Author's Note: This one was written for Photogirl1890, whose unfailing support, patience and humor (...did I mention patience?) have been an immeasurable gift over the last year and a half. Thank you, my friend, for your company on this writing journey.
(Also, this is a companion piece of sorts to Photogirl's "Reversion". If you haven't read it, skip this and go read it. You will be glad you did.)
Elegies
There's no body and therefore no coffin – or no torpedo casing, to be more accurate.
That in itself isn't entirely unusual. Plenty of cultures within the Federation have customs that preclude the use of a coffin, and Starfleet yields protocol in such cases. Durst's is hardly the first funeral gathering which Tom has attended that has lacked a clear centerpiece.
But, in this case, that missing casing serves as a stark reminder of the grisly end met by the officer.
Durst's features, grafted onto the Vidiian's face.
Tom blinks, trying to clear away the image – too much like something out of a second-rate twentieth century horror film.
Seeking distraction, he lets his gaze wander around the mess hall, filled to capacity by what must be every crew member not currently on duty, Starfleet and Maquis alike. Pete had been well liked as both a shipmate and an officer – one of those rare individuals with whom the lower ranks felt comfortable sharing a drink or meal during downtime and yet whom they also respected without question when on duty.
Tom Paris might have been one of those individuals – in another lifetime.
"So that bastard Paris lost another one, huh?"
"What's his tally now anyway?"
"Not sure – no doubt more than a few were covered up back in the AQ – nice to be an Admiral's brat."
"Shit, I hope I don't end up on an away mission with him. Poor Durst. I heard Paris almost lost Torres as well – and Kim too when he decided to fuck that scientist's wife a few months back. What was Janeway thinking anyway?"
Whether or not the conversation whispered over yesterday's lunch, meters away from where he is presently standing, had been meant to reach his ears, Tom isn't sure. It was certainly neither the first nor the last of its kind that he had heard in the week leading up to Durst's funeral.
Durst's funeral: the first funeral on Voyager since the mass memorial for the forty crewmembers who had been victims of the Caretaker's tetryon beam.
Little surprise to anyone that Voyager's first loss in the Delta Quadrant came under the command of Thomas Eugene Paris.
Tom's right hand moves up to fidget with the two pips on his suddenly too tight collar.
Yes, what had Janeway been thinking, anyway?
And what had he been thinking, accepting those pips and the reinstatement that came with them?
Hell, he even remembers agreeing to some nonsense from Janeway about his father being proud – in reality, he's pretty sure that the only positive emotion his father might have felt about him in years was utter relief when Tom finally disappeared into the Badlands.
He remembers his father being proud of him once upon a time – in that other lifetime. The Admiral had made a point of being on board the Exeter for the first occasion on which Tom had received that second pip and his lieutenancy. The visit had been brief and the majority of the Admiral's time was spent with Captain Epstein, but his father's pleasure and satisfaction had been evident when he grasped Tom's hand after the ceremony.
How easy it had all seemed back then.
Next to him, Harry shifts his weight from foot to foot as Chakotay yields the podium to the Captain. The mess hall had already been filled to standing room only capacity by the time Tom made his last minute arrival - the last three years may have left him accustomed to assorted glares from his shipmates, but he's still neither altogether immune nor willing to suffer them for longer than necessary. When he had finally entered, Harry had wordlessly given up his own seat and moved to stand beside his friend.
"...and Kim too when he decided to fuck that scientist's wife..."
Both hands back at his sides, Tom's fingernails bite into his palms.
The EMH had been all too happy to share with Tom the details of Harry's condition upon the ensign's return to Voyager from Banea: severe dehydration and exhaustion with attendant delirium and hyperalbuminemia.
All because Tom Paris had decided to fuck some scientist's wife – or near enough.
Janeway is droning on – no doubt exhorting the crew to honor Durst's memory by serving as good little Starfleet crewmembers. Tom has long since lost the train of her words.
At least this part of it will soon be over.
The last time, the funerals had taken place while he had still been lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness.
For Durst, they had waited a week. Because B'Elanna had wanted to attend.
At the thought, Tom's gaze moves over to where the now once again half-Klingon engineer sits between Bendera and Hogan. She seems fidgety and restless, almost as ill at ease as Tom himself feels. She turns in his direction and their eyes meet; a touch of color rises in her cheeks as she quickly looks down and away.
