B'Elanna Torres (btorres) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2012-12-17 18:33:00 |
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There were a lot of things that Tom missed about Voyager, but none so much as he missed his wife. He missed replicators. He missed the holodeck. He missed flying. He missed his friends. But more than any of those, he missed B’Elanna - his B’Elanna, the one who loved him even when she was threatening his life and who had promised him “‘til death do us part” on the bridge. The complicating factor, of course, was that the woman here in the alternate dimension with him was the very same B’Elanna, minus a few years of him proving he wasn’t just an arrogant, reckless, self-centered pig. Given that it seemed they were all just copies of themselves while their worlds continued turning, the only solution seemed to be to prove it all over again. Thus had begun Tom’s campaign of, as Kaylee had put it, wooing. It was like going back in time - just without any of his old tried-and-true date ideas. On the other hand, at least avoiding any “we got caught up in work and stood each other up” drama would be easy this time around - he wasn’t even interviewing with Stark Industries until after Christmas. And how weird was it to be celebrating Christmas on Earth, and an Earth where nearly everyone seemed to celebrate Christmas? All around the city, lights glittered and the scent of evergreens mixed with the smog that was all long gone in the New York City Tom was familiar with. None of the places Tom knew in that New York existed yet, either - if they would ever exist. This timeline was plainly very different from his. He’d managed to use their Internet to uncover a few gems, though. Tonight he was attempting to take B’Elanna someplace nice, with a touch of romance. They’d done well at ordinary places, so now...try a little candlelight and French food. “Welcome to La Silhouette,” he said, holding the door open to let B’Elanna pass first. “Word has it that this is some of the best French food in town. I haven’t had the real thing in years, but I’m hoping this will at least be close to Marseilles. It’s at least got to have an advantage over the replicator.” -- B'Elanna was still getting used to the idea of going out and about in a world where being an alien wasn't normal. She had had enough trouble as a half-Klingon / half-human where she was from, but here where Klingons were fictional aliens from a television series? It was difficult. Thankfully it was winter, and B'Elanna could get away with wearing hats and scarves and all sorts of things to hide her forehead. That night, while has carefully chosen an outfit -- why? she asked herself, it was only Tom Paris -- black slacks and a maroon sweater with heels and a pretty pink silk head scarf. She didn't think she looked all that bad. And at least people wouldn't be pointing and staring. She hated when people stared. "Thank you," she said as she walked past him and then waited for him to join her. She'd been spending a lot of time lately with Tom. There weren't many other people to spend time with. The other Starfleet personnel, yes, but she wasn't all that comfortable with them yet. Strangely, the person she felt the most comfortable with was Tom, and she hated that. -- Tom gave his name to the host, who easily found their reservation and led them promptly to their table. Tom walked behind B’Elanna, taking note of the light sway of her hips in the heels. She had dressed up a bit more than she did for day to day life, another fact that didn’t escape his notice. Not that she had to do much of anything to get his attention, but he noticed just the same, and let just a tiny bit of hope spring up. “So, did you decide if you’re going to watch the television show yet?” Tom asked after they were seated. “I keep thinking about it, and then not doing it. So far the bravest I’ve gotten is watching some of the one about the Enterprise.” -- B'Elanna sat and looked around, noting where the exits were and what sort of other people were also in the restaurant. Frankly, she couldn't think of the last time she was somewhere like this that was real. Dining out on the holodeck certainly didn't count. She almost missed Tom's question, but turned back and looked at him. "I'm planning on it, but it seems like it'll take some time. I settled for watching one of the movies, but I realized too late it wasn't the one with Captain Kirk or any of our new friends. Well, they were in it, but they didn't look the same. Really, the movie was pretty awful. Are all earth movies that poorly done?" If anyone was going to be able to answer some question about Earth's pop culture history like that, she figured it would be Tom Paris. -- “Oh, no,” Tom quickly replied. Say what you would about Tom, he knew his way around 20th century film. “No, I mean...they obviously had some limitations with their