Log Entries: The B'Elanna Torres Logs

(Personal Logs of Voyager's Chief Engineer's Personal Logs)

by J. A. Toner (a.k.a. Jamelia)

Log Entries 2 - Addendum

Chief Engineer's Personal Log, Stardate 51502.3

So much about today was bad, it's hard to believe that I'm here now, feeling pretty good. Well, after what Tom and I just finished doing, I guess it's no surprise I'm feeling good. It doesn't make up for everything, but it helps. Kahless, does it ever help! He really is good to me. I hope I can be as good to him.

I hope not telling him is good for him. Hard to say now for sure. I just knew I couldn't bring him that message.

How could that man have fathered anyone so wonderful? Tom must take after his mother. I just want to rip out his heart. The admiral's, I mean.

As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. I keep telling myself I'm not going to do this anymore. A simple, straightforward recounting of the day's events for my log, maybe a little commenting afterwards. And then, every day, I start ranting and wandering all over the place. You'd think I'd have learned better. I've certainly had enough practice in the last four years!

Anyway, dear Personal Log, let me get down to the particulars, or else start over. Which I'm not in the mood to do tonight.

The day had actually been going pretty well until Chakotay came down about his letter from Sveta. We've finally gotten all of the circuitry relay problems licked, and the power drain for Seven's personal fief is no longer causing problems with the main power system. Now that we have enough isolinear chips prepared for the Borgmetrics Lab's use, she isn't lifting any from other places where they "aren't really needed." She's actually been keeping her busy little enhanced fingertips away from the system grid's parts. And wonder of wonders, it's been working right. Funny thing about how much better a system runs when it isn't being pirated all the time! But, I'm getting off-track here again.

Anyway, when word trickled down to Engineering that our message from Starfleet had been accompanied by personal letters coming in from our families in the Alpha Quadrant, work pretty much stopped for everyone but me. It's a good thing everything on board was working right at the time. The rumor mill set the number of personal letters for the crew at anywhere from three dozen to three hundred, depending on who you talked to. Not that I expected any myself, of course. A letter from Mom would have been a major surprise. And Dad? When I haven't heard from him in over twenty years? Not likely!

I was the only one in Engineering who learned about the encrypted message Seven had detected. I wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone else about it, even if it wasn't considered classified information. There were enough "we're going to be rescued" scenarios flying around as it was, just because we had made contact with the Alpha Quadrant. I certainly wasn't about to add fuel to the fire.

Funny. I didn't even think about wanting to be rescued at the time, myself. Maybe not so funny. Tom and I are alike in that. We've got it better here. Who needs to be rescued? And I already had a hunch that maybe it wasn't going to be all good news. I just had no idea how bad it was going to be.

When Chakotay came to tell me about what he'd learned from his friend Sveta, I felt blindsided. The Maquis. Gone. All our friends, dead - unless they were "fortunate" enough to have been in prison already like Sveta. The Klingon came out. I was enraged.

Afterwards came the letdown. The truth is, as the years have gone by here on Voyager, I thought of our colleagues in the Maquis back home less and less. A couple of times I had to stop and think about whether or not someone on Voyager was a Maquis or not! Only for a few seconds, but it's true. We've become one crew. A family. Janeway's "kids." I think that's why I cried so hard, after. I hadn't spent any time thinking about everyone back in the Alpha Quadrant for so long, I felt guilty. Their lives were snuffed out while I was working on some engineering problem, or asleep in my quarters, or playing pool on the holodeck with Tom and Harry. The fight, the cause I'd adopted as my own when I'd joined Chakotay's cell - well, that was just a footnote in some history text now. If even that. The Cardies win after all. Damn the Federation.

But not damn this crew. Just because the others are Starfleet, from the Federation, I really can't bring myself to hate Harry, or Nicoletti, or Carey. We've been there for each other too often. They don't deserve it. I'm not sure how the others will feel, though. Chakotay said he was going to go to everyone individually to give them the news. Chakotay's always been good that way. I guess too good. He had plenty of practice back before the array snatched us here. But all of them gone . . . I never thought it would happen.

And then that damned message for Tom. I got so excited. I thought he was hearing from his family when I saw that, so I called him from the Bridge. I couldn't understand why he didn't seem to care, at first. He seemed more like the Tom I used to call a pig.

When I saw the message was from a Starfleet admiral, though, my heart fell a little. I had never known Tom's father's name was Owen Paris, so I assumed some Admiral Owen was sending word to him - maybe acknowledging that he was getting his commission confirmed again. "Welcome back to the 'fleet," or some such nonsense.

With that "Who cares?" attitude of Tom's, I felt like smashing him in the mouth. But I know him too well now, how he hides his heart behind that attitude. He can't get away with it anymore with me. I called him on it. I wasn't in the mood for the Tom Paris Game. I wouldn't accept his cavalier dismissal of his father's message. Little did I know.

When he still was showing me attitude, I thought the Klingon was going to come out again, so I told him what was bothering me. About the crushing of the Maquis. I almost broke down again; but he stepped up and hugged me. He has changed a lot in four years, or maybe it's just that the real Tom comes out now because he's learned to trust me. His arms felt so good. I needed them to be around me. Now I think he needed that hug as much as I did. Tom knows his father better than I do, obviously.

He really wanted to get back to the bridge, so I let him go. I promised to bring his letter to him as soon as I got the rest of the message. And I really tried to get the whole message. I mean, I certainly hope that wasn't the whole letter. If it was . . .

