The choices we make

Tom's screams wake her from her sleep. Slicing through the haze of her unconsciousness quickly, even though she isn't sure at first where she is or what's wrong.

She stumbles into his room, catching the doorway with her shoulder and a muttered curse; following the sound on instinct more than anything else.

It's only when her vision clears that she sees him thrashing in his bed. Relief finding her that whatever danger threatens him, it's only in his unconscious. Be it the phantoms of things imagined or, worse, those remembered.

"Tom," she whispers, touching his shoulder.

He stirs, but doesn't wake, muttering something incoherent.

"Tom," she repeats, this time louder and shaking him.

When he snaps awake, his whole body jerks. His eyelids flying open to reveal fear and panic, even in the darkness of the room.

"You alright?" he asks, looking at her through his abating disorientation.

The question is laughable, but she regards him with concern rather than amusement.

"You were screaming," she explains. "It woke me up. . . I thought something was wrong."

He closes his eyes and his cheeks flush with an embarrassment she can't quite see.

"I was. . . I had a nightmare." He adds, attempting to sound casual, "I'm fine. Sorry I woke you."

She doesn't buy it, though it's unclear whether it's because he isn't very convincing or the fact that her own knowledge of nightmares makes her an expect on this kind of fear.

"What was the dream?" she asks gently, sitting down on the bed.

He hesitates. Unable to find the words to explain. Desiring, too, not to voice the dream that startled him.

"Something happened on Deep Space Nine, I think with the Dominion. Miral and B'Elanna. . . "

"They were in danger?" she asks, adopting the same whispered volume Tom did before his voice trailed off.

"I think so. . . I was there somehow but I couldn't get to them." He closes his eyes, continuing, "I could hear Miral scream for me and I couldn't get to her."

She places a hand on his shoulder, attempting to draw him out of the imagined sound that now haunts him.

"Do you often have nightmares?" she asks, after they've both remained quiet for a while.

"Not as often I used to," he admits. "And even when I do now, they aren't the same ones that I used to have."

She falls silent, waiting for him to continue his confession, and eventually he does.

"I used to dream about Caldik. But now. . . I think about Miral. . . All the things that could happen."

"I understand," she admits after a few beats and he looks up, searching her face.

She doesn't think to hide the traces of worry and pain that remain from her years in the Delta Quadrant. The lingering images of her crew marooned on a desert planet.

Imagined thoughts of Voyager buried under a layer of ice and snow; her bridge littered with the bodies of the dead and dying.

"It got better after B'Elanna. It's worse now, I guess. . . sleeping alone. "

She nods, lifting the covers to slide into bed next to him.

"You don't have to stay," he says, though it's because he fears for her comfort level rather than his own. "I'm fine. Really."

She only gives a dismissive wave before settling into the bed.

After ten minutes, they're both wide awake, both of them more distracted by remembered nightmares than the proximity of each other.

"You were awfully quiet today," he observes, once it becomes clear sleep is going to remain at bay for sometime.

"Was I?" she asks, sounding distracted.

They only have two days left before Kathryn's leave ends and Tom must return to Portland to get his home ready for his returning family. While the latter has ticked the time away with bated thoughts, the former has felt a slowly materializing sense of loss that has nothing to do with her mother.

His only response to her question is a pointed look, the mildly frustrated face he angles toward her clearly lit by the moonlight that drifts in from the large window.

"I've been reading my mother's entries from just before I went into the Academy," she admits. "Some of the entries have me a bit distracted."

"She didn't want you to go into Starfleet, did she?"

"No," she confirms. "But I think she'd accepted that I would long before I entered the Academy. . . I was so much like my father."

She doesn't go on, still distracted by her own thoughts, and after a minute of silence he decides to press.

"The entries that you've been thinking about. . . They're about you going into Starfleet?"

"No. . . Well, one of them is, but that's not really what I've been thinking about. . ."

