"In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Broken
When Kathryn Janeway's shuttle is shot down while orbiting a planet in the Delos system, Tom Paris is in Montreal, looking over plans for the new shuttle Starfleet has hired his company to consult on. He returns home to Seattle around 19:00 to find his wife waiting for him on the porch of their home, two mugs of coffee in hand.
B'Elanna tells him of their former Captain's possible death, her voice so quiet that it's almost drown out by the rain, and Tom makes absolutely no movement or sound in reply. It isn't that everything around him freezes. But rather, that it feels like it should freeze, and when it doesn't, his mind can't comprehend that the normal fabric of space and time hasn't been ripped to shreds; the continuing sound of the pounding rain on the sidewalk and the rush of accumulated precipitation down the side of the house filling his ears with painful sound.
They watch for anything in the news, looking mostly at private media outlets rather than Federation channels. After a week of hearing nothing, Tom stops sleeping entirely while B'Elanna begins to worry about her husband on top of the missing woman. His wife observes, with a mix of compassion and fear, as he shows no sign of interest in food, and goes in so late to work that his boss is finally forced to ask him if he needs some time off.
On the ninth day, Chakotay contacts Tom to say that Janeway has been found alive, but gives him no more details before ending the comm line, a look of profound pain on his face as he tells Tom to give B'Elanna and Miral his love. To B'Elanna's confusion, her husband begins watching the Federation newsfeeds more, his face impassive as he sees only a ten-word announcement that Admiral Janeway has been recovered from an alien holding facility scroll across the view screen in his living room.
Tom's savvy enough to know that however supposedly humanitarian Starfleet's principles, Command tends to nudge high profile people into the lime light as fast as possible after things like this. Put a strong, confident face on the would-be victim, and thus the 'Fleet.
That is, unless the person in question is in no psychological condition for such interviews. What they've withstood going far beyond mere captivity.
Looking at the single scrawling line of text, Tom can still remember the complete quiet his father returned to San Francisco in; the total absence of journalists Starfleet sent to his family home, after the Cardassians.
"What's wrong?" B'Elanna asks, waking up in the middle of the night to find Tom sitting in the chair in their room, rather than in bed next to her. She throws back the blankets, coming to where he is and perching in his lap. Trying with her physical presence to diminish the mental distance he's unconsciously established between them, these last few days.
"Tom, they found her," B'Elanna soothes, pressing her face into her husband's neck. "She's alive."
"There are worse things than death, Bee," he whispers.
Her only reply is to wrap her arms around him tighter, as if to choke the life force out of the fear and painful memories that haunt him; thoughts of the torture his father endured- images and sounds from the prison in Auckland.
Two weeks after that night, B'Elanna is packing to go Mars. Part of her current posting includes going to Utopia Planitia for ten days every three months, and she has now forestalled her usual rotation there as long as she can.
"Are you sure you don't want to come this time?" she asks, packing the last of their five-year-old daughter's toys. "You have all that leave time saved up. . . You could just take off work. Kevin already suggested you take a vacation."
"The second half of that design is due Monday," Tom says, shaking his head. But this only makes B'Elanna contemplate him more. She's almost certain he's gotten nothing of value done on the project he's presently referencing. She hates the idea of leaving him alone like this.
Still, after a decade with him, she's learned to trust both her husband's resilience and his insistence to deal with some things on his own. And as she closes the suitcase, she hopes he'll find some peace without her, these next several days.
. . . . .
The evening Miral and B'Elanna leave for Mars, Tom considers contacting Janeway's family in Indiana, but thinks better of it. The official line that Headquarters has been selling is that "Admiral's Janeway family would appreciate privacy at this time," and Tom thinks that for once, Starfleet is putting out a story he can actually buy.
When the door chimes two mornings later, he's in the kitchen, making himself some toast before transporting into work. He comes into the entryway, opening the door to find the woman he's been worrying about for the last month standing only centimeters from him.
She's wrapped in a heavy jacket and scarf that both swallow her, and her hair has been dyed blonde. He assumes the last part is to avoid attention as she travels, her face having been splashed across the news feeds a dozen times in the years since they returned home.
