TITLE:
Dear Dad
AUTHOR:
Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
FEEDBACK
TO: shafshir@microconnect.net
RATING:
G
PART:
1/1
CODES:
J/P, some C/T. AU, obviously.
ARCHIVE:
Sure, why not? Just let me know.
DISCLAIMER:
Paramount owns the characters and the general situation, though they probably
didn't anticipate this particular use of same.
SUMMARY:
On the day of his wedding to Kathryn, Tom writes a letter to his father.
NOTE: This story originally appeared in THE
FLIGHT LOG 25 (n/l for Robbie McNeill fan club RanDoM Flight), and was edited
by Marianna Genakos.
Dear Dad
by
Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Dear Dad,
Well, I guess you'd say I really went and did
it this time.
I'm getting married today, Dad. Can you
believe it - me getting married? I almost can't believe it myself. And what I
really can't believe is that she'd even have me. She's only the most incredible
woman I know, and she's agreed to marry *me*? I better move quick before she
changes her mind.
Actually, you know her too, Dad. I think you
even kind of liked her. Well, as much as you liked anyone. Do you remember
Kathryn Janeway? Yeah, that's right: *Captain* Kathryn Janeway. My captain.
The more I think about it, the more I think
it's probably a good thing that you won't actually find out about our wedding
until it's way too late for you to do anything about it. You'd probably try to
talk her out of it. No, that's wrong. You wouldn't try to talk her out of it;
you'd *order* her to break the engagement. Tell her she has to go back to her
quarters and live the rest of her life – or at least the rest of this mission,
which might just amount to the same thing – alone, like a good little captain.
Tell her she can't touch. Tell her she can't love. Tell her she can't laugh.
Do
you have any idea how much you did to cripple her, you and all the other idiots
at Starfleet Headquarters and that crap you taught her about command isolation?
She's a beautiful, vibrant, passionate woman, and she was ready to die on the
vine sooner than break those precious unwritten rules of
yours. Well, I didn't let her.
I can see you snorting now, wanting to know
where a reprobate like me gets my nerve. How could I even think of a starship
captain as an eligible woman?
Well, I could say that living with you taught
me that starship captains weren't little plaster saints. And I guess that's
part of it. But it wasn't the first part. The first time I thought of Kathryn
as a woman - let's face it, the first time I thought of her as a human being -
was the night she hustled me at pool.
Oh,
she suckered me completely. She pretended she didn't know anything about the
game at all. Even called the cue a "stick." I decided to go easy on
her; I figured it would be bad policy to make the captain look bad, especially
on a long mission where I wasn't going to get a chance to transfer away. So I
smiled politely, and bowed her to the table,
and –
She shellacked me. Of course. I probably
should have seen it coming, but somehow it never occurred to me that a starship
captain would hustle a game. I mean, *you* wouldn't have. And then I looked at
her, smiling with the crew, and it occurred to me that there were a few other
ways she wasn't much like you, either. I couldn't even imagine you coming down
to my little holodeck Sandrine's, much less kidding with the crew.
Well,
she joined us for a few more pool nights, and I always made a point of
challenging her. No more pretending to take it easy on her, either. I tried to
give as good as I got, and we traded off victories for a while. When I got my
nerve up – real person or not, pretty woman or not, she *was* still my captain
–
I even flirted with her, a little bit. Well,
why not? I can't say I honestly expected to get anywhere with her. She just
oozed class, and I never got much of anywhere with classy women, unless there
was a really stupid husband or boyfriend hanging around to not appreciate them,
which was definitely not the case here. But she didn't seem to mind the
attention. I thought it amused her. At least, it made her smile sometimes, and
you know, I liked her smile.
Then she stopped coming to Sandrine's.
That was early in our second year, not too
long after we almost lost our first officer, Chakotay, to some stupid Kazon
rite-of-passage. That made our chief engineer, B'Elanna Torres, decide she'd
waited long enough to get some kind of commitment from him. Right after we
recovered him, she marched into Sickbay and proposed. My Sickbay contact told
me he goggled – but he accepted. (I can't blame him for either reaction;
B'Elanna is quite a woman. If I'd been braver back in the Maquis, I might have
gone after her myself. But even then, she and Chakotay were a major item.) And
of course Kathryn had to perform the ceremony. It was our first wedding on
Voyager.
Oh, she said all the right words, and she
made all the appropriate expressions of joy. And I knew that on some level she
really *was* happy for them. She knew them both pretty well by that time, and everybody
could see how much they belonged together. But to me she seemed a little
withdrawn, a little depressed. Even when I danced with her – oh, don't let your
eyes bug out, Dad, it was a party and half the officers there danced with her –
she was too quiet. I tried to flirt with her, and she didn't even deflect me.
