a/n: Written for the Friendship Fest Fit Exchange 2017 over on A03. My request was from ThatAdroitGeek who asked for a situation that the characters find themselves in, either stressful or relaxed; holodeck or away mission and for the pairing of Janeway/Paris.
Not my usual sandbox, and the Janeway/Paris friendship was a lot of fun to write.
Miscalculated
She didn't remember much of the crash. She didn't really remember much of the morning before it, either. If she tried hard enough, she could vaguely recall Chakotay walking her to the shuttle bay, joking that they had better come back in one piece.
The first thing she remembered clearly was Tom Paris' face looming above her own and an immense amount of smoke filling the cabin of what was left of the Delta Flyer.
So much for staying in one piece.
"Captain!" he said, his voice a little hoarse from either the smoke or slight undercurrent of panic she could feel coming from him. She wasn't sure which. "You've got to move, Captain."
She groaned, sitting up a little and coughing loudly. Tom's hands reached out, grabbing her solidly and pulling her to her feet. A sharp pain lanced through her shoulders as he did so, and together they stumbled blindly out of the shuttle and into the clearing.
Hot, humid air hit her, filling her lungs and making her wince with pain. Strong hands let go of her arm, and she slipped down to her knees.
Her eyes opened, and she blinked in the blinding sunlight, groping around with small hands on the ground. Thick jungle surrounded them, partially covering what was left of the damaged Flyer. Squinting up, she could make out what looked like a rather large mountain behind the smoke pouring from the inside of the cabin.
"Mister Paris?" she called, a little urgently, her eyes levelling out as she searched the clearing for Tom.
Scrambling against the leafy ground cover, she managed to haul herself to her feet and call out for him again. Her eyes were stinging from the smoke, and the humidity was making it hard to breath.
She'd definitely done something to her ribs. Probably bruised, she thought.
A noise to her left drew her attention, and Tom emerged from the Flyer coughing lightly. He swiped a hand over his brow, smudging the sooty marks over his face and into his blonde hair.
"Fire's out!" he said cheerily.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she managed to shuffle over to the blonde pilot where he was lugging two containers behind him as he exited the craft. He stopped a little away from her, grinning as he breathed out a little.
The containers dropped to the ground with a muted thud.
"All good there, Captain?"
Janeway shrugged lightly, trying not to wince as she took in the general surroundings. Destroyed shuttle? Check. Hot, humid weather? Check. General lack of something to do whilst waiting to be rescued? Also check.
All that was missing was the threat of imminent disaster.
"I'm quite fine, thank you Lieutenant," she said after a moment. The sun was beginning to burn her face, and she shielded what little she could with her arm. "Are you alright, Tom?"
He stood up a little straighter, and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm pretty good," he said casually, before throwing another grin her way. "I was hoping for a bit of shore leave!"
She suppressed a haughty retort, silently ingratiating herself to whomever or whatever was listening to give her the patience she was going to require over the next few hours in order to deal with her pilot.
Sometimes, she seriously questioned how B'Elanna tolerated his incessant need to be cheerful. And this entire accident was his fault.
Walking over, she perched on the edge of a container, leaning backwards slowly to peer into the back of the Flyer. Unfortunately, a lot more smoke needed to clear before they'd be able to take shelter in there.
"Well, Lieutenant," she said dryly. "Make yourself useful and start unpacking our supplies. I need to know how much coffee Neelix gave me." Her booted foot reached out, and pushed at the edge of the other container.
The sun continued to beat down on them. She seriously doubted she'd be able to keep her jacket on for much longer.
Tom answered with a thinly-veiled quip about her caffeine intake, but made his way to the other container. Looking up, Janeway squinted at the mountain right on the edge of her viewpoint, and hoped like crazy that it wasn't an active volcano.
Containers unpacked? Check. Still waiting for coffee? Check. Shuttle still destroyed? Also check.
Everything ever needed for a stranded away team was laid out in the small clearing, and scattered in some attempt at order. That was more specifically an order that only Tom Paris could follow, and Janeway had absolutely no way of following his rather bizarre method of sorting out supplies.
From what she could see, perched on top of a now-empty container, they had everything needed if they happened to be stranded on a planet stuck in the middle of an ice age. Blankets, thermal clothing and heaters were spread from one end of the clearing to the other.
They did not, however, have anything remotely useful for being stranded on a jungle-like planet, with a seemingly active volcano – if the constant rumblings were anything to go by.