If so, he thinks she's succeeded. She doesn't look at all like the Kathryn Janeway he knows. In fact, it takes him a solid second to recognize her.
As his thoughts race, his first impulse is to hug her. But something about the very air she gives off immediately quashes the feeling. Instead, he backs inside the house to let her in, and she walks straight past him like she's striding by a stranger in the street.
He grabs the small bag she's left outside on the stoop, closing the door with haste as he makes his way into the family room after her. She removes her jacket but not her scarf, then sits down in the center of the large couch that resides in the middle of the room. She doesn't look at him, glancing around the room to take in the new furniture she hasn't seen before, but with a kind of open disinterest he's never seen on her.
"Do you want some coffee?" he asks finally.
She doesn't reply promptly, and for a moment he thinks she's somehow failed to hear him. But she has, in fact, heard him. She's just processing the strangeness of coffee having absolutely no appeal to her
"No thanks," she replies neutrally.
After that she meets his eyes and stares him down for a solid minute. Perhaps she's daring him to ask her about her experience, or else expecting him to fuss over her. But he knows that this is a test- has absolutely no doubt that if he does either of those things, she'll pick up her coat and stride right out the door in the same manner in which she came in.
"I'm late for work," he announces. "You're welcome to stay in the house today if you'd like. B'Elanna and Miral are away for a week, so the place is all yours while I'm at the office."
She nods at his words but doesn't make any other reply. He picks up his work bag, and heads out the door to the office he'll spend the next nine hours worrying in rather than working.
When he returns to the house and opens the door, he thinks there's only a fifty-fifty chance she'll be there. And he's right. She did almost leave. But this fact he isn't privy to, coming into his living room to find Janeway stretched out across his couch and lying on her back.
He's assumes for a moment that she's asleep, but realizes shortly after that that she's simply staring at the ceiling. It's an activity he's engaged in countless times himself, but somehow he finds completely disconcerting when performed by the woman in front of him.
"Busy day?" he asks, coming in further and peeling off his outer layer of clothing.
"Your plants in the dining room were drooping. I watered them."
This is the only report about how she spent her day. Quite possibly, the single act she relates here is the only thing she did, other than what she's currently doing.
Watching her watch the ceiling, Tom feels at a loss for what to do. If he were Tuvok, he would inquire as to her mental state and present thoughts. If he were Chakotay, he would press for her inner most feelings or try to persuade her off the couch. And if he were B'Elanna, well, he would simply start yelling to get off her ass.
But she doesn't want or need any of that. And Tom knows this. Because if she did, she would have sought out Tuvok, or Chakotay, or even his wife. But she came to him instead, in all likelihood knowing that his family is presently away from Earth.
So Tom rocks back on heels, deciding to do the only thing he knows to.
Crouching down to the thick white area rug that covers the wood floor, he gets on all fours, then rolls onto his back, stretching out beside the couch to stare at the ceiling with her. They stay that way for a long time, Tom never looking over at her. But twice he's sure that her eyes are on him, can feel the weight of her stare as she considers him the way she used to when he sat for seven years with his back to her. And yet, not considering him in that way at all.
At some point he gets up to make dinner, and she follows silently, sitting in the adjoining dining room while he busies himself in the kitchen. The only sounds are the rhythmic thud of his knife as it slides though ripe vegetables and hard cheeses, striking the cutting board beneath, as well as the slow simmer of pots on the plasma stove.
She tries to eat, though he thinks for reasons other than his partially masked concern. After a few minutes, she gives up even the attempt, starting to swirl with a spoon around her plate the cream sauce Tom's cooked.
Kathryn Janeway playing with her food is another foreign, unsettling sight. But Tom keeps his face neutral as he digs into his own plate, pausing twice to slowly fill his wine glass with the bottle of shiraz that sits in the center of the table.
