Title: There is no Pain
Author:  Veronica Jane Williams
Email: xkhoi@iafrica.com
Size: 17K
Codes:  A; J/P
Rating:  G
Summary: Kathryn and Tom celebrate daughter's birthday.

Disclaimer: Voyager and all owned by Paramount. I wrote this
vignette. I'm so glad!


THERE IS NO PAIN

Kathryn looked at Tom. His hair is starting to grey a little,
she thought with some surprise. Her lips curved in a tender
smile as she studied him where he was sitting on the wide porch
of their home in Indiana. The sun just touched the edges of the
porch so that he was more in the shade of it. Although he was
quiet, she could sense the deep peace in him, now.

Somehow he sensed her looking at him and he looked up,
returning her smile, then turned his attention to the PADD again.
They were returning tomorrow to San Francisco and were
savouring the last day here. Yesterday had been Rebecca's
birthday and what an auspicious day it was.

Yesterday...

***

"Mom, have you seen my green T-shirt?" Rebeccah asked as
she barged into her parents' bedroom, not bothering to knock.

"The one your father gave you only last week?" Kathryn Paris
asked.

"The one, Mom, the one," Rebeccah sighed exaggeratedly,
throwing her arms up in a theatrical gesture.

Kathryn looked at sixteen year old Rebeccah and thought her
heart would burst. "She looks like you in every way, Kathryn,"
Tom had said when Rebeccah was born, and which he repeated
every time they marked new milestones in their daughter's life.
Rebeccah did resemble her, Kathryn thought with pride and she
felt a small tug of sadness at the same time.

Kathryn rummaged through her drawers and found the garment,
though how it got there she couldn't fathom. Perhaps with the
washing, she thought idly.

"Thanks, Mom," Rebeccah crooned and gave her mother a kiss
on the cheek. It was Becky's birthday and she was brimming with
excitement. She had been accepted at the Academy, and would
attend when the new semester started. A bit early for her, but
then
Tom started at fifteen. So did Chakotay...

"Pleasure, sweetheart," she said as she turned to the mirror
again and brushed her hair.

*

A few minutes later Tom entered and stood behind her, his arms
going round her. She rose from the stool and turned in his
embrace,
taking in his smell, his aftershave, nuzzling her cheek against
the
soft morning stubble on his chin.

She raised her face to him and kissed him, her lips lingering
on his. Her softness was enticing as he deepened the kiss, nipping
her lower lip then sliding his tongue into her mouth. She had
been far more responsive in the last few weeks and he wondered
absently if he should count himself lucky, or whether he dared to
hope again. It flared wildly in his chest as her mouth opened
under his. Their breathing was becoming laboured and he could
feel himself  hardening  just at the touch of her hips against
his as she began to melt into him.

"Kathryn..."

"Hmmm..."

"Venus observed..."

"I have arms, Tom," she said huskily. Tom wondered again.
Kathryn was uncommonly warm and responsive this morning.
Perhaps it was because it was Rebeccah's birthday.

"Which you seem to use very ingeniously," he mumbled as her
hands started roaming over his body.

"Have you got Becky's present?" she asked him.

"Hmmm," he mumbled his affirmation again as he kissed her
again.

"And Tom, the house is going to be buzzing with her friends
soon," she continued as she wound her arms tightly around his
waist.

"Yes, sweetheart," he said and thought: women!

For the next few minutes they were so engrossed in kissing that
they were rudely awakened by:

"Not again! Aren't you guys getting a little old for this kind of
thing?" Rebeccah asked sweetly, hands on her hips in an
unconscious gesture so like her mother's. Tom's heart flipped
over.

"We'll be with you in a second, Becky," Tom grumbled but
looked indulgently at her. Very early the morning they had gone
into her bedroom and both wished her happy birthday. The
presents always came later when they were together in the living
room, making it something really special for their daughter. It
had
become tradition and Rebeccah even now at sixteen, still relished
being spoiled by her parents in this way.