When she doesn't continue this time, he doesn't know whether she's still puzzling or genuinely unwilling to continue the conversation. He finds himself torn between his curiosity and his desire to respect her boundaries.

However strange that desire is, lying in a bed next to her.

"Before I left the house, my mother and father were having problems. Arguing about my sister and I. I never knew how profound the disagreement was. But I guess. . . during the year they were arguing, she met someone else."

"She had an affair?"

"No," she responds quickly. "She never acted on it. . . But she met someone at Phoebe's school. An art teacher. . . She fell in love with him."

She explains it with confusion. As though all of her knowledge about the woman she just buried has been betrayed by this epiphany of her emotional infidelity.

Tom purses his lips, collecting his thoughts. He isn't sure if he can shed a light on what she's worrying about, but he can try. At the very least, he knows the woman next to him is capable of understanding the grey, even if now and then she resorts to the black and white.

"B'Elanna and I had a rough patch after we got home," he ventures, shifting the conversation. "I mean more than a passing argument. . . We were seriously on the rocks."

"What? When?"

She's completely thrown off by the information. Abandoning her worries about her mother and father entirely.

"At the end of our first year home," he breathes, closing his eyes. "We were finally settling into San Francisco. Getting used to being back home. . . A lot of conversations we skipped before we got married and had a child caught up with us once we weren't living lives filled with enemy fire and red alerts. "

"I had no idea," she confesses..

He stirs slightly. A movement that would be a shrug if not restricted by the blankets and his horizontal position.

"We didn't want anyone to know."

"You didn't try to hide when you fought on Voyager," she points out, a hint of accusation creeping into her voice.

He understands the wounded sentiment, irrational or not. The obvious opening to discuss this was weeks earlier, when they talked about his hasty marriage or else her mother's jealousy. He'd hoped she hadn't noticed then, when he swallowed a comment in the middle of that conversation.

Laying next to him, she remembers that hesitancy, as well how brief Tom and B'Elanna's appearance was at the first crew union, the one she threw about eight months after their return.

She'd been hurt when they showed up for only an hour, kept their distance from her, and then departed without a word. She even took it as a painful sign of the distance that was to come, having escaped the confines of a tiny ship and forced relationships.

"It was one thing on the ship," he explains now. "Before we had Miral. But once we got home, we felt like we should have our act together. . . I felt embarrassed that we were the same immature couple who didn't trust each other."

She closes her eyes, thinking back to Tom's desperate pleas when B'Elanna wanted to resequence Miral's genomes. She'd felt terribly worried for both of them, despite the calm demeanor she tried to exude.

Beneath that, she'd felt selfishly relieved that Tom had sought her out. It was his first open act of personal trust in her, however frantic, after his demotion.

"I would have lent an ear," she says, not caring that the statement is selfish. "You could have come to me as a friend. Not a former Captain. I would have supported you."

"I knew that," he says, his apologetic tone inexplicably endorsing her selfish concerns. "But I didn't go to anyone about it. I didn't even tell Harry."

"So," she murmurs, after he falls silent, "One of you. . .?"

He realizes abruptly that she's trying to connect the dots between her mother's life and his own, but has connected them inappropriately.

"No," he assures. "Neither of us cheated. And I don't think either of us even thought of anyone else. . . At the very least, I never did."

"But?"

"But. . . It would be understandable if during that period, when we were both so unhappy, one of us had thought about it. Developed feelings for someone else, even if we never acted on it."

She casts her eyes to the ceiling, weighing his words.

Considering the clemency, however personal, that he's trying to extend to her mother.

"Still," she counters slowly, "as unhappy as you may have been, you didn't think of anyone else. You worked through your problems."

He lets go of a frustrated sigh that she finds irksome. Propping himself up with an elbow, he looks at her as though she's Naomi Wildman and he's caught her crawling through some corner of Voyager she has no business being in.

"Did your mother actually do anything about her feelings?" he prods.

"No."

"And did she have the chance to?"

"I guess. . . The man lived in town. And my father was frequently away."

