I might feel a little bad, but no,* Nicki replied. *I'll be there in a few.*

Nicki must have gone through the apartment on her way to the beach from the transporter station, a brown beer bottle now in hand. "Thanks," she said as a greeting, collapsing on the sand next to B'Elanna and accepting a hug from Izzy. "I needed a break." She had clearly been crying, her eyes red and puffy and her fair skin oddly mottled.

"My beach is everyone else's beach, apparently," B'Elanna said with a shrug. She waited a few seconds, then asked, "Want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Nicki replied as she took a long pull from the beer bottle. "Is my daughter here?"

"They're down there," B'Elanna said, gesturing vaguely to where her two tall blond nieces and her shorter, darker sister were trying to kick water onto each other off in the distance. Nicki gave a nod of satisfaction.

"Good. Kajsa and Navi'll keep her out of trouble." She readjusted herself on the sand and sighed. "Jason and I are fighting," she admitted. "Have been for… a while. Weeks? A month? I don't even know anymore. And it's so fucking tedious."

"About what?"

"Couples fight, B'Elanna. It's part of being married."

B'Elanna looked at her incredulously. "Right, because I asked for my husband to get sent to the Delta quadrant after less than a year of marriage. Just so we wouldn't fight. Kahless, Nicki. I don't even know if Tom is still alive, so I don't want to want to hear your sanctimonious preaching about what being married is."

"Sorry," Nicki said, rubbing her forehead. "I've been a little on edge. This fucking fight."

B'Elanna didn't even realize that Nicki and Jason fought, not for real. They liked to argue playfully amongst themselves, both stubborn even when they knew the other person was right, always honing their debate skills even after the argument was lost. "What about?"

"My Starfleet obligation," Nicki said with a sigh. "It's up in September."

Four years already. B'Elanna couldn't believe it had been that long since that conversation in her hospital room right after Izzy was born. "He wants you to resign?"

"No!" Nicki said with a laugh. "And that's what's so fucking frustrating! He'll support me with whichever decision I make. He just… needs me to make a decision. And I can't. And the constant fighting about me needing to make a fucking decision isn't helping."

B'Elanna was about to tease her about her excessive use of old swear words when Nicki's PADD chimed with an incoming message. "Syd," she said with a sigh as she read it. "She wants to know where I am."

"Tell her to come on over," B'Elanna said, rolling her eyes. "Everyone else has already today."

Sydney came over about twenty minutes later with a birthday present for Izzy. "I'm sorry I'll miss your actual birthday on Tuesday, Izzy," she said as Izzy ripped into the wrapping paper.

"A Gravingingoo!" she exclaimed as she opened the package, immediately beginning to play with the oddly-shaped gravity toy.

"Izzy," B'Elanna said warningly. "What do you say to Aunt Sydney?"

"Thank you, Aunt Sydney!" Izzy replied, her attention unwavering from the toy. Sydney chuckled and shrugged.

"She liked playing with Alex's, so I figured she'd like one of her own," she explained to B'Elanna.

"The last thing she needs is more toys," B'Elanna replied with a sigh. "But, thank you." Sydney gave an understanding smile in reply before turning to her sister.

"Nick, can we go somewhere to talk?"

"Just fucking talk here," Nicki snapped. "I am so goddamn tired of people pulling me aside to 'talk.' I'm fucking done with it. And everyone in this family knows everyone else's goddamn business anyway, so you might as well cut out the middle man and just say whatever you came here to say."

B'Elanna blinked in surprise, and even Sydney looked momentarily taken aback. "Fighting with Jason again?" Sydney asked a few seconds later.

"Go to hell," Nicki snapped.

"Well, it's your lucky day, because I'm on my way to the Neutral Zone tomorrow," Sydney said dryly. She thrust a PADD into her sister's hands. "And you're leaving for the Alteran Expanse in a week."

"What?" Nicki demanded, taking the PADD and furiously skimming it. "But my Starfleet obligation ends in September! That's not enough time for a 90 day deployment!"

"Well, you didn't turn in your resignation, so tough shit," Sydney replied. "The Gettysburg was the best I could do for you," she added softly.

"What are you talking about?" Nicki asked.

"Your name was on the list to go into Cardassian space," Sydney explained. "I redirected you to the Gettysburg, which will be doing a patrol mission with a Romulan fleet. No direct conflict. It's as safe as a wartime deployment can get. Get your Neutral Zone medal, get a campaign medal, come back to your kids."

"I don't give a fuck about medals!" Nicki exclaimed in frustration.

"I know that," Sydney replied, still eerily calm.

"And who are you to just…shuffle people's deployments around?" Nicki demanded. "I didn't ask you to do that!"

"No, you didn't," Sydney replied, somehow remaining calm despite her sister's yelling. B'Elanna glanced down the beach to see the three teenagers still clearly unaware of the fight that was going on between Sydney and Nicki. "But I'm the adjuvant to the Chief of Starfleet Operations, and shuffling assets around is what I do. So I did."

"Fuck you, Sydney," Nicki snapped. "You never had any faith in me, never believed I could take care of myself. Poor little Nicki needs her big sister to protect her. Fuck that."