technology, but so did Shakespeare. They created some really amazing stuff. You just have to take it in its context.” The 20th and 21st centuries had a lot of issues. Socially speaking they were incredibly backward, and technologically as well. Still, Tom couldn’t help but love their romance, and their optimism. Their world was full of pain and trouble, and still they dreamt of a better future. There was something beautiful in that. -- "Well, this was a bad movie. Very -- what's the word? -- campy? Is that it?" That didn't sound right at all, but it didn't matter. B'Elanna picked up her napkin and shook it out before placing it on her lap. "Have you thought about watching them? I imagine it would be a little odd though, because it's not like all we'd see is what we remember. We were on a ship full of other people. What if we saw things that happened to them that were private?" B'Elanna flushed, because she realized that that meant there were probably moments in her life that were also shown on that television show. Moments that she would have preferred to keep private. She didn't like the idea that there were parts of her out there that other people knew about, things people shouldn't know about. -- The thought of private moments on display brought a grin to Tom’s face. Oh, sure, he had plenty of times he didn’t want anyone else to be part of. He couldn’t imagine anyone else knowing about the way he’d fallen apart when breaking the trans-warp barrier messed with his DNA, or what a mess he’d been when he and Harry were in prison. He wasn’t thinking about any of those, though - his mind went straight to the dressing down he and B’Elanna had gotten from the captain for getting caught making out in Engineering. “On the other hand, what if we found out about really hilarious private moments?” he asked. “I could always do with knowing more about the romantic misadventures of Ensign Harry Kim.” -- B'Elanna wasn't sure whether to laugh or pull a sour face, so what ended up happening was something between the two, and she managed to get control of her laughing before she brought attention to them. She gave Tom a look. "I don't think Harry has anything worth airing out, do you? Unless you're talking about all the poor foreign women he kept falling for, the ones who he didn't have a chance with because they weren't interested in space travel to places unknown." -- “Oh, you don’t even know what you haven’t seen yet,” Tom replied, still grinning. “Harry’s crush on the wrong Delaney twin, Harry’s crush on the hologram, Harry’s crush on Seven of Nine...Harry has real talent for failing at romance.” He wished Harry were here, though. Harry was terrible at romance, but he was the best there was at being a friend. Tom would have liked to have his old sounding board, partner in crime, and conscience in New York. -- B'Elanna didn't know who Seven of Nine was, even though she'd heard the name a few times since arriving. "Harry always falls for the wrong girl," she said carefully, though she decided not to ask about any of the details. She didn't need to know the details. She didn't want to know the details. "It's a pity in all the time I don't know about yet he didn't manage to have some kind of successful romantic encounter," she said. "I know I'd be rooting for him. All this talk about romance was more than likely going to bring them around to talking about their romance, and B'Elanna was always trying to avoid that topic. She cleared her throat to change the subject instead. "Have a job yet?" -- Well, that figured, didn’t it? Anything like romance came up, and B’Elanna found something else to talk about. Tom knew subject-dodging when he saw it. For the time being, he decided to let it go. “Possibly,” he said. “I got applications in with SHIELD and Stark, and Stark wants to see me for an interview after the holiday. If it goes all right, I’m hoping I can join their opening the Tesseract project.” -- She sipped her glass of water and nodded. "What would you be doing for the project?" she asked. She couldn't imagine they needed someone like Tom, who really was only good for piloting, on their project. B'Elanna frowned to herself. That wasn't fair of her at all, to think that being a pilot was the only thing that Tom was good at. He was a damn good mechanic, too, not in the same way she was, but who was? Personally, she hadn't even thought about what sort of job to look for. There weren't very many openings for half-Klingon engineers with a penchant for talking back and disliking authority. -- “Trying to re-create the Delta Flyer’s slipstream drive, most likely,” he said. “Coming through the Tesseract was a lot like what I remember from traveling at trans-warp speed. It’ll be hard to do without Seven’s help, but it’s as good a lead as anybody’s got right now.” What he wouldn’t give for having Seven’s skills and experience around for this one. Having Tuvok and B’Elanna