"But she didn't- she chose your father. Chose her marriage, for all it's failings at the time, over her passing feels for that other man."

"I don't know that. . ."

"Yes or no. She chose her marriage?"

"Yes," she relents, with a sigh of her own.

"Well, than that's what you should take away from her entries. That she had a choice and she made it. . . The fact that there was someone else she felt pulled toward- the fact that there wasn't someone I felt pulled toward- was just a matter of luck. What matters is the choice she made."

It takes her a minute to analyze his assertion, but when she does- when she realizes he's swayed her- she looks at him with a soft expression.

"You and B'Elanna got lucky."

It's as much a question as a statement. The echo of sentiments he's already voiced, now finding her with new meaning.

"We did," he confirms, his eyes betraying his relief.

She smiles at him before settling a little deeper into her pillow. When she closes her eyes again, sleep finds her faster than she would have expected.

. . . . .

As she slowly she wakes up to something solid and warm pressed against her, she feels disoriented. When she realizes it's Tom, she worries that he's mistaken her for B'Elanna in his sleep. A hand perhaps inappropriately placed where it has no business being on his friend.

It's only when she surveys their positions that she realizes that she's the one who's rolled onto his side of the bed, Tom's arms remaining innocently at his sides.

She thinks to roll away from him, but can't quite bring herself to do so. Her mother's house is old and drafty, and Tom's warmth brings a welcome reprieve from the breeze that seeps in through the window.

Before she can fall back into sleep, Tom's voice drags her back to consciousness.

"You should be careful about cuddling with me, Admiral. My wife is half Klingon and her temper is noted in two quadrants."

He means it as a joke, she knows by the use of her rank. But she immediately feels the prickle of guilt at the thoughts his quip elicits.

"Are you going to tell about B'Elanna about this?" she asks, turning over to face him.

He looks at her with confusion. He's slow, still half asleep, having woken only because fatherhood has ruined his habit of heavy sleeping.

"That I had a nightmare?"

He takes note of the pointed look she gives him while he yawns. Catching on, finally, to her concern.

"Maybe," he says, unconcerned. "But maybe not. I don't know that it's of any consequence to her."

Her complete skepticism is betrayed by her expression, and he looks back at her with a skeptical expression of his own.

"She trusted you with her life," he admonishes. "The life of our unborn child as well. I think it's a foregone conclusion that she trusts you to sleep in the same bed as her husband without incident."

"Not quite the same leap of faith," she retorts, and he now finds himself completely confused.

"Kathryn, if you were uncomfortable, you could have left. . . There was no need to stay with me."

She looks at the wall rather than him. This isn't really what she meant, and couching her thoughts in terms of concern for B'Elanna has only muddied the waters.

"It's not that," she responds, shaking her head. "It's just that our relationship has always been - "

"Complicated?"

She was going to say 'hard to define,' but 'complicated' captures it just as well, and so she nods slowly. Trying to find a better of explaining it, but failing miserably.

She feels protective of Tom, though not in the same quasi-maternal she watches over Harry Kim. Phoebe's stay has made her aware of the fact that she feels possessive of him, too, but she's never felt the faint longing for him she once did for Chakotay.

She trusts him, instinctively, and without reservation. But her connection to him is beyond logic, unlike longtime friendships, like her bond with Tuvok.

The only way, it seems, that she can describe their relationship is the infinite list of dissimilarities it enjoys with other relationships in her life; a growing stream of negations she mentally checks off, one by one, the more they open up to one another about the past.

"Complicated isn't a bad thing," Tom says, after a while.

"Oh?" she asks, moving to get up.

"Would you trade our friendship for something simpler? For something easier to explain?"

She considers the question as he gets up from the bed, stretching his arms above his head.

"No," she responds, beginning to make the bed. "There are things I would choose to do differently if I could. But nothing I would fundamentally change."

"So stop worrying," he admonishes, throwing his hands in the air and chuckling.