It was like she didn't hear me.
So when she stopped coming to Sandrine's
right after that, I got a little worried. I didn't think she really cared one
way or the other about Chak being taken out of circulation – near as I could
tell, there was never any interest there – so I wondered what was bothering
her. Of course, I saw her a lot on the job, too, but that didn't make me feel
any better about her. She was just as smart a captain as ever, and just as
efficient, but she hardly ever told stories on the bridge any more, and it
seemed like she never made jokes.
Chakotay
and B'Elanna were too caught up in newlywed bliss to pick up on anything like
subtle emotional cues from the captain, and Tuvok wasn't cut out to catch stuff
like that. Much as I like Harry, he was just too young, and the Doc didn't have
enough emotional experience. Kes might have picked up on
something – she was real perceptive – but I
think Kathryn was avoiding her. So nobody seemed to notice but me, and I didn't
have any idea what the problem was or what I should do. I worried about her. I
missed her smile.
A couple months later, I decided to go down
to the holodeck one night when I couldn't sleep. Well, it turned out both the
decks were in use, but somebody was running Sandrine's on one of them. Since
that's my program, nobody's ever objected if I walked in on it. So I did. And I
found her there, shooting pool all by herself.
She looked up, but not right at me.
"Oh," she said. "Tom. I suppose you want to use the
program." She moved to leave.
It had been so long since I'd seen her there,
I didn't want to see her go. "We can both use it," I offered.
"I'd rather have some live competition anyway."
Her eyes met mine, and they were flat, like
she was hiding something. "I don't think that would be a good idea,"
she said. Her voice was flat too. And she went to walk past me.
You know what, Dad? I don't know where I got
my nerve, either. But I reached out and put a hand on her arm, and she stopped.
"Why not?" I said.
"Tom –" she said, and broke off.
And she looked sad, so sad.
I didn't know what it meant, but something in
that look, and something in her voice, made my heart do a weird little twist in
my chest. "Why not?" I said again. (I honestly couldn't think of
anything else to say.)
"It's not - appropriate," she said
simply, and made one more attempt to leave.
I let her go that time. But I didn't play any
pool, and I didn't get much sleep the rest of the night, either. I was thinking
about what she said. "Not appropriate"? What in the world - any world
- did that mean? Why would playing pool with me not be appropriate? And did it
have anything to do with why she'd gotten so sad and withdrawn since Chakotay
and B'Elanna got married?
Then, at about 0400, I heard you in my head,
reciting one of your famous Starfleet-issue speeches about command isolation.
"The higher, the fewer," all that crap. And it hit me: she'd gotten
sad and withdrawn after Chakotay and B'Elanna got married because she knew
she'd never be able to make that choice, not as long as we were on Voyager. If
she thought it was "inappropriate" for her to play pool with me, it
might mean one of two things. One, that she didn't think it would be
appropriate to make friends with me. Two, that she was afraid that if we spent
enough time together, she might be tempted to make me more than a friend. Which
she could never do as long as, and so on.
Well, she had other friends on the ship, like
Tuvok and maybe even Chakotay. And she hadn't seemed so worried about making
friends with me before. So, did that mean –?
I remembered the look in her eyes, there in
Sandrine's, and I thought maybe it did. The thought made my heart do that weird
little twist again.
I asked the computer to flag me the next time
she used Sandrine's. Normally it won't tell you what other people are using,
but Sandrine's is *my* program, after all.
A couple weeks after that, I got the signal
one night at about 0130. I got dressed and went down to the holodeck.
And there she was, all by herself, lining up
a shot. She was in her uniform – I don't think I'd ever seen her out of uniform
back then – but somehow she didn't look like a captain, just that minute. She
looked lonely.
I didn't so much want to protect her. Even
I'm not macho enough to presume like that, not with a woman like Kathryn
Janeway. But I wanted to help her. I wanted to hold her. And it looked to me
like she would be just the right size to fit into my arms....
Then she noticed me watching her.
"Tom," she said quietly. And she moved to leave. Again.
I put up a hand to stop her. "What did
you mean?" I said. She looked confused, so I said, "About it not
being appropriate. You and me playing pool."
She got a stubborn _expression on her face.
"It wouldn't."
"Why not? We played pool together
before, and it didn't bother you then." I was brave enough to take a few
steps closer. "And it didn't bother anybody else, either. What's the
difference now?"
"It's different," she said. The
tone told me to back off.
But I didn't. "How?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you,
Mister Paris."
*Mister Paris.* Ooh, *that* sounded cold.
