Rated - PG
        Disclaimer - These characters are not mine, except for Sienna, Tommy, Jules, Amanda, Navajo, and Denise. Everything else belongs to Paramount, UPN, Disney, Berman, Piller, Taylor, Mrs. Roddenberry, who ever! I just know they don’t belong to me. Don’t sue me, I have no money.
        Author's Notes - I don't know why I'm even posting this here. It's one of the oldest fan fictions you'll find on my site and probably the only finished Star Trek one. I'm including my original author's notes below, just for kicks.
        Old Author's Notes -
Hi All!
 This is my first attempt at a Voyager story. Any of you who has read my Babylon 5 fan fictions will realize very quickly that this is quite different from the stuff I usually write. First of, unlike most my stories, all the characters don’t die! Secondly, it’s not meant to be a heart-wrenching epic. It’s one story and while I may end up writing a sequel, it’s not a tearjerker or tragic. I realized, as I was reading through many P/T stories, that a lot of the titles and plots follow songs. I remembered this song {from Disney’s Pocahontas soundtrack} and figured I’d give it a shot! I’ve really enjoyed just about all of the stories I’ve read and I hope you all like this, too. Please let me know either way! I can always use some criticism. I apologize in advance for the few spelling mistakes I may have missed. My e-mail address is [email protected] Thank you so much!
      Isis

P.S. This is dedicated to all of the B5 teens who are also trekkies. We do exist! You can like both shows without being a traitor!!!! Love y’all!
 
 
 
 
 
 

     “What?” She screamed infuriated, her eyes bulging out, “You did what?”
     “Nothing!” He yelled back in defense, “I just knocked out the warp engines on the shuttlecraft so I’d have more power to use the manuvering thrusters.”
     “Did you realize that you were being chased by three hostile ships through an asteroid field at the time? We didn’t need the ore that badly. You couldn’t have gotten out fast enough if you had really needed to. You’re lucky we found you at all, much less alive!” She bellowed out with a look that seemed to scream ‘Your turbolift is not going to the top deck!’
     “Listen, B’Elanna, I did what I needed to do to survive out there, maybe if the shuttles had been  in better condition I wouldn’t have had to take that risk!” He snapped without thinking.
    B’Elanna recoiled, all of Engineering stared, mouths gapping open, at the sight of Voyagers most beloved couple falling apart at the seams.
     “Believe what you want to Paris. You know, sometimes I wish we’d never met!” Her calmed voice proclaimed. She was barely capable of keeping it from quivering in anger andn pain. Before he could say a word, she turned and stormed out.

     “How dare he,” she muttered to herself, alone in the turbolift. “It’s not like I don’t work constantly to keep this damned ship in running order. Forget that I upgrade systems, keep recreational facilities on-line, and somehow manage to find time for him too! He’s lucky the shuttlecrafts can fly at this point, never mind go through asteroid fields at full thrusters while dodging photon torpedoes.”
     “You are really unappreciated, aren’t you?” A voice mocked her. B’Elanna turned quickly to her right and glared at the intruder.
     “Q, what do you want?” She demanded.
     “Now, now, don’t be hostile, Lieutenant. I outrank you!” He quipped with mock seriousness, gesturing to his rank pips.    B’Elanna was not amused.
     Q sighed, “I merely wish to help.”
     “Help?” she smirked, “I don’t think I want any of your help, Q. I’ve heard entirely too much about your prior attempts.”
     “Oh, my reputation precedes me! No matter, perhaps I should leave you to yell at Tom Paris. However, considering he’s not here, it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.”
     She ignored the last statement, “Yes, please leave!” She snarled.
     “I will, but unfortunately, you must come with me,” Q confided in her, quite seriously.
     “What? Why?” She yelled.
     “So inquisitive! Because, I have been ordered by the continuum to do a good deed for someone on this ship. They seem to think I owe your Captain for solving our little war.”
     “Then do her a favor!” B’Elanna yelled, “Or send us home! Now that would be a favor. Why me?”
     “Alas, I can do nothing so grandiose as send you home. Your journey is as necessary as that of Odysseus and twice as legendary. As for why you, you intrigue me! I’m not really all that familiar with Klingons. The only one I’ve ever been aquatinted with was Worf. I expected you to be just as dull and boring, but you aren’t. You’re torn. Much more violent but, you contain it, out of fear, much the way you supress all your emotions.”
     B’Elanna caught the hint but chose to ignore it, “Then what do you intend to do, as your favor?”
     “A moment ago, you wished you’d never met Lt. Paris. I intend to show you what your life would be like if you never had. No one will be able to see you, you won’t pollute the time streams or alternate universes,” he mocked, “your ‘Prime Directive’ will be safe and no harm will come to you. At the end of the journey, you will return back to this reality, an hour in your future. Alright?”
     B’Elanna paused, the idea was appealing, “Since I have no choice,” she concluded.
     “Wonderful,” Q smiled as the two disappeared in a flash of blue light.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

