He extended an arm. “I would be honored if you would grant me the favor of your company this evening, Miss Seven of Nine.”
For a long, long moment, he thought she would refuse. He expected her to refuse, actually. But finally, an uncertain smile curved her full lips, and that smile reached her eyes.
“I will require a change of uniform,” she said.
* * *
Kim materialized in an enormous hall. Flags representing every Federation member planet hung from the high, arched ceiling. Windows that ran almost the entire length of the walls opened to the San Francisco sky, and the muted hues of twilight vied with artificial lighting for the right to illuminate this vast chamber. Soft music played in the background, and more tables than Kim had ever seen in one place stretched the length of this great hall.
Kim gaped openly for a moment. He had never seen this room before; it was reserved for high ceremony. He supposed that Starfleet had, after the cursory briefings, come to the realization that Voyager rated such kudos. Quickly, though, he forgot about the opulence of the room and began scanning the crowd, looking for those whose faces he had kept in his mind for seven years.
So many people! Out of the corner of his eye, he saw big, jolly Chell squeal happily as he rushed to embrace two blue Bolians. Little Naomi, standing close beside a beaming Samantha Wildman, formally stuck her hand out to a towering Ktarian male, who gently accepted it. Vorik stood politely conversing with three Vulcans. They appeared to be strangers, but, knowing Vulcans, Kim was willing to bet they were his family.
Captain Janeway was hugging two women at the same time. One was an older woman who looked a lot like her, and the other was a little younger than she. They had to be her mother and sister.
Over there was Chakotay, his expression a mixture of joy and sorrow, as he embraced men and women who Kim assumed were fellow Maquis members. And there was the Paris family. Kim didn’t recognize the older, attractive woman, but guessed she was Tom’s mother. Standing next to them was a tall, handsome man with black hair and a dark complexion.
Harry stared. Was this B’Elanna’s father, after all these years? B’Elanna looked as if she were trying to decide whether to punch the man or throw herself in his arms.
He never saw which she did, because at that moment, a beloved voice cried, “Harry! Oh, Harry!”
Harry whirled and saw an elderly Asian couple threading their way through the crowd. When their eyes met, the woman lifted a long, rectangular box over her head. He knew what it was, and tears sprang to his eyes. She had brought his clarinet.
“Mom! Dad!” he cried, and rushed to embrace them fiercely. And even as he hugged them, he saw another person he had never forgotten, despite the intervening years, the resignation at never seeing her again, and the things he had shared with other women who had entered his life. He saw a lovely face framed by curly dark hair, and large eyes filled with tears even as her mouth curved wide in a smile of joy.
Libby.
Voyager’s crew had all finally come home.
Chapter
4
WHEN SEVEN OF NINE AND THE DOCTOR MATERIALIZED in the hall, Chakotay did a double take. What was she doing here? She had said she hadn’t wanted to come. And now here she was, her long golden hair down about her shoulders, wearing the soft, flowing red dress he so admired on her. Their eyes met for an instant; then she looked away.
More than Chakotay noted her presence. Almost at once, a murmuring arose from the crowd, and conversation slowed for an instant. Seven kept her head high, her visage almost haughty, but her cheeks reddened. Chakotay knew at once what she was thinking. She was trying to be brave, to not appear intimidated, and inwardly fighting a desire to flee. No doubt, at this moment she was probably wishing she had stayed on board after all.
“Is that Seven of Nine?” Sveta said. “Wow. You always did have good taste in women, Chakotay. Except for that time when you dated a Cardassian spy.”
Her warm, rich voice was full of good humor; it was gentle teasing, nothing more, but it bothered Chakotay. He forced a smile.
“Excuse me,” he said, and headed for Seven before the rest could descend on her.
He was too late. Already she had drawn a crowd. They closed in on her like a pack of hungry wolves, and Chakotay could see her blue eyes widen, her breath quicken, as she tried in vain to step backward. She drew closer to the Doctor, who was behaving like a father with a daughter.
