What if Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres had not been rescued in time in "Day of Honor?" If Voyager took the same route afterwards, it's likely they would have encountered the same people and events in the early part of Voyager's Season Four - but without their Helmsman and Chief Engineer. How would their absence alter the events and, especially, the emotional reactions and relationships of those left behind them on Voyager? The situations and some of the dialogue might be the same, but without Tom and B'Elanna to take part in the events or to utter the words attributed to them in the actual episodes, the stories would look quite different:

Those Who Are Left Behind
by J.A. Toner a.k.a. "Jamelia"

Space is infinite, dark, and empty. Airless. Cold. Light coming from widely scattered stars occasionally reflects off wisps of gas in nebulas or bounces off a solid body of matter that, for a moment, tumbles into the path of radiation in the visible spectrum. A brief flash illuminates the darkness, a scant moment in the scope of limitless time, before disappearing again into the ether.

Most of the time, said objects are inorganic bits of rock of various sizes. Some are planets, some mere grains of sand. It is rare, in the vastness, for the object to ever have had life. Rarer still is the object that is still alive in that emptiness.

At one set of coordinates in the area that beings from one culture refer to as the Delta Quadrant, two living creatures, clothed in white pressurized suits and tethered to each other by a thin line, clung barely to life. Their legs were linked together; the only sound audible over the intercoms of their EVA suits was labored breathing and a tinny computerized feminine voice reciting, ::::Warning, oxygen level at one hundred four millibars and falling.::::

"Tom," murmured one of the white-encased bodies, shaking her companion.

"Hmmm."

"Tom, come on, open your eyes."

"I was having a dream. A really nice dream. We were home . . ." Meeting her eyes through the plexiglas visors guarding them from vacuum and the almost absolute zero temperatures of space, he smiled, "Don't be afraid, B'Elanna. It's not going to be hard. It's going to be . . . peaceful."

Another warning of falling oxygen levels halted B'Elanna before she could continue, "Tom, there's something I have to say . . . "

"Me, too. I'm glad . . . the last thing I'll see . . . is you . . ." His labored breathing could not obscure the message beneath his words as he pulled her into his arms with his vanishing strength, his eyes conveying more of his longing for closeness than either speech or his actions could.

"No, something else . . ."

"What?"

Her breathing was almost as labored as Tom's as she continued, "I've been a coward . . . about everything . . . everything that really matters . . ."

His clear blue eyes gazed softly upon her, his face open, as it always was when he was not hiding behind the masks he had always been able to assume too readily. There was no more time for hiding from the truth, no mask over his face but the clear one that concealed nothing from her. "You're being a little hard on yourself."

B'Elanna's Klingon half would not be dissuaded. "No, I'm going to die - without a shred of honor. And for the first time in my life, that bothers me. So I have to tell you something. I have to-"

::::Warning, oxygen level at seventy-one millibars and falling.::::

During the interruption, Tom's eyes began to close again, although his arms still held B'Elanna close. She breathed out his name again, "Tom-"

Dragging himself back to consciousness, he said, "I'm here. It's okay. It won't be long now."

"I have to tell you the truth."

"The truth? About what?" He was interrupted by another warning. Sixty-two millibars of oxygen left now. Seconds of life remained. His mouth seemed to move in slow motion as he encouraged, "Better say it now. We don't have much longer."

Lightheaded, she took as deep a breath as she could, finally getting out, "I love you, Tom."

His eyes went wide, even as his mind seemed to slip away from the enormity of what she had said, the incongruity of the setting. Nothing came from his mouth as his head nodded, eyes drifting closed. That was not what B'Elanna was seeking, and she demanded in an intense whisper, "Well, say something!"

His eyes opened as a half smile graced his face. He looked at her again, searching for the words which finally came with a wistful sadness, "You picked a great time to tell me."

At another time, B'Elanna Torres probably would have slugged Thomas Eugene Paris for that statement. At another time, he undoubtedly would have delivered the line with a sarcastic swagger and a cockily raised eyebrow. This time, his words were merely a statement of the obvious. A slight smile that matched the one he wore came to her lips. Their gloved hands stroked the outsides of their helmets in vain attempts to caress the faces within. There were no more words to be said. Their hearts spoke now in the silence, in the embrace they shared as their heads moved as close to touching as the plexiglas would let them. Two bodies knotted together, adrift in the loneliness of space, finally at peace with each other.

When the transporter beam locked onto the bodies of Lieutenant Torres and Lieutenant Paris and reassembled their molecules in Sickbay two hours later, Tom and B'Elanna still embraced each other in death.

