Disclaimers, ratings and warnings are in Part 1.

THE BADLANDERS

PART TWENTY SEVEN

"Children, go inside," Chakotay  said softly as he kept his eyes on Owen Paris. The man looked completely stunned, blown away by the same news they had seen half an hour earlier and which the entire congregation of the United Federation of Planets witnessed. The man was doomed.

Down, but apparently not out. 

He waited until Kathryn had helped Phoebe into the house and the children followed them. On Paris's face the shock had replaced the bewilderment he showed when the phaser blast didn't kill Phoebe. The phaser dangled loosely in the murderer's hand, like an olden time pistol swinging in his finger.

Chakotay couldn't decide what shocked Owen Paris more: the phaser which by some strange quirk of fate had been pre-set to stun instead of kill, or whether seeing Kathryn alive.

Maybe it was seeing Kathryn alive. Official communiqués had gone out a week ago about Voyager's destruction at the hands of the Maquis and the death of its entire crew. That was Paris's doing.

Now, not only did Kathryn stand before him alive and well, but so was her husband right there by her side. Not only did Phoebe form the protective vanguard to their children, but so did their parents. Owen Paris was halted in his onslaught.

They had all heard the news, all seen his face on the vid-com, all took in his confession. Chakotay knew that somewhere Tom, Nick, Harry and Dickson had something to do with it. Not something, he amended, but a major role to play, and that role was not over yet. Paris had rushed to Indiana meaning to kill Phoebe, thinking that she might have had something to do with it, or instigated his own sons against him.

Phoebe, however, was innocent.

Their own arrival had shocked Kathryn's younger sister just as much, although they had managed to convince her of their own sincerity, convinced her that Owen Paris would break his word and renege on any shady promise he made. Phoebe had been playing tough with them, not wanting to hand the children over to them. The children had other ideas when they heard their mother and father and had run outside, throwing themselves into their parents' arms.

Phoebe's toughness was only on the surface. Chakotay sensed she was secretly glad of their arrival and intervention.

Now the man stood, and Chakotay had the idea of "almost broken" as if Paris still had a few aces up his sleeve. Under normal circumstances he would have had something to throw back at them, but not now. It was the end for him.

The end.

And it wasn't going to be a good end. Moreover, he was finished with killing and maiming and violating. He wasn't going to kill Paris, even if the man expected him to 'act within character'.

"How did you get here?" Owen Paris asked, stepping back when Chakotay moved towards him.

"Caught your little game, Paris. Managed to save ten crew, didn't you know? And now we've come to get the children you stole from us. My memory has been restored. You're dead, Paris."

The older man moved further and further back until he reached his shuttle, pointed the phaser at Chakotay. Then, realising it was set on stun, fiddled to set it to kill.

"Oh, no, you don't," Chakotay hissed as he quickly grabbed the phaser. "Get out of here. You're finished."

"Kill me," Paris demanded. "Kill me. It's what you do so well, Chakotay."

"No, it's what Owen Paris does so well. You turned me into a beast, but no more, understand? Who do you think is going to do you the favour of killing you? You'd like that, don't you? So that you can get the last laugh. When you get into your shuttle, just turn on your vid-com, will you?"

Paris's lips quivered with anger. The hair, once so neat and smooth, looked dishevelled, the eyes filled with the classic look of fear. By the time he got to Headquarters, Law Enforcement would be on its way.

"This isn't the end, Chakotay," the older man threatened.

Paris was bluffing. He looked terrified. He couldn't feel sorry for the man. Owen Paris tried to kill them, tried to kill their love, robbed them of their identity, their loyalty to the Federation, their lives, their children. Especially their children.

Ethan had been scared of Owen Paris all his life, and it was going to take a long time for his son to trust people again, especially sick old fucks like his grandfather. The children called Owen "grandpa" most probably on his own instruction and that of Phoebe.

Which reminded him that his family was still inside the house.

He watched the Paris shuttle take off, smiled grimly at the thought of what the man was going to see on his vid-com. Chakotay knew that what they saw on the news earlier must have been the work of Tom Paris and company. It was what he had hoped they would do once Kathryn had given them the PADD with the recording of Voyager's destruction.

Kathryn lived. It was a miracle. They had their children back. That too, was a miracle. They still recognised him, and Ethan had been hesitant, not certain that the man he was touching was really his father.

"I dreamed every day of you, Papa…"

"Me too," Lainey chimed in. "Every day. Papa, Aunt Phoebe kept Grandpa away from us…"

That had been the first realisation that Phoebe Janeway wasn't what they thought she was. She had been coerced, intimidated exactly the same way Owen Paris touched every other person in his orbit.

Phoebe couldn't have hated Kathryn so much and in the next instant would die for the children, protect them with her life. And what if his phaser had been set on kill? Chakotay's heart turned cold at the thought of what Owen Paris might have done with the children, especially Ethan.

Ethan who looked so remarkably like Tom Paris and Nick Locarno.

He turned and walked back into the house. The children were in the kitchen, fixing breakfast for them. He and Kathryn – who hadn't seen them in a year – had learned quickly that the children were self-sufficient.

More than that…

Late last night, when no one wanted to sleep, not even Phoebe who had rallied and hugged her sister eventually, Ethan had tugged at his uniform.

"Papa…"

The boy blushed deep red. Chakotay thought his heart would rip out of his chest from some unknown fear. Fear that Ethan was Tom. But Ethan had something on his mind.

"What is it, son?" he asked.

"I disabled Grandpa's phasers. It is permanently on stun, even though Grandpa will think he set it on kill."

"You did that?" he asked, surprised.

"Aunt Phoebe told me to learn everything I could. I transported us to the shed when Grandpa came and Aunt Phoebe took him to her room."

Aunt Phoebe took Owen Paris to her room.

