Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres was on a mission. She stomped past one of her more junior engineers in the corridor and quelled his questioning face with a quick glare. She needed to find her husband now, and make him tell her what the hell was the matter with him.
As she reached the door to sickbay, she paused. Calm down, B'Elanna, she reprimanded herself, Acting pissed off won't help anything.
As happy as they were together since their wedding, neither B'Elanna nor Tom would ever claim their relationship was easy. B'Elanna often marveled that she managed to fall for the one person on the ship whose trust issues and penchant for self-loathing rivaled her own. The death of the other Maquis, Tom's "quarter life crisis" (as he liked to call it) and the mess with Steth, Crell Moset, Alice, and on and on and on. There were countless times when one of them would push the other away, countless ways that it seemed like the whole universe was telling them their relationship wasn't meant to be. And yet… the way Tom had cared for her after she had infiltrated the Borg cube with Tuvok and the Captain. The proposal of marriage on the Delta Flyer during that idiotic race. And now, their baby. Something had clicked for B'Elanna, that terrible day in sickbay when she almost genetically altered their child. For the first time since, well, ever - she found herself trusting someone with her whole heart and no reservations.
Which is why she was so angry at him for not trusting her the same way.
When she woke this morning and found herself alone in their quarters, she knew immediately what was wrong. She had been waiting the last few days for him to open up to her; to really talk to her about Caldik Prime for the first time, instead of the occasional detail and vague allusions he'd let drop in the past. She didn't want to push him - she knew very well after Tarakis that he had to decide to talk to her in his own time. And to be honest, on the surface he'd seemed fine - his normal (sometimes annoyingly) chipper self. But she knew he had to be hurting. When she discovered he'd switched his shift at the conn this morning for one in sickbay, it only supported her suspicion that he was in pain and trying to hide it from her. Even if she couldn't get him to talk about it yet, she wanted to remind him that he could rely on her; the same way she had relied on him many times in the past. Even if that meant reminding him by ripping him a new one.
The door slid open and Tom's back was to her, as he leaned over the empty biobed in the surgical bay. She called out to him, only partially successful in keeping the irritation out of her voice, "I'm not used to waking up alone anymore. I didn't like it."
"Oh. Hi," Tom said, and as soon as he turned to her B'Elanna felt her anger melt away. It was subtle, and perhaps not noticeable to much of the crew, but to her eyes Tom was clearly in a bad way. From the low set of his shoulders to the faint shadows under his eyes, she suspected he'd been awake for many hours.
She put her hands on her hips, but her expression and tone were kind. "That's not much of an explanation, Flyboy."
He favored her with a small smile, but B'Elanna could see it didn't reach his eyes, "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't sleep well last night, and I didn't want to disturb you. You need your rest." He turned back to the diagnostic he was running on the biobed.
B'Elanna came up behind and rested her hand on his shoulder, "Tom… I think I know what's going on. Maybe you want to talk about it?"
He stopped working the tricorder. "No," he said, then shook his head. "I mean, yes. But not now." He turned around to face her. "There's a lot I should tell you. That I want to tell you. But once I start…" He paused, and B'Elanna was alarmed to see his eyes growing damp. "I'm not going to be able to stop. And I don't think I'll be very useful for awhile afterwards."
B'Elanna didn't anticipate how hard this anniversary would be for him. She put a hand to his cheek, "Tom, I can clear my schedule; we can get the Doctor to let you out of your shift. You're obviously struggling with this."
Tom gave her another sad smile, and shook his head. "Life in the Delta Quadrant doesn't really allow for mental health days, B'Elanna." He swiped roughly at his eyes, and looked down. "I guess it's pretty obvious - to you anyway - I'm not feeling very good about myself right now. But it'll keep until tonight."
"Tom…" B'Elanna said, concerned.
He lifted his face and met her brown eyes with his blue ones. "I'm OK. I mean, OK enough for now," he amended at her skeptical look. "The Doc has a mile-long list of incredibly involved yet mind-numbingly tedious tasks that will keep my mind off things for the next several hours. I promise we'll talk tonight. But right now...I need some space. I just need to focus on something else for awhile. Anything else."
"All right," she said slowly. "But you promise we'll talk at dinner?"
"I promise. You don't even have to threaten to break my arm," he said, and kissed her gently on her ridges.