Two data chips rested in his hand. Ensign Harry Kim of the Federation Starship Voyager didn't feel much like listening to either one, but he knew he had to. Tom Paris, who had saved him from the greed of a Ferengi barkeep on Deep Space Nine, and B'Elanna Torres, who had first dubbed him "Starfleet" when they were being held in a medical facility far beneath the surface of the Ocampa homeworld, had entrusted him with the duty and the privilege of listening to thoughts that were to be shared with him only after their deaths. Because of his friendships with them, he had to listen, even if he felt like he'd lost his best friend.

He had. Both of them.

Slipping the first chip into the player, Harry noted that B'Elanna had recorded it a few days after Kes had left Voyager so spectacularly. That wasn't surprising. Many of the crew had decided to update their final messages after Kes' death/transformation to a new life form - whatever had happened to her, she was no longer visible. Harry himself had recorded updated messages for his friends. His messages to them could be trashed now. Tom and B'Elanna would never see them.

As he listened to B'Elanna's message, he felt both smiles and tears come to his eyes. There wasn't anything in the message he hadn't suspected long ago. He wished Tom could have heard it.

Harry was struck by the similarity of Tom's message to B'Elanna's. He wasn't really surprised at the contents of Tom's, either.

Listening to both messages at the same sitting, one after the other, Harry easily grasped what neither had been able to say directly in words. A depressed Harry was certain that his friends had never been able to express their true feelings towards each other, either. Not before . . . .

Thinking of the twin torpedo casings being readied for the next morning's services, Harry realized he had a message of his own to give - to his captain.

::::Ensign Kim to Captain Janeway.::::

"Janeway here. Yes, Harry, what is it?" Kathryn Janeway looked wearily up from the data PADD in her hand and glanced briefly at her first officer where he sat in his customary seat in her ready room. What had been Chakotay's customary seat up until recently, when their working relationship had been strained by their differing positions toward the Borg - one of whom was now a de facto member of Voyager's crew.

::::Captain, I just reviewed the data chips that Tom and B'Elanna left me. I think you should see them, Captain.::::

"Thank you, Harry, but they're your private messages."

::::I know, but I think you might want to adjust some of your plans for them . . . I mean, for their bodies. I don't think they'd mind if I showed you, Captain. You should call Commander Chakotay, too.::::

"He's already here in my ready room. If you think it's so important, come."

::::I'll be there in a few minutes. Kim out.::::

As the message began, her smile brightened quickly to a broad grin, to quickly be replaced by a grim smile. "Hello, Starfleet. If you're listening to this, I must have died. I hope it was 'with honor,' so you can go to my mother when you get back to the Alpha Quadrant and tell her that her daughter 'went to Sto-Vo-Kor' the way she'd always wanted me to. Let her know about the chief engineer thing, too. She'll like that. She was always sure I was going to amount to something. I never told anyone that before, Harry. I always talked about the way we didn't get along, I know. It wasn't all bad, though. There's a data chip for her, too, Harry. Please make sure she gets it."

The image looked down towards her feet for a few seconds before again looking out squarely from the computer screen. "Harry, I want you to know how much your friendship always meant to me. You were the first person I ever knew who wasn't more interested in my being a Klingon woman than you were in B'Elanna Torres, your friend, the engineer. That may seem like a simple thing to you, but it isn't, Harry. I know.

"I hope you remember all the good times we had together. The meals in the mess hall. Sandrine's. Swimming at Neelix's resort. All those all-nighters working on the Warp 10 Project. You've always been there for me when I needed you, Harry. I really loved being your friend. Thank you, for everything.

"Harry, speaking of the Warp 10 Project, there's one more favor I need to ask of you. It's about Tom. You know how he's been lately. I mean, I'd have to have been blind not to know that . . . well, you know. With the dating, and all, we've gotten pretty close, and . . . well, I have a hunch he's going to take this pretty hard. Me dying, I mean. So, Harry, please help him through this. Stay with him. Don't let him go back to being 'Pig Paris' again. He's better than that, even though he tries to hide it. Maybe he hides it from himself, I don't know. I just know that if anyone can keep him from going over the deep end, you can.

"I don't know what else to say, Harry, except, maybe, ride herd on my engineers so they keep Voyager together. Get home safe and sound. Good-bye, Starfleet. Remember your 'Maquis.' "

The ready room was completely silent while Harry exchanged Tom's data chip for B'Elanna's in the computer. Harry blinked when the image of the pilot appeared on screen. Tom's tall, lanky form was perched on the edge of a table, blue eyes staring down the recording device for his final message, almost as if he were daring it to record his thoughts accurately.

"Hey, Harry. Hope you're doing well. I guess I'm not. Well, I don't think anyone's too surprised that I bought it; I've skirted on the edge most of my life. I just hope that when it finally happened, the only one who ended up dead was me. I wouldn't want that on my conscience. I've got enough dead people in there already. I always told you I wasn't a good luck charm, Harry! I hope you have better luck with your next best friend.

