By:AW

Published in Unicorn Press. Editor: Nancy Border & Pat
Hayden.

You can buy it from Unicorn Press @
http://members.aol.com/UnicrnPrs/press.htm

Disclaimer: You know it, I know it, I don’t own idea
of Star Trek: Voyager. I just own the story.

Date With Destiny I

10. Resolutions

Tom sat at the table. He was sitting with his son, Harold Chakotay Paris. He was named after two men who had influenced and had a great impact on both his and his wife’s lives greatly over the years. B’Elanna was pregnant again, this time they were told it would be a girl.

A girl, a sweet girl for his wife. There was however, concern where the child was involved. With any interspecies pregnancy there was always cause of
concern, but Paris had learned early on, when B’Elanna had fallen pregnant with little Harry that there was especially cause for concern in B’Elanna’s family.

On B’Elanna’s mother’s side of the family there lay a deep hidden history of not only miscarriages, but deformities, and it happened only with the females.
Just as in males there were certain defects that afflicted only males. In B’Elanna’s Klingon family, only women were shaken by these defects.

In the past, in this culture of warriors, it was not as large of an issue if the female did not survive for it was the male who “carried the blade” so to speak. In today’s day and age however, where the female was as important as the male, where B’Elanna and his little Kathryn were concerned, it mattered. This daughter of theirs was already named, a name agreed on by both of them: Kathryn Amanda Paris. She was named after their leader and savior, the great Kathryn Janeway.

He had hoped in naming her after Kathryn, one of the strongest people he had ever met, that his baby would be okay. That she would survive hopefully unscathed by her parents’ and her genetic history.

If he was ever to meet either of his former commanding officers again, just once more, he would say everything he had always wanted to say. He would tell them the great impact they had had on their lives. He would thank them for their support and leadership and their love. He had taken it hard when they had disappeared. Right now B’Elanna was cleaning out the spare room, making way for the new baby, while Tom finished the specs on the new shuttlecraft they were designing at headquarters today. He had made a name
for himself in Starship design. After Starfleet had seen the Delta Flyer and the ingenious schematics he had designed to make it work, they had no problems
finding him a job and putting him to work in all of their battles against the Dominion.

He knew B’Elanna in going through the room, would find many mementos of their time aboard Voyager. Voyager had been a place of discovery and renewed hope. A hope they both carried with them now in their prayers for
their unborn daughter. If this child was anything like her namesake she would survive and go on to be one of the great women of her time. For Kathryn Janeway had been his savior. A lost ship, a lost moment in time and a mission of self-discovery had created the Tom Paris he was today. He heard a soft music slowly making its way to his ears. It was his recording from Voyager; it was the recording he and Harry had shared. It brought back too many memories. The days aboard Voyager; the days when he had been happiest. Time with friends and family. “B’Elanna what are you doing?”

“Listening to the vid I found.”

Tom put Harry down and ran into the room. “Turn it off. I don’t want the reminder of everything I’ve lost.” He saw the defiant look in B’Elanna’s eyes.

“Tom…”

“Just turn it off B’Elanna.”

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair Warm smell of colitis rising up through the air Up ahead in the distance. I saw a shimmering light My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim I had to stop for the night The words were so appropriate. His trip on the Voyager, a trip which had allowed him to redeem himself. A trip that had forever changed his life. A ‘stop along the journey’ of his life and his future was altered for all time.

There she stood in the doorway
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
This could be Heaven or this could be Hell.
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way.
There were voices down the corridor
I thought I heard them say....

“B’Elanna… “He had tears in his eyes. It was so appropriate, but it wasn’t if it was heaven or hell…it had been both. It had been a blessing and it had been
a curse. She did show me the way. He needed to know where they were. He needed to know. TH shadows of the past haunting him forever more. “B’Elanna, we have to find them. I need to know.”

B’Elanna gave him a smile that lit up the room. “I know.”

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat,
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

She listened to some most of the song. She realized its appeal. It described everything he had gone through. It was his life laid out before him in a
song. “I was hoping this would let you see…”

So I called up the Captain,
Please bring me my wine
He said, ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since
nineteen sixty niine’
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle fo the night
Just to hear them say….

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place, such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here

Mirrors on the ceiling.
The pink champagne on ice,
And she said ‘We are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
And in the master’s chambers
They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast.

Tom looked at her and brought her into a huge hug. “We can’t leave it alone anymore can we? We can’t forget?”

She hugged him back and rubbed his back in an almost hypnotic motion. “We never could.”

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘Relax’ said the night man.
‘We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’ (4)

They both had tears in their eyes as the last of the song floated through the room, and quieted forever, until they were whole again. Until they found who they were seeking. Until the end of their quest for a past stolen by an unfair future.

They looked for months. Starfleet was no help. The location and fate of the crewmembers taken could not be disclosed. Their location, their status nothing. B’Elanna was getting close to her due date. Now eight months pregnant, they gave up on their search until after the child’s birth. Two-year-old Harry was getting big, a reminder that time passes and stops for no one. They just hoped someday they would find their lost friends and be able to share the present and future as well as the past.

