October 2371
Tom nodded to Harry Kim in greeting as he passed him on his way to the mess hall. This was good. If Harry was done with dinner, B'Elanna probably was as well. The new assistant chief engineer was nothing but professional during their occasional meetings on various Voyager-related issues; but Tom knew he had hurt her that day in his quarters when she kissed him, and he figured it was better for everyone involved if he just stayed the hell away.
He was glad, though, that she'd found a friend in Harry. He saw them sometimes, on the other side of the mess, or on their way to the holodeck - sometimes with Lyndsay Ballard, but often just the two of them. He initially wondered if there was something more than friendship between them (and he cursed himself for the pang of jealousy that suspicion had caused) but it turned out Harry had a fiancé back home and still held out hope that someday he'd make it back to Earth and be reunited with him.
Their friendship meant Tom avoided off-duty time with Harry as well, which was yet another thing to feel bad about. The younger man seemed so sincere in his desire to unite the 'Fleet and Maquis crews and often asked Tom if he wanted to join him and B'Elanna for dinner or maybe workout together in the gym. But Tom always politely declined. It was easier to stick with the Maquis or even just eat with Tuvok. It wasn't that he was particularly close to any of them; it was that they all knew Tom long enough to know he didn't like people to ask him questions, and that they shouldn't expect much more than the occasional snarky comment or bad joke from the pilot.
So he flew the ship, always taking any extra shifts that needed coverage; he ate alone or nearly alone in the mess; he worked out in the gym or on the holodeck at times he knew they weren't crowded. He even slept a few hours, here and there, but only when he knew he didn't have another choice. Chakotay tried to engage him sometimes, but his old captain's patience for his sarcasm and defensiveness had never been particularly long; he would always give up on the pilot sooner rather than later during those conversations. Tom figured, before long, he'd stop trying to start them at all.
He entered the mess and joined the line for the latest foul tasting concoction from their resident Delta Quadrant expert and chef. There was one thing that Tom had looked forward to, when the two crews had merged and he fully comprehended that he'd be stuck on a "Fleet ship for the duration - working replicators. The one on the Val Jean had been notoriously persnickety and frequently broken, and Chell's enthusiastically but recklessly prepared meals were not always made with human taste buds in mind. But given the uncertainty of finding reliable and renewable energy sources in the DQ, replicator use on Voyager was being strictly regulated. Tom still had fond memories of the single pizza he'd been able to make before the new rules came online. Neelix made Chell look like a five star chef.
"Ah. Lieutenant Paris." Neelix greeted him with a stiff smile. The Talaxian seemed to regard all the former Maquis with suspicion, like the barely more than two dozen of them were about to stage a mutiny at a moment's notice. "We have a special treat today! An old family recipe - Merupax Curry!"
"Merupax?" Tom asked, dubiously regarding the blue grey chunks of what was possibly meat, floating in a grainy yellow liquid.
"I looked it up in your database, Lieutenant," Kes said, her trusting eyes blinking at him. "The merupax is similar to an Earth creature called an iguana."
"Oh," Tom said, his smile about as sincere as Neelix's. "That would explain the scales. Sounds delicious."
He sighed internally as he turned away from the dinner queue, his next mission to find an empty table, or at least one where no one would try to talk to him. And that's when he saw something that made his stomach turn more than the curry.
Seska. Sitting with B'Elanna. Talking and laughing and probably fucking flirting knowing her, with B'Elanna.
His hands gripped the tray. He should walk away, probably even leave the mess entirely. (It's not like I'm going to eat this vile looking stew.) That's what Chakotay had asked him to do. Had ordered him to do, really.
Within a couple of days of them coming on board, Tom had confronted the now Commander Chakotay in his shiny new 'Fleet digs. "What are you going to tell Janeway about Seska?" he'd demanded.
"Nothing," Chakotay said. "And neither are you."
"Chakotay! You said she's a spy for the Cardassians! We can't trust her! We can't just let her walk around the ship like another member of the crew!"
"I said she might be a spy for the Cardassians," he replied in that damn calm voice of his. "We have no way to prove it out here, either way. But even if she was a Cardie spy, she's cut off from them now, and she's still Bajoran. I can work with her - give her a chance to prove herself. Maybe if we show some faith in her, even if she was a spy, she'll come around - be an asset to the ship and the crew."
"Or maybe she'll cut our throats while we sleep!" Tom snapped.
"That's enough, Paris!" Chakotay barked back at him. "Things are going to be hard enough for the Maquis without me running to Janeway and telling her one of my crew might be a damn spy! The captain needs reasons to trust us, not justification to throw us all in the brig. It's my decision and you will abide by it. So stand the fuck down, Lieutenant!"
"Yes, sir," Tom snarled, storming out of the office and telling himself that not saying anything to Janeway didn't mean he couldn't keep an eye on Seska all on his own.
Now here she was, sharing a meal with B'Elanna. He wouldn't, he couldn't, take a chance that Seska didn't have any nefarious plans in mind. Not with B'Elanna involved. He walked over to the table and dropped his tray next to where Seska sat, taking a small amount of pleasure when flecks of the yellowish gruel splashed onto her uniform. "What the hell, Paris?" she snapped, glaring at him.
