Archive Submission Author: BDoll Title: Not Endgame Summary:B'Elanna Torres goes though a Space/Time Anomaly and sees the past and future as it could have been if Admiral Janeway had not gone back in time. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com Title: Not Endgame Author: BDoll Summary: B'Elanna Torres goes though a Space/Time Anomaly and sees the past and future as it could have been if Admiral Janeway had not gone back in time. I hate mornings. They always come too early and this one has come earlier then it should. My head hurts. I shift under the sheets and still feel tried and nauseated. I decide that staying in bed will not help my disposition, although I would love to stay. Stay and let the planet I am on revolves again until it has turned again and the darkness of night has once again reclaimed the side that I am on. I blink and look around the room. Things seem different. Out of place. I must have a worse headache then I first thought. I go to the bathroom and turn on the hydro shower. Take my bathrobe off the hook and put it on to go down stairs. As the exit my room I stop. I stop because standing there is a boy, a man? He looks like he was about to knock on the door before I opened it. "Hey, Mom-" He was about to say something else but stops because he sees my face. "You okay?" he says in that apprehensive way that children say things because they know that something is so wrong that it even bothers their parents. I can't breathe. He just called me mom. And he looks some much like his father-if such a child existed. I am dumbstruck. The boy turns and calls out for his father because I don't answer. I just stare. Is this some kind of joke I wonder. A hologram? Because this is not funny and can't be funny. Who would do something so mean? So mean as to create a hologram of a child that looks like MY child would have looked if he had not died. My husband comes up the stairs. "Julian stop yelling." He says. As he says this I faint. When I come to I am in my room again and I again notice the difference in the surroundings. This isn't my house. Just as I start to get up the doctor comes to me and runs a scanner over me. Leave me alone I say and then I see Tom. He looks concerned. "He's just checking you out B'Elanna" he says. "Just try to stay calm. It is probably an after effect of that anomaly that you went through on your way back from Kronos." he says soothingly. Anomaly? "What anomaly?" I ask. And then he tells me. He tells me that I ran across an anomaly in a shuttle I was in. I was the only one rescued. Everybody else died. There was one other similar anomaly in Starfleet records. Harry Kim went through it, a time stream. I remember that. It was over twenty-five years ago. He said that he woke up and some of the events of his life had been radically altered. But that didn't happen to me. I was pulled out and I didn't remember anything but being in that shuttle. This kid. They tell me that he is mine. Tom's and mine. But you see, my son died. He died a week before he was due. Some unhappy Fen Domar came in to the engine room. I was shot with a phaser. I survived. The baby did not. The baby was a boy. Instead the baby died before he had a chance to live. That was a hard time for my husband and me. If we had not been on Voyager we would have gotten a divorce. But on Voyager what was the point. We would see each other every waking moment anyway. We walked in a daze for a while. A year in fact. Then we pulled ourselves together. For Miral. The child that was still alive. And in the process Tom and I begin to like one another again. We decide we wanted to be together not just because we are out in the middle of nowhere but because we want to, but things are never the same. We are not the same, individually or separately. We are more distant. Less together. Hardened. We feel foolish for ever thinking that we could have a family on board a lone starship in the Delta Quadrant. We decided not to have any other children. Here I am though. I have two children. A boy and a girl. Miral and Julian. Julian, we named him after a doctor that was stationed on DS9 that delivered him. How do I know that? He has my dark hair, tan skin, and forehead ridges but he has his father's deep blue eyes and sense of humor. They both drive me crazy-in a good way. I remember that? They drive me crazy with their terrible jokes all the time. How? How do I remember? I mention that we have only been back in the Alpha Quadrant for about three years. As I tell my story, mention the Fen Domar it makes the EMH sit up straighter. He recognizes the name. "*Admiral Janeway* mentioned the Fen Domar," he says. He says "Admiral Janeway" in such a strange way. As if it is not the normal Admiral Janeway. I am still mad at her. I am bitter for being lost in the Delta Quadrant and losing my child. For that lose and the destruction that it did to my family. He goes to contact Admiral Janeway. Then I talk to her. As I talk to her, and Tom talks to her, she realizes that somehow that anomaly made me live a different path. A path that would have happened if an older Kathryn Janeway had not come and changed it. In this reality we, my family, has been home for over 19 years. The 22 people who died, the ones I remember dying and an older Janeway mentioned, of those 22 one was Julian, an infant that was never named. A child that only breathed one breathe on his own and then died. But here he is now. Weeks have past. I visited Miral at Starfleet Academy. She is happier then I ever remember her. And so am I. I remember things. At first it was little things like Julian and Tom's sense of humor being so similar. Now I remember more. Being in this new life, which isn't really new, reminds me of it. I see something and I remember. I remember. Almost everything. I remember when Julian was born. I remember going back to school to finish my degree. Not with Starfleet but deciding to studying with the Klingon Empire. With my expertise in the Delta Quadrant, the Borg and Trans Warp technology the Empire was more then happy to have me study at their most prestigious schools, unlike the Federation that considered me a out-law still in so many ways. In my other life I never finished my degree, a regret I always carried. When I came home I felt too old. Old and worn. But here, in this life, Tom had encouraged me. So many differences, fewer in regrets. *************************************************************** Today I have convinced Tom that I am okay. I tell him that I can indeed be without him for a few hours, while he goes out. I will not break down if I hear from someone I think is dead. I will not cry when I see my son's baby pictures or see holoimages of my daughter playing in the sunshine on the beach instead of on a starship. It has been weeks since I went through the anomaly. I remember the past that I lived, really lived, even if I do remember the way it also could so easily have been. But that memory is not so fresh and though I will always remember it, it will not be the first thoughts that come into my mind. Instead the past that I did live does. I can hear Julian coming in. I think I freaked him out. The way that I have looked at him the last couple of weeks, with such sadness, I believe it scared him. He comes in. He is almost as tall as his father. He will probably be taller then his father when he reaches his full height. Julian puts his bag and his padds down on the table. I always want him to put them away. I decide to let it slide. "You okay?" he says not so much anymore in that apprehensive way that children say things because they know that something is so wrong that it even bothers the parents. "Yes, I am." I reply. And I am. I really am.