“Yes, yes, I know you’re all fascinated by Seven,” he was saying, “but she’s already had her debriefing. If you want to talk to someone, talk to me.”
But they didn’t want the Doctor, they wanted Seven. Chakotay couldn’t believe it. These were all families of other crewmen. Good people, he was sure. Why then were they behaving like the paparazzi of old Earth, actually reaching out to touch Seven as though she were some kind of—
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a cool, female voice he knew very well. “Seven isn’t used to all this attention. You know her story. I ask you to please give her a little time to adjust.”
Small though she was, Janeway smoothly threaded her way with ease through the press of people to stand beside Seven. She slipped an arm about the younger woman’s waist and smiled at the crowd. It was a pleasant expression, but there was steel in that smile. Mama Janeway wasn’t about to let anyone hurt her cub.
The crowd drew back. Janeway’s appeal to their better natures had worked, at least for the moment. Chakotay was certain, though, that people would find some excuse or other to “drop by” Seven’s place at the table during the course of the dinner.
Politely but inexorably, Janeway steered Seven to a corner. The Doctor accompanied them, trotting beside them like an attentive dog, concern radiating from him. Janeway reached for a glass of champagne, thought better of it, and selected a glass of juice instead. She handed it to Seven. Chakotay smothered a smile. Seven would be better off if she didn’t touch a drop of alcohol tonight.
He finally managed to reach them. “Seven, I’m so sorry,” he said. “If you’d let me know that you had changed your mind about coming—”
“It’s quite all right, Commander,” she said, chilling him with the formal title. “I changed my mind at the last minute. I had no wish to intrude upon your reunion with old friends.” Her eyes lingered on the slim, beautiful form of Sveta as she spoke.
He stared at her, his heart sinking. How could she possibly think that her presence would be an intrusion? Would he ever understand this complex woman?
Chakotay decided it was time to cut to the chase on this. Firmly but gently, in a manner that brooked no argument, he clasped Seven’s elbow.
“Excuse us for a moment,” he said to Janeway and the Doctor. Before she could protest, he had steered her away. “That had to be awful,” he said before she could speak. “As I said, if you’d let me know you’d changed your mind, I could have helped prevent it somewhat.”
Her eyes were like chips of blue ice. “That is not necessary, Commander. It would appear that on Earth, I will need to learn to fight my own battles. I will not cower behind my—”
She closed her mouth, not finishing the sentence. What had she been going to say? “My lover”? “My friend”? “My commanding officer”?
He released his hold on her elbow. “Seven, this is me,” he said, softly. “Please don’t shut me out. I want to be there for you.”
She glanced away. “I know.”
“But you don’t want me there.” His voice was sad, but not surprised.
She looked back up at him. “Admiral Janeway said that you and I would get married in the future.”
He smiled. “You know, somehow that stuck in my mind.”
“But that was a future on Voyager. Not here.”
His smile faded. The ache in his heart pained him, but it also had a sense of inevitability about it. He didn’t want to hear any more, but she grimly pressed on, as if now that she had started, she had to say it all.
“Voyager
was my collective. I knew I was safe there. I trusted all of you; I knew all of you. I could. . . I could try to learn to love. But all that’s changed. We’ve returned to Earth. I’m a—an oddity.”
“Seven, that’s not true, you’re—”
“And I have to learn to find my place again. I knew who I was on Voyager. Here, I have no idea.”
He took a deep breath. The irony didn’t escape him. He had cared for three women on Voyager—Seska, Janeway, and Seven of Nine. One was a madwoman, a traitor, whose “yes” had never been real. The second had told him “no” gently and sweetly, because they were together on Voyager. And the third was telling him “no” because they weren’t together on Voyager. It was kind of funny, in a painful way.
“Can’t win for losing,” he said ruefully, chuckling despite his hurt.
