Fan Fiction
TITLE: Chakotay's Holidays: Life With Father
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: PG
CODES: C/T
PART: 12/?
DISCLAIMER: Paramount will little note, nor long remember,
what I do here. But they still own the VOY copyrights, so they get a shout-out
anyway.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Diane Bellomo for betaing.
SUMMARY: B'Elanna and John Torres get to the dangerous part in their ongoing
conversation. C/T implied.
"No, that's all right, I'll get it." John Torres walked out to B'Elanna's kitchen replicator to get himself some coffee. "Anything for you while I'm up?"
"Raktajino for me," B'Elanna said. "The way I like it is the default."
"That makes sense."
A few minutes later he emerged from the kitchen unit, two steaming cups in hand. B'Elanna identified her own beverage before he even offered her the mug; the strong, almost pungent aroma of the Klingon caffeine-of-choice was unmistakable. John handed her the cup, and retreated cautiously to her armchair. "So where's Miral today?"
B'Elanna took a sip of the raktajino, savoring its potency. "She's with her father."
John blinked his surprise. "Really?"
She frowned, irritated. "Yes, really. He sees her all the time." For the moment she refrained from drawing the obvious comparison.
"Oh." John took a swallow of his own drink, but the slight shaking of his hand must have spoiled his aim; he immediately started coughing as if the warm liquid had gone down wrong. Clearly, he'd heard the words she hadn't spoken. He set the mug down. "That's nice."
"Yes, it is." Daring him to comment further.
John Torres had been coming to visit B'Elanna (and usually, Miral as well) for several months now. B'Elanna had rejected his overtures the first several times, but when he'd persisted she'd finally yielded and let him in. Since then, they'd had a series of tentative, quiet connections that B'Elanna had reluctantly come to look forward to. They would end eventually; her experience of bonding with John Torres was that it ALWAYS ended eventually. But while they lasted she'd enjoyed the rare chance to hear some happier stories about her girlhood and her parents' marriage, and the opportunity to learn what had happened to relatives she hadn't seen or heard from in some time.
Today, though...there was something in her mood, something in the air, today. One of her coworkers had mentioned a few days ago that today was the traditional date, in the United States, for a holiday set aside to honor fathers. It seemed to B'Elanna that there was a certain irony in the fact that she would be spending this "Father's Day" with a father who had never earned a great deal of honor in his role.
Apparently John Torres did NOT dare to comment further on Tom and his active fatherhood. B'Elanna wasn't surprised. John hadn't had the courage to face a quarrel with her even when she was a girl. Back then (and for a long time afterward) she had blamed her mother and herself, for being the kind of women whose anger could not be withstood by an ordinary human: women of the hardy and volatile Klingon race. Now, having learned to accept more of that stormy part of her nature -- indeed, having been encouraged to embrace it -- she felt a certain contempt for him. Was he so weak that even harsh words were too much for him to withstand? Even Tom Paris was more of a man than that. And Chakotay -- he withstood angry words with the ease of an oak tree withstanding arrows.
"Actually," B'Elanna asserted, "I'm glad Miral's dad wants to be a part of his daughter's life." Which was true, but which was also goading her own sire.
No response, beyond a familiar hunted look in John Torres's eyes. That only prodded her further. "HE understands that divorcing your wife doesn't mean divorcing your child."
Something flared in the man's eyes, but his voice was quiet when he at last responded. "You obviously have some things you want to say to me, B'Elanna."
The statement was like a red flag to an alien bull. The very softness of his voice was a too-potent reminder of the differences between them, the differences that he had let chase him away. Was he making a show of his human composure, in contrast to her rising Klingon anger? If so, then to hell with him and his sarcasm. "Do you think so?" she flared. "Do you THINK so?"
"B'Elanna --" He was out of his chair now, approaching cautiously as if he thought he could somehow gentle her by the right approach.
She would not be handled. "Yes, Dad, I have some things I want to SAY to you!"
He stopped where he stood, visibly bracing himself. "Go ahead, then," he said, his jaw tightening in a way that, in any other man, she would have taken for resolution. But this was John Torres, a man to whom she knew the concept of resolution was foreign.
"Are you sure you don't want to leave now?" she taunted. "That's what you did the last time we had this conversation."
He flinched, but shook his head. "I'll stay."
That much won him a jot of unwilling respect. Still, it would not be the first time he'd promised more than he could deliver. Barely heard, a part of her wanted to pull back, wanted to refrain in the name of keeping him here, of keeping him in her life. But the anger, too long restrained, at last demanded its way.
"You bastard!" she burst out. "You deserted me! You left me alone there on Kessik, with humans who thought I was a freak! And why shouldn't I believe them? I was too Klingon for my own father! Why should anybody else want me?" Oh, dear gods, the years upon years of mockery, of laughter, of "Miss Turtlehead," and she had taken all of it, because even her father must believe it -- even her own father had walked away because of what she was. Chakotay, and later others like Tom, Harry, and Captain Janeway, had tried to convince her that her hybrid strength was actually an asset, that it made her who she was. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, her father's judgment-by-abandonment had never been surmounted.
John Torres sucked in a breath, his eyes widening, but he didn't look away.
"I was too Klingon?" she snarled. "Did it EVER occur to you that when you married a Klingon woman you might just possibly end up with a Klingon child? Or didn't you do the math?"
"B'Elanna!" The protest seemed to burst from his lips involuntarily.
She blazed on, too furious to stop. "Or was I more like a puppy to you? Sure I was cute when I was little, but once I was grown you suddenly realized I was actually a BITCH?"
He flinched again, but somewhere found the nerve to speak up. "It wasn't like that."
"Oh, really? What was it like, then?"
He looked right at her, then, his eyes intent but their expression somehow helpless. "What do you want me to tell you, B'Elanna?"
"I want you to admit you ran like a scared child!"
He breathed deeply, straightening. "All right, then," he said, in a steadier voice than she could ever remember hearing from him. "I ran like a scared child."
"I want you to admit you were a coward."
"I was a coward."
"I want you to admit what you did was wrong!"
"What I did was wrong."
"Do you have any idea how much you HURT me?"
He averted his eyes then, a gesture all-too-truly characteristic of the John Torres she remembered. And then, astonishingly, he turned back to her, full on, vulnerable, and clearly shamed. "I do now." More astonishingly, he walked to her, slowly, deliberately. Every step was clearly an effort, but he did not stop until he stood within inches of her, still meeting her blazing eyes. "And I know there's nothing I can ever do that will change that."
He lay a hand on her shoulder, and she remembered (as she had not since he left her that first time), that for all that he lacked a bold heart, and for all that his frame was slight, physically John Torres was no weakling. "But B'Elanna, I'm here now. And I'm not leaving."
B'Elanna stared at him in pure surprise...and the tentative beginnings of joy.
It was the most amazing Father's Day the two of them had ever celebrated.
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Later she called Chakotay, to tell him of this astonishing turn of events. "And before he left, he asked me if Miral and I wanted to go to the park with him next Saturday!"
Chakotay's voice was warm with pleasure. "And do you?"
"Yeah." She smiled. "I think we'd like that a lot."