She falls asleep on the couch rather than going into Miral's room or else the guest bedroom, the latter being larger but the former having the virtue of a bed that isn't stripped. Tom's surprised she falls asleep at all, but then he reconsiders the way she'd half sank, half tossed herself onto couch after dinner. She only had one glass of wine, but one glass in an empty stomach and a drained body is more than enough for a small person. Too much, if she's taking any of the meds Starfleet Medical likely gave her when they discharged her.
Tom's medical training is just advanced enough, or else his past just seedy enough, that he knows she must have just barely passed the psych eval they gave her before agreeing to send her out into the world. Years earlier, his head would have been filled here with colorful language about the enlightened Starfleet procedures at play in this. But now it only fills with medical terms he's scarcely considered in years, and the Doc's impatient voice, growing louder and angrier as Tom stares at Janeway's sill form in the darkened living room.
The next day passes much the same way. He goes to work, coming home to join her in her continuing examination of the shadows that shift on the ceiling as the afternoon light slowly disappears. But sitting down to dinner, he decides that they can't keep on this way for another five days. Perhaps it isn't making things worse right now. But at some point it will, whether after the third or fourth day of this here, or else when she returns home, the pattern turning more destructive when she's alone in her San Francisco apartment.
"I'm going to Puerto Rico tomorrow," he announces, in the same tone he used to inform her he was leaving to go to work the previous day. "I'm long overdue for a vacation and frankly, it will be nice to go to the beach without worrying about diapers, or flotation toys, or whether B'Elanna thinks Miral is in water that's too high for her."
She eyes him warily. There's no invitation being directly offered, but the pretext is thin enough to court her ire.
"Isn't it hurricane season still?" she asks, her face growing dark. Challenging.
"Nope," he shrugs slightly. "Ended a few weeks ago."
She knows this. And he knows that she knows this. She is a scientist, after all. But this a delicate little dance, and Tom is already well into understanding the choreography of the steps.
"I've never been a fan of humidity," she remarks, pushing back from the table and taking on a displeased air that almost makes her look like the woman he remembers from his past.
He shrugs again, pouring more water into his glass. There's no wine in sight tonight.
"You don't have to come," he says, shoveling another bite into his mouth. "I don't think I even invited you, did I?"
They stare at each other for a few beats over their glasses, Janeway being the first to avert her eyes back to her plate. For the life of him, Tom doesn't know whether it's a victory or a loss. Until the next morning, when he's awoken by a foot firmly and repeatedly shaking his mattress.
"We're wasting daylight," she informs him, when he slowly opens his eyes.
Tom's taken the rest of the week off, his boss seeming relieved rather than angry when he made the call earlier. But after Tom closed the comm, he went back to bed, planning on sleeping for several more hours before even considering packing.
When his vision mostly clears, Tom sees Janeway's standing in a pair of beige slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. Both items are loose on her, but they're meant to be tailored, thus failing to camouflage her weight loss the way her previous clothes have.
In the bright light of his bedroom, he considers her thin frame, the way the blonde hair makes her face look sallow and old before her time.
"I was sleeping," he says. As if she didn't know this.
"And now you're not," she replies, sliding a black pair of glasses onto the top of her head. "Come on, get up and get moving."
Despite her command, she doesn't seem excited about the excursion. She's edgy, more than slightly irritated. But clearly on some kind of internal schedule that Tom can only begin to fathom.
Later, he will recall how fast he scrambled out of bed at her barked commands, feeling embarrassment and self-reproach at the memory of how desperate he was for Kathryn Janeway to be giving orders- any kind of orders- once again.
Tom checks them into a hotel that's on the northeast side of the island, not too far from San Juan but not too close to the teeming tourist masses either. He's normally a thrifty traveler, spending extra for a good location but often opting for the least amount of space manageable. This time, however, he gets a large double suite (essentially a small two-bedroom apartment), and hopes B'Elanna will understand the dent their vacation fund is taking.
He enters the suite with Janeway trailing a ways behind him, and the first thing he does is to throw open the balcony doors in the living room and both bedrooms. The air is warm, even in November, and the breeze filling the suite is refreshing. Tom looks out at the nearby coastline, then casts his eyes toward the slow moving clouds that will likely bring rain.