At last, mercifully, Janeway wraps up. Harry has been tapped to sound the traditional boatswain's whistle, and Tom is thus free to flee the scene as soon as the final notes fade. At best hope, no one will miss him.
.
.
The eight ball skitters into the corner pocket. The shot has neither subtlety nor finesse, but there's no one there to impress anyway – or at least there hadn't been before the cue hit its mark and Tom heard the squeak of Sandrine's doors behind him.
He turns without haste but instinctively tests the weight of the pool cue in his hands. When he sees who has entered, his grip relaxes.
"The doors were unlocked," B'Elanna offers quickly, vaguely indicating back towards the holodeck entrance. "I didn't realize you were running the program by yourself."
Tom considers that as he begins to re-rack the balls. He'd intentionally left the privacy settings off as it isn't his scheduled holodeck time and Sandrine's is generally run as an open program. However, considering that the rest of the crew is likely still gathered in the mess hall, he wonders who else the engineer thought might be with him.
"Come by to play a little pool?"
She stiffens at the guarded tone that he instantly regrets, remembering that as shitty as his week has been, hers has been a waking nightmare.
.
...B'Elanna gathers herself, resisting the reflex to throw back a biting response and flee (…you would think those now again free-flowing Klingon hormones would do something to dampen that ever-present instinct to run…) and tries to assess the pilot's level of sobriety. There is a glass and open bottle of some golden liquid that she presumes has alcoholic content perched on a windowsill near the pool table. The glass is nearly full, though the bottle is not. But how much could he really have consumed in the few minutes that it had taken her to free herself from the mess hall and the few more that she had stood, wavering, outside the holodeck doors?
In retrospect, she has begun to wonder if she has ever seen Paris truly drunk or if his apparent state of near-constant inebriation throughout his brief stint with the Maquis had been yet another layer of an elaborate facade. She'd long ago admitted to herself that she envies that ability of his to pull on a mask, to remake himself and hide his vulnerabilities from the world – while her own flaws and insecurities have always been as starkly obvious as those ridges so recently regrown on her forehead.
"Actually," she crosses her arms and tries for an air of unconcern which she suspects is painfully transparent, "I came by to say thank you."
.
...He pauses mid-motion from gathering balls from pockets. The hesitation is brief and he doubts that she notices it, standing there as she is like a skittish young sark.
He could ask, thank you for what? but he remembers as well as she does their conversations in the depths of the mines – and her fear.
Instead, Tom finishes racking the balls, keeping B'Elanna in the periphery of his vision. Frankly, it's hard not to stare at her directly, not to try to trace out the image still fresh in his memory of that fully human girl against the engineer's restored features.
She's still waiting for some response and, finding himself unable to conjure up any verbal reply not laced with self-loathing, he grabs a second pool cue and crosses the room to offer it to her with a raised eyebrow and a slight tilt of the chin. She hesitates a beat and then, uncrossing her arms, takes the cue from his hand and moves to the table.
Her break sends two striped balls into opposite corner pockets and he watches as she lines up for her next shot, not failing to notice how the uniform that had hung so limply around her in the caves now once again hugs her lithe form. Tom has never considered a Starfleet uniform to be a particularly attractive garment, but damn if Torres doesn't wear it well.
Tom's eyes roam up to the provisional rank bar on her collar. "Can I ask you something, Lieutenant?" Her attention is on her shot but he chooses to take her 'mmph' as acquiescence. "How did you end up mixed up with Starfleet – the first time, I mean?"
Hit with overly much force, the cue ball follows its target into the side pocket.
.
...Tracking Tom Paris down to the holodeck is not exactly what she had planned for this evening; joining him for a game of pool is even less so. Recounting to him her reasons for embarking on her maiden tryst with Starfleet falls somewhere far behind even that on what might have been her list of possibilities for the evening a couple hours before.
She watches as he fishes her eleven ball along with the cue ball out of the pocket and respots them. His jaw is tight and his expression is set in that habitual impassivity that three months ago she would have had no difficulty labeling as arrogance.
Of course, three months ago she had also had a Cardassian spy as a best friend, so what the hell does she know?
Besides, the answer to his question is fairly mundane, nothing really compared to the long-held secrets she had shared with him a week before.
"Things…weren't great…at home." He's angling for his own shot now and not looking at her. That makes this easier. "I needed – thought I needed – to get away." She snorts: "There wasn't a circus handy, so Starfleet Academy was the next best option."
.
