It Could Happen to You

Simone Berkowitz returned to the bridge.

Along the way, she got an interesting call.

Anton Berkowitz was the last man, really, she expected to hear from.  Not that it was the first time; he had called before, but – that was before the time-jump, twenty years ago.

Twenty years later, he was still kicking.  Tough old bird.  He had gotten past admiralty, and retired.  Simone had to admit, she wondered what he was doing now.

She and her uncle were never very close.  That fact seemed kind of odd – both in Starfleet, but by entirely different routes.  He never influenced her decision to join... though she knew he was in Starfleet, in her teens.  Maybe, subliminally.

She also knew, for him, it was a different matter, why he called.  He had lost his son... her cousin, Ronald, 'Ronny', Berkowitz... about thirty-two years ago, now.

It was an old family story, one never told with great panache.  Ronny wanted to be Romulan, for some reason... so much that he left home at the tender age of nineteen, joined Starfleet, and somehow made it all the way across the Federation, hoping to defect to Romulan space.  (Psychological pre-screenings were a little more lax in those days.)  Everyone doubted the Romulans would have taken him in – why should they?  Romulans 'took no prisoners', it was said.  The same had been said about Klingons, Cardassians, Breen... even the Dominion, before it was known otherwise.  They said that about every enemy race.  Sometimes it was true.  Not always.

For Ronny, it could have been.  Assigned to the Bellerophon, during the war with the Dominion, he had been on board when the ship went to Romulus, for a medical conference... which later turned out to be a cover-up, for clandestine dealings between Section 31 and the Tal Shiar.

Ronny disappeared.  Never heard from again.  He went to the surface... never came back.  Bellerophon, operating under strict privilege... to be granted access to the heart of Romulan territory (unheard-of for a Federation starship at the time)... was not allowed to remain in search of one man.  The alliance with the Romulans was so shaky in those days, that the UFP wouldn't risk upsetting it, and while they tried to press the matter, they didn't press too hard.  Only when investigators discovered afterwards, that Ronny wanted to go to Romulus (which must have seemed like a dream come true for him), did his ship's people realize why he was missing.  Perhaps they thought he had gotten what he wanted.  Perhaps he even managed to become a Romulan citizen.  Perhaps they threw him in a cell somewhere.  Perhaps they tortured him for information, then killed him.  Any or all of the above.

For ten years, no one knew.

The Romulans turned their empire into a republic in 2382, and signed a peace treaty.  They started making a lot of sealed records available, regarding Romulan activities involving Federation citizens in years until then.  Anton Berkowitz, withdrawn and dejected, was not the one who took advantage of the opportunity, to perhaps finally learn what became of his son.  His wife did – aunt Charise.  The flag went out, for information on Ensign Ronald Berkowitz, formerly of the USS Bellerophon, an Intrepid-class starship.  MIA, last seen on Romulus, 2375, part of a security detail for Federation delegates.

Bureaucracy was slow.  Romulan red tape.  Three years later, they got the news: He was dead.  Not of some noble cause or insidious Romulan.  Lon'Gor fever.  Rare to Romulans, contagious to humans.  He died in a Romulan hospital... ironically, three years earlier – days after the signing of the Romulan peace.  Anticlimactic, and coincidental.  But life was like that.  Or, in Ronny's case, death.  He might have been saved by Federation medical science, as advanced as it was becoming.

And uncle Anton, a Starfleet officer, captain of the USS James Kirk... who had connections his wife didn't have; he could have used them... didn't take advantage of the opportunity.  He distrusted Romulans.  Distrusted them more because of Ronny.  He wouldn't have believed whatever they told him.  "Peace with the Romulans won't last."  "Ronny turned his back on his family."  "He made his choice."

Excuses.  All excuses.

Who knew what could happen, at any time?

If he had looked past himself, and his excuses... if he hadn't wasted the gift time granted him....

In the end, he blamed himself.  He might have saved his son, had he acted at the right moment.  Ever since, he had been trying, half-heartedly, to make Simone his surrogate daughter, in place of Ronny.

Who knew what could happen, at any time?

Simone took her own advice.  She took the call.

From there, a data trail had emerged.  Ronny never became a Romulan citizen.  Never served in the Romulan military; never, as far as they knew, had his guts turned inside out for classified information.  (He was only an ensign.)  But he didn't sit around on Romulus, twiddling his thumbs.  And after Anton, of all people, called, she learned part of what he had been doing.

Ronny wasn't her only cousin.  But he was the first cousin to give her half-Romulan cousins.

Anton Berkowitz had Romulan grandchildren.