Rebeccah watched her parents draw apart reluctantly, and
wondered whether she would one day be privileged to have such
a bonding. How she loved them both. She sighed and left happily
to go to the living room where they were going to give her her
presents. Sweet sixteen! Going to the Academy! She smiled as
she remembered her parents' good-natured arguments over what
her chosen direction would be. But her heart had always been set
on flying. Her mother had given a sigh of capitulation when she
saw she was outnumbered by daughter and husband. Rebeccah
just knew she was going to have the best looking Dad at the
Academy, and one who was going to be her tutor once she
became a senior cadet.

Smiling, she turned and left the room and went into the living
room with its wide windows that overlooked the garden. In the
back garden there were little bushes of tomato plants. She could
never understand how her mother could plant tomatoes so
prodigiously and nothing else! Perhaps, she thought, it was from
their days when they were still traveling in the Delta Quadrant...

She was sitting in a deep arm chair when Tom and Kathryn
entered. She turned to look expectantly at them. Her Dad,
she  knew, was always the one to surprise her, always with
something completely unique. She had after all, outgrown the
teddy bear stage.

"Dad?"

He bent down and kissed her on the cheek, his heart burning
with love for her. Then he handed her a PADD.

"Happy birthday, sweetheart," he said tenderly, his hand
caressing her long hair. Rebeccah looked at him, then her mother.
Her eyes shone as she saw the love in their eyes. Then she
flicked on the PADD, stared at it for long moments before she
looked at Tom again.

"It's the specs for a roundabout. A little hovercar I designed,
Becky. It's yours and waiting for you at Utopia Planitia."

Rebeccah jumped up and hugged her father tightly for long
seconds, the PADD slipping from her fingers as her arms went
round his neck.

Kathryn looked at them and felt the pride well up in her. She
had  not told Tom what she would give Becky, although she knew
about the hovercar for weeks now. She experienced a momentary
surge of panic come over her as she clutched the gift, wrapped in
coloured paper. Her hand shook slightly as she stepped forward,
seeing Rebeccah look at her over Tom's shoulder. She must have
seen her mother's slight unease and frowned. Kathryn sighed.
The time has come at last, she thought.

"Mom?" Rebeccah asked as she let go of Tom and stepped
forward to take her mother's hand and move with her to the couch
to sit down there. Tom noticed Kathryn look a little serious and
felt a fleeting concern. He didn't know what Kathryn got for
Rebeccah, and that had been tradition too. She would never tell
him until he would see it on the day of Rebeccah's birthday.
Like now. He wondered what she got this time.

"Happy birthday, Becky," Kathryn said, her voice trembling a
little as she handed Rebeccah her gift. With childish excitement
Rebeccah tore the wrapping off and then stared for several long
moments at the object in her hand.

It was a silver watch, an analogue chronometer and attached to
it was the silver fob chain. Tom stared, transfixed. How often in
the last almost seventeen years had he seen that watch in
Kathryn's drawer? Lying neatly in a corner just under her fine
underwear? How often had he himself looked at it and wondered?

He almost clutched his chest as a sharp stab of pain ripped
through him, his breathing suddenly laboured, a wheezing sound
escaping. The  watch lay on Rebeccah's palm and Tom kept
staring in punishing heartache at it. There was a distant buzz
in his ears, a sting behind his eyelids. From far off he heard
their voices, breaking  intrusively into his distraught thoughts.

"It was a gift your father gave me, Becky."

"You mean my real father, Mom."

"Yes, Rebeccah..."

"On your birthday too?"

"Yes, sweetheart. I thought it was time I gave it to you now."

"It's beautiful, Mom. Very beautiful," Rebeccah said as she
fingered the watched lovingly, letting the chain lace trough her
fingers.

"Yes it is, isn't it?"

"Mom..." Rebeccah said suddenly very softly as she saw Tom
move quietly out of the room seeing him seconds later standing
now on the porch.

Kathryn followed her daughter's gaze and a look of pain came
over her elegant features.

"He will always be my father, Mommy," Rebeccah said, her hand
going to touch her mother's cheek. "I have never known any other
father  and - and I love him very, very much Mommy," she
continued, using her old little girl endearment as she spoke to
Kathryn. Kathryn blinked to try and stem the tears as she looked
at Rebeccah.