She frowned slightly. “I do not understand,” she said.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s okay, Seven. You’re right. You need to learn who you are, and you need to do that without me coming along for the ride.”
He wanted to kiss her one last time, but he felt the myriad eyes upon them. So he contented himself with gently stroking her cheek, smiled at her, and let her go.
* * *
B’Elanna was surprised at how small her father appeared to her. To her as a child, he had been such a large, comforting presence; and when he had gone, his absence had been even more enormous. Now he seemed to be just human-sized. Not a god, not a demon; just a man. She recalled a man with shiny black hair; now that hair, though still thick, was more gray than black. There were wrinkles around his face that did not jibe with her memories, and a stiffness to his movements that pained her to see.
Her father was growing old.
John Torres was still fit and healthy for his age, but she had not watched him grow older gradually. This was a startling change to B’Elanna, one that she had glimpsed but not fully integrated when she had talked to him briefly on Voyager.
The way he was staring at her told her that she, too, had changed. Probably more than he. But children grew up, and parents grew old, and that was the way of the universe, wasn’t it? What did the universe care that one little half-Klingon woman grieved the death of her mother, and the aging of her father, and mourned even more deeply the opportunities for joy that the ill-fated triangle had missed?
Cradled in her mother’s arms, Miral made a soft, squawking noise. It broke the uncomfortable pause that had ensued after the first stiff round of greetings had been exchanged. At once, B’Elanna’s attention was diverted from father to child.
“May I hold her?” John Torres asked.
Not trusting her voice, B’Elanna nodded. As she placed Miral in her grandfather’s arms, B’Elanna’s body briefly touched her father’s. It was the first touch they had exchanged in years, and it felt like a shock passed through them.
Daddy.
And then the instant of physical warmth was gone, and John Torres was smiling down at his granddaughter. “She’s beautiful,” he said softly. “I am so sorry her namesake couldn’t be here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tom open his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, and before she could lose her courage, B’Elanna blurted, “How did my mother die?”
“So much for small talk,” Tom muttered.
Torres’s eyes flickered from the baby to his daughter. He looked dreadfully uncomfortable. For a moment, the thought flared in B’Elanna’s mind: Good. He should be uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him. All the warmth that she had been feeling for him turned to ice.
“How the hell can you not—”
“B’Elanna,” John said softly but firmly, “they never found the body. Your mother went on some sort of, I don’t know, some Klingon ritual. She never came back and was declared dead a year ago per Klingon law. I only learned about it myself quite recently. We—we weren’t in close contact.”
Shame washed over B’Elanna and she felt her cheeks grow hot. She was acutely aware of the Parises standing awkwardly by, trying to be present and yet not intervene. Tom had been right. Small talk would have been better.
There was not even a word in the Klingon language for “small talk.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that—”
“B’Elanna, dear,” said Mrs. Paris, “it’s all right. Everyone understands. You’ve had quite an adjustment to make and there’s so much that’s changed. Of course you’re going to be off-balance for a little while.”
The human woman reached as if to take her daughter-in-law’s hand, then seemed to think better of it. Before Julia could withdraw, B’Elanna reached out and clasped the other woman’s extended hand. A smile spread across Julia’s still-lovely face.
“B’Elanna received a message from someone named Commander Logt,” Tom said. “It was pretty cryptic. She said she needed to talk to B’Elanna about her mother, and that it was kind of urgent.”
John Torres frowned. “That name rings a bell,” he said. “Though I can’t imagine why she’d want to talk about Miral as if it was urgent.”
B’Elanna dropped Julia’s hand. “I have to talk to her,” said B’Elanna. She surged forward to leave, but Tom’s hand closed about her upper arm.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “the banquet is only going to be a couple of hours. I promise, we’ll send a message to this Logt the minute it’s over.”
She turned angrily, a sharp retort on her lips, but it died when she saw the pleading in his blue eyes. It’s my mother we’re talking about! she wanted to scream.