"That's not what anyone thinks," Sydney assured her. "But we do know that you joined Starfleet to be a pediatrician, not a solider." Her lips tightened into a thin line, then she said, her voice low, "Growing up with Dad's expectations was hard. Take the good you can get out of being a Paris where you can find it."

B'Elanna blinked in surprise; she had never heard Sydney or Nicki complain about their childhood or pressure from Owen. Tom had talked about it all the time, had regaled her with stories of Owen scolding him not to cry and how that made him cry harder, how he had spent most of his time at home as a kid in his room as if that door could protect him from his father's world. He still bristled from admonishments as an adult, and she was sure he had developed his dry, depreciating wit as a way to project to others that he didn't care what they thought about him. Did that same pressure turn Sydney into the competitive, demanding person she was? Was Nicki's light personality and tendency to argue about things she didn't really care about as much of a defense mechanism as Tom's humor?

"And what about my colleagues who didn't have the privilege of growing up as a Paris?" Nicki demanded. "You move me to a milk run deployment, you put somebody else on a ship going into Cardassian space. Somebody who probably already went on a deployment, with how much they've been shuffling us in and out of Starfleet Medical."

"You're my sister," Sydney said emphatically. "I love you, and I love those four kids you've got and want to make sure their mom comes back to them." Nicki crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes, ready with a response, but Sydney didn't give her the opportunity. "I thought my brother was dead, for four years. And knowing now that Tom is alive doesn't take away how much that hurt. I won't go through that again. I can't go through that again. So, please, Nick, just do this for me."

"This fucking family," Nicki spat. "Everything's been fucked since Voyager, and not even finding out that Tom is still alive has made a goddamn difference. We're all so fucking afraid of everything, as if we're all going to die if we as much as let anybody out of our sights."

The sudden sound of teenaged laughter stopped all three adults, all turning to see Navi running toward them. "I'm going to get us something to drink!" she exclaimed as she run past them toward the apartment.

"Get me my beer!" Ainsley called after her.

"And that's my daughter," Nicki muttered. "I'm right here, Ainsley."

"Hi, Mom!" Ainsley said with a wave.

"Is she seriously getting them beer?" Sydney demanded to B'Elanna.

"Probably," B'Elanna said with a shrug. "It's synthehol. They're 15."

"Sydney was too good of a girl to drink synth beer when she was 15," Nicki said, rolling her eyes.

"You had the market cornered on rebellion," Sydney shot back. "Didn't leave much room for the rest of us. And now your daughter—"

"Oh, so Kajsa drinking the occasional synthale is now Ainsley's fault?" Nicki demanded.

"Well, if you had raised your daughter—"

"Now it's my fault?" Nicki interrupted.

"Both of you can shut up," Ainsley said, rolling her eyes. "It's synthale. Gods. We're not doing drugs or having wild orgies on the beach or stealing the family shuttle and flying it into lakes. Get a little perspective for once. And you've been giving us synth wine at holiday dinners for years." Both women had the good graces to look embarrassed at the argument.

Navi re-appeared a few minutes later, three brown bottles in one hand and a plate with a piece of cake balanced in the other. "Congratulations on your first round of Academy entry exams," Nicki said to Navi. "Your mom was bragging about you in clinic."

"Thanks," Navi said with a grin.

"How'd you do?" Sydney asked.

"This time next year, we'll be calling her Cadet Torres," Nicki answered for her.

"I still have another round to go before I'm accepted for plebe summer," Navi protested.

"Ooh, cake!" Kajsa exclaimed when she noticed Navi.

"You said you didn't want any!" Navi protested, her attention diverted from the adults and toward trying to keep the plate away from Kajsa. She thrust the hand holding the bottles toward her instead. "Take your beer and leave me alone!" The three teenagers left as they had appeared, suddenly and with laughter, both Kajsa and Ainsley trying to steal Navi's piece of cake and Navi trying her hardest to run away while defending it from them.

Sydney watched them for a long minute. "I'm glad for them," she said. "Ainsley and Navi. Moving here, getting to spend time with them… It's been good for Kajsa. They've brought her out of her shell, make her relax when she needs it." She turned to Nicki and sighed. "I know I'm a lot like Dad, and I know that's a hard way to raise kids, and I don't want my kids to grow up like that. I want them to be kids. I don't… I don't want Kajsa to grow up like me."

"You're just fine," Nicki protested. "I mean, you're weird, but we love you the way you are anyway."

Sydney chuckled and rolled her eyes. "Thanks, darling sister of mine," she said dryly, and Nicki laughed and gave her a hug.

"I'll go on the Gettysburg if that's what you want," she promised.

"I want you to stop fighting with your husband and taking it out on the rest of us," Sydney shot back.

Before B'Elanna could tease them about the way Paris' fought and how quickly they made up, her own PADD chirped. She pulled it out and activated the comm. "This is Lt. Torres," she said.

*Sir, this is Crewman Maule, I'm on staff duty at CRC. Uh, we have a planet in the Chin'toka system with a Dominion communication relay station—*

"AR-558," she interrupted. "It's been off and on for months now."

*Yes, sir. A crew has been holding it, and, long story short, they need you to lead an engineering team to tap into the station. The Veracruz will be departing from McKinley Station at 1100 San Francisco time tomorrow, and they need you and your team on it.*