A/N: MissyHissy3 was particularly helpful with this chapter so hooray for her being my best beta lady. She's also talked me into Tumblr. I'm there as 'notimejustwords'. I'll be posting mostly random nonsense, I would think. And a few bits and pieces of original writing under the hashtags 'short story' and 'short story Tuesday'.

Thanks to those of you still reading and reviewing, it is much appreciated!

Thirty Four

Tom walked towards his father's office with trepidation. He didn't come here often, at least not any more. When he was a kid, Tom had loved to visit his dad at work. He'd come in, settle down in the corner and play, listening as the great Owen Paris commanded the army in his employ. That had been before it had become apparent that the young Paris definitely wasn't a chip off the old block. He was barely even a splinter, in fact, a disappointment and definitely not a worthy heir to this great monolith of glass and steel. Soon enough a summons to his father's office had been something to avoid and resent.

He didn't know why his father had asked him to present himself at his desk now. Tom didn't really want to know, either – he'd wracked his brain trying to work out what he might have done wrong this time, but couldn't come up with anything. Was some past misdemeanour coming back to bite his ass? Was he about to be reminded of yet another thing he wasn't proud of?

He'd thought about not coming at all, but B'Elanna had talked him around. You've only got one dad, Tom, she'd pointed out. That might not matter to you now but one day it will. And who knows, he might have something to say that you'll want to hear.

So here he was. Tom walked into the penthouse anteroom where his father's secretary worked. The small, grey-haired woman behind the desk seemed to have looked exactly the same for as long as he had known her, which was all his life.

"Morning, Mrs Boseman."

She looked up with a warm smile and then pulled off her glasses. "Well my, my – if it isn't Thomas Eugene Paris, as I live and breathe. How are you?"

Tom glanced at the door that led to his father's private office and grimaced. "Hard to say. Ask me again on my way out."

Mrs Boseman smiled again and picked up her phone, pressing the intercom. "Your son is here, Mr Paris," she nodded at the answer and then looked up at Tom as she replaced the receiver. "You can go right in, Tom."

Tom mustered a smile and then headed for the door, taking a breath before turning the handle. Inside was largely the same as it had always been: the floor-to-ceiling glass windows with the stunning views, the huge desk set in front of it, the bookcases lining the walls, the sofa he used to have his afternoon nap on after a hard morning of playing on the rug in front of it. The rug had changed, maybe even the sofa had, too, but the place felt the same. It held the geography of Tom's childhood within its four walls.

Owen Paris was seated behind the desk but stood up when Tom entered. That was a novelty in itself. There was nothing more powerful than being able to control a room while seated and his father knew it. Tom knew it too, having been provided with numerous demonstrations of just that right here in this very room.

"Son," he said, as Tom crossed the expanse of grey carpet, "thanks for coming. Can I get you a coffee?"

"Uh – sure, that would be good, thanks," Tom said and then watched as his father crossed to the percolator on the stand in the corner. This was not normal behaviour either. The nerves ratcheted up a little more.

"Take a seat," Owen Paris said, as he handed his son a mug, "there are a few things I want to talk to you about."

"Okay…"

"I had a meeting with Kathryn Janeway yesterday," the older Paris went on. "The things she had to say about you… were impressive."

Tom blinked. He didn't know what to say to that, so he took a mouthful of coffee instead.

"She's recommending that you be given full managerial control of the Maywood Project from here on. And I have to say that the arguments she made in favour of the appointment were compelling."

Tom inadvertently inhaled his coffee and had to stop himself coughing it all back up again. He muffled his choking with the back of his hand, his eyes watering. "Me?"

"Yes, you." His father looked down at his hands. "She pointed out that you had been invaluable to her as an assistant, but that you are capable of far more than that. That, in her view, what you need is more responsibility, not less, and that this is the opportunity and the time to give you exactly that."

Tom opened his mouth but found he had no clue what to say.

