Day 61
Tom takes one step into the Mess Hall, locks eyes with Kurt Doyle, and freezes. He mouths, full uniform, huh? half a second before Doyle, a mean glint in his eyes, jeers, "Full uniform, huh?" from across the crowded room.
What the hell?
Several people glance over in the silence that follows. Dumbly, Tom pushes up one sleeve to confirm that his skin is inexplicably covered in goosebumps. He rubs his arm and, as he looks down, a familiar swell of vertigo overtakes him.
Anticipation seems to hold the room in stasis. He senses Doyle's eyes on him, waiting for the opening that Tom…
That Tom… has given him before…
"Never know when we might have to leap into action," he mutters under his breath.
Doyle starts to rise, but Tom's brain feels like an ancient television set that's just kicked on, blaring at full volume as the picture belatedly comes into focus. He turns on his heel and bolts down the corridor and into the turbolift, hitting the opposite wall as the doors close behind him.
"Deck three!" he gasps.
It takes no more than a minute for him to be ejected one deck down and onto Janeway's doorstep, and he slams the chime, twice. He paces a little while he waits, allows ten seconds to elapse before he raises a fist to start pounding on her door.
And this is how Janeway, clad in a white robe and clutching her coffee mug like a threat, finds him: one arm raised, hand balled into a fist, his expression, presumably, somewhat manic.
He lowers his arm slowly.
"Can I help you, Mr. Paris?" Janeway asks, a little dangerously.
Oh, shit.
She doesn't remember.
"Uh," Tom replies, his mind spinning. He hadn't realized he'd need a recruiting speech; it was she who had alerted him, previously. He's just about to blurt you're going to die! when reason, mercifully, catches up with him. He takes a steadying breath.
"Captain, can I… come in? It's important," he promises, when she narrows her eyes at him.
She clenches her jaw but steps back, allowing him room to enter. He spares a glance down the hall and then slides past her, acutely aware that he has never been in her quarters before. He controls a powerful urge to look around.
Janeway tightens her robe and sits, gesturing for him to do the same. He takes it as a positive sign that she didn't immediately change into her uniform, and just as he is thinking this, she asks, "Why are you in uniform?"
He laughs out loud; he can't help himself. She scowls at him.
He remembers that it is still relatively early in the morning, for her day off.
"Sorry," he says quickly. "It's just that someone else already asked me that exact question… I don't know how many times."
"Maybe you'd better start over," she warns.
Right. Start over. He stifles another laugh and realizes that he is edging into hysteria. Get it together, Paris.
"What do you remember about, uh…" Today? Yesterday? He tries again. "What's the last thing you remember, before you woke up?"
She studies him intently and he is afraid, suddenly, that she might not answer. Everything—and he can't believe this is just occurring to him—everything hinges on her trusting him over what he assumes is an understandable impulse to haul him to Sickbay. But then he seesin the softening of her face the moment she decides to humor him, and he releases a breath.
"I was up late, reading." She nods at the side table where a leatherbound book lies, its title facing away from them. "Very late. Maybe 0400. So imagine my delight to be hosting you at this hour," she adds, but Tom hears the smile in her voice even as she keeps it off her face.
"And then you woke up?"
"And then I woke up. About half an hour ago."
He's lucky she hasn't decked him, in that case. He decides to get to the point.
"Captain, this is going to sound crazy, but… I think we've been re-living this day over and over again."
She stares at him, inscrutable. Carefully sets her coffee down on the table in front of her.
"A temporal anomaly?" she asks, and the relief that she believes him almost knocks the wind out of him.
"I don't know. I don't… I can't remember everything," he says with some surprise, only now realizing that this is the case. "I remember going to the Mess Hall. That's where I was before here. But I don't think this has happened before. I think I normally see you on the Bridge, next."
"The Bridge?" she asks sharply. "Why?"