     Acrid black smoke filled B’Elanna’s lungs.
     “Stabilize the magnetic constrictors, Chacotay,” she heard herself yell.
     “I can’t, that last blast threw them out of alignment,” he shouted back, “Seska, get us out of here!”
     B’Elanna flinched as she saw her other self working furiously over the aft console. Her blood-caked face contorted in frustration at the growing problems the small maquis ship undoubtedly had. Out the viewscreen she could see two Federation starships chasing them.
     “Seska,” Chacotay’s voice called out, B’Elanna scowled, catching the name, “take us into the badlands. Let’s hope they don’t decide to follow us in.”
     B’Elanna turned around, searching for Q. Spotting him leaning non-chalantly against the starboard bulkhead with an amused smile on his face, B’Elanna slowly made her way over.
     “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that things change this much just because I never met Tom Paris!” B’Elanna stated, giving her best impression of Janeway’s authoritative look.
     “My dear!” Q said in mock surprise, “You misunderstood me. You didn’t simply ‘never meet him’. In this timeline, he never existed. Do you know what day this is B’Elanna?”
     “No, should I?” She asked, mildly annoyed.
     “In your timeline, this would have been the day that your dear Flyboy was captured by the Federation. However, with a much inferior pilot handling the diversion for your little renegade operation, the shuttle that should have been Tom’s was overwhelmed much quicker, not giving you and your… comrades,” Q looked at Chacotay with distaste, “the time to retreat.”
     “Chacotay!” The other B’Elanna screamed, “There are three Cardie Battleships coming right for us, from the badlands.”
     “I doubt you will fare as well as Helmboy did,” Q tisked.
     B’Elanna watched the viewscreen as her counterpart, Chacotay, and Seska did their best to escape the ships. In the end, however, they found themselves captured by the Cardassians.
     Then, just as quickly as she had arrived, B’Elanna disappeared from the timeline. Finding herself on a vaguely familiar planet she turned to Q, “What now?”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

     “That was one of two options. The other option was to be caught by the Federation, a much more pleasant fate, I assure you. In that timeline, you and your comrades were prisoners of the ‘Cardies’ for more than a decade before they mercifully allowed you to die. In this timeline, Captain Janeway released you, Seska, and Chacotay to help her find maquis outposts.”
    Seeing B’Elanna was about to protest, Q raised his hand, “No, no, you would never agree to help her. Except, you knew someone had betrayed you and revealed your plans to the Cardassians and the Federation. That someone was of course Seksa. However, not knowing that, you and Chacotay decided that Tuvok was a spy and you agreed to hunt him down.”
     B’Elanna looked slightly more satisfied with that explanation and allowed him to continue. “I must admit, from there on things went remarkably without change from what you’ve experienced, until now.”
     Hearing footfalls, B’Elanna glanced upward to the top of the cavern and saw Voyager’s crew.
     “Without Tom,” Q whispered, “Seska and the Kazon would have taken your precious ship and the Talaxian convoy would never have come to help. In this timeline you and your crewmates live out your pathetic lives on this miserable planet. You manage to create some kind of a colony. In fact, you do quite well. Until about fifty years from now when a volcanic eruption will kill you all.”
     “Great,” B’Elanna said sarcastically.
     “Now,” Q said, “I’ve shown you your past and present without Tom and, since you’d be dead in the future, I can’t show you that. However, I can show you your future with good old Helmboy. You will only remember impressions of it when you leave the future, a vague feeling. It won’t alter anything. You have my word.”
     More than a little interested, B’Elanna agreed.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