…Tom's shot is true and the cue ball splits two solids. Straightening, he looks back over at B'Elanna who has found some chalk to fidget with.
The question had been a shot in the dark: at best, he might have expected a well-deserved reminder that it was none of his fucking business. However, some last remnants of that intimacy they had shared so recently had led him to ask anyway. And perhaps the same has bought him his unexpected answer.
He reaches across the table to pluck the chalk away from her as he raises his brows ever so slightly and carefully pitches his voice: "The circus probably would have been a lot more fun."
Whether in response to his tone or expression, she relaxes and the corners of her mouth twitch. "Or a better fit at least."
He turns back to the game but that smile, slight though it may be, lingers in his mind, proving distracting. His target ball bounces dully off the edge of the pocket.
"Looks like it's your turn, Lieutenant."
.
…She edges around the table, weighing her options and the various openings left for her by the pilot.
"Okay, my turn," she agrees. "So. What happened at Caldik Prime?"
Two more stripes fall into their appropriate pockets and she moves around for the follow up. Paris is now chalking his own cue, his expression unchanged by the question which they both knew had been provoked by his own. Still, there are steps to this dance. "If you know the name, you know there are plenty of people who would be more than happy to answer that question for you."
"But I'm asking you." Another striped ball thuds into its pocket.
He sets the chalk down and takes a moment to contemplate the table. "I was overconfident. That got my crew killed."
"It was your fault – the accident?"
"My fault, yes."
Her next shot brings her back around to the end of the table where he is standing. "And then you lied on the report." A statement rather than a question. She moves the cue into position. "Why?"
The shot requires some subtlety and she finds Paris's presence next to her more distracting than she would like to admit.
"Because I didn't want it to be true."
.
…He knows he should move around the corner of the table and give her more space but he finds himself mesmerized by the flex of her spine and curve of her shoulder blades as she leans into her shot. Possibly he is indeed crowding her though, as her target hits just wide of its intended pocket.
"ghay'cha'!"
Bristling with frustration, she straightens and turns toward him most likely to make a scathing and probably justified complaint about his continued proximity. Their eyes meet, but whatever accusation she is about to deliver seems to catch in her throat.
After a long moment, she takes a step back, giving him a clear path around the table to his next shot.
Reluctantly, he moves to the other end of the table, contemplating the placement of his remaining targets.
"Tom?"
He looks back up.
"You know that this time – that Pete's death – this one wasn't your fault."
Fuck contemplation. Tom sinks an open shot and then looks back up.
"My command: my fault."
"Not always." And, apparently unfazed by the waves of bitterness that are no doubt emanating from his person, she cocks an eyebrow at him. "Not this time. I was there, remember."
.
…His next play moves him back down the table in her direction. She stands her ground, watching his expression, making her best attempt now to distill the man from the mask.
When had Chakotay's mercenary pilot become so damn complicated?
He looks back over at her and their eyes meet again – and something in his jaw and brow relaxes ever so slightly. He opens his mouth to speak as her comm badge chirps to life.
:Engineering to Lieutenant Torres:
The pilot snorts a rueful laugh at the inevitable interruption as she taps her badge and reassures Nicoletti that while, no, she is not technically back on duty yet that, yes, she would be able to come by and check the unexplained variance on the plasma flow regulator levels.
"Sorry for leaving the game unfinished," she offers as she returns her cue to its place on the wall.
Paris shrugs. "Another time perhaps? We have sixty-nine or so more years out here, I believe."
There is a relative lightness to his voice which she finds both oddly gratifying and flustering. She gives a curt nod and heads for the door.
"B'Elanna?" She pauses and looks back: Paris's eyes are on his next shot. "You didn't ask why I came forward – later – after Caldik Prime."
.
…Tom keeps his attention on the table but out of the corner of his eye he watches B'Elanna hesitate. She glances again at the escape offered by the door before seeming to make her decision and turning fully back to face him.
"Actually, it took me a while, but I think I figured that one out for myself."
Whatever response he had expected, this is not it. He straightens. "Oh? And what did you decide, if I may ask?"
She cocks her head and gives him a look that cuts through years of carefully layered defenses. "Because," and she turns as she speaks, crossing the remaining distance to the exit, "because you're Tom Paris."
And, with that, Sandrine's door closes behind her, leaving Tom to contemplate the repatterned game before him with, perhaps, the company of a ghost or two fewer than a half hour before.