As always, when Janeway wakes up, she has to struggle to remember herself. It still doesn't come easily, nothing does. She must look around at the gray sheets beneath her, the chronometer on the utilitarian nightstand beside her, the stars streaking by.
Starship – Voyager – Captain. It all starts to trickle and then flood back. Janeway, she tells herself. Captain. Kathryn.
She rolls over, rubbing her face and feels a little sore and under slept. Another glance at the time shows it's her normal time to wake up. Did she go to sleep later than usual? She's trying to remember the details of last night when she realizes she can make out the pulsating noise of the sonic shower. She sits up quickly to hear better and when the blanket slides off her body, she realizes she's wearing only her underwear. No bra, no nightgown, just a pair of pale pink panties.
She wills herself to think. She remembers the Doctor ordering her to rest, going to the holodeck and… the wine and…
"Oh my God," she says. "Tom Paris."
She had sex with Tom Paris. No amount of synthetic alcohol would impair her judgment enough to make having sex with an inferior officer okay and yet she'd done it, as if this were not her life and she would never have to deal with the consequences.
She is a fool. She whips out a hand and gets her robe on just as Tom emerges from the bathroom in his boxers and his uniform shirt. She must look panicked because he immediately holds up both his hands.
"Let me explain," he says. Maybe he expects her to be angry and start yelling but instead she folds her body onto the bed and buries her face into her lap so he won't see her start to cry. "Please, don't overreact."
"Overreact?" she says through her tears. "I'm under-reacting!"
"I just mean… yes, we kissed but that's it!"
She looks up at him, her eyes wide and wet. Tom knows that it takes her awhile to piece things together in the morning.
"I woke up disheveled," she says.
"You went to sleep tipsy," he says. "I would never take advantage of you, ever."
She shakes her head and presses her hands to her face.
"Remember with me," he says, sitting next to her. "We went to the holodeck and Harry and Seven left. We drank the Merlot, the Chardonnay, the White Zin even though you hated it. Remember?"
"Yes," she says. "The ducks."
"Then I walked you home," he says. "You invited me in. We sat on the couch."
"You kissed me," she says, filling in the blank.
"Well," he says. "I'm not sure that I was the one… the important thing is that we kissed. We kissed for a while and then you were tired but you didn't want me to leave, remember?"
She does, a little. Loneliness will do strange things to a person; make even the most rational person desperate. She hadn't wanted to be alone.
"I stayed until you fell asleep and then I slept on the couch," he says.
"You promised you'd be here in the morning," she says, wiping her face.
"Can't break a promise to a lady," he says, his grin a little impish.
"I'm sorry," she says. "What you must… I'm so sorry, Tom."
"No, no," he says. "We are getting you well. That's all this is, steps toward making you well. Every morning you're going to remember a little bit faster."
"Not the memory! I'm your commanding officer and it is inappropriate for us to…"
"You aren't my commanding officer this week," he says and kisses her lips swiftly. It's over just after it starts.
"And next week?" she asks.
"Next week is next week," he says. "You can't spend your whole life worry about the future."
She nods, holding her robe more tightly around her frame. She's lost over five pounds since all of this has started. It's stress and confusion taking its toll.
"Why…" She clears her throat. "Why did I wake up so scantily clad?"
Tom raises his eyebrows and rubs his hand over his scruffy face.
"Maybe that's how you always sleep?" he offers.
She hugs her robe tighter.
oooo
Harry finds Tom in the research lab on the starboard side. It's unusual for Tom to spend any time in the research lab and unusual for him to spend time alone and especially unusual for him to do so off duty.
"I had a hell of a time tracking you down," Harry says, dropping into the seat next to him. Tom says nothing – his eyes barely flicker up from the screen. "I asked the computer the location of you and do you know what it told me?"
Tom doesn't respond.
"It told me you were in your quarters. You were not. Then it told me you were in the mess hall, on the bridge, and in your quarters again."
"I didn't want to be disturbed," Tom says pointedly.
"Tuvok will have your hide if he finds you've been tampering with the computer," Harry says.
"You going to tell him?" Tom asks, finally meeting Harry's eyes.
"No," Harry says. Tom lowers his eyes back to his screen.
"Good."
"What's wrong?" Harry asks. "You used to tell me what's wrong."
In some ways, being friends with Harry is like being friends with a woman. It's nothing against Harry, he's just sensitive. He needs to be handled with care. And while Tom would greatly love to tell Harry to leave him the hell alone, he also hates to see that wounded look take over Harry's young face. Harry is, after all, his best friend. Sometimes his only friend.
"I did something… rash," Tom says.
"Here we go," Harry says, leaning back.
"Maybe a little crazy," Tom adds.
"What?"
"I kissed her," Tom says.