The heat had only continued to increase, and Janeway had lost her jacket and long-sleeved shirt about five minutes after Tom unpacked the first blanket. It might have been the lack of supplies, or the searing humidity, but she was suddenly quite angry at a certain pilot for crashing them here.
"You're not doing very well with flying my shuttles, Lieutenant," she remarked dryly, arching an eyebrow in his direction.
He stopped, dropping a blanket he was trying rather unsuccessfully to fold, and looked at her. With that irritating grin.
"My track record is not as bad as Chakotay's."
She inclined her head, nodding. "Very true." She stood up, stretching a little, before lowering herself down to the ground, resting her back against the side of the container.
Tom sat down beside her, flopping ungracefully the last few centimetres onto the greenery-covered earth. He picked up a few sticks, breaking the ends off in small increments and flicking them with his fingers in the general direction of the Flyer.
"Now what?"
"Have you found our emergency beacon yet?" she asked. "Or coffee?"
He ducked his head. "No, Captain."
She sighed, stretching her legs a little in front of her. Her knees protested, filling the clearing with a loud crack. She stood up again, frustrated at her indecisiveness when it came to the location she wanted to occupy when it came time for her to collapse from the heat.
"Well then" Janeway said, eyeing Tom out of the corner of her eye. "You'd better get to it."
She gave him all of thirty seconds to feel guilty about stranding them, before she strode over and began to rummage through the containers as well.
Hours later, and the humid air had only increased. It was beyond stifling inside the shuttle, the tiny cabin still smouldering with remnants of their crash. The lack of ventilation hadn't helped matters, and the alien sun was beginning to reach a point high overhead.
Kathryn could feel the consistent tremors underfoot, and the mountain she'd first seen when the Flyer had crashed was beginning to smoke ominously in the background.
Paris had really better hurry up and find that damned emergency beacon.
A few loud noises and curse words travelled throughout the clearing before, right on cue, Lieutenant Paris found the equipment.
"Remind me to have stern words with the crewman who packed this at the bottom of the container," Paris commented sarcastically, setting the beacon down rather carelessly at the edge of their clearing.
"Be careful where you leave that thing," Janeway said sternly. She was strongly resisting the urge to walk over there and explain to him exactly why he should take a bit more care with it.
Her patience was definitely not going to last if they were stuck here for days.
Just as she was above to give in, and grab the emitter to place it somewhere safer, a small, brown, suspiciously hairy creature emerged from the clearing with grabby, nimble fingers.
In an instant, she was transported back to another planet, in another time with another monkey causing just as much mischief before a large plasma storm. Only this time, she really didn't believe that the monkey was here to warn them about the volcano.
Before she could call out, the little monkey had closed its hands around their emergency beacon and promptly darted across the clearing. It's irritating, high-pitched voice called out, alerting Paris and succeeding in making Janeway growl in frustration.
Tom, for the most part, managed to react swiftly, springing into action and chasing the monkey through the clearing and into the dense jungle on the other side. The monkey sprinted past her, tugging their only chance at rescue along in one of his frustratingly agile hands.
"Lieutenant Paris!" she shouted, half switch concern and the other half with annoyance. He failed to answer her as he too vanished into the clearing.
The volcano rumbled loudly, and she glanced up to see an increasing amount of smoke pouring out of the top.
"Perfect," she muttered. Hauling herself up, she ran with frustrated, heavy footsteps toward the edge of the clearing where Paris and the monkey had vanished.
Grasping at the dense leaves, she went to push through into the jungle when her foot caught on something. Apparently, in his haste, the monkey had dropped the beacon and Tom had run right over it. And promptly smashed it to smithereens with his big feet.
Sighing, she bent down and picked it up. The nagging pain in her side and shoulders had yet to subside, and she angrily stalked her way back to sit back on the container. The fabric of her pants was sticking to her now, and irritating her to no end.
Reaching around, she grasped at their pile of useless items, searching for something, anything to cut off the bottom of the pants. Finding what looked like an ice pick, amongst other various mountaineering equipment that was better suited to a glacial environment, she began to chop roughly at the material.
Angry, frequent holes appeared between the strands and eventually, satisfyingly, she was able to tear the fabric away.
Right at that particular moment, Tom emerged from the jungle looking a little worse for wear with scratches across his sweaty brow and significant holes in his trousers to match her now-destroyed ones.
His eyes flicked to the beacon in her hand as he made his way over to her.