"Fine," she declares dramatically, "but at the first sign of trouble, I'm telling your wife that it was you who had a crush on me ten years ago."

"Coward!" he calls, as she exits the room laughing.

. . . . .

The last day together, Kathryn seems contemplative and Tom tries to give her space to work through her emotions.

In only a few hours, he'll transport back to Portland, to the empty house that will soon be filled with his daughter's laughter and the piles of work B'Elanna leaves behind her like discarded crumbs. Leaving Kathryn in the empty house she grew up in. Only to return to an empty apartment filled with achievements of an impressive career, but little else.

"Did you know that Seven of Nine once asked Harry if he'd liked to copulate?"

He asks it over lunch, attempting to tease her out of her silence, and she looks back at him in shock.

"She didn't," she says with horror, looking at him across the table that is the last item of furniture to remain in the house.

"She did," he confirms, a sly smirk spreading across his face. "Chakotay really didn't tell you?"

She shakes her head, amusement and disapproval fighting for control of her expression.

"He probably wanted to save Harry the embarrassment," she guesses.

She's chiding him, but it's a kind of reproach he knows she doesn't really feel. Her twinkling grey eyes are giving her away.

"If I wanted to embarrass Harry, I would tell you that he's convinced that you and Jean-Luc Picard are secretly sleeping together."

"What?" she manages, now almost choking on her lunch.

"That conference on Vulcan last year," he explains.

"The one on the Borg? We were on one panel together and then we went out for dinner after. But it was with ten other people and certainly not romantic in nature!"

The idea of being coupled with the Fleet's most famous Captain seems to horrify her more than the story about Harry and Seven, and Tom tries to hide his immense amusement as he continues picking at his meal.

He'd assumed this bit of gossip would have such an effect on her.

"Oh, I know," he shrugs, his expression innocent, "but you know Harry. Prone to believing gossip, no matter how ridiculous."

She eyes him with sudden suspicion.

"Harry's only prone to believing tawdry gossip when it comes from his best friend. Who is, and always has been, a corruptive influence on him."

He tries to hold back his laughter. But looking across at her crossed arms and accusing expression, he can't. He quickly folds, his shoulders tucking in with laughter.

"Alright," he relents, between chuckles, "I may have been the one to convince him that you were seeing Picard."

"Tom!"

When she buries her face in her hands, obviously mortified, it only makes him laugh harder, slumping back in his chair and pushing away his plate.

"I had to do it," he defends. "If only to convince Harry you're not some kind of demigod. A high priestess who's as virginal as she is powerful."

She wrinkles her nose in distaste at the word 'virginal', but despite herself, she begins to shake with laughter.

"So, you convinced Harry- even though you know I'm not dating Jean-Luc? Or you convinced Harry because you hoped I was dating Jean-Luc?"

"Hoped?" he practically spits. "Definitely not."

"What's wrong with Jean-Luc Picard?" she tests. "He's a kind man. Intelligent. Well-read, too, from what I can tell."

"And almost two decades your senior," Tom adds, pulling a face. "As spry as I'm sure he is. . . "

He doesn't finish the thought, to her relief. Yet somehow she finds his sentiment flattering nonetheless.

"Alright," she begins with a sigh, resting her elbows on the table, "so if not Jean-Luc Picard, who would you choose for me?"

She says it lightly, her face still smiling, but Tom recognizes immediately the risk she's taking in asking.

There any of number of possibilities he could voice that would cause her pain rather than amusement. The most likely one now residing on Dorvan V, alongside a woman she once regarded as something akin to a daughter.

"Let's see," he murmurs, feigning contemplation. "Who to pair the great Kathryn Janeway with."

She rolls her eyes as the silence stretches; Tom's exaggerated pose, finger tapping against his chin, tempting her to throw her napkin across the table at him.

"Even though I've only met him twice. . . Will Riker seems about your speed."

"Will Riker," she repeats. "You do realize he's married now?"

He shrugs dismissively.