on board would help, too. However, Tom wasn’t one to let adversity or crummy working conditions slow him down. Besides, there were a half dozen other mechanical geniuses around, albeit not the ones from their world. They’d have to figure out something sometime. -- "I wouldn't even know where to begin," B'Elanna pointed out. He was talking about things she hadn't experienced yet. "At least, not with what you're talking about. I think the important thing is to pinpoint where the tesseract gets its power and the figure out how to either harness it or turn it off. Once that happens, we might be able to figure out how to use it to either control it or send us all back." It was a lot like figuring out power sources that would work or wouldn't work with the warp core. -- “Either one would be good with me,” Tom said. “Too bad they don’t have much in the way of space probes here. If we could launch one in next time the Tesseract opens, we might be able to find out something about it.” Unfortunately, this place was a mess as far as technology was concerned. Voyager’s sensors would have brought back mountains of data already. Here, there was nothing like that. They were barely space travel capable here, much less equipped to analyze complex spatial and temporal anomalies. -- They were in the twenty-first century, after all, B'Elanna thought, and she nodded. "So we'll need to figure out how to do it with the technology we have, since the probes we're used to aren't available here. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can come up with something. Honestly, I haven't talked much to anyone outside of our -- should I call it a universe? -- so I don't even know what sort of skills anyone else has. Is there anyone else at all useful?" -- “A few,” Tom replied with a nod. “The crew of the Normandy all seem pretty sharp, and Adama’s people from the Battlestar Galactica. Kaylee and Captain Reynolds both seem to know what they’re doing, but I don’t think either of them’s used to stuff like this. They’re more geared toward straight up fights and keeping a ship in the air. You would’ve loved to have them on a Maquis ship, though. Reynolds is like Chakotay with fewer scruples.” Which was to say, much easier to get along with. Not that Tom really had a problem getting along with Chakotay these days, but he still had a tendency to play fast and loose with the rules when it suited him. -- B'Elanna took note of everything that Tom was saying, though she was still trying to keep up with the names and situations and universes of those particular people. She didn't know how she'd ever get used to it. Better to have a date with her computer and its search engine soon enough. "That's good to know. Space people have to stick together, it sounds like?" -- “Basically,” Tom agreed. “It’s an experience that brings us together, I guess. The superheroes seem to mostly hang together, too, and the magic users are their own little group. When everything’s unfamiliar, you find what makes a little bit of sense to you.” Tom had mostly stuck with the space folks since coming to this dimension for those reasons. Most of these people came from worlds he could barely comprehend. It was good to find a little common ground somewhere. “Speaking of, Dr. McCoy is having a Starfleet Christmas party next week,” Tom continued. “I volunteered for dessert...so either I need to find a bakery or figure out how to use the stove between now and then, one or the other.” -- "Yes," she said. "I said I'd bring something alcoholic, but my go to isn't available here. Romulan ale. We never had it on Voyager. I haven't had it in ages. But that's not even available here, is it?" She couldn't even replicate a decent alternative." B'Elanna smiled over at him. "I think you'd better find a bakery, fly boy. I don't think it's a good idea to test the fire alarms in the building." -- “But it would be so exciting!” Tom jokingly protested. He was smiling - he liked having her call him flyboy again. He might have been imagining things, but he thought he heard a slightly affectionate tone in that word that had once been a dismissive insult. Probably wishful thinking, but she was smiling back at him, at least. “Anyway, no,” he concluded. “No Romulan ale here. I don’t think they even have Romulans. They do have ale, though.” -- "Is it anything like Romulan ale?" She laughed and then shook her head. "Of course it's not but if you have any suggestions for what I should bring then? You've been here longer. Is there something people like more than anything else?" B'Elanna rubbed the side of her neck and leaned forward a bit toward him. "What about you, Tom? What kind of alcohol would you like?" -- “I’ve been here two days longer,” he pointed out, but Tom wasn’t really concerned with the particulars of who knew what about what. The important thing was B’Elanna leaning just a little bit closer to him in the low light of