In the Arms of Family
Story by Janet and Christina
Written by Janet, Christina, Cybermum, Diane, Julie,Mary, Penny, and Rocky
Compiled by Janet

Act One

"Docking clamps engaged, Captain," Harry Kim called out, his voice several decibels louder than usual. "Voyager has arrived at Deep Space Nine!"

Tom Paris didn't need to swivel his head around to know the reactions of the bridge crew. His grin broadened as they hooted, called out, clapped, and in one notable case, laughed out loud behind him. There was only one throat that raspy, almost evil, yet still feminine sound of glee could have come.

As his fingers sped over the controls, closing off circuits and navigational sensors, Tom felt a surge of adrenaline rushing through his body with every tap of a digit upon smooth plastic. Deep Space Nine. Back where they began. Full circle.

Well, not exactly. Not for Thomas Eugene Paris. It seemed a lifetime ago a certain "Starfleet observer" was told by Captain Kathryn Janeway his services would be appreciated upon her ship- but not at the helm. Oh, no. His pleas that he was the best pilot she could ever have had fallen on deaf ears until fate snatched them all 70,000 light years away-or at least, those who had survived the trip. Sadly, the original pilot, Benara Stadi, was not one of the fortunate ones, giving Tom his chance to take the helm, and to be sitting here now as the starship Voyager reached the point from which she had flown off into adventure in the Delta Quadrant.

Tom's hand paused a moment, hovering over one of the pads that Stadi's fingers had stroked eight years before, as he visualized her as she'd looked during the last leg of his trip from Earth to Deep Space Nine. God, he'd always had a weakness for dark-eyed brunettes! Tom could still remember how he'd hit on her in the shuttle. At least she'd shot him down very gently. He'd been such a dog in those days!

At the time, he would have pretended it didn't hurt even if she'd been vicious about the way she turned him down, but the Betazoid pilot had been a good soul with a playful sense of humor. Stadi had probably known what he was going to say before he'd opened his mouth. Finding her broken body slumped next to the helm after they'd been dragged to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker had been the first death to bring pain to him during Voyager's journey, if far from the last. To be perfectly honest, Stadi's death had been the first to pierce the walls of brittle indifference he'd so carefully built during the years of his disgrace to touch his heart for a very long time.

As Tom shut down the last operational control, he felt her immaterial presence, even if it were only in his memory, and embraced it.

His reverie was broken by a shadow falling over the helm station. "You're uncharacteristically silent for such a momentous occasion, Mr. Paris," Kathryn Janeway teased lightly. "No words of wisdom?"

Tom opened his mouth, ever ready for a glib bon mot, but he hesitated before actually speaking. Maybe that was why he discarded the quick joke he was about to utter and admitted what he was really thinking. "I was thinking about the first occupant I knew who sat in this chair, Captain. We've come full circle- some of us, that is."

Janeway gently patted Tom on the shoulder. "I'd say it was more like a hundred and eighty degrees of a circle in your case, Tom."

He chuckled lightly. "Thank you, Captain. But you know, despite everything, I wish Stadi were here with us to enjoy this moment, too."

"As do I." She gave Tom one more tap on the upper arm, a little brisker than the previous one, adding, "And since you won't be responsible for any navigational duties right away, would you care to be one of the senior staff members accompanying Commander Chakotay and myself out to the docking bay? I understand you might be familiar with one of the DS9 staff who will be coming to meet us."

An image of his father leaped into Tom's brain, but he suppressed it immediately. Admiral Paris, coming all this way to meet Voyager when they'd come to Earth to see him as soon as the repairs to the ship were finished? Not likely! He pushed away any more speculation, deciding he'd be better off finding out by going that imagining who it might be, and answered, "I'd love to, Captain, but I want to check in with B'Elanna first. Not that I'll be able to pry her out of Engineering for hours, but ..."

Janeway nodded understandingly. "We won't be leaving for about five minutes. You've got time."

"Thank you, Captain," Tom said with a sincere smile. Although she could take these simple words simply for giving him permission to speak to his wife or asking him to accompany her as part of her party at the docking ring, in his own mind they resonated with a much broader expression of gratitude to his captain for helping him make a personal about-face between the time of that last visit to Deep Space Nine to this one.

Now, as long as his captain wasn't the only one who held that opinion in Starfleet, his "one hundred and eighty degree change" might hold up all the way home to Earth.

Although B'Elanna Torres and her engineering staff were absent, bound and determined to get Voyager's engines in shape now that they could be shut down completely, and Harry Kim and Tuvok were remaining on board in support to supervise the skeleton bridge crew, most of her department heads gathered around Kathryn Janeway near the main entry hatch, ready to disembark with all due ceremony at their first true port-of- call in the Alpha Quadrant. A whole list of cliches, including such gems as "This is it," "Back where we started," "We're home, Commander" and the ever-popular, "Home again," popped one after the other into her mind. She discarded every one of them. Instead, she settled upon a nod to her first officer, who did the honors.