"Marriages end," he deadpans. "You can always nab him if he gets divorced."

Her eyes narrow. However ridiculous this conversation, she refuses to bested by her former helmsman in banter. No matter how much his cheek tests her boundaries of propriety.

"Maybe," she allows, gesturing slightly with her hand. "But even before he was married, he was a pompous ass. And I just can't imagine anything he has to offer would be worth it."

He isn't thrown off by her uncharacteristic crudeness, volleying back a reply immediately.

"I don't know, Kathryn. If you ask my wife, she'd probably tell you that pompous asses often have plenty to back up their egos."

We waggles his eyebrows as she finishes, sipping his beverage to hide the smirk he can't contain.

She wants to glare at him, but manages to restrain herself. Stirring her food around her plate, she mimics being in deep thought.

"You're probably right," she concedes, and he looks at her with mild surprise. "But I'd have no use for him now. . . Not since he's gained all that weight."

She decides, humbly, not to gloat out loud when Tom throws back his head, laughing so hard that the sound echoes through the entire house.

. . . . .

"Well that's it," he says, placing his duffel bag by the staircase, "the only thing now is the dining room."

He follows her into the dining room silently, Kathryn's arms crossed over her chest. It's a sign of discomfort, but the only one she'll allow herself.

"Do you want the dining room table?" she asks, surprising him.

"You should take it," he responds, shaking his head, "it's been in your family for three generations."

"I don't have room for it in my apartment- it's too big. That's why I'm taking the one in the kitchen instead."

He looks between her and the table with mixed emotions. He loves the old pine table, but he doesn't like the idea of acquiring her family heirloom.

"B'Elanna and I will take it," he agrees reluctantly. "But only until you have room for it."

"You'll take it and you'll keep it," she counters firmly. "I want it to stay in the family."

Her words could just be a polite echo of his own, four weeks earlier. But looking at her in the room they've spent countless hours in, he doesn't think to take them as anything but sincere.

"I'll take it on one condition," he begins, Kathryn looking at him questioningly. "And that's that you visit the table often."

"I'll visit often. But not to see the table."

She smiles at him as she finishes. And he winks at her, giving her a toothy grin that reminds them of when they were both younger.

. . . . . .

"Tom," she says hesitantly, an hour before he's set to leave, "I haven't visited my mother's grave since the funeral."

"Do you want me to go with you now?" he offers.

He realizes that the fear of doing something alone is confession she's still unable to voice.

She gestures to the door with her head instead of responding, and he follows her outside and down the steps. They stop just outside the property, looking up the slight hill at the off-white structure that's now lined with the dark shrubs Tom planted.

"Are you sure you want to sell it?" he says, his eyes locked on the house.

"Yes," she replies after a moment. "It's tempting to keep it. . . to cling to the memories. But I'd rather not fill my days with ghosts and doubts about the past."

He nods as they turn, continuing their trek toward the cemetery.

"I understands" he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "That's why B'Elanna and I moved from San Francisco."

"I thought you liked Portland."

"We do like Portland," Tom confirms. "But partly because it doesn't remind us of anything. . . We both looked around our apartment in San Francisco and saw the months we spent fighting. All those weeks we were unhappy. . ."

He shakes his head abruptly to banish the thought, and she touches his arm as they walk.

"I can't say that I think the two of you are worse off for leaving San Francisco," she volunteers. "The Starfleet presence can be pretty stifling."

"Are you thinking about moving?"

"Not right now. But eventually, yes."

"Portland is delightful," he points out playfully, and she thinks for a moment he's kidding.

"You're serious?" she presses.

"Why not? It would give B'Elanna someone to talk theory with. And me someone to go to bars with." He adds, his tone far too cheerful, "not to mention the free babysitting."

"I'm not sure if I'm ready for Portland," she remarks warily, causing him to chuckle.

"Fine," he declares. "Ruin my master plan."

"Your master plan is to live in the same city as me? You already did, before you moved away."

