Something Familiar
As she sits behind the desk in her new office, Admiral Kathryn Janeway fiddles with her chair. On its present settling, it's too short. She reaches down and changes it . . . only to find that the next setting makes it too tall.
Still, looking down at her desk is better than looking up at it, and so she settles for the second setting with a stifled grumble.
She rests her back against the cushion and pulls another face. The chair cushion is too soft, almost like a pillow. No getting around that, she thinks with an inward sigh, just as her new administrative assistant pops his head through her door.
"Admiral," the young officer begins stiffly. And as though he's never addressed a flag officer before.
"Ensign," she greets, forcing a smile to her face. Even as her feet now dangle awkwardly off the floor and the blasted chair is offering her back absolutely no support.
"Admiral Hayes would like to move your briefing back an hour, sir. May I confirm the change with his office?"
Kathryn tries to keep the frustration from her face as she responds. Doesn't anyone at Headquarters simply comm a person directly, rather than going through the endless number of lower ranking officers who staff their offices?
"That will be fine, Ensign. But please, feel free to dispense with calling me 'sir'. It's not something I've ever been fond of, even if it is protocol."
The Ensign looks at her with an expressionless face, but doesn't move from the spot he occupies. After a moment, his superior realizes the issue, adding, with another perfunctory smile, that he's dismissed.
The next few hours of Janeway's first day are spent scanning through the countless briefings on her desk. And about halfway through, a deep sense of foreboding begins to creep up her stomach.
She honestly thought she'd managed to prepare herself for this, having spent hours at home trudging through this or that diplomatic report. Curling up at night, for three solid weeks, with prose so dense and trying as to bore a Vulcan to tears. But now, sitting in a chair she hates, with an assistant who keeps calling her 'sir', she isn't sure if it's possible for anyone to be prepared for this. And for the first time since after the Caretaker's array, it occurs to her that she might be in way over her head.
It's around lunchtime that her administrative assistant appears again to tell her she has a visitor, and Kathryn wonders, darkly, what it is this time. Perhaps it's Owen Paris with a few more words of 'helpful' advice. Hayes wanting to keep playing shell games with her welcome briefing- the one that both of them know will be of no help, and neither of them have any desire to attend. Or maybe someone even higher up, like Nechayev; here to announce that Command has realized, and in the mere span of half a day, that they were wrong to promote her in the first place.
"Who is it?" she asks, unable to keep mood from showing this time.
In front of her, her administrative assistant squirms. And immediately she feels guilty. It's not the young Ensign's fault that his boss is having first day jitters.
"It's . . . Lieutenant Commander Tom Paris," the Ensign answers, not sure he's getting the name right, "I'm happy to send him away if-"
"No," she responds quickly, her face already alight at the idea of Tom being outside. "Please, send him in."
Kathryn expects her former helmsman to be as nervous as she is when he appears before her. Likely looking for a piece of advice, or a pep talk, as it's his first day at his new post too.
Instead Tom saunters - saunters rather than walks - past her departing administrative assistant, casting the younger man a small knowing smile as he slides easily into the chair across from his former Captain.
"Lieutenant Commander," Janeway greets formally, but with a spreading smile as she says it.
Tom can't help but give a laugh here. Who was more overjoyed at his promotion- Janeway, his father, or Harry Kim- he'll never be able to say. But it certainly wasn't him. Add a pip, take one away. It's all the same to him. Always has been.
"Perhaps we shouldn't make an issue of new titles, ma'am. Since it seems I have more ammunition than you do."
He punctuates the joke with an incredulous look around her sprawling office, and she gives a small laugh. The huge windows, the real mahogany accents, the desk meant to intimidate. It's all a bit much, she's keenly aware.
"So how is it?" Tom asks, reclining comfortably where he sits.
"It's going to take some getting used to," she allows, watching him with a measured air. "How's your first day at the Academy going? Are all the senior cadets completely captivated with their instructor's take on advanced flight theory?"
"I'm not sure if we'll ever get to flight theory," he snorts. "Not with all the questions they ask about Voyager."
She shrugs, not sure what to say here. Part of her wants to tell him the interest will fade, but another part of her knows they'll all be hearing the same questions for the rest of their lives. It's both a worry and a comfort, albeit at alternating times.