But it was also her father they were talking about, and he was right here, warm and alive. And it was Tom’s mother, and Tom’s father. The strange experience—she couldn’t call it a dream—about encountering her mother on the Barge of the Dead was always in her mind. But she was not the child John Torres remembered, willful and headstrong and rash. B’Elanna Torres still had her Klingon passion and pride embedded in her genes, but she had learned patience.
Well, she amended with a rueful smile, she was at least learning patience.
She nodded at Tom. She would stay for the banquet. Stay, and learn about who this father was now.
* * *
Libby Webber was even more beautiful than Harry Kim remembered. He was of course delighted to be reunited with his mom and dad; Harry was an only child, born late to these elderly parents and therefore all the more precious to them. He loved them fiercely, but he was a man now, not a little boy, and although he tried to be the dutiful son and pay those who bore him the attention and deference they deserved, damned if his head didn’t keep swinging around as if pulled to the woman standing across from him.
Had her eyes sparkled so brightly seven years ago? Was her hair that curly and thick, her smile that wide? He desperately wished he could talk with her alone, ask her how she had been, really been. Was there anyone else? There was no ring on her finger, but that didn’t rule out a serious boyfriend. Or girlfriend, for that matter—Harry wasn’t narrow-minded in his distressing scenarios of imagining Libby attached. They laughed and talked, but it was all shallow, all surface. If only they could speak deeply, as they used to, speak to and from the heart.
His feelings for her surprised him. There had certainly been other women in the intervening seven years. And they hadn’t been flings, either. Unlike some men he’d known, Harry knew that where his body went, his heart followed. Recollecting some of the things he had done, had felt, even now Harry felt a pang of loss. Once, he had believed in the very romantic concept that there was only one Someone for everyone, one true soul mate. He knew better now. Love—real love, not infatuation or passion—could be shared with more than one person in a lifetime.
She was watching him keenly, and as the shadows settled on his heart, she cocked her head in a gesture that was deeply familiar to him. Libby smiled, slowly, that wide, all-encompassing smile that had always made him feel like he was dancing on air.
>
“You’ve changed a lot, Harry,” she said softly. “I can see it in your eyes. You’ve really grown up.”
“Don’t I know it,” his mother sighed, seemingly unaware of the electric connection between her son and his former fiancée. “Just yesterday he was little Harry, singing in the sunshine with me. My baby boy.” She reached up and tousled his hair. Harry knew from experience that it was now standing straight up and he blushed, embarrassed.
“Ma,” he said, drawing the word out in exasperation as he tried to smooth his ruffled hair.
Libby laughed. “It is good to see you again,” she said.
Throwing caution to the wind, knowing he’d hear about it all through dinner and probably beyond, Harry turned to address his parents. “Excuse us for a moment,” he said, grabbed Libby’s hand, and pulled the startled woman toward a corner of the hall where they could talk.
“Harry,” she protested. “Your parents are going to be furious!”
“Let them be. They’ve got me for the rest of tonight and probably for a long time after that. I don’t—I don’t know how much time we’re going to have.”
He realized that he was still clutching her hand and released her. Libby clasped both hands behind her back. Not a good sign, Harry thought.
“Well, what do you want to talk about?”
He stared into her eyes. What did he want to talk about? What could they, separated for seven years, even have to talk about?
He knew what he wanted to say and do. He wanted to reach out to her, grasp her hands, and say, Libby, there have been other women. I’m sure that you’ve been with other men. We didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done, but now I’ve come home. And I see you again, and it’s as if I’ve never been away, and as if I’ve been gone for a thousand years. Is there someone else now? Could you learn to care for me. . . love me again? Is there anything left of love for me in you?
He said, “How’ve you been?” and hated himself.
She fixed him with a skeptical gaze. “I can’t believe you dragged me over here and annoyed your parents just to ask me how I’ve been,” she said, challenging him.
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