He presses his hands over his eyes, fighting to remember. He sees her on the Bridge…
A sense of foreboding threatens to derail his train of thought. Something big, important. He tries to picture its source, imagines himself at the helm, wills himself to piece it together…
Nothing. Nothing, until the afternoon. "I don't know. I'm missing a few hours, at least." He opens his eyes. "But I remember how it ends."
It is difficult to be here like this. Not just this conversation, but all of it: the formality, the unspoken rules he agreed to follow when she "introduced" herself to him at the penal colony. She looks at him and for the first time since they left Earth he seriously considers breaking character. Through his rising panic, he thinks, I don't know how to deal with this as Lieutenant Paris and Captain Janeway.
His heart hammers in his chest.
"I remember you dying," he says, finally. "We go to the Science Lab together, and something happens to you. You remembered before I did, last time. You knew it was coming, and that we wouldn't make it to Sickbay in time."
"And I was right?" she asks carefully.
"And you were right."
She stands and moves to her window. Tom notices for the first time that she's chosen the same hue for her illumination as himself: a vibrant, totally uncharacteristic orange.
"How long, do you think?" she asks him, her voice low and serious.
"This last time is the first that I'm… aware of remembering," he answers awkwardly. "It feels like yesterday, to me."
"I think we have to consider the possibility that we may have been in this… temporal loop… for days already. Weeks, even." She huffs a mirthless laugh. "Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes."
He smiles ruefully. "If it's any consolation, I don't think we're really time travelling if we're just repeating the same day."
She glares at him. "It isn't."
Janeway decides their next step should be to have him evaluated by the Doctor, just in case. But as she leaves the room to get dressed, he hears her combadge chirp. Baxter's muffled voice summons her to the Bridge.
She looks at him from the doorway and for the first time this morning, her expression is truly uneasy. He knows exactly what she is thinking: the Bridge is the next thing Tom remembers. After this…
"Come on," she says, shrugging her uniform jacket on and heading for the door. They ride up to the Bridge together, and when they step out of the lift they both automatically look to the viewscreen, where a massive spatial disturbance writhes off their port bow.
Tom tries to make his way down to the conn, but as he edges past Janeway he sees that she has gone pale. She turns slowly and meets his questioning gaze.
"Chaotic space," she says.
She remembers.
And so does Tom, now. He leaps down the steps and slides into his chair, bringing Voyager to a standstill with a single emergency override.
Behind him, Janeway snaps back into command mode. "Senior officers, report to the Bridge," she orders over the comm.
Tom looks at her over his shoulder, unsure how freely to speak. He decides to risk it. "Think this is the cause?"
"It's as good a guess as any," she answers tightly.
Chakotay, Tuvok, and Harry file onto the Bridge. "Why have we stopped?" Chakotay asks.
Janeway ignores him. "Mr. Kim, scan the anomaly. I want all the data you can get on it. Mr. Paris, back us off."
At once, Tom throws them into full reverse, glancing up at the viewscreen every few seconds to monitor their progress.
"It's… following us, whatever it is," Harry says. "It's jumping a little erratically, but it's definitely following us. The energy output of this thing is unlike anything I've seen."
"It is too close," Tuvok warns.
"Maximum shields. Tom—" Janeway starts, but too late: a great black wave seems to heave itself over the hull, immersing them. The ship trembles.
"All stop," Janeway barks.
"Where the hell are we?" Chakotay asks, looking first at Janeway and then to Tom, apparently sensing that he is several steps behind.
"Briefing room," Janeway says by way of an answer. "Get Torres up here, too."
"First thing's first," Janeway begins, when they're all seated around the table. "We're in a pocket of subspace that we will decide to call Chaotic space."
Silence.
"Will decide?" Chakotay asks.
"That's the other problem." Janeway glances over at Tom. "We may be stuck in some kind of temporal 'loop'."
Chakotay, following her line of sight, looks unimpressed. Tom decides to jump in. "This briefing is different, but other things have repeated. I knew what Crewman Doyle was going to say to me this morning at breakfast. The Captain remembered running into Chaotic space, once we got here."
