Lost the Battle, Win the War
Source Episodes: VOY 7x25 Endgame, 5x3 Extreme Risk
CW: Discussions of emotional and sexual abuse, exploitation, and substance use.
After leaving the briefing room, Tom stopped me in the corridor and asked to talk. I knew we needed to discuss what I had just learned about Tom and Marnah, but I was emotionally drained and needed some time alone to think. I told him to come by my quarters after lunch.
The door chimed at exactly 1300 hours.
Tom was definitely nervous, but he was also determined to get answers. "How did you know?"
"For the last week, I've been receiving visions from Alixia. She's been giving me glimpses into our possible future—a future we will have if we keep heading for home instead of helping to fight this war against the Borg. It's—" I paused. "It's not good."
"And these visions showed you that I was involved with Section 31?"
I shook my head. "No. It was... something else. Something implied. It's complicated, and I'm not sure how much Captain Janeway would want me sharing with you."
"I see," he said with a nod, though his tone implied something else.
"I didn't know," I said, grabbing his hands. "I swear, I didn't know any of it. I had no idea what..." I bit my lip.
"What I did?"
"What Marnah did. What she made you do." Tears filled my eyes. "I'm so sorry, Tom. You asked if I could forgive you, but there's nothing to forgive. She knew about your substance use disorder and she used it against you. She manipulated you, mislead you, and exploited you. You can't hold any of that against yourself."
He wrenched his hands from mine, throwing them out to either side as he let loose a sound that was somewhere between a yell and a sob. "How can I not? I let it happen! I put myself in that position. I took the drugs, I did the work, and I lied to you for years! I took my orders and changed course to the gravity well without question, and I lied about that, too. I would have taken all of it to my grave if it weren't for this. I could have stopped it at any point—said no, talked to you—but I didn't. What kind of a friend does that? How could it not be my fault?"
"You said it yourself. You were just the messenger. You had no power, no influence. You've done what you had to do to keep going forward—to survive. Marnah chose to use you—to force you into doing something you wouldn't otherwise do. That's on her. Section 31 has chosen to use you, too. They don't need you, but they still make you play their games because they know they can benefit from it, and they know you stand to lose if you fight back. None of that is your fault, Tom. Do you hear me?" I stepped closer and cupped his face in my hands. "None of it was your fault."
His face crumpled like a bateret leaf in a flame. Choked sobs escaped his lips, and his chest heaved with the effort of gasping in air. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I drew him close, nestling his face against my shoulder as I held him in a tight hug. We stayed like that for a long while until he cried himself out.
When he finally calmed down, I guided him to my couch and helped him sit. Then, without a word, I crossed to the replicator to get him some water. We let the silence linger between us for several minutes, until Tom finished his water and stood.
"I'm going back to my quarters," he said wearily.
I stood, too. "Okay."
He met my gaze and hesitated, as if unsure of how to leave things between us. I couldn't help but think that he looked like a lost little child, and I almost started to cry for the shards of youthful innocence that still lingered in his own soul. Every time he found one and picked it up, hoping to reclaim something of the boy he never got to be, it just seemed to cut him even deeper. It wasn't fair. He deserved so much better.
"No matter what happens," I said, "you'll always be my family. Nothing can change that. You know that, don't you?"
"I know," he murmured. "So will you." Setting the empty glass on the coffee table, he trudged out of the room.
It wasn't until the next morning that Captain Janeway made up her mind on the matter of whether or not Voyager and Equinox would play a role in the war against the Borg. That morning, the briefing room was filled with Voyager's senior officers, plus Elentia and Captain Ransom. At the sight of our guests, I knew right away what Janeway's decision would be.
But first, they deserved an explanation.
Everyone had a million questions for me, which Tuvok helped to answer. We left out any mentions of Section 31, of course—that was classified. We also stopped short of revealing the identity of the Prophet. Given that Captain Sisko was still—in our time—a physical presence in the Alpha Quadrant, we thought it was best to keep that to ourselves. But I told them everything else I saw, and what the Prophet had said to convince me that finding Annika was of upmost importance. Naturally, there was a lot of skepticism, but at least everyone agreed that defeating the Borg was in the best interests of everyone. In fact, all of Voyager's senior officers were enthusiastically supportive of taking up the fight against the Borg, even if it meant delaying our trip home.