Harry groaned. "Please say you didn't."
"Actually, I sort of think she kissed me – no, I deserve blame. We kissed each other," Tom says.
Harry looks confused. "But she hates you. I mean, not just a little, but the kind of hate that sticks."
"What?" Tom asks, furrowing his brow.
"B'Elanna truly hates you," Harry says. "She tells me at least once a day, including today."
"Not B'Elanna!" Tom says, obviously shocked. "God, not B'Elanna. Never again, never, never again."
"Oh," Harry says. "Then who are you kissing?"
Tom lowers his voice even though they're the only people in the lab.
"The Captain."
Tom isn't sure but he thinks he can see Harry visibly pale.
"That's… not even a funny joke," Harry says.
"Try, for a moment, to imagine her as the woman and not the institution," Tom begs. "She's had this terrible accident. She's scared and alone and still carrying the weight of this ship on her shoulders and every day the doctor forces her off duty is one more day she's further away from where she is supposed to be."
"So you kissed her because you feel sorry for her?" Harry says.
"No," Tom says. "I kissed her because it's Kathryn Janeway."
Harry doesn't understand that. To Harry, she is his captain. Harry doesn't know her like Tom does.
"Kathryn Janeway," Tom repeats, as if that explains everything. "Don't you see?"
Because Tom can see so, so clearly.
oooo
Janeway sits in the Doctor's office. He is speaking to her about going back on duty, about the risks and complications of this, her new life. Behind him on the display, there is a glowing, colorful picture of her latest brain scan. It rotates slowly, as if it is only decorative. Above it, it says Kathryn Janeway and has her service number and the stardate.
"You need to sleep," the Doctor says. "You need to remember to eat. Don't think of these changes as having to do with your brain, think of them as basic human necessities because that's what they are."
There are a hundred smart aleck retorts but she holds each and every one in.
"Tom Paris…" She hesitates for just a moment but then pushes on. "Tom Paris thinks that I don't want my old life back, that subconsciously, I'm dragging my feet."
"Monuments could be built to the stupidity of Tom Paris," the Doctor says. She gives him a stern look. "He said that?" the Doctor adds.
"Not in so many words, but it's what he thinks," she says.
"Only you know what you are feeling and only you know what you want, Captain," the Doctor says. "Do you know what you want?"
Behind him, the brain spins and spins.
oooo
The scrolling text on the PADD is giving her a headache. Not a brain trauma induced headache, just the normal every day kind. She tosses it down none too lightly and thinks about lunch.
"Lunch?" Chakotay asks, his brow furrowing. He'd apologized as he always does and now they were back to the normal routine. She had so much to catch up on that they have been holed up all day in her ready room and she's sick of the place. "Captain, we've already missed dinner."
"Oh," she says. Yesterday, the doctor had lectured her on this very subject and not 36 hours later she has already messed it up. "I won't tell if you don't."
"Come on," he says, standing up. She can hear his knee pop and he gives her a look that tells her she'd better not comment. "I bet Neelix can scrounge us something up."
"I guess a break is deserved," she says, rubbing the back of her neck.
"No break," he demands. "We're calling it a day."
"I'm never getting caught up," she bemoans.
"So you don't," he says. "You know the important things and you have a good crew to carry the rest. Just wipe the slate clean and start anew."
He kind expression turns suddenly to one of horror.
"That sounded… I didn't mean wipe clean… in the sense that…"
"It's okay," she says, quickly. "I know what you meant."
"I'm sorry, Captain," he says.
"Kathryn," she says. "You used to call me Kathryn when we did this sort of all day marathon of paperwork."
"That's true," he says. "I wasn't sure if you still wanted that."
"I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what it is, exactly, that I want," she confesses as they exit on to the bridge. Everyone rises but she waves it off and they all sit as she makes a beeline for the turbolift. She's just passing through.
As promised, the mess hall is mostly empty. There's a small knot of ensigns on the couch, their heads bent dangerously low over a single PADD – "Betting pool," Chakotay supplies – and Neelix in the kitchen cleaning up, but otherwise, the room is empty.
"Shouldn't we stop them?" she asks, looking at the ensigns who have sat up straight at the site of them and are failing miserably at acting nonchalant.
"Keeps morale up," Chakotay says. "I only have to step in once or twice a year if things seem to be out of hand."
"And what's my role in it?" she asks.
"Don't ask, don't tell," he says. "Happily oblivious."
"But not really," she says.
"Officially," he agrees. "Hello, Mr. Neelix."
"Captain, Commander, good evening," Neelix says.
"Is it too late to get something to eat?" he asks.
"I just closed the kitchen," Neelix says, regretfully. "But I'd be happy to replicate you something."
"Oh well," Janeway says. "I can do that from my quarters."