"It's hard not to indulge them," he says, seeming to pluck the wistfulness right out of her mind. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it."
He smiles at her softly, and she can't help but get up from her uncomfortable seat, coming to perch near him, on the edge of her sprawling desk.
"We're all going to be fine," she assures. "We can move forward with the relationships that we forged. . . Even if we have other projects now."
"Oh, I know," he says, and with completely sincerity. "But it still feels different. . . Odd. Not having Harry a few meters behind me. Or you standing over my shoulder."
"I'm always going to be standing over your shoulder, Mister Paris," she warns with a slight smirk. "Even if we're separated by the length of a campus now."
"You know, their wasn't any office space in the flight school," he says conversationally, "so they put me in with the engineers. . . Guess they thought if I married one, I could hold my own with them."
"The engineering school? Well, that's right across the walkway."
"Yep," he grins. "We're neighbors."
Maybe it's the mischievous way Tom says it, or maybe it's the devilish smile on his face, but something about the comment makes Kathryn flashback to all the tales of pranks Tom pulled on the crewmmates who shared a deck with him on Voyager. Confetti falling from Dalby's ceiling. The sonic showers in the Delaney twins' quarters both emitting a blue, viscous substance.
Not that she officially knew about any of this, of course.
"Tom Paris, if you even think about pulling a prank on me, I will go over your head faster than you can say 'crewman'."
"Over my head?" he repeats with big blue eyes. "Are you really threatening to comm my father? That seems a little low for you, ma'am."
"Not your father," she corrects innocently. "Your wife."
"Cheater," he says, getting up from his chair.
"Not cheating," she counters breezily. "I simply use all means available to me. Even if in unanticipated ways."
"Which is why they made you an Admiral."
He voices the last remark without any of the lightness of their previous banter, and for a moment her breath catches in her throat and her eyes shine. Because here is Tom Paris, the once convict turned officer and father, looking at her with the same familiar confidence he always has. Here she expected her one-time reclamation project to come for a pep talk, when clearly he's giving her one.
"It is," she agrees after a brief silence, and with her characteristic charisma.
Tom smiles wildly as he tracks his way back to her door. And after he departs, she focuses once more on the daunting stack of PADDs on her desk, feeling a bit better than she did an hour earlier.
She comes into the office bright and early the next day, though not as early as the day before. After all, she's already successfully located her office. The worst case scenario has been avoided.
She greets her assistant with a cheery smile, determined that that this day will be better, regardless of her countless meetings and conference comms. Or that damn briefing that Hayes has postponed for the fourth time, now slated for this afternoon.
"Oh, Admiral," her assistant calls as she enters her office. "Something came for you a few minutes ago. It's in your office."
As she calls for lights, she looks around the large room, but doesn't immediately see anything. It's only when she comes to her desk that she spots what's changed. The despised chair is gone, and in it's place is . . . Her chair.
Disbelieving, she reaches down to touch it, only to be watched by the curious Ensign who's trailed in behind her.
"It's my chair from Voyager," she explains, her eyes crinkling as she smiles.
"The one from your ready room, Admiral?"
"No," she shakes her head. "The one from the bridge. . . Someone's had it placed on a normal wheel mount so that it could sit here behind my desk."
She sits down in it and turns slightly. It's odd to have it mobile, being able to roll this way and that. But at that same time, it's still her chair. Same firm cushion and well-worn arms rests.
"It didn't come with a note, Admiral. But someone must have gone through a lot of trouble," the Ensign comments. "It must have taken at least three weeks of red tape to get it removed from Voyager. They would have had to go through the preservation office and Starfleet Design. Who knows what else. . ."
The thought strikes Janeway with force. The idea that someone- undoubtedly a member of her former crew- thought to do this for her. And just so she could have something familiar with her in her new post.
Anyone who knows Kathryn Janeway would tell you there's a long list of people whose lives she's touched enough to inspire such an act. But her mind's quick to sort the possibilities, correctly pinpointing who it was.
After all, there's a reason they made her an Admiral.
"Ensign, will you comm Starfleet Academy's engineering department?" she asks, pushing herself forward her desk, which is now at the perfect height. "Tell them I'd like to speak to Lieutenant Commander Paris."