"For a lot of us," Harry said at one point, "getting home is what we've wanted more than almost anything. But when I think about all that we've been through together, maybe it's not the destination that matters. Maybe it's the journey. And if that journey takes a little longer so we can do something we all believe in, I can't think of any place I'd rather be, or any people I'd rather be with."
"Hear, hear," said Tom.
Ransom was none too happy about the situation—too many variables, too much risk, and a lot riding on the word of a Bajoran deity and a woman he'd never met. After making his dissent known, however, he accepted Janeway's orders like the soldier he was determined to be.
Elentia, on the other hand, was extremely pleased. She'd hoped for such an outcome, and she confessed that it was part of why she came to Voyager despite the trip taking her so far away from her wife. We were already scheduled to make a short stopover at a small Zahl station in two days where Elentia and Sinta had planned to leave us, so the timing was quite convenient. She agreed to coordinate our entry into the war with the other allied forces and promised to help us in our quest to track down Annika.
With that out of the way, Janeway dismissed Ransom and Elentia from the room so that the rest of us could get on with our usual staff meeting. After checking in with each of us on divisional and departmental updates, Harry spoke up about another matter—shuttles.
With the losses of Drake in the gravity well and Cochrane in the Borg sphere heist, we were down to only one shuttle—Tereshkova. She was a nice little type eight, and still in top order, but we would definitely need more than just her and Neelix's ship to get around. Tom had been itching to build a shuttle from scratch for years, but we never really needed it before, so it wasn't a priority. It surprised me a bit that Tom hadn't already been pressing for it, but he hadn't acted much like himself ever since we got back from the gravity well.
Neither of us had, really.
I had a sneaking suspicion that Harry was pressing for it now as a way to force himself, Tom, B'Elanna, and me to work together. He probably hoped that it would revive our friendship. Maybe it would. Either way, he was absolutely right that we needed more shuttles.
When Harry broached the topic, Janeway's eyes went to Tom. "May I presume that you would support this endeavor, Mister Paris?"
He shrugged. "We've needed something bigger and better since we got to the Delta Quadrant. It's time we built it."
"Any ideas for the shuttle's design?" Chakotay asked.
"A few," Harry said with a smile.
"Actually," B'Elanna said, "I was just telling Harry yesterday about that multispacial probe Tuvok, Annika, and I designed a few months ago. I think I could modify the shielding to work for a shuttle."
"Using Borg-inspired shielding as we prepare to go to war with the Borg," Chakotay observed.
Janeway grinned. "It has a certain poetry to it, don't you think?"
"It does," he agreed, smiling back.
There hadn't been much levity among any of the senior staff since losing Annika. Even after learning of her survival, the general attitude had remained unusually grim. Everything had begun to seem rote at best or grating at worst. We were all getting tired of Voyager, tired of our isolation in the Delta Quadrant, and tired of our increasingly abstract goal of getting home.
Yet it seemed that having a cause to unite over had renewed everyone's energy almost instantly. The excitement in the room was palpable, and the optimism was contagious. Between Janeway's decision to take a stand against the Borg and the opportunity to design a new shuttle, our crew was pulling together for the sake of this purpose we had found within our exile.
Harry's words from a few minutes before replayed in my head. "Maybe it's not the destination that matters—maybe it's the journey." I glanced at him and found that he was smiling, too. Of course he was. Harry reminded us of who we were.
"Does this mean I finally get a 'yes' for building my shuttle?" Tom asked, still hesitating to let himself get too excited.
Tuvok ticked an eyebrow. "Your shuttle?"
Tom huffed. "You know what I mean."
"You mean that nobody else will be allowed to fly your baby around once it's been built," B'Elanna teased.
He rolled his eyes. "Of course other people will fly it. Just, you know... carefully."
Janeway chuckled. "Alright, you've convinced me. Get to work on a design. I want a draft on my desk by the end of next week."
Tom smiled. "Yes, ma'am."