the restaurant without showing any of the general nervousness she often had around him lately. He had come to cherish these little flashes of time when she actually seemed comfortable with him. “But I was thinking of attempting the rum apple cider my grandma used to make for Christmas,” he said, matching her slight move forward. “Come help out, and I’ll let you take credit for it.” -- It was a nice offer, that was sure, and B'Elanna smiled. "I'll do some searching myself and will let you know. I'd like to be able to come up with something on my own, but thank you." She picked up her water again and sipped it, moving her gaze away from him and back around the room. She felt her face growing hot at the way he was looking at her, and she told herself to relax. A moment later, she cleared her throat. "Look, lieutenant, I realize that your experiences are -- different than mine. Your memories and everything, but none of that has happened for me." She didn't add in the 'yet' but she knew it was unspoken. "I'm flattered with all of the attention and thankful because I don't know anyone else, not really, but …" She let that but trail off. -- Well, that put a plug in his little spring of hope. Tom sighed and sat back in his chair. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; B’Elanna had always been pretty direct about shutting him down, and last time it had taken all of this plus a near-death experience to get her to admit to any real feelings for him. The unspoken “...but I still think you’re an arrogant, self-centered jerk” still stung, though. “I know that you aren’t where I am, B,” Tom replied. “I’m not expecting you to be. And I sure as hell didn’t win you over quickly or easily last time, so I’ve got no reason to think it would be quick or easy here and now. But can you really blame me for trying?” -- She sat back and crossed her arms. "I don't know yet. Because I haven't decided yet what your actual intentions are. I could just watch the show if I wanted to, but I don't know where that will get either of us." B'Elanna swallowed and looked down for a long moment. "I'm not her, Tom, whoever she became. That's all there is to it. I might never be her because I'm not living her life." Was it odd to talk about one's self in the third person, future tense? Yes, but then again, B'Elanna never did understand much about time travel or alternate realities or anything like that. It never made any sense to her, and living it didn't help. -- It seemed like a fairly straightforward attempt at crushing his hopes. After all, she wasn’t saying anything that he hadn’t considered. Divergent timelines could make a real mess of things that way. People changed because of different experiences. Maybe she was right. Maybe this B’Elanna Torres wasn’t ever going to fall in love with this Tom Paris. “I’m not asking you to be anybody but yourself,” he said. “But I’ve never in my whole life been happier than I was with you--or with some other stubborn, temperamental, obsessive, isolationist, beautiful, brilliant, amazing half-Klingon engineer, if you want to be really insistent about not being the same person. So until you tell me to back off and leave you alone, I’m going to keep on trying to convince you that I’m worth taking a chance on.” -- B'Elanna didn't understand this man in front of her. She'd seen him like this while they were planetside recently, when she was infected with the blood fever, and it had opened a small window in her mind to who he could be if he wasn't an arrogant, womanizing playboy. Still, it had frustrated her to no end that at the moment she needed him to be the arrogant womanizing playboy, he'd gone and acted all chivalrous and as though he actually cared about her and her feelings. Which, if present time was anything to go off of, that was true. She was just surprised that it was true. "I just wish I knew how to act normal around you now," she said. -- “You don’t have to act like anything, B,” Tom said with a sigh. Honestly, it was like she had two settings: damn the torpedoes full speed ahead, and let’s overthink this until everyone involved is old and gray or possibly dead. “Just be yourself. Do what you want, say what you want...and don’t worry so much about what it’s gonna look like or if I’m going to get the wrong idea or anything. Out of the ordinary doesn’t have to be bad.” -- B'Elanna nodded again and promised herself that she would try that, at least, and see what came of it. "Fine, then that's what I'll do. But I make no promises, all right?" -- “No promises,” Tom echoed smartly. “Got it.” If B’Elanna wasn’t completely ruling him out right off, that meant he had a chance. And if anybody was a master of the long shot, the last ditch effort, and the desperate gambit against impossible odds, it was Tom Paris. “Come on,” he said, and smiled. “Let’s figure out what we’re eating. I hear great things about the Lobster Bisque.” |