It told him and Kathryn everything, of Phoebe's courage, her selflessness, her way of protecting the children. He had hugged his son close to him, felt the old prick of tears again. He had committed so many crimes, but he had been under a spell, if it could be put that way. His memories had been altered and supplanted with evil. Yet in that altered state there was always in him the imbalance, the lack of equilibrium, the ambivalence of his emotions. At times he wondered if he were two versions of one person.

In a sense that could be excused. He didn't want to be excused.

But Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, revered and feared in Starfleet, father of Kathryn, Tom Paris and Nick Locarno, had no such excuse.

None at all. It was – if that could be any justification – as if he had been born evil. In was in every bone in his body, in every nerve, every utterance, in every narrow-eyed smile, in every gesture – the man exuded his own brand of cunning. And Tom Paris had to live with such a man. Two other women produced children fathered by him. And Phoebe…

He heard the children's voices coming from the kitchen – bright voices, happy voices, laughter going up. Phoebe's room was near the front of the house, the room that their parents occupied when they were still alive. It was a brilliant move on Phoebe's part. The man had to walk past her room or make a noise if he wanted to be anywhere near the children. The kitchen door had two old fashioned heavy duty surface slide bolts on the inside if Owen tried to enter from the back of the house.

But Phoebe took the brunt of his lust, by the looks of it.

Chakotay stood in the open doorway of her room, watching the sisters connect again.

"There, that should do it," Kathryn comforted, "no more pain." The hypospray made a soft hiss. They both looked up when they heard him.

"Please, come in," Phoebe said, her face still ravaged, stark and unsmiling, but her eyes no longer so unfriendly.

"Has he gone?" Kathryn asked as she looked up at him. Phoebe lay propped against the pillows.

"Yes, but don't ask me where. I told him to watch his vid-com for more news. Probably his office. The man's on his last legs, Kathryn, even if he is  - "

Kathryn gave him a steely look. "Edward Adam Janeway was my father. Don't you forget that."

"Sorry," he said, smiling at how neatly Kathryn negated Owen Paris from her life.

"He'll see your message," Phoebe whispered. "No one was going to believe that you were alive. All we heard was that you were dead and that Voyager…"

"Voyager was destroyed along with her entire crew."

"Yes."

"Phoebe," Kathryn said as she touched her sister's hand, "we're returning to the Badlands in the near future. You're welcome to join us."

He held his breath. Phoebe was quiet for a long time. Her eyes were red, moist from unshed tears. His heart went out to her. It didn't bear thinking what she had been forced to do in order to keep the children from harm. But she too, needed to talk. All her life she had resented Kathryn, had never even been friendly towards him, the one or two occasions he had been in her orbit. She resented Kathryn's happiness too. Her world was filled with darkness and Kathryn's was beginning to fill with light and laughter, so how could Phoebe Janeway not want that for herself and live with the reality that it may never be her right to be happy?

It was this, he believed, that made her such easy prey for Owen Paris, who knew exactly where to pounce, which angry buttons to push on this young woman.

"I am sorry, Kathryn…"

"Phoebe? There's nothing – "

"For hating you so much. I didn't know…"

"You protected the children, Phoebe. For that we will always be indebted to you. He would have killed you outside."

Phoebe smiled sadly.

"I told Ethan to disable his grandfather's phasers. Don't know much about them myself, but Ethan – he's very clever you know, smart just like Tom and Nick – "

"You know about Nick?"

"Yes," she sighed. "Nick tried to help me once. I was...well, too much in Owen's clutches. Nick wanted me to meet his mother. I should have listened to him."

"His mother is a good woman. Just like Tom's mother, like our mother. All were victims of a very ugly man," Kathryn told her.

"He wanted Ethan, you know. Saw the lust in his eyes whenever he looked at your little boy. That was when I knew I couldn't let him near the children."

"Thank you, for saving them."

"They're pretty scared of him, Chakotay. He's no loss to them." she said, sounding bitter.

"But you paid the price…" he said softly.

Phoebe wiped ineffectually at the tears the welled in her eyes again.

"I was stupid, Chakotay. I should have listened to Kathryn. But I was so...angry...  Daddy - "

"He loved you, Phoebe, more than you'll ever know. Only you just never let him love you... He wanted to, so badly."

"I know now," Phoebe said, giving a sob as she threw herself against Kathryn. When she calmed sufficiently again to sit back with a tearful smile on her face, she reached to grasp his arm. "Thank you both. I would very much like to accept your offer. We can find a family to live here..."

"And you can have your own family - "

"You forget, Katie," she said, a look of mischief in her face, "I need a good man for that."

"You will find the right man. Ethan and Lainey will need cousins they can spoil to pieces."

Phoebe burst into tears. It shocked them both, the intensity of her sobbing. Chakotay thought that the relief to be free from Owen Paris must have been so great. Kathryn held her sister again, crooned to her, promised that she'd love her forever, that they would remain together as a family.

But the words that rushed from Phoebe were incoherent stammering;  in their very incoherence  they formed a damning indictment against the man whose downfall Tom Paris and Nick Locarno had planned that morning early.

"You don't know how hard it was to keep him away from the children...especially Ethan. It was so hard..."

"Oh, Phoebe, it's over now, sweetheart. He can't touch us again."

"I knew from the time he took the children from you, that he wanted Ethan. I always knew he wanted little boys. I knew about Tom. Owen...that first time... He raped me, you know..."

Chakotay turned ice-cold at Phoebe's words. Then she looked at them, her eyes tearless this time, the woe replaced by a sheen of bitterness. 

"A little family of my own will have to be shelved, you two."

"Why?"

"I can't have children, Kathryn."

************ 

END PART TWENTY SEVEN  

PART TWENTY EIGHT

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