"Sorry, Captain!" he said, slightly out of breath. His shirt seemed to have been lost somewhere in the jungle, and he stood before her looking rather hot and prepared for a dressing-down.
She tried hard not to notice the way he supressed a smirk as he took in her tank top, shorn-off pants and damaged Starfleet-issue boots.
Drawing herself up to her full height, she shoved, rather forcefully, the broken pieces of emitter into his chest. "Do not lose this again."
Pinching the bridge of her nose between dirty fingers with mostly ruined nails, she stalked back toward the Flyer.
Majority of clothes now discarded? Check. Volcano continuing to make increasingly ominous rumbling? Check. Emergency beacon now broken with no chance of rescue? Also, check.
"Mister Paris, make yourself useful and find me some coffee."
He froze, turning around to watch her. He took her in, the command-stance, rigid - if slightly injured - shoulders and no-nonsense glare, slightly losing its effect due to the immense amount of grime currently smeared on her pale face. Suddenly, he had the feeling that what he was about to tell her was not going to go well.
"It's pretty warm," he commented lightly, as casually as he could.
Her eyes narrowed and her eyes bore into his own.
"Never tell me," she started. "It's too hot for coffee."
He swallowed, and took his last chance to save himself from telling her the truth. "But-"
"Coffee," she swiftly cut him off. "Now."
He sighed, already wincing at the inevitable.
"Actually Captain," he said slowly. Carefully. "We only have decaf."
The words migrated slowly to her ears, and the guarded expression on her helmsman began to fail with her hardening look in his general direction. Involuntarily, he took a step backwards, and she took two steps forward. Her eyes watched his throat as he swallowed thickly.
"Did you just say," she said, pausing. A deep breath shuddered through her and she looked up at Paris. The next words were enunciated so perfectly, as if she almost couldn't believe what she was about to say. "We only have decaf coffee?"
He cleared his throat, glancing over the clearing. "Yes." The shuttle was too far away for him to reach safely, and he added a quick: "Ma'am."
Her glare darkened, and it was hard to tell if it was due to his tentatively-given affirmative answer, the lack of caffeine or the use of a rather hated salutation.
"Do you mean to tell me that the coffee didn't survive the crash," she asked evenly. "Or, Commander Chakotay removed it before we left Voyager?"
He shifted, clearing his throat loudly and stepping further back from her. "I'd rather not say."
And she knew without a doubt that the Commander was solely responsible for her current lack of caffeine. He was going to get a rather lengthy lecture when they returned to Voyager, and she was probably going to blame him for their bad luck in crashing the shuttle as well.
"Then you had better find me something better than Neelix's better-than-coffee substitute," she commented in dangerously low tones. "And hope that Chakotay rescues us very, very soon."
She didn't catch the reply as Tom scurried away, for right at that moment, the volcano let loose an almighty bang. Without much warning, the sky began to darken, and the humidity in the air around them began to drop at a frightening pace.
Tom stopped, glancing up with a worried frown before turning back toward her and running.
"Suggestions, Lieutenant?" she barked over the thunder.
"There is a small cave not far," he shouted back, grabbing her by the shoulder and dragging her off in the direction of the jungle.
She wasn't even going to bother asking him how he knew this, although he guessed he had found it when chasing that bloody monkey through the jungle. She just hoped it was high enough to avoid the realistic probability of lava.
Running for their lives due to impending natural disaster? Check. Shuttle going to be destroyed? Check. Emergency beacon dropped by careless Pilot and left behind? Also check.
This was turning out to be the worst possible away mission.
Three days.
They had been here three days.
Three long, stifling hot days and she was going absolutely crazy.
"All good, Captain?"
The voice of Tom Paris floated over to her from across the expanse of the cave. Causally, he leant against the outside of the Flyer, one knee bent up arrogantly as he continued to chew – loudly – on a piece of gum. Apparently, chewing gum had been the rage in the late nineteen-nineties on Earth. Or, so she'd found out over the past here days as a certain Lieutenant continued to apprise her of useless information whilst continuing to chew gum.
And it was pissing her off to no end. Because of everything left behind in the clearing, just waiting to be encased by lava, Lieutenant Paris had brought packets of chewing gum.
She was so sure he would have run out by now.
Her eyes narrowed, and she flicked her eyes over his form. She folded her arms over her chest. "Yes, Mister Paris. Everything is fine."
He smirked, immune to her sarcasm after three days and pushed off the shuttle with boyish grace. It was pretty much now assured across the expanse of this damn planet that after three days and no caffeine, she was anything but fine.