B'Elanna, too, appears dubious. "So… you guessed what Doyle was going to say?"
"I didn't guess," Tom disagrees. "I knew. I knew it, verbatim, before he said it. He picks a fight with me—" Janeway looks over sharply, Tom having omitted this part of this story earlier, "—and Neelix breaks it up. This time, I left first."
"And that proves we're stuck in some kind of loop?" This from Harry, to Tom's surprise.
"It doesn't prove anything," Janeway interjects smoothly. "Our next stop was going to be Sickbay, before we ran into this anomaly. That was before I started remembering. We can have the Doctor check us both out."
Tom looks around the room and is startled by the degree of skepticism he sees in the faces of his colleagues, his friends. Starfleet has encountered countless temporal anomalies. There is an entire series of courses on it at the Academy, on managing paradoxes and obeying the Temporal Prime Directive, and that's before you even get into temporal mechanics.
He catches Janeway's eye, and he can tell that they're thinking the same thing.
This doesn't bode well.
"You didn't mention the kicker," Tom says under his breath as they make their way to Sickbay. Janeway throws him a look, then confirms that they are alone in the corridor.
"I didn't want to start a panic. They need to be focusing on Chaotic space. We could both be… hallucinating the rest."
"Hallucinating?" Tom repeats doubtfully. "Hallucinating with incredible accuracy."
"Has this happened before?"
Well, no. But as far as he can recall, they've never been aware of the situation before. Knowing about the temporal disturbance changes things, surely.
She has certainly already thought of this, so he decides to keep his mouth shut. He lets her do the talking when they reach their destination, ordering the Doctor to perform a full physical on both of them.
"It would help if I knew what I was looking for," the Doctor says, failing to mask his curiosity.
Janeway sighs resignedly. "Temporal aberrations would be a good place to start," she says.
Something occurs to Tom suddenly, and he adds, "Scan the Captain's brain for any kind of injury or trauma."
Janeway and the Doctor both stare at him.
"That is, uh, with your consent, ma'am."
Janeway pinches the bridge of her nose. "Just do it, Doctor."
That the Doctor fails to discover any physical indicators of temporal flux does not surprise Tom. Whatever's going on, it can't possibly be isolated to either one of them. Nor was he expecting to be diagnosed as delusional, psychotic, or suffering from head trauma. What does give him pause is that Janeway's brain scan comes back perfectly clean. This suggests one of two things: either she is not going to die in an hour, or within the hour she will spontaneously develop a fatal brain aneurysm.
He wishes he felt more inclined to believe the former.
Tom teeters now on the threshold of the Science Lab, feeling superstitious about entering at this point in the day. Janeway wants to scan for external temporal anomalies while the crew works on the problem of Chaotic space, a reasonable plan with which Tom doesn't disagree on any particular point. And yet…
"Get in or get out, Tom," Janeway snaps. "You're making me anxious."
Tom steps in. The doors hiss shut behind him.
Janeway buries herself in data while he hovers uncomfortably nearby. This is by no means his wheelhouse, but he could do something to help. Yet even as he considers his options he feels his skin begin to crawl, and has to fight, again, the urge to grab Janeway and run.
"Computer, time," he asks instead.
"The time is 1242 hours."
Janeway pauses infinitesimally, then resumes her work. She does not look up. "Is it supposed to happen soon?"
He cannot even begin to articulate how much he does not want to answer her question. He considers deflecting—he could tell her, truthfully, that he doesn't know when it starts. But he takes in the taut lines of her neck, the way she's punching commands into the console like it has personally offended her, and he decides the least he can do is not make things worse.
"The Doctor pronounces time of death at 1302 hours."
She stops working.
Tom moves over to her terminal, facing her. Her knuckles are white where she grips its edges.
"Computer, time."
"The time is 1245 hours."
His heart slams against his chest.