"I'm going for a swim while it's still sunny," he says. Hoping she'll decide to follow him, like she has several times in the past few days.
She doesn't, remaining in her seat on the couch, and scrolling through a PADD that contains a list of the resort's impressive amenities. She's in the same spot when he comes back from his swim two hours later, the sky now dark and grey, and finally spitting rain.
He feels a wave of impotence and then another of frustration. He's succeeded only at changing the geography of her listlessness.
"Do you want to go out?" he asks tentatively. But of course she only shrugs a dismissal, reclining on the couch and propping her head up with a burgundy throw pillow.
Her shoes are off and she has no socks. When she props up her petite feet on the couch, her slacks move up a bit, revealing pale pink, newly regenerated skin around her ankles and the part of her legs he can see. He doesn't allow his gaze to settle on the clue, promptly sitting down in the club chair opposite her and forcing himself to look casual. But all the while his mind is thinking about what that pink flesh indicates, even after he mentally shakes himself to stop.
It could have just been a simple injury while in captivity, but that fact the it was to both legs points more toward deliberate infliction. The thought shouldn't be jarring to him, it's the kind of thing he assumed all along. Yet with this small confirmation, his mind spins off, imagining every known method of physical torture, the untold levels of pain she may have experienced before finally being rescued.
She retreats to the jacuzzi tub in the period of time that his mind is occupied, and when he notes the departure , he hopes that she hasn't guessed the nature of his shift in mood. He orders in from the resort restaurant while she's still soaking. The menu isn't the most imaginative he's ever seen, but after years with Neelix, he knows that 'unimaginative' isn't the worst of all culinary vices. She emerges into the main room in a robe, her hair still damp enough to stain the pale blue terry cloth darker.
"Hungry?" he asks. Already knowing the answer.
She shakes her head in response, sitting down across from him and taking his wine glass from him in one motion. He represses the sigh this elicits, pushing vegetables around his plate the way his daughter does when she's trying to stall for time in eating them.
There's a complete lack of conversation. He hasn't tried to force it, these last few days, but now the silence is proving stifling to him. All he can think about is the regenerated flesh on her legs. And then how much he wishes he hadn't seen it.
He turns in early, even though he's not tired. There's only so much of the quiet he can stand.
It's four hours after he falls asleep that he wakes up, feeling her slip into his bed. Before he can open his mouth to say anything, she's pressed against him, her feet cold against his legs. He remains motionless with uncertainty, not moving away from her but not welcoming the presence either. There was a time when he entertained the idle fantasy of Kathryn Janeway creeping into his bed like this. But that was years ago, before a wife and a daughter shifted even his most private thoughts in ways he never could have imagined. And beyond even this, the present state of the woman in bed with him invites no plays of seduction. Regardless of what she might think she wants or needs.
She turns her head, her chin digging into his shoulder and her torso pressing more firmly into his body. And when she shifts, he begins to feel the clear outline of her ribs, the protrusion of her collar bone sticking out farther than it should as it pushes into his chest. He tries not to meticulously catalogue the changes in her body, estimate the loss of weight. But of course he does, as he presses his eyelids shut tightly.
Her fingers twist into his night shirt, and for a moment he freezes, waiting for any indication of what it is she's after- feeling an infinite sense of relief as she lets out a deep sigh, settling in, it seems, for sleep. Whatever brought her to his room, it obviously wasn't sex.
He wakes up in the morning to find she's already vacated the bed. He showers and dresses distractedly, wondering whether to bring up her journey into his room the night before. By the time he quits the bedroom, he's decided against it. But later, after he eats breakfast while she sips juice, he realizes his internal debate was needless.
"Darkness and silence are both . . . disquieting," she admits, looking out through the balcony doors rather than meeting his eyes.
He appreciates the confession, but doesn't know how to respond to it. He takes a moment to consider his options, finally settling on directness.
"I thought you preferred silence," he admits. "You haven't spoken much. Even since we came here."
She considers the statement as though it's a novel observation, turning it over in her mind the way she used to turn over complicated equations or diplomatic strategy.
"I think that solitary silence and silence with someone else are two different species entirely," she says eventually.