"We're here," Chakotay says. "We might as well eat together." She can see that he is handling her, perhaps even doing the bidding of the Doctor or maybe just trying to be a good friend.
"You're right," she concedes. Chakotay is not a bad man – in fact, she suspects he is quite similar to her self. He stands heavily on principle just like she does; it's just that sometimes the principles aren't the same.
She lets him bring her whatever he's having. She hasn't been at all interested in food though she suspects that's how it has always been. There are things she likes more than others – a hearty vegetable soup, a well-cooked roast, brownies of any variety, but she doesn't seem to crave those things like others crave comfort food. She's seen Tom Paris pine for a grilled cheese sandwich for hours and then when he got it, the look of bliss on his face seemed ridiculously out of proportion to the event.
"How is Tom?" Chakotay asks politely. She had told the story out loud.
"Oh," Janeway says, pushing the tofu around on her tray. "How is any of the crew? Usually I know only when something is going wrong, not when things are fine. I mean, I don't get reports that says when people are perfectly fine, that would give me an absurd amount of data to get through every day so, you know, I assume he's fine, they're all fine."
"Kathryn," Chakotay says. "Don't take this the wrong way, but that made you sound like a crazy woman. Did something happen? Are you and Tom having a disagreement?"
"Disagreement?" she echoed faintly. "No, it's fine. We're fine."
"Tom is your friend, it's okay that you know how he is compared to someone you see once a week in passing," Chakotay says.
"I know that," she says, sounding a little stubborn now. "And I'm not crazy."
"No you aren't."
"Besides, Tom is 15 years younger than I am, how good of friends could we really be?" she asks.
"Tuvok is at least 100 years older than you and you'd consider him a close friend," Chakotay points out reasonably. Chakotay is always so reasonable lately, ever since their fight about Tom. Him asking about Tom now is being reasonable, showing that he trusts her. He speaks to her calmly and always has one or two solutions on hand and it's making her irrationally upset.
"He's Vulcan," she says, even more petulantly.
"Well, I think it's ageist," Chakotay says.
She glares at him and he smirks back.
oooo
"Captain Janeway," Tom says, stepping into the turbolift. "Commander Chakotay, good evening."
"Paris," Chakotay says, glancing at Janeway. She shakes her head slightly, a warning to him.
"Tom," she says. "Good evening."
Tom looks at the both of them, the silent communication there and decides against engaging in small talk for the duration of the ride. "Deck six," he says, instead.
It's a weird silence; not quite awkward, but when the lift stops and Chakotay bids them both a good night, he is relieved.
"Nice to see you two crazy kids made up," Tom says.
"We can't be romantically involved," she blurts. He sighs.
"You know what I miss?" he asks. "I miss, 'How was your day, Mr. Paris?' I miss, 'Good job getting us out of that harrowing situation, Tom.' I miss, 'Sorry for publicly reprimanding you for your off-color Bolian joke even though you could see me laughing.' Those were the days."
"What if Chell had been on the bridge?" she asks.
"I wouldn't have told it!" he says. "Captain, I can't tell you how to live your life but I would try – I will try to make you happy." The lift stops and he stands in the doorway for a moment. "And whatever you decide, I will do that, okay?"
"Okay," she says.
When she gets to her quarters, she starts the bath and takes her uniform off. Looking at herself in the mirror still gives her a little shock up the spine. She never expects to see what she sees – the lines by her eyes, the military bob instead of her long hair, her bony shoulders and sagging breasts.
It's hard to see what Tom Paris would want in the first place.
The bathtub is not normal. Generally, the Captain has some perk – a personal dining room for instance, but even for a Captain, it isn't normal. She'd had it installed the week before the ship had left dry dock, and it hadn't been ready in time. She hadn't gotten it operational until they were several months into the Delta Quadrant. She'd watched the log, her younger self, pulling the pins out of her hair as she spoke.
B'Elanna came and fixed the plumbing for the tub today. When she saw it, she laughed.
She can remember the incident now, clearly even. When someone puts in a service request, it takes a while and generally, some engineering ensign comes with a kit and a tired expression to fix the shower or the replicator but Janeway had only just put in the request before B'Elanna herself showed up.
"You're the Captain," B'Elanna had said. "I'm not letting some barely out of the academy newbie crawl around on your bathroom floor, ma'am."
And when she saw the tub, she had laughed.
"There's a few more in a some of the VIP guest quarters," Janeway had told her. "Voyager was going to be a ship of diplomacy."
Now, Janeway eases her body into the water. That conversation seems a long time ago. Janeway does her best to avoid B'Elanna for anything other than work and yes, it's petty but she just can't seem to look the woman in the eyes lately.
From the edge of the tub, her communicator alerts her to an incoming message. She's set it to beep first so the voice doesn't startle her. She presses it with her wet thumb. She could drop it in the water and it'd work just fine.