"I don't want you to die," he says.
Janeway meets his eyes intently. She opens her mouth to speak—
And then winces, hard.
Tom goes cold.
"Paris to Transporter Room 2, emergency medical beam out, now!"
"I wonder how many times you've given that order," Janeway tries to joke.
Before he can reply, the transport is initiated and they rematerialize, once again, in Sickbay. Without the science console to hang on to, Janeway hits the ground gracelessly.
Tom reaches her first, the Doctor snatching a medical tricorder on his way over. "What's her status?" he demands.
"What the hell do you mean, what's her status?" Tom snarls. "I told you this was going to happen!"
Kes gives Tom a confused look, and Tom could decompile the Doctor for not warning her. The Doctor ignores them both. "We need to perform—"
"—surgery," Tom finishes, already carrying Janeway to a bed.
"What if we forget again?" she breathes.
"We won't. I won't," Tom promises, taking her hand in both of us. Her eyes roll back in her head. The biobed alarm fills the room and Tom fights the impulse to start yelling along with it.
"Mister Paris, I need you to move back or leave. Kes, get the cortical stimulator. We'll use it along with the cordrazine. Ten milligrams. Now!"
This is never going to work, Tom thinks. This has never once worked.
Kes and the Doctor are a flurry of movement that Tom does not bother to track. He cannot get enough air in his lungs. Janeway convulses, once, twice, then is still. Tom twitches with the effort required to not go to her.
"Again!" the Doctor shouts.
What time is it? He longs for a wrist watch. He longs to be at her side. He longs to be anywhere else.
"Doctor..." Kes warns.
"Don't question me. Again!"
But Tom already knows it's over. It was over before it began.
"No brain activity."
The Doctor stares at his tricorder readings, then closes his eyes. Kes hesitates for a beat before shutting off the alarms, and then she gently removes the cortical stimulator from Janeway's forehead, and covers her with a thin sheet.
"Make a note in the log," the Doctor intones. "Time of death, 1302 hours."
Tom strides over and shoves him as hard as he can. The Doctor tries to speak, so Tom shoves him again, crowding him against the wall.
"I told you this was going to happen! How did you miss a brain aneurysm?" Tom bellows. Kes steps quickly between them, forces him to take a step back.
"I have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. Paris," the Doctor says, looking alarmed.
"What did you tell him, Tom?" Kes asks gently. "When?"
"Today! Not two hours ago!" Tom raises a shaky hand, points accusatorily. "He gave us both physicals, I told him to scan her brain, he told her she was fine. He didn't even tell you?"
"I assure you, I did nothing of the sort," the Doctor insists. "I have only examined one patient today, and it certainly wasn't eitherof you."
"Check the logs," Tom demands, addressing Kes. "Check his program, too."
Kes hurries back to her terminal and does as he asks. A tense silence fills the room as they wait for her verdict.
"I'm sorry, Tom," Kes says finally, looking up. "There's no record of you being here at all today."
Tom looks at Janeway's shrouded body for a long moment, then throws a disgusted look at the Doctor and walks out without another word.
He is aware, dimly, that his rage is misdirected. If the Doctor doesn't remember seeing them so recently, then something is very wrong—worse than they'd realized, if that's even possible. He is terrified that he won't remember everything in the next loop. That neither of them will. And they will have to go through this all over again…
He stops short.
What if there isn't another loop?
There is no reason to believe that they've broken the cycle, none at all. And yet, they have changed some things. What if…
Well. He certainly isn't going to investigate any further, then. He decides on the spot to wait out the rest of this loop locked in his quarters, to be absolutely certain that he in no way risks Janeway's death becoming permanent.
On his way there, he mouths, She's going to die. She's going to die. She's going to die.
He has to remember.
Day 62
Tom jolts awake, clammy and panting. For a moment he is utterly disoriented. He sits up and rests his head on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
Behind his eyelids, he sees Janeway. Janeway, in a white robe. Janeway, under a white sheet.