"You love him, I know," Rebeccah said softly as she looked at the
door again through which her father moved. Then she hugged her
mother fiercely. She had known since she was very small. They
had been open with her. But she always felt so completely the
daughter of Kathryn and Tom Paris that it never really bothered
her.
Her father loved her to distraction and that was more than she
could say for many of her friends who either hated their
stepfathers
or just never cared. She felt so cosseted by both her parents;
they had given her all they could of themselves: their love. She
was happy, well adjusted and could not have wished for a more
caring father than the man whose shattered expression she
witnessed when he looked at the watch just now.

She held her mother away from her. "Go to him, Mom. He needs
for you to tell him that," she said with so much wisdom. "And
this,"
she said as she looked at the watch again in her hand, "I shall
treasure it always as a link to the man who fathered me..."

Kathryn looked at Rebeccah, and realised how much of Tom
really was in her. She gave her daughter a grateful smile, got up
and walked to the door through which Tom had gone minutes
before.

****

Tom stood at the edge of the porch and sighed again heavily.
She could never let him go, he thought. Chakotay was always
there, a silent witness to their struggle to come to grips with
their loss, their grief, their pain. The first months they were
both
too shattered when both Chakotay and B'Elanna and several
members of the crew died as they came through the wormhole
that brought them home.

B'Elanna had been pregnant. Kathryn didn't know she herself
was pregnant until a few weeks later. She had come to him,
knowing how devastated he was over B'Elanna's death. That was
when he suggested they marry. Kathryn had been grateful, and
he... He needed comfort as much as she did. It was a terrible
time for them both as in the months they waited for the birth of
their daughter, they could only grope at each other and wail their
grief to the heavens. Healing such as it was, came slowly.

But the minute Rebeccah was born, he knew he would never love
a child more, or care for her mother more than in those precious
moments he held his little girl in his arms. She was his and he
loved
her unconditionally. And so he and Kathryn gave their daughter
what she needed most from her parents: their total and irrevocable
love.

It wasn't long before his own feelings for his wife grew into
love, although he knew she could never...could never... He closed
his eyes in pain again, and pursed his lips tightly. Somehow he
had deluded himself that Kathryn's feelings had changed in recent
months. The intensity and colour of their lovemaking changed. She
was more passionate, more demonstrative than she had been before,
His heart had sung with new hope. Perhaps now she could... But he
had been mistaken. The watch... that watch that was the constant
reminder that Kathryn had loved another man, that she was still in
love with a man long dead, who didn't know he had a daughter.

He looked up as he heard her footfall on the floorboards of the
porch. She stood in front of him. He looked away again in the
distance, not wanting to see or hear what he had known all along.

"Tom, look at me. Please," she said softly, her hand touching his
arm. Even in profile she could see the brief flash of pain cross
his attractive features. Slowly he turned to look at her, a world
of sadness in his blue eyes. Strange she thought absently, how
Rebeccah's were the same blue. She was Tom's daughter in every
way that counted she thought. In every way that mattered.

"I thought it was time to give her the watch, Tom."

"I understand, Kathryn," he said quietly, then continued, "she is
his - "

"No, Tom. Rebeccah is your daughter. Yours. You love her,"
Kathryn said in a pleading tone, but there was a sudden lightness
in her heart.

"My blessing, Kathryn..."

"Yes..."

"I love you, Kathryn," he whispered desperately.

Kathryn wrapped her arms around him, yet stood in such a way
that she could look in his face, see his eyes light up again.

"Tom, my love," she said, and he felt his heart quicken at the
words, "I gave Rebeccah the watch because I didn't need it
anymore. I haven't needed it for a long time, Tom..." She waited
to
see her words sink in.

"Kathryn?"

"No more pain, Tom."

"Kathryn?" he said again, an almost foolishly happy smile on his
face as he saw in her eyes the answer, all her love there, for
him.

"There is no pain, Tom."

****

>From where she stood in the lounge looking through the window,
Rebeccah saw her parents in an embrace such as she had never
seen before. Her father's hands were cupping her mother's head
close to his heart, and his head was bent so that his lips touched
her golden hair.

She sighed with such contentment, then looked at the fob watch
and chain lying in her hand.

"There is no pain," she said softly.

THE END.

Veronica Jane Williams
13 June 1999