Second Chances: Chapter 73
A/N: I have a rough outline for finishing up the story. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to go down tangents (in case you haven't noticed), which leads to long, rambling chapters. I tried to stay on point, but I definitely took some detours. We'll see how it goes as we go forward.
Stardate 53141
May 2376
U.S.S. Dojeonja
Ainsley and Izzy both had soccer balls as Ainsley was demonstrating footwork drills, Nicki was reading a text on Cardassian medicine, and B'Elanna was reviewing the damage assessments that the Klingon Empire had sent her.
It was the first quiet moment they had had since leaving Earth. Fitting, since they would be arriving at DS9 the next day and their routines would again be disrupted.
It seemed like the confetti was still in the air from graduation when the four of them boarded the Dojeonja, headed for DS9. It was the opposite direction as Qo'noS, but General—no, Chancellor—Martok and Lt. Commander—Ambassador?—Worf were on DS9 on business, and Martok wanted her to meet them there and they would travel to Qo'noS together. She did remind them that she had Izzy and that primary school students didn't usually travel by Birds-of-Prey. She wasn't sure what to make of his laugh at that.
B'Elanna looked up from her reading to watch her daughter and niece for a minute. Ainsley was 16 now, a fact she still found hard to believe, even though she had been there for at her party. Sixteen and, for all intents and purposes, as Nicki had pulled her out of school for the last few weeks to join her on Cardassia, halfway through secondary school. They were growing up, all of them. Navi would be starting at the Academy a few days after B'Elanna and Izzy returned from Qo'noS, and if things continued for Kajsa the way they were going, she would be joining her in another two years, and of the three of them, it was only Ainsley who was fighting off her impending adulthood as hard as she could. She hadn't wanted to come on this trip; she wanted to finish the school year with her classmates, wanted to have the time to spend with Navi and Kajsa before Navi started at the Academy and Kajsa headed off to see her parents at Starbase 241, wanted to spend the summer holidays coaching soccer and taking holos as she had done the year before. Nicki wasn't one of those parents who encouraged her kids to grow up any faster than they had to, but she had put her foot down on this one, convinced that the time on war-torn Cardassia would help put things in perspective for the teenager a little bit better.
Ainsley looked more and more like Nicki every day, down to the long blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail and the serious look on her face as she watched Izzy's footwork intently. She was like Nicki in that respect, too. They both had that flighty air that concealed a person who took things very seriously—Nicki her medical practice, Ainsley her holophotography and her soccer. Tom had done the same thing, probably still did on Voyager. B'Elanna wondered if Izzy would pick that up from him and Nicki and Ainsley or if she would be more like her, wearing her emotions much closer to the surface and taking everything a little bit more seriously than it warranted.
"Do we have time to get a message to Tom today?" Nicki asked abruptly. B'Elanna turned her attention from her niece to her sister-in-law to see Nicki looking at her curiously, and she glanced at her chronometer.
"Not today," she replied. Pathfinder sent out messages every day at the start of the 26 minute connection, and that had happened three hours ago. "I can get it in tomorrow's message, though."
Nicki nodded. "I'm sending something over to you," she said, and a second later, B'Elanna's PADD pinged with the incoming message. She nodded to indicate that she got it.
"How much space do you have left for tomorrow's message?" Ainsley asked.
"A little less than a gigabyte," B'Elanna replied. Each person on Voyager had a weekly allotment that could be sent or received, managed by the comm techs on Pathfinder; they probably could have gotten more per person, but the last thing they wanted to do was overload the data stream and shut it down before the video could connect. Some families preferred to send one big package once a week; some sent something every day. B'Elanna or a member of the Paris family sent something every day, so they had to keep each daily message small. It was rare that each crewmember's family used their full allotment, but B'Elanna didn't want to use her position at Pathfinder to abuse her privileges. Too often, anyway; she certainly went over her allotment when she sent Aja Sero's most recent holonovel to Tom.
Ainsley brightened. "I learned how to compress holoimages in school a few weeks ago," she said. "I could probably get two high-quality images compressed down below a gig. Izz, do you want to help me pick out two holos of you to send to your dad?"