Owen Paris sighed. "I know I've been hard on you, Tom. I know that you and I… we'll probably never see eye to eye on certain things. We're very different people, and it's taken me too long to accept that. But for what it's worth… what Kathryn said about you yesterday made me proud of you, son. It also made me ashamed. Because I realised that I've got a son I don't know and that can only be my fault."

Tom stared down at his coffee, his chest burning with something he couldn't name.

"So, I've been thinking," his dad went on, "and how about you and I wipe the slate clean?"

Tom looked up, slowly. He nodded. "Sounds good, dad."

His father smiled at him. "Probably won't be easy. But I think it's worth a try, don't you?"

Tom smiled back. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Owen Paris slapped the surface of his desk lightly. "Good, then. In that case, there's something else we need to talk about. Why did you never tell me you wanted to be a pilot?"

Tom felt his eyes bugging in shock. "I – what?"

The smile on his dad's face turned into a grin. "I had another visitor. B'Elanna. She didn't just turn up - she made an appointment, although I get the feeling that if I'd said no to the meeting she would have come anyway. She was very respectful, though. She had something specific she wanted to talk to me about. Apparently you want to fly planes, although from what she said it sounded as if maybe you'd like to fly more than that?"

Tom shook his head. "No, dad, that was just – that was nothing, just talk. That's what I'm good at, right? Just talk."

The older Paris gave a lop-sided smile. "You know what some of my best memories of you are? When you were little you used to love to just hang out here. Right in this room. You'd sit over there on the rug and you'd take whatever toys you'd brought with you in your little Buzz Lightyear backpack and you'd play with them for hours. Do you remember the ones you played with the most?"

Tom nodded, smiling at the memory. "Sure. My planes. Remember that Tomcat? They don't even make them any more. And the Strike Eagle, that was so cool. I had a couple Tigersharks, too. I used to pit them against the Millennium Falcon and the Enterprise. Who cared that the scale between all of them was completely off? I fought the best space battles right here in this room!"

Owen Paris laughed and shook his head. "I remember. You were good as gold, but there were times I had to tell Mrs Boseman to take you out into her office so that some businessman in Japan didn't think I had an all-out air strike going on during a conference call."

Tom laughed, too, then stopped when he saw the sober look that passed across his father's face.

"That was a dream of yours, Tom. It must have been, even way back then. When did you give that up?"

Tom shrugged. "I don't know, Dad. It just never… it wasn't ever something that I thought I could really do. It was just… just dreams."

Owen shook his head. "I should have noticed. I should have been paying attention instead of deciding on a future for you that you clearly didn't want."

"Dad, that's not-"

"It's not too late."

Tom blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Son, if you want to be a pilot, then you should be a pilot. I've done a bit of quick research. There are various programmes you could apply for. It depends what sort of flying you're interested in and what your ultimate goal is."

Tom's head was spinning. "My… ultimate goal?"

Owen smiled. "This country might not have a space programme right now, but there's a number of guys building commercial versions. Branson, for example. The future's above us. The future is space. It has to be, because God knows we're making enough of a mess of this planet that sooner or later we're going to have to leave it. So what kind of flying do you want to do, Tom? An airliner? A fighter jet? A space shuttle? If it's the former then we can put you on that road right now. If it's either of the others then it's the Air Force or the Navy you need to be talking to."

"I don't…" Tom was so turned around he didn't know what to say. "Dad, I don't – I can't-"

His father held up his hands. "Sorry. Maybe I'm going at this too fast. Why don't you think about it all and we can talk again whenever you're ready? And you should think about what Kathryn has suggested, too. If you'd like to go into management then the Maywood Project is a good place to start. Whatever you want to do, son."

Tom swallowed. He put down his coffee mug and pressed his fingers to his lips. "I'm not smart enough for the space programme. They probably wouldn't even let me into the military."

"You are more than smart enough. Why do you think I've spent so long angry at you for wasting the talents you have? You can do anything you set your mind to, I know it. I've just been pushing you in the wrong direction, that's all. Kathryn's proved that once you're motivated you'll go the extra distance for whatever it is you've set your mind on. That's the kind of dedication you need, and you've got the brain to go with it, I know you have."