She has a point, and his face registers a concession to her thesis even as he pauses, waiting for more confessions that will not come. This becomes clear after a few minutes, and he keeps the dejection from his mouth, though not the general air of concern from emanating from him.
She reaches beside them to the remnants of breakfast on the table, plucking a piece of toast with butter before chewing on it slowly.
Tom here smiles. He's lived with two Klingons long enough to recognize subtle attempts at concession. And even though he's no longer hungry, he grabs a piece of toast himself, continuing to eat it as long as Janeway methodically works on her own slice of cold and flaccid sourdough.
. . . . .
She remains in the suite again that day, but talks a bit more. He's encouraged by the small progress, choosing to recognize its relative magnitude given timing and circumstances.
It's their fourth day on the island, their last full day in the resort, that Janeway shows up wordlessly next to Tom on the beach. She's in a swimsuit and a flowing cover up, and as she drops into the lounge next to him, Tom notes that the regenerated tissue covers her arms and the part of her legs he can see, just up to her knees.
He turns away from the sight, waiting a beat in order for the aversion escape her detection. And then he floods with guilt. Before she turned up at his home, he was fixated on her health and well-being. But now that she's beside him, her trauma openly visible, he realizes that a large part of him doesn't want to know.
"It's lovely," she say softly. The sun is starting to set and the afternoon heat is abating. They have maybe three hours left of light.
"It is," he agrees, turning to the side briefly to smile at her.
The breeze picks up, and Tom procures a drink from the passing resort service. The glass quickly moves from his side of the small table to its center, Janeway picking the glass up twice to test the sparkling wine that finishes with a crisp sweetness.
"I don't remember you ever drinking wine," she observes.
A laundry list of things she's done lately that are out of character, the least of which being to drink from his glass without permission, occur to Tom. But he doesn't consider citing them.
"I normally like dry wines," he admits. "But this seemed a good substitute for one of those embarrassing fruity drinks."
The comment produces something on Janeway that would have, at another time and place, blossomed into a full smile. But this time the phantom of an expression disappears almost as fast it emerges.
"I've been present while people were tortured," she announces suddenly, and lowly. "I was there when the Cardassians interrogated your father."
He keeps still, knowing that this is a lead up to something else rather than a confession itself- and despite that she's here citing something he's always known but they've never talked about. Something that he rarely talks about with anyone, even B'Elanna.
"I know the tactics that can be used to destroy the strongest person's resolve," she continues. "The ways even a Vulcan can be made to betray information. But somehow. . . over the years, between . . . that . . . and coming back home from the Delta Quadrant, I think started to believe it couldn't happen to me. That I could never be broken."
Sipping his wine, he thinks that anyone can be broken. But he doesn't lend voice to this truth, as it's something she's already been made acutely aware of.
"I think," she finishes, her voice now becoming rueful. Cynical. "I think that belief became a part of me, my identity."
He sees what she's saying. There was a certain disturbing confidence that used to go all the way down with her. And Chakotay certainly wasn't the only one who was scared out of his wits on Voyager, whenever the ship's Captain ran around thinking she was invincible. But at the same time, he thinks the feeling that's inhabiting her isn't just about her own particular sense of immortality being stripped. Rather it's the feeling of being entirely dispossessed of one's self. And it's something few people ever experience.
"I think that belief is excusable," he offers, his manner neutral. "It's impossible to know what it's like . . . Until you know."
She crosses her arms, considering his statement. And in the interim pause he notices that she has about a centimeter of auburn roots showing through the blonde. It's too much new growth in a week to be a natural rate, so he theorizes that she had her hair follicles stimulated sometime before she left to find him in Seattle. As her hair is shorter, not longer, than the last time he saw her over comm, the suspects this was done to treat hair loss she suffered while in captivity.
It's another piece of information he didn't look for. Another clue he doesn't want. He closes his eyes, swirling the wine around in his mouth and feeling the fizz quickly die out against his tongue.
"I never asked you about it," she says. And he sucks in a deep breath, knowing that she's talking about Auckland, and not his father.