"No," he replies sweetly. "My master plan is for you to move to Portland. . . So I can convince your gullible Mister Kim that we're secretly having an affair."

He chooses, pompously, to gloat when she's struck mute with horror. His smile dimming only when she smacks him forcefully in the shoulder.

. . . . .

"I feel like I'm just getting to know her," Kathryn confesses, standing next to her mother's grave.

"At least you learned about her now," Tom consoles.

She glances at him quickly before returning her gaze to the headstone.

"Yes. But the knowledge feels like a waste. She's already gone."

"It's not a waste," he chides, with more vigor than she expected. "And I don't think she'd see it that way."

He knows that the presumptuousness with which he speaks invites her glare, but he doesn't back down; looking at her with an expression that dares her to argue that he's wrong.

She only deflates further. It seems to make the injury worse, the fact that Tom seems to understand her mother better than she does.

"She liked you," she remarks, the corners of her mouth flirting with a smile.

"I beg your pardon?"

"When you showed up at that first reunion but didn't stay, she asked about you. She wanted to know where the handsome pilot was that I'd introduced her to at McKinley Station."

He smiles, remembering when he met her mother when Voyager first docked. It was after he hugged his father and shook hands with John Torres.

He was so struck by how much she looked like an older version of his Captain that he was completely floored when she hugged him.

"I liked her, too," he murmurs, putting an arm around Kathryn's shoulder.

Eventually, he leads her away from the grave with a hand to the small of her back. He understands why she wanted to come, why it was necessary. But he doesn't want to her linger either.

Whatever is left of her mother, it isn't the body resting below their feet.

After they walk through the trees, they find themselves coming to rest on the same bench they found the day of the funeral. The weather is brilliant, as it was on the first day, and Kathryn closes her eyes. Content to bask in the comfortable silence and Tom's presence one more time.

"What I did with the Moneans wasn't impulsive. But what it wasn't thought out either. . . I don't think I really considered the full ramifications of what I was doing until I was already on the Flyer."

Her eyes snap open at his words, her whole body turning to look at him.

She hasn't even tried to bring up his demotion and the events preceding it, these last two weeks. She gave up after the fourth time he refused; assuming, however fearfully, that he wasn't willing to talk about it.

Learning to feel grateful, after that, that despite all that would continue to go unspoken between the two of them, there were enough things they had voiced to get them through.

"I should never have punished you when I was still angry," she admits, shaking her head. "I acted out of her personal feelings rather than professional ones."

"You didn't really have a choice," he posits. "It isn't as though your anger would have faded any in a few days. Or even in a few weeks."

It's tempting for her to take his words as an accusation, but they've come too far in their understanding of each others' mannerisms for her to think his muted expression hides anything but remorse for both of them.

"I wouldn't even listen to Chakotay when he asked me to reconsider your sentence. . . I don't know that I've ever been that angry."

When she pauses, he knows she isn't waiting for an apology from him. Still, he isn't sure what it is she does want.

"You know the funny thing," he begins, a mirthless chuckle interrupting his thought as he turns to her. "I think I did it because of you."

She looks at him, genuinely doubtful, and he struggles to explain.

"Don't get me wrong, I was honestly concerned by the idea of that planet ceasing to exit. . . But I think a small part of me wanted you to be proud of me. . . Part of me thought you would understand."

The realization hits her liking a rising tide, in small successive waves. Each of their conversations over the last four weeks bringing a different, painful bit of understanding as the memory finds her.

"I should have," she mutters, burying her face in her hands. "Heaven knows how many of my own decisions resembled yours that day."

When she ventures a look at him from between her fingers, his expression is rueful.

He noted the hypocrisy sometime ago, even if he never remarked on it.

"Still," he says eventually, his tone lacking conviction, "I was your officer and I disobeyed you."

It's a statement that captures woefully little of what transpired. They knew so five years ago, and they certainly know so now. He's giving her an out, she realizes, but isn't one that she's interested in.