Izzy, of course, was happy to go along with anything her older cousin suggested, and the two girls went over to Ainsley's PADD to begin perusing the holos she had saved there, and B'Elanna was a little embarrassed that she hadn't considered asking Ainsley for holos before. She had been sending Tom pics of Izzy, but Ainsley had hundreds, if not thousands, of holos that she had taken of Izzy over the years, and she was a much better photographer than B'Elanna and had edited the good ones to perfection.
Knowing that that task would keep the two girls occupied until dinner—dinner tonight was with the captain, a tradition B'Elanna suffered through every time she was a guest on a ship but knew better than to refuse—she returned to her reading. She hadn't thought she would ever prefer being on Qo'noS to being on a Starfleet ship, but at least on Qo'noS she would have something to do. The worst part about these trips was the waiting.
They arrived at DS9 an hour or so after lunch the next day. B'Elanna had never been on the station—the last time she was in the sector, when she had been called to AR-558, she had flown in and out of Starbase 371–and she took a minute to just look around and try to get her bearings, her arm across Izzy's chest to keep her from running off. The station had somehow seemed both cold and warm, the combination of the Cardassian architecture with the Bajoran decor, she guessed. "Nicki!" Dr. Solaris Jaxon greeted, the hybrid pediatrician wrapping Nicki in a tight embrace.
"It's good to see you, Solaris," Nicki said, grinning at her old friend. He was wearing commander rank now; Torres wondered when that promotion had happened, then wondered when Nicki's would be coming. "You remember my daughter Ainsley, and B'Elanna and Izzy?"
"Of course!" He enthused. He bent down to Izzy's eye level. "I remember you," he told her. "I'm guessing you don't remember me, though. I'm Dr. Jaxon. I was your first doctor."
"Izzy Paris," Izzy introduced officially, offering her hand to shake. Solaris smiled and accepted it. "It's nice to meet you."
"I reserved a three-bedroom family suite for you," he said, straightening and again addressing the adults, his eyes going from Nicki to B'Elanna and back. "Nick, assuming the transports are running on schedule, we should be leaving for Cardassia in three days. B'Elanna, I don't know Chancellor Martok's plans. He and Commander Worf are meeting with Admiral Ross and Colonel Kira about the future of the station today, but he said he'll meet with you tomorrow. Let me take you guys to the habitat ring, and then I can give you a tour of the station, or can leave you to rest—"
"We've been resting since leaving Earth," Nicki interrupted. "Please, for the love of whatever deities watch over this station—"
"The Prophets," Solaris provided.
"Right, I should have gotten that one," Nicki replied. "Please, give us something to do that doesn't involving me pushing a teenager out an airlock."
"Thanks, Mom," Ainsley said with a roll of her eyes.
As promised, Solaris showed them to their quarters–which were larger than B'Elanna's apartment—and then gave them a very lengthy tour of the station, which ended in the dining section of the Promenade right around dinner time. "We have a few choices," he said, gesturing around them. "There's the Replimat, which has the benefit of being free, and then Quark's or the Klingon restaurant, which are both a lot more fun but cost latinum." B'Elanna blinked in surprise; she couldn't remember the last time she had to deal with currency. Seeing her confusion, he quickly added, "Starfleet has a system with the merchants on the Station. Essentially, you get paid for time spent on station, which you can use to buy goods. It's kinda confusing, but you get used to it."
"I want to go in there," Ainsley said, pointing at the brightly-lit bar and casino.
"A bar," Nicki said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm shocked."
They found a table on the upper level, where Izzy could watch the excitement below with a bird's eye view while the adults and Ainsley caught up. "I want to go to art school. I mean, my secondary school is an arts academy, but I want to study it in college, too. I want to be photographer," Ainsley replied when Solaris asked what her plans were after secondary school.
"She's really good," Nicki chimed in. "Probably because she's had so much practice. She always has her holoimager with her."
"I have some holos with me," Ainsley offered, pulling out her ever-present PADD. "I did a holo essay on children on summer holiday last year, and then did a series on the response to the Breen attack last winter."
"These are amazing," Solaris said, scrolling through the holos. He looked up, his eyebrows raised. "You're not just a holophotographer, Ainsley. You're a holophotojournalist. These pictures tell a story. I hope you're planning on taking pictures while we're on Cardassia. People need to see what it looks like on the ground here. So many in the Federation are asking why we're helping our very recent enemy when there are a lot of Federation worlds hit very hard by the war. Words only go so far. It's pictures that people respond to." Ainsley blushed slightly at the compliment but nodded solemnly. B'Elanna hoped she took the words seriously; maybe it would make her feel better about getting taken out of school to go to Cardassia.