His father's mention of Kathryn made Tom frown. "Wait a minute," he said. "If Kathryn wants me to take over managing the garden – what's she going to be doing?"

"She's moving on. She's got another project up in Fresno she wants to get started on and she's scouting places further afield, too. The work you guys have done down in Maywood has really opened up a host of opportunities."

"She's… leaving?"

"I think this shooting she witnessed hit her hard, Tom. Harder than she'd ever let on. I'm not surprised, to tell you the truth. After what happened with Edward and Justin – that would have been enough to end most people, but not Kathryn Janeway. Still, everyone's got a breaking point."

Tom shook his head. "Everyone's always alluding to what happened, Dad, but no one's ever told me. Not properly. All I know is that her dad and her fiancé died, and that she was there. What happened?"

His father regarded him quietly for a moment. "You were so young when it happened. It wouldn't have been right to tell you then," Owen paused. "Do you remember the Janeways' boat?"

"Sure," Tom nodded. "I loved going out in that thing."

His dad nodded. "You really did. When you were really small I used to have to hold on to you the whole time to make sure you didn't lean too far over the side. You loved the water. Well, so did Justin. He was a marine biologist PhD candidate. His big passion was orcas – he wanted to find a way to prevent them from beaching themselves."

"I remember that," Tom realised, an unexpected recollection surfacing from the deep. "Didn't he give me a toy killer whale once?"

"He did, you're right. He was great with you, actually, whenever we went out all together he always had time for all your questions about the ocean. And you always had a lot." Owen sighed. "Anyway, Justin wanted to test a new sonar-activated tag he'd developed, so one night Edward took Kathryn and Justin out. It was just the three of them – Kathryn had tried to talk her dad into letting them take the boat out alone, but Edward wasn't keen because the last time she and Justin had used the boat on their own they'd pranged it bringing it back into harbour. Edward had tried to get them to leave it until the weekend, but Justin had some deadline or other that meant it couldn't wait. And Edward never could refuse Kathryn anything. Anyway, somehow the engine malfunctioned when they were out there – the fuel line ruptured and there was an explosion. Kathryn was the only one who stayed conscious. She tried to hold on to both of the men, but their life-jackets failed – probably punctured by debris." Owen shook his head. "She's never talked about it, but I think she had to choose. I think she had to choose between letting go of her father and letting go of Justin. She couldn't keep both of them and herself afloat and she couldn't bring either of them round. The likelihood is that one or both of them were already dead, but still…"

Tom found himself gripping the arms of his chair. "What happened?"

"When the coastguard found them Kathryn was fading in and out of consciousness. She was still holding onto Justin, but he was dead. They never found Edward's body."

"God," said Tom. "Dad, that's…" he couldn't finish his sentence. The horror his father's words had inspired was too great.

Owen nodded. "She's suffered ever since. I think she blames herself for talking her dad into taking them out in the first place and I think she blames herself for not being able to save them. So being there, when this Chakotay was shot – seeing that at close range… being the one that had to keep him alive…"

Tom nodded, but didn't say anything.

His father's desk phone beeped into the silence.

"Yes, all right, Mrs Boseman. Give me five minutes." Owen Paris put the phone down and looked at Tom. "I'm sorry to cut this short, son, but my next meeting is here."

Tom stood, his head still full of Kathryn's story. "Sure."

"Tom-" his father stepped out from behind his desk and came toward him. "You'll think about what you want to do? And we'll talk again?"

Tom nodded. "Yes. I will. And… thank you."

Owen Paris shook his head. "Don't thank me. Thank Kathryn Janeway and B'Elanna Torres."

Tom smiled, looking down at his shoes. "I can't believe B'Elanna came to talk to you."

"She's got a lot of faith in you," said his father. "So does Kathryn. So do I."

They looked at each other for a moment. Owen Paris raised his arms slightly. Tom stepped forward and they hugged, briefly. It was a little awkward, a little hesitant. But it was good. It was the first time Tom could remember them doing that for years.

[TBC]