However badly this conversation could go, they both want to have it. They both need to have it.

"It wasn't that you disobeyed me," she remarks, sitting up slowly. "It was that you betrayed me."

His eyes flash with pain and then with anger, the scar that he's carefully nursed for years finally ripped open as her blatant accusation.

"Harry and Tuvok betrayed you- B'Elanna betrayed you. Hell, Chakotay even betrayed you! Why was it only my insubordination that mattered?"

His voice rises with anger. And she feels a momentary relief that if they're having this discussion, they're having it all the way.

"It wasn't the only one that mattered. It was just the one that hurt the most."

"But why?" he presses, his tone as desperate as it is hostile.

"Because it was you, Tom!" she shouts, as though this explains everything. "Because you were the one who didn't worship me or think of me as an institution. Because I trusted you, and in a way that I rarely trust anyone- a way that defies rationality or explanation, and that I would have defended until my dying breath. Right up until you chose to launch that damn ship!"

After the echoes of their anger fade, the faint rustle of leaves is all that's heard around them.

When he let's go of a ragged breath, she's surprised to feel his hand tugging at hers. She reluctantly leans against him.

Her anger is quickly abating, but her doubts still circle slowly around her, like the leaves shifting restlessly at her feet.

"I'm sorry I chose my own desires over your trust me in."

He grips her hand tightly when he says it, but doesn't look at her. Afraid, perhaps, of what he'll find in her eyes if does.

"And I'm sorry I chose my own ego and hurt feelings over fairness and my loyalty to you."

He closes his eyes at her apology, caught between his relief and a five-year-old pain that still feels fresh.

"You would have shot me down," he says.

It's painful echo of her own words when she demoted him, but which of them it hurts more now is unclear.

She slumps against his shoulder. No words seeming appropriate for an admission, nor any adequate as an apology.

After a minute of silence, she feels his arm move over her shoulder, his hand draping across her arm.

"I'm not sure why you trusted me after that," she whispers, her anger now usurped by a profound and familiar guilt.

"It was one day," he responds. "One day when we both made a series of unfortunate choices."

She pulls away from him slightly to look at his face. He seems convinced, but her own eyes are still full of doubt. He looks straight ahead, his eyes focusing on the trees in front of them.

"When B'Elanna and I were fighting, I could have walked away from my marriage," he declares suddenly. "Child or no child, I could have packed my bags and left."

She waits for him to continue. Hoping this is going somewhere pleasant, but unsure what that destination could possibly be.

"I made a choice, Kathryn. But it wasn't just one choice on one day. It's one that I make over and over again, just like we all do in our relationships. . . I wake up everyday, and I choose B'Elanna. And I choose Harry. And I choose you."

He strings the choices together easily. As though, however dissimilar, they're ultimately the same.

After a moment, she sees his point.

Countless of her relationships have fallen by the wayside over the years, whether through distance or change or both. But here she sits next to Tom Paris, ten years and an entire quadrant later, and she still trusts him. In a way that she rarely trusts anyone- a way that defies rationality or explanation.

Nodding, she closes her eyes again.

"You should come for dinner tomorrow night," he states, standing up and holding out his arm to her.

She can't help but laugh. They've just spent four weeks alone together, and he's already planning their next visit.

"They may be my family as well as yours, but you still need time alone with your wife and child. I'll come in a few days. . . Maybe take B'Elanna out and leave you alone to babysit Miral."

He threads his arm through hers, rolling his eyes as they turn to begin their walk back.

"How very thoughtful of you," he retorts sarcastically. "Remind me on my next visit with Phoebe to dig up the most embarrassing stories from Voyager I can think of."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me, Admiral."

He laughs at her put off expression, both of them falling silent afterward.

"Tom?" she begins, as they pick their way back through trees.

"Hmm?"

"Did I mention I'm glad that you're here?"

"Yes. But feel free to say it as often as you like."

For Chase, whom I choose everyday.