/\/\

Kathryn was walking through the park. She had taken to doing this one her off time. She always saw many couples…she saw children. She saw people’s dreams fulfilled and the emptiness of her own life. Ever since they had returned Kathryn had felt like a shell. She had felt as if there was no longer anything to live for. No longer a purpose to her life. She knew that uintil the day she was reunited with Chakotay, she would be forever empty inside. A hole in her soul that could only be filled by one.

On this day she glanced around. She sat in the sun. It felt warm on her skin, and it felt happy. It felt as if for a moment all the troubles she had, all the
hardships she had endured had been washed away. She opened her eyes and realized that they never would be. She saw a happy couple. They were playing with a little boy, and the woman was pregnant. The couple looked oddly familiar. She looked closer, trying to figure out where she had seen them before. Unfortunately she was just getting a back view. The woman turned around to expose the familiar forehead ridges of her former chief engineer. My god. It’s Tom and B’Elanna.

She was drawn to them and started walking towards them, not by choice. She had to do this, she had to see them, and she had to find out what had happened to her former crew. “Tom?”

Tom heard a voice, and felt a presence coming towards him. He knew that voice. He had known it for so many years. It sounded like the throaty voice of his former Captain. He whirled around to see the frail form of Kathryn Janeway approaching him. “Captain?” She looked much thinner and her hair had more gray, but it was Kathryn Janeway. He noted the fact that she had grown her hair out, it was as it had been when he had first met her all those years ago. She had apparently taken to wearing it down. He had missed her.

He ran to her and wrapped her in a hug as only friends did after an eternity disappeared, taken not by chance but necessity. “Tom!”

“Captain, is it really you?”

Kathryn felt tears stinging her eyes. Captain, hardly. “Yeah, it’s me…but it’s not Captain anymore.”

Tom couldn’t help grinning. “What is it now? Admiral? What are you doing here?”

The Captain felt the tears slipping down her cheeks. “No Tom. Who told you I was an admiral?”

Tom let go of their former Captain and took a step back. He looked at her. He saw the tears. He saw the haunted look in her eyes; he saw a shadow of the woman who had brought them home. “What do you mean who told us? Tuvok got the VoyagerB and…well we assumed you had gone on to bigger and better things. We hadn’t heard from you, and Starfleet wouldn’t say anything. We thought you were in charge of some secret mission.”

“No, I’m afraid now. You can call me Kathryn you know? I think you’ve earned the right.”

Tom steadied himself. “Sounds good…Kathryn. So what happened?”

Kathryn didn’t want to get into this now. She needed to keep this to herself; she was ashamed of what had happened to her. She was ashamed of Starfleet and the actions they had taken.

Tom saw the hesitation on her face and decided to change the subject. He heard Harry crying in the background and went to get him. “Well, Kathryn, meet our son. This is Harold Chakotay Paris.”

Kathryn saw the adorable little boy. He had B’Elanna’s coloring and very faint forehead ridges, almost unnoticeable unless you were aware of the child’s parentage. She picked him up and he immediately stopped crying.

“You’re a natural Kathryn. Do you have any children?”

Kathryn pried her eyes away from the little boy. “No, I never met the right man.” Actually you met him Kathryn, you just never got your timing right. She looked down at the boy again. He looked up at her with eyes so blue. “He has your eyes Tom.”

“Yeah…he does.” He was wondering what had happened to Chakotay. Why they had never ‘made it happen.’ “What about Chakotay?”

Kathryn felt the anger come to the forefront of her mind. “He made his choice Tom. He left me years ago, he broke his promise to me. He promised he would always be at my side, he said we would make it work.” She had tears streaming down her face now. Harry started to cry. “He left me. On the day we came back. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I left the conference with Starfleet command. I walked outside expecting to see him waiting for me…he wasn’t. I went back to Voyager and he had disappeared. I was committed to making this work. I wanted to have it all, on earth, all the things we couldn’t have in the Delta Quadrant, but obviously he didn’t.”

Kathryn sat down on the ground. She rocked the crying child in her arms and quieted him down. “I’m sorry, it’s just been a long hard couple of years for me Tom.”

B’Elanna approached her now. She placed an arm on her shoulder. “It’s okay Kathryn. We haven’t heard from him either. I guess we all assumed that when we found you, we would find him too. That the two of you had finally given in to the love and friendship we had all seen during our time on Voyager.”

“I wish we had B’Elanna. I wish everything had turned out that way, but it didn’t. I guess I was never meant to live happily ever after.” She looked down and saw Harry was asleep in her lap. She handed him back to B’Elanna. “Well, it was nice seeing you again. I better get going. I have a lot to do before I leave.”

B’Elanna got a funny look on her face. “Leave, where are you going?”

Kathryn thought about telling them, but decided against it. “Away.” She turned to leave and felt B’Elanna’s hand grip her arm.

“What do you mean away? We finally find you, and you’re leaving again, and you’re not going to tell us where you’re going?”

Kathryn turned around and faced the couple. “I’ll always be with you, I always was, but I have to go.” With that she walked out of their lives. She would not see either of them for a long time, but the visit had made an impact and some day they would all look back and remember ‘the good times.’

TBC in Chapter 11. The Long and Winding Road

[Main Page] [Fanfic Main Page] [Date With Destiny Main Page]