"And that's what you were to me, Harry. You were just about the best friend a guy could ever have. The moment I laid eyes on you in that bar on Deep Space Nine, I felt like you were the little brother I never had. But you turned into a lot more than that. Hell, most people fight all the time with their little brothers; we hardly ever argued. About anything important, I mean. And what fun we had! Sandrine's. The holodeck programs. Dating the Delaney sisters - and Harry, I am sorry I laughed about you and Jenny and the gondola, even though it was really funny at the time. And about that holodeck babe that turned out to be an alien, too. I shouldn't have done that. But we did have fun, didn't we?

"But Harry, that isn't what I really need to thank you for. It was for not believing what Cavit and Fitzgerald said about me - hell, what I even said about me. For being your own man. I told you to stay away from me, but I'm glad you didn't listen. I was a pretty despicable person when I first met you in that Ferengi's bar, but whatever good I ended up doing on Voyager, it started with you believing in me. That means a lot to me. Meant a lot. I never could figure out how you're supposed to talk doing one of these things. But Harry, you know what I mean, I hope.

"When you get back to Earth - when, not if! I know that Captain Janeway and Chakotay and Tuvok are going to get you home someday - I'd like you to look up my parents, if they're still alive, and my sisters. Tell them I wasn't always a screw-up, and that I got to do what I loved doing the most. I got to pilot a starship again. I hope they'll care. Whether they do or not, I care. So let them know.

"There's one other thing, Harry." Tom's eyes looked off to the side, as if to look at something in the distance, and a look of stabbing pain crossed his visage, just for a second, starkly visible during the brief hesitation in his speech. "I don't know if you've noticed, but there's someone who's really become special to me the last few months. B'Elanna. I want you to take care of her, Harry. I don't know how much she'd really care about . . . whatever happened to me, but . . . I . . . just in case she does care, I . . . " Tom looked down at his hands and clasped them, saying, "This is silly. It's not like we're married, or anything, but I'd like you to be there for her, Harry. Be good to her. I'd like to think that maybe you could make her happy. Hell, you'd be better for her than I ever would be. I should try to fix the two of you up! But I won't. Not while I'm still around - but hey - if you're listening to this message, I'm not around anymore. So, go ahead, Harry. Make your move. But Harry, just make sure that she gets home okay, too."

The image of Tom Paris stood up, and at least a suggestion of the cocky grin he habitually assumed lit his face again. "So, anyway, Harry. Take care of yourself. And thanks again, for everything."

Tom's image flickered away as the message ended. Kathryn Janeway's hand closed reflexively on the chips in her left hand, holding the final personal messages directed to her by her chief engineer and helmsman. She hadn't looked at them yet, thanks to the lingering complications the Caatati had caused for Voyager. She'd only had time to review the public messages, detailing the funeral arrangements each had wanted. Simple Starfleet services for both, with their bodily remains to be shot out into space, to spend eternity in the stars.

"Captain?" Chakotay was concerned by the grief-stricken, faraway look he read upon his superior's face.

Her eyes met her first officer's, focusing upon his face for a moment and nodding slightly before they met those of the young operations officer again. "Thank you, Harry, for sharing these with us. I hadn't had a chance to play mine yet. You said you thought we might want to adjust our plans for the services tomorrow, based on these messages?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Yes, Captain. I know you were getting two torpedoes ready, to shoot out one after the other. But after seeing these, and seeing what they felt about each other . . . Captain, no one will ever know if they ever said anything to each other at the end; but from the way we found them, the way they were holding onto each other - I was thinking maybe they wouldn't have wanted us to waste the resources by using two casings. I think maybe, if they're going to be floating in space for as long as the galaxy lasts . . . one capsule is enough for both of them. So they can be together at last."

The captain nodded her head, mouth tightly pursed. From the look on her face, Chakotay could see that words would not come easily to her for several minutes. He took it upon himself to say, "See that it's done, Harry. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Dismissed."

After Harry left, the two senior officers sat silently in the captain's ready room for several minutes. When Janeway finally trusted herself to look at her first officer, she could not see his face. His head was down, his eyes on his folded hands. Then he looked up, and a gleam of unshed tears was visible in his deep brown eyes. A slight choking sound escaped her lips, and his glistening eyes flew to her face. Her right hand flew up to conceal her eyes from him, but he caught a glimpse of what he fully expected to see in her blue-gray eyes.

Chakotay stood and took the three steps needed to cross the space between them. The awkwardness of the last few weeks vanished as he touched her shoulder in comfort. Her left hand dropped the two data chips upon her desk before she reached up, crossing her body, and grasped his wrist where it rested upon her shoulder. More emotional displays would come when they were alone in their quarters, reviewing the last words of their own personal reclamation projects. Projects which had come to untimely ends.