"Paris to Janeway."
"Go ahead," she says, lazily, her head back against the tub lolling slightly.
"I've been thinking," he says. "You've been spending too much time alone."
"That is preposterous," she says. "It's been 45 minutes and this is the best you could come up with?"
"Can I come over?"
"No," she says. "I'm not decent."
"All the better," he says and she can hear him grinning.
"When I'm decent, I'll come to your quarters and you can feed me ice cream," she allows. "Coffee ice cream."
"Deal," he says.
"As friends," she clarifies. "Nothing untoward."
"Captain Janeway, I wouldn't dream of it," he says. "Paris out."
"Hmph," she says to herself.
When she shows up to his quarters, she's already second-guessing herself and her actions. Why had she given into him so easily? Her hair is still damp underneath and she tries to smooth it as she waits for him to invite her in. The door opens and he's there, holding two glass bowls of ice cream. One is brown – obviously the one for her – and one is green and spotted with chocolate.
"Ice cream heals all," he says, handing her the bowl and stepping aside so she can enter. "At least, that's what my sisters always said."
"They were right," she says, picking up the spoon. She thought this would be easier but now, all she wants to do is put the confection down and drag is mouth to hers. His lips cool from the ice cream, but hot on the inside, tasting of chocolate and mint.
"Captain?" he asks and she realizes she's been caught staring. She jerks her eyes up.
"What?"
"I asked if you wanted to have a seat," he repeats.
She sits on his sofa and he sits next to her. This time, the lights are bright. His quarters are much more cramped than hers and she can see his rumpled bed from where she is and past that, his bathroom. There's a small table and the sofa but that's about it. Still, he has it better than some of the other, lower ranking crewmembers.
Tom eats his ice cream and says nothing. He's giving her control of the situation. He's just happy she came over.
"When you were younger, what did you do for fun?" she asks.
"Got in trouble," he answers. "Sneak out of the house."
"Sneak out and do what?"
"Didn't matter," he says. "Even if I just walked around the block, it was enough to get the Admiral's attention."
"I see," she says.
"Don't do that," he says. "Don't say that all knowingly. You wanted your father's attention just as much as I wanted mine, you just got it differently."
"I worked hard," she says.
"I worked hard, just at different things," he says. "Maybe you just need to do something bad."
"I do plenty," she scoffs. "I'm bad to the bone."
He barks out his laughter, throwing his head back.
"Prove it," he demands.
This is her cue, this is her window to lean in and kiss him, to lick his exposed neck in one long, hot swipe – to let her hand travel across his thigh but she can't do it. She shouldn't do it. She won't do it.
Instead, she touches her head.
"I have a bit of a headache," she says, seriously. This sobers Tom right up and his face his honestly concerned.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," she says. "It just was… sharp."
"Come on, I'll take you to sickbay," he says, taking the bowl from her hand and dumping them both into the replicator to be recycled.
"I can go to sickbay myself," she says, but he pulls her up by the bicep and practically drags her out the door.
"The last thing we need to do is put off a serious symptom," he says.
"Tom, it's probably just brain freeze," she argues, shaking off his hand.
"I don't care if it's a bug bite, we're going," he says.
"Lieutenant…"
"Oh, ho, ho, no way is that going to work," he says, ushering her into the turbolift. "You can pull rank from here to the Kazon home world, but we're going."
"And if I order you to stop this turbolift?"
"Then I'll sleep well in the brig knowing the Doc took a look at you," he says.
In sickbay, Tom looms over her bed to the point where the Doctor makes him go wait in the enclosed office.
"At least he can stare from over there," the Doctor mutters.
"I really am fine," she protests. "I feel perfectly normal."
"Everything seems okay," he says. "You probably ate your ice cream too fast."
"There is one… odd… symptom," she says, lowering her voice.
"Oh?" the Doctor asks, curiously.
"I've been having these… impulses that aren't normal," she says.
"What kind of impulses?" he asks, opening the tricorder back up.
"Impulses of the… inappropriately romantic nature," she mumbles.
"Ah," the Doctor says, glancing at Tom while Janeway refuses to look up from her lap. "That is a terrible symptom… of being human."
"Well I didn't have them before," she snapped.
"Oh, you had them," the Doctor says. "You just suppressed them with stress and coffee and insomnia and paperwork. Captain, here's my expert medical opinion. Forget your hierarchy and take what you need."
"Take what I need?" she says. "Could you have thought of a more terrible way to say that?"
He pauses for a moment.
"Yes," he says. "I could've said…"
She holds up a hand.
"I will consider your advice," she says.
"Now please allow Lieutenant Paris to escort you home. He's fogging up my glass," the Doctor says.