Fan Fiction
TITLE: Chakotay's Holidays: Easter Duty
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: PG
CODES: None. Future chapters will be C/T.
PART: 8/?
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 general betaing, and to Kathy
Speck for letting me draw on her expertise and experience in Roman Catholicism,
particularly the sacrament formally known as Reconciliation.
NOTE: In this story, I have assumed that some minor (or perhaps not so minor)
changes in the structure of the Roman Catholic Church might happen over the next 300 years. No disrespect to that faith is intended.
SUMMARY: In the confessional, John Torres admits to his shortcomings as a
father. But he learns that confession is not enough.
"Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned."
John Torres was not a particularly observant Roman Catholic; he typically attended Mass less than once a month, and received sacraments only during the major Church holiday seasons. But he had been reared in the faith, and he knew and believed in its theology and its rituals. And this Easter season, there was one ritual, one sacrament, of which he stood in particular need. Thus he had slipped into a dim and secluded confessional booth, and taken his seat facing a dark, stern-looking woman in clerical black, her iron-gray hair drawn up into a tight bun.
"Yes, my son?" she prompted, when he did not continue.
He had rehearsed this conversation in his mind a dozen times before entering the confessional, and yet the words were still hard to speak. "I'm not much of a father," he said finally. "I've let my daughter down."
"In what way?" The priest's tone was neutral.
"Well, I just found out that she and her husband are separated. They've been separated three months," it was hard to keep the bitterness from his tone, "and I only just found out."
The memory of how he had learned that fact burned shamefully in his mind: he had been talking via commlink to a friend who worked for FedFlight, the same company which employed B'Elanna. The friend, Manuelo Connelly, had expressed his sympathy for B'Elanna. "I'll tell you, John, everybody says she's a fine woman, and a hell of an engineer. It's a damned shame that husband of hers didn't know how to appreciate her."
Surprised but hiding it (he hoped), John had agreed that it was, indeed, a shame, and joined Manuelo in questioning Tom Paris's judgment. After the call had broken off, John had gone to his computer and did a search on his daughter. In moments, he saw on the screen that B'Elanna Torres, resident of San Francisco, former Maquis, and erstwhile chief engineer of the famous Voyager, had filed for legal separation from her husband, Thomas Paris. In January. Three months ago.
His daughter had left her husband, and John Torres learned about it on the Federation News Net.
"You're not in regular contact with your daughter, then." Mother Josefina's smooth contralto recalled him to the present.
"No. No, wait, that's not quite right," he amended, for if one couldn't be honest about one's faults in a confessional, then there was little point in being there. "I'm not in contact with my daughter at all."
"I see."
"I haven't been -- I -- it was a lot easier when she was off-Earth, you see. Or maybe the only reason it even worked then was that we hadn't talked in so long that neither of us wanted to say anything to make the other one angry. Not that there was really enough time to pick a fight when we talked. Three minutes was all we ever got." Three minutes, and half of that first time eaten up with awkwardness. He'd been terrified she would reject him outright (and only summoned his courage to risk it because he had feared so long that she was dead that he had to see her now he knew she was alive), and she'd been shy in a way that seemed most unlike the fierce girl he remembered.
"There was another long period when you didn't speak to your daughter, then."
He lowered his eyes, ashamed. "Not since I left her mother."
"You and your daughter quarreled when you left?"
"I guess we did," he murmured, "but she was only a girl then, she didn't know, she couldn't understand." Couldn't understand that he had been afraid then too, afraid that he wasn't strong enough, wasn't *enough* to live with a wife and a daughter both driven by the volatile passions of Klingons. "I left her with her mother. And I thought -- I thought it would be easier for her if I didn't -- didn't contact her."
"Is that what you thought?"
"No," he whispered. "I thought it would be easier for me." If he had tried to reach B'Elanna, Miral might have intercepted the message, interrupted the commcall, might have assailed him with her catalogue of his faults, his weaknesses, his human frailties. Even if he had gotten through to B'Elanna -- she'd been angry with him before he had ever left. Why should he think that she'd want to talk to him?
And yet, she had put his name on the "permitted contacts" list, back when Starfleet had finally succeeded in establishing a communications link with Voyager. So it seemed that she had, indeed, wanted to talk to him.
With the perspective of more than twenty years gone, he knew that he, a grown man, had failed to reach out all those years mostly because he'd feared the anger -- the rejection -- of a little girl.
No wonder Miral had thought him a coward.
"I see. And why are you not in contact with her now?" the priest probed softly.
Because, he tried not to think, he was a coward still. "She -- after she came back to Earth," and after she got out of prison, he thought but did not add, "she invited me to visit her and her family. She'd had a baby while she was away, you see." A baby named for her grandmother but so like her own mother that the sight had almost taken John Torres's breath away. He drew in a deep breath. "And we got to talking about the old days, she and I."
"Well, that conversation didn't end in three minutes, did it. And she had plenty of time to let me know how much I'd failed her. And her husband, he -- he tried to calm her down at first, but I had the feeling he would have just as soon seen me on a spit." Tom Paris's voice had stayed even, but his eyes had flashed the blue of hottest flames every time he looked at John. "And then she told me to get out. So I did."
"And you haven't contacted her since?"
"What would be the point?" he asked, a little bitterly.
"My son," and Mother Josefina looked him directly in the eyes, "you don't need to try to convince me that you think your choice was justified."
That was an unexpected enough response to startle him. "Excuse me?"
"If you truly believed that, you wouldn't be telling me about it here."
He snorted in rueful acknowledgment of the hit. "No, I guess not."
"Then you know what you need to do, to atone for your actions and inactions. Don't you?" Her voice was soft but definite.
He shook his head. "You want me to try to talk to her again. But I can't. I don't know how." At any rate, he didn't know how to do it in a way that would keep his head firmly planted on his neck.
"My son," the priest said firmly. "All beings know fear. Our Lord himself knew fear, when he walked among us in human flesh. It is no sin to be afraid. But you may not make fear the king in your soul. Only one Being should hold that place." He bowed his head, but shook it again, resisting.
"When you leave here, my son, I want you first to pray for courage. Call on the Lord, the son of Mary and the foster son of Joseph, to give you strength to heal the wound in your own family. His strength never fails those who trust in it.
"Then yes, you need to go to your daughter."
His jaw dropped. "And what will I do when she kicks me out? Again."
"Then you forgive her, and you go back."
"No." He half-rose from the chair, as if he could physically escape the words. "I -- I can't."
The priest was implacable. "There is no other way, my son."
He closed his eyes and sighed, pushing the gray-black hair back from his forehead with one distracted hand. "All right, I'll try." He opened his eyes and saw her nodding, in agreement and approval.
"And if you think there's a chance she won't let you in, I may have an idea that would help. You said she had a young child?"
* * * * *
Four days later, John Torres sounded the door signal of B'Elanna's apartment. He was carrying an Easter basket and a bright-pink stuffed targ.