Solaris begged off after they finished dinner, reminding B'Elanna that Martok would comm when he was free to meet and telling them not to hesitate if they needed anything while on the station. A few minutes later, Dr. Bashir and Lt. Dax appeared on their way into the holosuite; B'Elanna introduced them to Nicki, Ainsley, and Izzy, and made vague promises to catch up before she left for Qo'noS, even though she couldn't remember if she had ever actually exchanged any words with Lt. Dax and couldn't think of a single topic of conversation to cover with Dr. Bashir. She should probably just put him and Nicki in a room so they could complain to each other about how difficult of a patient she was.
She finally met with Martok and Worf over lunch the next day. Halfway through the meal, they were joined by a young Klingon in a Klingon Defense Force uniform. "Lt. Torres, my son, Alexander," Worf introduced, seemingly reluctantly. "He will be joining us on the Rotarran at the weapons station."
"It's nice to meet you, sir," Alexander said with nod.
"It's nice to meet you, too," she replied. Nodding to Izzy, she said, "This is my daughter, Izzy. She'll also be joining us on the Rotarran, but she's not quite ready to man any controls yet."
"I'm sure we can find something for you to do at the weapons station," he said with a smile down to the almost-five-year-old. "You'll undoubtedly do better than I did on my first assignment." Worf had muttered something indistinct at that, and she noticed that Alexander pretended not to notice.
Clearly, every relationship between a fully-Klingon parent and not-fully-Klingon child was difficult.
They set out two days later, the Rotarran as loud and disorienting as B'Elanna remembered from her first time on the vessel. Izzy looked around with wide eyes, probably cataloging the differences between the Klingon Bird-of-Prey and the Starfleet ships she had been on. "No leaving our quarters without me," B'Elanna reminded her as a young bekk escorted them to the guest quarters. "Everyone is very busy, and they can't have a four-year-old wandering around unsupervised."
"I'm four and a half," Izzy replied indignantly.
"That you are," B'Elanna replied with a sigh. "But they can't have a four-and-a-half-year-old wandering around either, okay?"
Izzy nodded reluctantly before she turned to the bekk walking with them. "What do you eat on Klingon ships? When we're on Starfleet ships, my mom just replicates me something, but when we're on Qo'noS, we eat Klingon food."
The young crewman looked uncomfortable at the question, or maybe just uncomfortable with children. "Chancellor Martok is partial to gagh," he replied, "although we have a variety of other foods on board as well. I am not certain our food replicators our programmed with any… human food."
"Do you have gladst?" she asked eagerly. "I like gladst. With sauce. I like gagh, too, but gladst is my favorite Klingon food."
"I believe we do. I will have the cook check."
Izzy grinned. "Thanks!" She turned to her mother. "Mom, they have gladst!"
"Yes, Izzy," B'Elanna said with a sigh. "I was right here when he said it. Twenty seconds ago."
B'Elanna was spending most of her time with Martok and Worf as they discussed the priorities of Starfleet and the Empire, and it didn't take long for Izzy to get bored staying alone in the small quarters on the ship. She joined them in the Rotarran's mess hall for meals, and to B'Elanna's surprise, the crew immediately took to her, several of them volunteering to watch over her while B'Elanna was working so she didn't have to be alone. B'Elanna quickly discovered just how many serving abroad the Bird-of-Prey were parents themselves and missed their own children, and not for the first time, she was amused at how quickly a bunch of Klingon parents became softies when talking about their children, the pride obvious in their voices.
She wondered if Miral had ever used those tones when talking about her.
By the time they arrived on Qo'noS, Izzy had an entire crew worth of new friends, and her extroverted personality had actually gone a long way in getting B'Elanna's acceptance among the crew as well, to the point that several of the officers had invited her and Izzy to dine with their families during their stay on Qo'noS.
In the course of the war, B'Elanna had gone from hating everything associated with Qo'noS and the Klingon Empire and just about everything that was even remotely Klingon, to finding herself with a surprisingly busy social schedule on a planet that she begrudgedly had to admit had its charms.
Kahless, how her life had changed. She was still struggling to grasp and accept those changes, and a quiet voice in the back of her head wondered if she was ready for it to all change again when Tom came home.