Putting me in my place and all that. I guess it should've scared me off. But
you know what, Dad? I guess you spent so much time putting me in my place that
I just got used to hearing stuff like that. I took a few more steps closer.
"No, you don't," I said, deliberately meeting her eyes. She has
wonderful eyes, big and dark blue like a clear lake. But right then they kind
of reminded me of a wild animal's eyes, looking back and forth like she was
trying to find a way to escape. "You don't have to tell me anything,"
I told her. I kept my voice real gentle like I was trying to calm that wild
animal down, which was just about how I felt then. "But I wish you
would." I took another step. "Kathryn."
She almost jumped. As far as I knew, nobody'd
called her "Kathryn" since we came into the Delta Quadrant. (Unless
maybe Tuvok did, but coming from him it wouldn't sound any more personal than
"Captain.") But she looked me in the eyes. "Don't, Tom,"
she said, real soft.
"Don't be afraid of me, Kathryn," I
answered her, just as soft. I was close to her then, so close I could have
reached out and touched her. But I didn't.
"I'm not afraid of you, Tom," she
said. She was still looking right at me, but her voice wasn't as strong as it
could've been.
"Good," I said. I probably
should've backed off then, and said, "Then let's play pool," or
something else lame like that. It would've been safer. But I guess you were
right about me, Dad. Sometimes I'm reckless.
So I didn't say anything else. I just took
her hand.
Nobody said anything for a minute, nobody
moved, nobody breathed....And then she turned her hand in mine, and gripped it.
She still didn't look away, but her eyes got bright. And oh God, I wanted to
kiss her, more than I've ever wanted to kiss anybody, but even I'm not reckless
enough to push that hard that soon. So I settled for a peck on the cheek - but
you know, there was more of my heart in that peck on the cheek than I put in a
lot of, well, more intimate stuff. When I pulled back, her lips were kind of
trembly, and her eyes....there was definitely something softer there.
I never figured on what happened next.
She took a deep breath, and she squared her
shoulders. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, leaned up, and kissed *my*
cheek.
I was stunned. Then she squeezed my shoulder,
and her voice sounded almost normal when she said, "Let's play some pool,
Tom."
My mouth was dry. "I'd like that –
Kathryn."
It was probably the worst game of pool I've
ever played. And you know what? She didn't play so well, either.
Well, that wasn't as-they-say
"that," but I guess you could call it a start. The months after that,
we played some more pool, and I introduced her to a few of my other vices, too.
(No, not the ones you're thinking of, Dad. I know better than to rush a lady.)
Some of the 20th-century stuff she wasn't too crazy about, but she really liked
the amusement parks. Still does. You should see her eyes sparkle when she's
riding in the front car of a roller coaster....I won her a big stuffed dog
once, at one of the carnie booths, for knocking over some milk jugs. Then she
won me a big panda bear, for putting three darts in the middle of a painted
apple. She looked at me with this sly guess-you're-not-so-smart look in her
eyes, and we both laughed. And that was the first time I really kissed her.
Later I blew some replicator rations to
recreate the animals. We still have them.
Geez, look at the time! I'm gonna be late to
my own wedding if I don't wrap this up soon. But then, you always did say I was
gonna be. Late to my own wedding, I mean. Or was that my funeral? (I never did
get why that was a bad thing, Dad. I mean, who'd want to be early for their
*funeral*?) Whichever. Anyway, like I said before, I don't want to give her
time to change her mind. You'd probably say, to come to her senses.
I'm
not going to tell you that it's always been easy. After all, she's still the
captain, and I'm still her subordinate. She tries so hard not to show any signs
of favoritism on the bridge that sometimes I feel downright picked on. (I even
*volunteered* for some shifts in Sickbay, can you believe it?) And I'm
on my best behavior as much as I can be, so
hopefully nobody will feel like I'm trying to get away with stuff because I'm
with her. Not that she'd stop Chakotay or Tuvok from disciplining me, but I
guess that could get pretty awkward.
But things aren't too bad. And it's
definitely worth it. I mean, she's definitely worth it.
Well, now I really have to finish getting ready.
Harry's going to be ringing my door chime off the wall in a few minutes. And
we'll get to the mess hall and there she'll be, in her dress uniform, with her
lips trembling and her eyes sparkling, waiting for me....I can't wait to see
her. She's going to be gorgeous. We'll send you holographs when we get in
range.
I hope she's smiling. I know I will be.
And hey, Dad, look on the bright side. You
probably think I'm corrupting Kathryn. But isn't it just as likely she's
reforming me? Like we say around here, anything is possible in the Delta
Quadrant.
Gotta go, Dad. See you around.
Your
son,
Tom