"Open the hatch, Mr. Ayala." As Tuvok's second in command in the Security/Tactical Department did as instructed, Janeway and Chakotay stood quietly as the heavy, metal plated door glided out into the sizable docking ring air lock. Janeway led the group out into the airlock, followed by Chakotay, Megan Delaney of Astrometrics, Samantha Wildman, who was representing the sciences, Lieutenant Rollins, the EMH, Tom Paris, and Ayala. The iris separating the rest of Deep Space Nine from the air lock. Two orange-clad figures stood in the pylon corridor.

"Welcome to Deep Space Nine," one of the women said, holding out her hand for Janeway to shake.

"Thank you, Colonel," Janeway replied. "It's very *very* good to be here."

"My security officer, Lieutenant Ro Laren of the Bajoran militia," Kira introduced. The name, of course, was not unknown to Janeway, but she shook the lieutenant's hand firmly. "A pleasure."

Ro crinkled her brow, but any comment she might have made in response was drowned out by Paris' shouted, "Ro? Ro Laren! I can't believe it!"

"You don't have to shove me back inside Voyager in your haste to depart," the Doctor sniffed.

"Sorry," Tom mumbled incontritely, stepping between Megan Delaney and Rollins.

Chakotay took back the hand he was about to offer Lieutenant Ro as Tom rushed passed him.

"It's good to see you, too, Tom," Ro said, making a stab at maintaining appropriate protocol by shaking both his hands before shrugging and giving him a quick hug instead. Kira took a step back, the look of astonishment on her face matching that of the rest of the onlookers, with one notable exception.

"Lieutenant Paris and Ro were at the Academy together. I understood they were quite close friends there," Janeway explained, rather smugly. Her love of research had paid off again.

Ro and Tom stepped back from each other, both saying, "Sorry," to their respective commanders at the same time.

"No apologies needed, Lieutenants," Janeway said. "I think we're going to have to throw protocol to the winds at times, considering how emotional many of our reunions are bound to be now that we're back home in the Alpha Quadrant. Now, that has quite a nice ring to it, doesn't it, Commander?" She grinned broadly at her first officer.

"It does indeed," Chakotay said, as he introduced the rest of the assembled officers to Kira and Ro and the party began a slow stroll down the pylon towards the heart of Deep Space Nine, the Promenade. Janeway was well aware that the smile pasted upon Chakotay's face was not quite as dazzling as many that Janeway had seen over the years. She understood; her own feelings were far more unsettled than she was allowing herself to show.

She had no personal feelings one way or other towards Lieutenant Ro, who had been in tossed out of Starfleet, brought back into the fold, and then turned her back on Starfleet voluntarily in the face of her personal convictions to join the Maquis. Her history was reminiscent of her old friend Tom Paris in more ways than one, yet now here she was, in a position of responsibility on Deep Space Nine. She had survived, rehabilitating herself through courage and more than a little luck. That Janeway recognized and accepted Ro's transformation was telling. The captain who had left Deep Space Nine eight years ago in hot pursuit of Chakotay's Maquis ship would have had a very different, far more judgmental attitude towards the Bajoran if they'd met back then.

Now, as she overheard Tom Paris relating Miral's latest antics of and promising he'd drag his wife away from her engines that night, somehow, so Ro could join the family for dinner, Janeway found herself hoping desperately that Ro Laren's presence as one of those greeting Voyager's crew today was a good omen. If Ro Laren could win respect because of her courageous actions, couldn't-shouldn't-her own crew? Maquis and Equinox survivors alike?

She would like to think so, yet in her heart, she feared the Bajoran government was considerably more forgiving than Starfleet and the Federation were likely to be. Still, she had to play out the entire act, follow all the procedures, fight as hard as she could if need be, and hope for the best. For Kathryn Janeway, there was no other alternative.

Ro had instructed her station security forces to keep the main corridor of the pylon where Voyager had docked, including the area where it emptied out into the Promenade, as clear as possible. Although Kira had asked the Ops crew not to publicly announce that Voyager had reached the station, anyone looking out one of the observation ports could watch the procedure. There was no way to know how quickly the word would spread, or what the reaction would be. The pylon corridors were too narrow to allow them to become clogged up with crowds of the curious. Considering how feelings might be running for-or against-the returning Maquis on Voyager, impeding the ability of those whose ships had docked further along the same pylon free access to their own ships was not something Ro or Kira wanted to risk. Adding a large dose of high feeling into overcrowded conditions was a recipe for a riot.