     “Mommy, where’s my racquet?” A little blond girl, about nine years old, called out to the older B’Elanna.
     “It’s under your hiking gear in the closet, Jules. If you put it away for a change, you’d know where it was,” She hinted.
     The girl’s brown eyes rolled sarcastically as she ran off to get her racquet.
     “That’s my daughter?” B’Elanna asked Q incredulously.
     Q nodded, “Just wait, it gets better.”
     “Ma,” a devilishly handsome young teenage boy called out, poking his head in the room, “I’m gonna go play pool with Denise.”
     “It’s fine with me Tommy, but make sure she asks her Dad. You know how Uncle Harry gets when she doesn’t ask before she goes out on a date,” B’Elanna replied staring over her Engineering PADD.
     “It isn’t a date, Mom” Tommy blushed, a sure sign that it was.
     “Thomas,” She started.
     “Yes, Mom,” Tommy sighed in defeat.
     “He looks exactly like Tom,” the younger B’Elanna commented.
     Q nodded in acknowledgement. “He acts like him, too,” He said dryly.
     “I can’t believe this is my future!” B’Elanna exclaimed.
     “It is,” Q confirmed. “In this time, twenty-five years from now to be exact…” he was interrupted.
     “Twenty-five years?” She asked. “You’re telling me that Tom and I don’t have kids for ten years?”
     “I never said that,” Q grinned evilly.
     “Mother?” A stunning young woman spoke quietly as she entered the room. Her waist-length dark brown hair, streaked with blond highlights and her blue eyes, rimmed with brown, seemed to soften her entrancing appearance somehow.
     B’Elanna stood breathless and suddenly feeling inadequate, “She’s who I wanted to be, as a child,” B’Elanna breathed.
     The elder B’Elanna looked up and smiled, “Did you talk it over with Captain Janeway?” She asked.
     “Yes, I did. She didn’t like it much, but she acknowledged that the older children should be able to move out and take our own quarters. I suspect, she dislikes the idea so much because Amanda and Navajo are so close to my age, she knows they’ll want to move out, too.”
     “Well, she knows it’s time,” the girl’s mother said as she sighed. “I can’t say I like the idea too much either, Sienna. You’re my baby! I don’t know what I’ll do without you here.”
     Sienna smiled lightly and laughed, “I’ll be just down the hall, Mother. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on Amanda. She may be my best-friend, but she’s very… well, she’s outgoing.”
     “She’s wild,” B’Elanna stated bluntly, pushing her gray hair behind her ear.
     “I don’t imagine it will be too long before you move in with Navajo,” B’Elanna tried not to grin as she glanced down to her PADD.
     “Mother! I’m only twenty! I have plenty of time to settle down,” Sienna exclaimed.
     “I know, but I’m not blind. It’s coming sooner than you think and sooner than your father would like! He may have a fit, but he likes Navajo. He’ll warm up to the idea,” B’Elanna smiled.
     Sienna sighed in reply, “You’re impossible Mother!”
     “Never forget that!” B’Elanna grinned, “Your father would never have married me if I weren’t!”
     “I’m going to go pack,” Sienna announced. “Bye Mom,” she said as she leaned down and kissed her mother on the cheek.
 B’Elanna shook her head as she watched her daughter leave the room.
     “Q,” the younger B’Elanna said, “I don’t know how to thank you. I never thought I’d be that happy in my life!”
     “Don’t thank me yet, Mademoiselle,” Q grinned, “You have yet to see your husband.”
     B’Elanna turned to see a much older, yet still attractive, Tom Paris enter the room. His wife, facing the other direction, had not yet seen him. “Hey love,” he murmured as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
     “Hey yourself,” she replied kissing him contently, “How was your day?”
    “Oh you know, plot a straight line, follow it. Not much was going on. You,” he asked his wife.
    “Not much, I had to replace a couple dozen gel packs and reconfigure the dilithium matrix twice, but nowadays that's a good day!”
    The younger B’Elanna balked. A day like that would go down in history as one of her worst, right next to all her days of honor! She never had to do that much work in a day.
    “I’ve had the weirdest feeling of deja-vous all day,” the elder B’Elanna continued.
    “Yeah, well that’s cause we’re an old married couple so set in our ways that everything seems the same because it is!”
    B’Elanna smacked him on the arm, “Speak for yourself, I am not old!”
    “Love, you used the word ‘nowadays’ in a sentence,” Tom reminded her.
    “I did not… Did I? Oh, I guess I am old.”
    “That’s okay, I think you’re perfect!” He smiled kissing her sweetly.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

    Suddenly, B’Elanna found herself back in the turbolift. “Computer, what time is it?” she asked.
    “The time is 2207 hours,” it replied.
    “Thank you, Q,” B’Elanna whispered.
    Stepping out of the turbolift, B’Elanna recognized Tom Paris’ quarters to her right, “I got the hint Q, I didn’t need you to put me on his deck!”
    Stepping to the door, she waited for him to acknowledge her presence.
    “Who is it?” Tom’s voice called from inside.
    “It’s me,” she replied, “can we talk?”
    After a slight hesitation, the doors opened.
    “Tom, I’m so sorry for saying all those things. I didn’t mean them. I was just so scared when you were out there and it all built up. I never meant to lash out at you. I love you so much and the thought of losing you just took over my mind. Can you please forgive me?” B’Elanna rushed through her whole speech so fast it took Tom a moment to digest it.
    “Lanna, there’s nothing to forgive. I knew you were just upset and I blew it. I didn’t mean to insult you or the ship. You do so much work,” he paused. “I can’t even explain why I yelled at you. I just, I just was taken off guard. It’s no excuse, but it’s the explanation. I love you more than life. The minute you said you wished we’d never met. I felt like if we had never met I didn’t want to exist.”
    “Oh, Tom,” B’Elanna sighed as she hugged him with all her strength, trying desperately not to cry. “I didn’t mean it. If it weren’t for you I’d be dead right now. You’ve saved my life. No, you’ve made my life. I never want to lose you again.”
    “You won’t, I promise,” Tom said with such passion, she had no choice but to believe him.
    Somewhere, at the edge of existence, though he would have denied it, Q smiled.