"Don't you have somewhere else to be? Crewman?" Tom could see B'Elanna's confused and annoyed expression out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn't worry about that right now.
"You have got to be kidding me," Seska sneered. "You're going to pull rank on me? Lieutenant?"
"We're just having dinner," B'Elanna said, in a tone Tom recognized as just this side of pissed off. "We had a long day in Engineering."
"I need her to go to shuttle bay one and help with the overhaul on the Sacajawea," he said from between gritted teeth, not taking his eyes from the Bajoran's.
"Tom!" B'Elanna snapped. "We just got off shift. There are plenty of other engineers that can go down there!"
Her eyes narrowing, Seska rose to standing. "No, B'Elanna. It's fine. After all," she said, dragging a finger across Tom's chest. "I know exactly how Paris likes his shuttles to fly." She looked back at B'Elanna before she walked away. "We'll have dinner another time. When the company's a little better."
"What the fuck was that?" B'Elanna hissed, pitched just loud enough for him to hear.
Tom glanced around the mess, realizing most of the eyes in the room were on the little table. Shit. More fodder for the rumor mill. "It was… nothing. A Maquis thing. You wouldn't understand." He walked swiftly out of the room, abandoning his tray of space iguana and wondering who was going to be most pissed at him in the end - Seska? Chakotay? B'Elanna? Really, it was a complete toss up.
He got on the turbolift and called for his deck. B'Elanna slipped in beside him just before the doors closed. "B'Elanna, it's not a-"
"A good time?" she finished. "It never is with you anymore. But if you think you can just walk up and order one of my engineers around like that, we need to come to a new understanding. Lieutenant."
Ever since he'd gotten his rank reinstated, Tom considered, it seemed like more people sneered it at him as an insult, rather than used it to denote any level of respect. "You're right. I'm sorry. It won't happen again." The turbolift opened on his deck and he walked purposefully towards his quarters, hoping B'Elanna would take the hint and not follow.
No such luck.
"Don't just walk away from me!" she growled, coming up alongside him. "We are not done here."
"B'Elanna," he said to his door. "I hear what you're saying, and I apologize. I told you I won't do it again. What else do you want from me?"
"I want you to tell me what's wrong with you!" she cried. "I want you to tell me why you don't talk to anyone, why you work every duty shift you can, and why you look like you haven't slept in a week! What the hell happened to you, Tom?"
He opened his door and walked in, knowing there was no throwing her off this time. He had to tell her something, even if it wasn't the answer she was looking for. But it didn't have to happen in the middle of the hallway. He waved at one of the chairs as an invitation. B'Elanna chose to remain standing.
"Look, about Seska," he started, holding out hope that a simple misdirection would do the trick. "I know her a lot better than you do. Just… do me a favor, and don't trust her with too much, OK?"
"Not OK," she retorted. "Why should I just take your word for it? She's a competent tech, and she's one of the few Maquis that doesn't talk to me like I'm a new species of pond scum-"
"Who's giving you a hard time?" Tom interjected. "I'll talk to them. You don't-"
"I don't," she growled, "need you to defend me against your Maquis buddies. I can deal with it myself, Tom. And if you have an issue with Seska, tell me what it is, and I'll deal with that, too."
"I can't," he said, weakly he knew. "I just need you to trust me on this one."
Her disgust was evident. "Trust you? Oh, please. You hide in your quarters when you're not on duty, you don't engage with anyone - not even the other Maquis - and I should trust you? Someone on this ship is acting like they're hiding something, Tom, and it's not Seska."
He sat down heavily on the couch. What could he say to that? She wasn't exactly wrong - he'd been far from open with her since they'd seen each other again. He couldn't think of the last time he'd been open with anyone, really.
"It doesn't make any damn sense!" she said, pacing around his room. "You don't make any sense! You were always the one that put your family first. So how does that guy end up abandoning them to join the Maquis? You gave up your career, you gave up everything! You couldn't even go to your own father's funeral!" She whipped around to stare at him. "Have you read the intel reports? The things they've said about you? What the hell happened, Tom? Do you have anything to say for yourself? Or are you too much of a zombie these days to even do that?"
He looked up at her, standing there all pissed off and guarded, and he knew what he should do. He should tell her that nothing had happened, really. That he had joined the Maquis for the same reasons a lot of people do - he disagreed with the Treaty, he found Starfleet stifling, he wanted to kill Cardassians. All of those things were true, after all, to a degree. And B'Elanna would look at him like she didn't know who he was anymore, and she'd be right. And she'd walk out the door, and maybe she'd finally give up on him for good.
But he didn't want to hide anymore. He wanted to tell someone, finally - all of it, the whole sordid tale. He wanted to tell B'Elanna. It wasn't fair to her, really. It wasn't something he should burden someone else with - least of all someone he loved as much as he still loved her. But he was so tired of keeping it all in, of pushing everyone away.
The irony being, of course, that once he told her everything she'd probably never want to talk to him again.
"Do you really want to know?" he asked her finally. "What happened? How I ended up in the Maquis?"
She looked at him, her expression surprised. She sat down on the couch, just out of reach. "Yes," she said. "I do."