Of all the things that had managed to find in the containers, there was no explanation for how several packets of gum had ended up amongst the thermal blankets and solar-heaters.
"How long until Chakotay finds us?" he asked, stopping a little short of her and continuing to chew the gum.
Janeway's eyes narrowed further. "Not soon enough," she answered flippantly.
Irritatingly, Tom continued to smile.
"Problem, Lieutenant?"
He smirked again, flicking the gum around his mouth with his tongue before blowing the gum out between his teeth. Her eyes followed the pink goo with distaste, irritation quickly welling up simultaneously as the bubble continued to grow before popping rather loudly.
"I'm just curious," he continued.
She took a deep, stabilising breath, mentally counting to ten and wishing she'd paid more attention to Chakotay's meditation techniques. "About what?" she ground out.
Another bubble formed as he continued to chew loudly. She could almost feel the twitch beginning to form over one eye.
"Is this the longest you've gone without coffee?"
Of all the planets in the Delta Quadrant, they had managed to crash on the only jungle-like one that apparently contained no coffee beans. At this point, even the raw, green plant would have been more than satisfactory.
She swallowed slowly, carefully. "You sure you want to ask that?"
Annoyingly, he laughed. "Well, I'm just wondering if I should be treating you for withdrawal?"
Her hands found her hips and she straightened her spine. She chewed the inside of her lip, and continued to regard the youthful man in front of her. Another bubble of gum popped, and she almost lost it.
"I'm going for a walk," she stated matter-of-factly. At his raised eyebrow and quick glance around the small cave, she added lamely: "To the entrance."
Irritation was running high, and her fingers were just itching with boredom and annoyance. Her now-dusty boots were scuffing along the ground, kicking up whatever dirt and small pebbles she could find along the way.
She was absolutely stir-crazy, and hot. Her uniform pants had now been shorn off to well above the knee, her tank top torn and dirtier than she'd ever seen it and she was almost certain that she was never going to untangle her hair.
Her foot found a large rock, and she muffled a curse as the impact bruised her toes. Angrily, she reached down, grabbing the rock with both hands and intent on flinging it as far as possible when blue light enveloped her.
All she could think about was the way she was going to appear on the transporter pad. Dirty, sweaty, slightly crazed look in her eye and wielding a rock the size of Neelix's leola root muffins. Captain gone native. With her chief pilot.
Oh yes. This was going to go around the rumour mill.
The first thing she actually saw was her First Officers barely suppressed grin when he opened his mouth to no doubt say something witty about his Captain. He must have thought better of it, though, as his mouth closed almost as quickly as it had opened.
"Sorry we're late, Captain," he said eventually.
"About time Chakotay!" Tom remarked from somewhere behind her.
At least the Commander had the good grace to look a little sheepish.
Looking around, Janeway all but dropped the rock to the floor of the transporter room, stepping down from the pad with a frustrated sigh. "The Flyer?" she inquired.
Chakotay looked back at her, and answered easily. "Mostly recovered. It seems the lava flow avoided the crash site."
She nodded slowly, wiping a hand over her face and breathing in deeply. After three days, it was a strange feeling to breath in air that was dry and it hurt her lungs. She must have winced a little, because the Commander was suddenly insisting she go to sickbay.
Annoyed, she took another step toward him, and pinched the side of her cheek between her teeth. "Actually," she started. "I need to discuss something with you," she said seriously, resisting the urge to stand on her toes and look him directly in the eye.
"Oh?" he asked casually, lifting the corner of his mouth in a tell-tale grin and looking at her.
"I'd like to know why you saw it fit to remove my coffee from the shuttle."
Nervously, he tugged his ear. The corners of his mouth quirked up again, this time into a full grin. "Ask your pilot."
Janeway narrowed her eyes, and whirled around. Tom stood wisely away, hovering by the transporter pad with the look of someone in serious pain. "Lieutenant?" she prompted.
To his credit, his face mostly remained impassively straight. "Sorry, Captain. I just, uh, remembered the Doctor needed my help."
And he scuttled out of the transporter room, dodging the Captain and all-but running out the door.
Back to Voyager in one piece? Check. First Officer being annoyingly concerned? Check. Pilot still a little bit frightened of the Captain? Check.
Still waiting for coffee? Unfortunately, also check.
a/n: Thank you to Helen who was my sounding board for coming up with many crazy, cliched away mission disasters!