What made it worse was that the letter from Harry's parents started coming in right afterwards, all mixed up piecemeal with Tom's letter and with Joe Carey's, from his wife. Harry's parents, so unbelievably happy to hear their son was alive. They'd refused to believe Harry was dead, even after Voyager was declared lost. Even when Harry's girlfriend Libby came to them and asked for their understanding when she'd married Harry's friend Danny, they hadn't given up hope. "We love you, Son. We will wait for you. If it takes sixty years, we don't care. Just knowing you're alive is enough." I can't remember it exactly, of course, but their love shone through the simple words.

I think I might have gotten a little jealous of Harry's letter, to tell the truth, if I hadn't been so angry at the message for Tom.

"Heard you're alive. You're lucky Captain Janeway is letting you fly Voyager. By the way, . . died a few months after hearing you were dead." I missed exactly who the person who died was. I thought it was "mother," but the message was so garbled there, I can't be sure about the exact wording of the rest of the message, because there was so much interference. But that last part that I was able to get is burned into my memory. "After hearing you were dead." Like Tom was still dead.

No, "glad you're alive, Son." No, "I love you Son." No, "Congratulations," about hitting Warp 10 (which the Doctor said he told Starfleet about). Nothing about how proud he was that Tom had turned his life around.

I saw the ending to Harry's letter. Harry's parents said how much they loved him. He should be careful and take care of himself. Then we lost the data stream, right in the middle of "Love, Mom and . . . ."

There never was a closing of any kind that I saw to Tom's letter. Did the rest of his get lost? Was there a part where the admiral said he loved Tom, that he was proud of him after all? That he missed him? That he was sorry he had to tell him his mother, or whoever it was, had died this way? The letter was so short, I keep telling myself it wasn't the entire letter. It couldn't have been. Who could just send those couple of lines to their only son, risen from the dead? I don't know why he bothered to send a letter to Tom at all, if that was the whole message.

I couldn't tell Tom that all I got for him was a message that he was lucky Janeway would let him fly Voyager and that somebody died, but I can't be certain who.

So I lied. So shoot me. Maybe it was only a partial lie. Maybe the rest of the letter was lost when the array shorted out. All I know is that once I'd ripped that scab off his wounded heart, I wasn't about to drive a knife through it again. I told him the message never came through.

I'll look at the downloaded information some more, of course. Maybe I can find more messages. The rest of Tom's? Ha! I don't really think so. But I make no apologies for lying, since Tom felt better afterwards. He's so fragile, really. Such a big man, so, "I don't care" on the outside, and pure mush on the inside. Very loving mush, though.

Tonight, after we made love the first time, we had a chance to discuss his family, really for the first time. Tonight I found out a lot about them. Tom described his mother, his sisters, and his Academy days with me. I found out he'd first become friends with Ro Laren when they were at the Academy together. I was fascinated, especially what he had to say about his mother. She sounds like she's a wonderful person. And of course, we talked about "dear old Dad," as he calls him, although he didn't say too much about him.

And then we chewed over whether we ever want to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. If it's overrun by the Cardies and those aliens from the Gamma Quadrant, maybe we'd be better off finding a nice little planet to settle out here - not that life is particularly safe in the Delta Quadrant, either. But we've been happy here in the Delta Quadrant, Tom and I. Maybe some of the others would prefer to go the colony route, too. The Maquis crew doesn't have a home to go back to any more than Tom and I have. A lot of them were colonists whose homes have been blasted away by the Cardassians.

And if the rumors about Janeway's letter from home are true, maybe the captain doesn't have much more to go back there for than Chakotay does. I hope so. He's got almost as big an "I'm in love" sign on him as Harry does.

Hmm. I see Tom's stirring in bed. I don't want him to hear this, so I guess I'll close now.

End Personal Log

Chief Engineer's Personal Log, Stardate 51504.2

Just got back from Neelix's party. It's what we all needed. Chakotay said the eulogy for the Maquis. Janeway led a moment of silence. She didn't have to do it, but it was a nice gesture. I could see the Maquis on board all appreciated it.

Everyone seemed a little more relaxed today about our setback. It's not like we haven't had the route home stolen away from us before. We're almost getting used to it. Like Neelix's food. His spread wasn't bad. I think I'm even getting used to leola root. I'm not saying I like it, but I'm getting to the point where I can eat it without complaining. Much. And Harry made a special request for Pleeka Rind Casserole to be served. Tom said he's just trying to get on Neelix's good side so Neelix will make Harry some really nice pizza. I think it's some kind of macho thing - showing off for Seven about what a strong stomach he's got.

No, I shouldn't say that. It's not fair. I guess I am jealous about Harry getting a real letter from home.

It was fun to tease "Grampa" Tuvok about his granddaughter, but it was nice, too. Everyone had a good time, I think. Not as good a time as Tom and I had when we got back from the party, of course, but it was good. After struggling all day with trying to decrypt that Starfleet code, it was nice to give my brain a rest. I had to help Harry - just to make sure I hadn't missed any of Tom's message the other day. I'm sorry to say I didn't.

And if there was a plan to get us home in that coded message, I sure hope Janeway understood it. I couldn't figure it out at all.

I'm pretty tired. We had to check the whole ship over thoroughly, to make sure there was no damage from the strain caused by the singularity. Fortunately, nothing major turned up.

Now that we've managed to stun one of the Hirogen, kill some others, and we've destroyed their communications network, I have this really strong hunch that Voyager is going to need to be in top condition in the near future. Just a feeling!

I'm going to crawl back into bed next to Tom - maybe wake him up. I need to feel those long arms of his around me again. Another hug, a big one. A hug that lasts all night long.

We both need it, even if he doesn't why.

End Personal Log

General Disclaimer: Voyager and its crew are Paramount's possessions, including the storyline of "Hunters." I'm just adding a little I think they must have accidentally left out. Thanks, Kim, for getting me to take the time to write this down. (Originally published on ASC in 2/1998)