Janeway.
She's going to—
"Paris to Janeway!" he calls, forgetting that he is not, of course, wearing his combadge. He gropes for it on his nightstand, ends up pushing it to the floor. He curses loudly and scrambles out of bed.
The door chimes.
Throwing his robe on, he reaches the door in four quick steps and opens it. Janeway stands there, in the white robe from his memory.
She looks like hell.
He ushers her in quickly. She came without coffee in hand so he moves to the replicator and orders her usual, handing it to her mutely.
She drinks deeply, closing her eyes. "I don't think I'm getting much sleep between loops," she says wryly.
"I think that's the least of your problems," Tom answers hoarsely.
He feels raw. How many times has he had to witness her death? How many times before it finally stuck in his memory, how often has he watched her collapse in agony and how, damnit, how could it take more than once to snap him out whatever has been keeping them from knowing about the loops? The image of her lying lifeless on the biobed dominates his vision even as she stands, living and breathing, before him now.
He wants to go to her. He wants to hold her to him, keep her safe. A part of him wants to get both of them the hell off this ship. And he must be broadcasting these feelings, because she takes half a step backwards.
She clears her throat. "Let's recap."
Tom offers her a seat, then perches on the chair opposite hers.
"What do you remember?"
"Dying," she says sarcastically.
"You didn't remember that last time. Do you, uh, remember not remembering?"
Generously, she gives him a lopsided smile. "I do. I remember you were about to break down my door. Then our conversation, and not remembering. And then we got called to the Bridge—"
"You got called. I tagged along."
"—And then Chaotic space. We should have checked the time," she realizes.
"It was around 1000," he says quickly. At her curious look, he adds, "Because I'm supposed to meet Harry at 1000 hours. I go to breakfast, then the holodeck. It happens a little after that."
"You—oh. You get into a fight in the Mess Hall."
"Yeah…" he says slowly. "I'm not sure that's something we should really be worrying about now, though."
"I'm not," she says, and he hears the eye roll implied by her tone. "We changed some things. We didn't change others."
She still died, she means.
"Okay. Okay, so what's our baseline so far, then? I wake up, go to breakfast, fight with Doyle."
"Some time in there, I wake up."
"I meet Harry, but I don't… he's called away. Then you call us all to the Bridge."
"…If we run into Chaotic space every time, does that suggest it is not causing the temporal disturbance?"
"I mean, but what are the odds that they're unrelated?"
"Paradoxes," she groans.
"Moving on," he interjects, "We investigate, there's a briefing—"
"—I only remember trying to explain the temporal loop. You remember others?"
"Yeah, I do. When I don't intercept you, you and Harry meet with B'Elanna first. Then the briefing, then you and I go to the Science Lab…"
"Full circle. I die."
1302 hours. "Computer, time."
"The time is 0842 hours."
"Wait," Tom says. "You're up early?"
Janeway looks uncomfortable. "I was having a nightmare. I don't remember having it before. I don't know."
Tom is aware that his sympathy would be unwelcome, but it's hard to suppress.
The absurdity of it all. Here they are in his quarters on a Sunday morning, both in their bathrobes, she with her coffee. Except for the subject of their discussion, he has imagined this scene a thousand times.
"There's something else," he says. "After you… afterwards, the Doctor didn't remember us coming to Sickbay. Not just didn't remember, didn't have a record of it."
A startled pause.
"Well, I have no idea what that could mean," Janeway says, finally. "But I think we should follow up on it. Try to convince someone else. In the briefing—"
"They were completely dismissive, yeah," Tom says. "It was… weird."
"I'll talk to Chakotay," she decides. "You're supposed to be with Mr. Kim soon?"
"Briefly," he clarifies. "B'Elanna calls him away before we get started. I can find him ahead of time."
"Do it."
"Alright, alright, you've had your fun. Do you want to go to the holodeck now or what?"