"It's not very good dinner conversation," he sighs. "And downright shitty bridge banter."
He fails at even the thin lightness he was striving for, the woman beside him fixing him with pleading eyes as his own blue ones slowly open. Desperately, he wants to look away, quit her side. Because of all the things he's willing to suffer through for her, he doesn't know if he can deal with sorting through his memories of this.
"I never asked you," she says again. And this time it's clear that it's an apology. Her own sense of guilt.
He gives the ghost of a shrug, looking at her with a tired face.
"It's impossible to know until you know," he repeats. "It's impossible to understand what it is to be broken until you have been."
He doesn't share any tales of prison. The beatings. The rapes. The hours when his apathy as to whether he lived or died gave way to a burning, desperate desire to feel the end of that life come. And to his relief, she gives him the same emotional space that he's afforded her, not pushing for any further information.
"I'm afraid I'll never get back to who I was before," she says later. After minutes of watching the sun and the two of them sipping from the same glass. "I don't know, maybe that's better. But what if I'm not even close to that woman? What if I always feel like I'm walking around in someone else's skin?"
"In some ways you will," he allows. "But you'll become someone else. At some point, your life will feel like your own again."
He doesn't say she'll become someone better. Someone stronger. Even if he won't rattle off the things she has ahead of her- from the years of nightmares and panic attacks to the loss of trust in others- he also won't gloss over this as a character-building exercise. They've both lost something, something they'll never get back. And no system of justice, no professional or personal accompaniments of a long and happy life, can ever heal the scars that were left when that thing was forcefully ripped from them.
. . . . .
When they pack their things the next day, she tells him she's transporting straight to San Francisco rather than accompanying him to Seattle first. He understands. His house will soon be filled the loud noises of his child, and he also must return to work the following day. Yet, he's worried. Afraid she's planning to go straight back to her own job at Headquarters.
"I'm on light duty," she assures, seeing his obvious distress.
The statement only partially soothes him. 'Light duty' for Janeway often has an ever-expending definition of activities, typically resembling normal duty for others. But he packs his bags without comment, choosing to live in the hope that she'll take care of herself. Choosing to believe that she won't hide in work the way his father did.
He gets home several hours before B'Elanna and Miral, and he spends the time cleaning and straightening. Worrying too, since the only reply he received days earlier, upon telling his wife of his plan to go Puerto Rico, was a line decreeing the lack of sympathy she would have for any sunburns he incurred.
His wife and daughter get in later than expected, probably due to a late transport, and Tom hears the sound of dropping bags and Miral's door opening from his bed. He means to get up and help B'Elanna with their child, who's no doubt sleeping like the dead as her mother lumbers with her, but by the time he summons the energy to do so his bedroom door is already opening and B'Elanna is shuffling in.
She gets in bed with heavy movements, wrapping her arms and legs around him almost as soon as she's lying down. He rolls over, curling into her as her breasts graze his chest and his fingers splay across her flat stomach.
"A double suite, huh?" she murmurs. An eyebrow arching even as she falls asleep.
It's the kind of comment that would have worried him at the beginning of their marriage. But he knows now that she's not upset, even about the expense. Her joking like this is a sign of acceptance. Affection. Trust.
"Uh huh," he mutters, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling the scent.
A pause. Fingers finding purchase in hair, or else spreading further across shoulders and stomachs. Lips making contact with flesh but applying no pressure.
"Is she alright?" she asks, her voice muffled against his arm.
Tom makes a non-committal noise in the back of his throat, and B'Elanna opens her eyes, taking in the trace emotions that flutter across his face before disappearing in the dark of their bedroom. She moves her head to his chest, listening to beat of his heart as his long fingers comb through her thick tresses. Eventually, she nods off.
Sometimes, after B'Elanna's out cold, Tom has trouble falling asleep. And sometimes he wakes up with nightmares, coming to just in time to stop himself from producing shouts that will wake his sleeping daughter as well as his wife.
But tonight, none of that happens. And he drifts off just after his partner, both of them sleeping deeply and soundly until their child crawls into their bed early the next morning.