"I'm holding you to that, parmaqqay," she responded softly, and tried to forget her worry as she left for Engineering.
Running biobed diagnostics was generally one of Tom's least favorite tasks. But between the lack of sleep and his general state of mind, he didn't trust himself at the conn this morning. So he called in one of the many favors Baytart owed him, (the man was terrible at poker) and decided to spend his shift catching up on the massive backlog of "housekeeping," as the Doc liked to call it. And these diagnostics were exactly what he needed - they required close attention to detail, yet exactly zero critical thinking. The only thing that might have been better at keeping his mind occupied was getting the grease monkey program up and running again, and since their marriage Tom tried to save most of his free time for B'Elanna, (and Harry, for whatever holodeck activity B'Elanna was currently dismissing as "childish and a complete waste of of time for anyone that's evolved past a chimpanzee." At the moment, this included any holodeck activity she was too pregnant to participate in. She only tolerated being left behind when she chose to be left behind.).
He'd been waiting for B'Elanna to come find him, knowing she'd be worried when he wasn't beside her when she awoke. And he did want to tell her everything that was going on in his head - B'Elanna understood him better than anyone he'd ever known. But there was still a part of him that was terrified of what she'd think of him once she heard the whole ugly story. He knew she loved him, but even with everything they had gone through together, he couldn't rid himself of the nagging doubt that one day she would change her mind; that she would decide he was utterly without honor, and unworthy of her.
During the whole debacle with the Tarakis memorial, B'Elanna thought that he hadn't wanted to confide in her because he was too traumatized by what had happened in the implanted memory. And because it was easier than the truth, he'd let her believe that. But the false memories hadn't been the problem. Or at least, the false ones were just the tip of the iceberg. Somehow, seeing himself in that long ago battle had made his own terrible mistakes feel new again. His false memory had mimicked what he'd done in real life, after all - sacrificing innocent people to save himself. He hadn't meant for the three of them to die, of course; but he still felt ashamed that his first instinct was to let his dead friends take the blame for what had been a situation entirely of his making. And so, those many months ago, afraid to lose the woman he loved, he'd told her half-truths and said what she wanted to hear, so she wouldn't pry too much into what lay beneath.
But he knew he couldn't keep things from her, not anymore. That particular vow wasn't an official part of their wedding ceremony, but it was an unspoken promise they made to each other and Tom knew it was time to tell her everything. It would break him if she looked at him differently after their promised talk tonight, but the alternative was worse. He knew how afraid she'd been that day in sickbay, how much courage and trust it had taken for her to admit her fears of abandonment to him. How he could be such a coward as to not tell her why he could barely look at himself in the mirror right now?
Tom was disturbed out of his reverie by the doors to sickbay sliding open again. "Hey, Harry. Shouldn't you be on the bridge by now?"
Tom's best friend stumbled over to the nearest biobed and leaned against it heavily. "I asked to be relieved," he mumbled. "Something's…wrong."
Tom adjusted his tricorder and began to scan the younger man. "Yikes, I'll say. Your temp is 39.7, several of your joints are inflamed, and you've got a leukocytosis with a marked left shift."
Harry frowned at him, and wiped some sweat off his forehead, "Left shift? Is that bad?"
"It's not good. Computer, activate EMH," Tom called out.
The doctor shimmered into existence. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
"Look's like we've got a live one here, Doc," Tom replied, handing him the tricorder.
"I should hope so, Mr. Paris," the Doctor muttered as he studied the readings. "This isn't good at all! Mr. Kim, you appear to be harboring some sort of virus," the hologram said in accusatory tone. "You returned from an away mission yesterday, I believe? Where were you, exactly?"
Harry looked like he was having trouble concentrating, but after a few moments replied. "It was a scouting mission for new food sources. We stopped at, uh, 3 planets, I think?"
"I need to run a full molecular scan. Lie back on this bed here, Ensign. Mr. Paris, I need you to contact every member of the away team and have them report to sickbay immediately. You'll also need to find out every crewmember they've had contact with since their return, as well as start collecting relevant information on the planets the away team visited. I hope you don't have any evening plans. It looks like I'm going to have to initiate a quarantine, and that includes you." The Doctor stared at him. "What are you waiting for? Get started!"
Tom sighed inwardly as he tapped his combadge to contact the appropriate crew members. B'Elanna was going to kill him.