Tom runs an angry hand through his hair. Harry sits across from him, laughing a little. It is wildly unlike Harry to dismiss Tom's concerns out of hand and so Tom is certain, now more than ever, that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Because from the moment Tom walked in and started explaining the temporal loop, Harry seemed… aloof. Not unfriendly, but in no way open to entertaining the possibility that Tom is presenting. Eager, indeed, to move on from the topic.
"Harry, listen to me," Tom tries again. "I'm telling you, soon, B'Elanna is going to call you to Engineering. Just wait. We won't have time to start the program, we never do."
"Hey, okay, let's just head over there. Alright?" Harry says for the third or fourth time. "Or, did you have breakfast already?"
Tom stands abruptly, but the placid look on Harry's face remains unchanged. "Computer, time."
"The time is 1005 hours."
"Wait," Tom says. "In three, two—"
"Torres to Kim. Harry, are you busy right now? I could really use your help with a problem over here."
Tom looks expectantly at Harry.
"Sure thing, B'Elanna. I'll be right there," Harry answers, standing as well.
"Well?"Tom demands.
"Well what?" Harry replies. "We work together all the time."
"Are you even listening to me?" Tom shouts. "I just told you she was going to call you! How would I have known that if I'm making this all up?"
"Listen, Tom, let's reschedule, okay? We'll meet up later, take your mind off things."
Harry pats Tom on the shoulder on his way out, leaving Tom feeling incredibly unnerved. He's just considering rifling through Harry's things for clues, an obvious long shot, when his combadge chirps.
"Janeway to Paris."
"Paris here."
"Report to Sickbay immediately."
Tom's heart leaps into his throat. It's too early. Does this mean she's made some progress? He makes it to deck five in record time and walks in on Janeway and Chakotay shouting each other down, the Doctor standing off to one side, looking alarmed.
"What's going on?" Tom asks him.
"The Commander saw fit to order me in here to have my head examined," Janeway answers for him, livid.
"Captain, you're obviously not well," Chakotay says earnestly, and Tom sucks in a breath. Not only because he'd been hoping she'd have better luck than he has so far, but because Chakotay clearly doesn't recognize the amount of danger he is in right now. Tom looks over at Janeway, her face white with fury.
He decides to intervene.
"Captain, can I speak with you? Privately?" he adds, meaningfully.
She hesitates for a moment, then relents. The Doctor moves over to Chakotay as Janeway leads Tom back out into the corridor.
"It was the same with Harry," he says.
"He threatened to call security to bring me in," Janeway seethes.
"It's almost like they don't want to remember."
"…Or something is preventing them from even trying."
They share an uneasy look.
"Captain to the Bridge," Baxter calls over the comm.
"Right on time," Tom mutters.
"It's going to happen again," Janeway says darkly.
"I know."
They turn and walk slowly to the turbolift together. "What do you normally do with the rest of the day?" Janeway asks him after a beat.
Tom lets out a hollow laugh. "Nothing."
Janeway frowns, confused. He clears his throat.
"I don't handle it well," he admits, staring straight ahead as they step into the lift. "From what I remember before, I've just shut down, locked myself in my quarters. And last time, I was so afraid to change anything, break the loop…"
He trails off heavily. Janeway is quiet, and Tom is just about to attempt a weak joke to cover his lapse, when he feels her slip her small hand into his. He looks down, a lump in his throat, then meets her gaze. Her expression is unreadable.
"Computer, time."
"The time is 1032 hours."
Two and a half hours to go.
She squeezes his hand once and then steps away, as the doors open onto the Bridge once again.
A/N:
We're going with what I've just started calling Curator Canon, which is that Janeway has Reasons for introducing herself to Tom at the penal colony, but they did already know each other. You can read her version of that here: /works/20991566
Janeway's line about loathing time travel is from the episode "Future's End." And yes, at this point in the show, of course, Janeway wears the pink robe. But she switches to white later on, and I like it better, so white it is.