Fortunately, Ro's staff had done an excellent job. When the small clump of senior officers from Voyager and the station reached the place where the Promenade truly began, there were only a few people standing in small groups. Her people unobtrusively passed through, gently asking the onlookers if they needed any assistance to get where they wished to go, to encourage the clots of people to disperse. Ro waved a few times to her people in approval. She was proud of her staff. It wasn't easy finding people with the experience and skills needed to work on the busy station, and Ro appreciated their high levels of performance. Her predecessor Odo had done a terrific job training them, and she had made maintaining such lofty standards a priority since she had assumed the position as security chief.

While Kira and Ro had expected the group to keep moving along to Kira's office at Ops, the reaction of Janeway and her officers at the first sight of the Promenade altered her plan. "It's so...familiar!" Tom said, as he halted in front of the first storefront next to the corridor.

"Oh, there have been plenty of changes. Garak's shop is closed, of course, and I don't remember if the Qapla' was open yet the last time you were here," Kira remarked.

"I remember that bar over there very well," Tom laughed. "That's where I met Harry for the first time. Had to rescue him from the propietor."

"I spend a lot of time there rescuing people from Quark's schemes," Ro agreed. "Too much time! I think he sets some of them up just to get me in there so he can flirt with me."

"Lieutenant Ro," the Doctor said brightly, "would you like to hear about the time I transformed Neelix into a Ferengi so he could go...Counselor Troi! And Commander Riker! How lovely to see you again so soon."

Ro turned her head. Deanna Troi was, indeed walking towards them, next to a very tall, very bearded, and very familiar first officer. "It's wonderful to see you here, too, Doctor."

Troi walked over to the Doctor and gave him a quick hug as everyone else-almost everyone else-exchanged greetings.

"Do you know everyone here?" As he released Counselor Troi, the Doctor surveyed the group expectantly, looking for someone to introduce. "Colonel Kira? Lieutenant Ro?"

"Doctor," Janeway warned, with a touch of the glare Kira had told Ro about, when they'd first heard that Voyager was to dock at Deep Space Nine.

"Oh, sorry. Introductions would be your prerogative, Captain, or Colonel Kira's."

Riker had halted his progress a little distance from Ro, with Deanna safely between the two of them. He was stroking his beard, a broad, if slightly contemplative smile upon his face, as the EMH took a step backward, ceding the center of the group to Janeway. The silence of the group continued for an awkward length of time before Ro tossed her head slightly and explained, "Commander Riker and I are well acquainted from my days of service on the Enterprise-D."

"Ah, then, you're old friends and shipma..." The EMH looked at Tom, who was clearing his throat emphatically, which Ro remembered him doing years ago when they were still at the Academy together when he wanted her to change the subject. The EMH could not fail to notice that the rest of the group were all pointedly avoiding meeting each other's eyes. He finally said, "I, uh, stand corrected. You must *not* be old friends, precisely, but you still are old shipmates..." Tom's rasping became even louder. "Hmm. Kes must have missed this scenario when she programmed my old lessons in social situations."

It was remarkable how much like Barclay the EMH sounded, Ro thought. Must have something to do with the effects of spending so much time on the holodeck. She decided to rescue him again. "Doctor, Commander Riker and I are old shipmates. It's just been a while since the Commander and I last were together-and that time, I had the business end of a phaser aimed at his solar plexus. I was defecting to the Maquis. Not the best way to say 'see you later,' if you know what I mean."

As she finished her explanation to the Doctor, Ro took a very deep breath and turned to face Riker. One good thing about the Doctor's good natured blundering was it gave her a chance to say something she'd been wanting to say for a long time. Before she could say anything to Riker, however, he interrupted her. "Lieutenant, in the interests of maintaining the present good relationship between Starfleet and Bajor, let's just say we've both had cause to wish certain past decisions never were made, or were made very differently-and leave it at that. I'm certain Captain Picard would tell you the same if he were here now."

Riker respectfully tipped his head in Ro's direction. She returned the gesture. Kira jumped in, quite literally, stepping between Ro and Riker, saying, "Well, now that we've discussed old times sufficiently, shall we go to Ops? I have several things I'd like to go over in a less public place."

Ro looked around again. While she and Riker were having their uncomfortable moment, the group had drawn quite a crowd, exactly what she'd hoped to avoid.

As the group began to move towards Ops and Ro's security forces slowly moving into position around their perimeter to keep the outsiders at bay, Janeway asked, "Colonel, have you had the opportunity to speak with a Commander Craig about what we can and cannot discuss?"

Neither Ro nor Kira could completely contain the small groan that escaped from their lips. "Via subspace, yes. How did you manage to keep him from coming out of Voyager along with you."

"We had some communication problems during the last stage of our trip, and he had a large number of priority messages from Starfleet Command he had to review," Chakotay said, his face held in a perfectly serious mask. Ro would have taken the comment at face value if Tom hadn't sniggered immediately afterwards.