Day 68
Tom wakes, throws his legs over the side of his bed, and comms Janeway, seeing no reason to delay. Eager, truthfully, to wipe the memory of her last death from his mind, however briefly. When she doesn't respond immediately, he tries again, and then a third time.
Nothing.
He panics. She's been having nightmares, the last few times. Dark circles under her eyes. What if she's ill? They hadn't considered that the loops might have deleterious effects. His stomach churns and he does not bother to pull a robe over his pajamas before he throws himself into the corridor and down to her quarters, stopping short when he realizes, obviously, you idiot, that he can't enter unless she lets him in.
He starts pounding. "Captain, can you hear me?" he shouts, banging his fist against her door as hard as he can. "Captain!"
If he calls security, will they help, or cart him off to the brig? Tom has no reason for entering the Captain's private rooms that he can imagine would satisfy Tuvok, given what they know. Unless…
He goes cold.
Unless time didn't reset.
"Computer, what—" he starts, but before he can finish asking for the stardate, Janeway opens the door.
Tom fears for a moment he might be sick over the relief he feels to find her alive.
She steps back and he follows her in, the door shutting behind them. The room is dark and she is disheveled, like he has just roused her from bed. She doesn't look angry, though, as he might once have expected. She looks… terrible.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," she jokes weakly.
"I called first. You didn't answer. I was afraid—"
She holds up a hand. "I understand."
He scrutinizes her appearance, to her obvious displeasure. "What's going on?" he asks.
She looks very much like she would rather not tell him. "It's just a headache," she says finally. "I was having that nightmare again. I must have slept through your call."
So Tom wasn't too far off in his initial panic. "We need a medical tricorder," he decides.
"To what end?" she laughs, a hollow sound that sets Tom on edge. "It doesn't detect the cause of my death. We don't even know they work properly in Chaotic space."
Tom doesn't like her tone at all. They've devoted the last several loops to collecting as much data as they can before their time runs out, and their lack of meaningful progress is wearing on them both. He decides an intervention is in order, making a mental note to deal with the tricorder problem soon.
"Breakfast," he declares. "Don't bother arguing."
She huffs, but excuses herself to the bathroom while he orders a variety of light breakfast options from the replicator. He uses his own rations to be polite, then realizes, with the first hint of giddiness he's felt in who knows how long, that he doesn't have to worry about rations running out as long as they're stuck in this temporal whatever. He orders a higher quality coffee than he knows she tends to allow herself, a whole pot of it. He is just laying everything out on her table when she returns, less rumpled but still in her pajamas.
"It seemed needlessly cruel to let you be the only one half-dressed," she explains.
He laughs, pours her a cup of coffee. She wraps her hands around its comforting warmth and inhales deeply, eyes widening. "Oh, Tom," she moans, and he flushes.
"I finally noticed that our rations reset along with everything else," he says quickly, looking anywhere but at her.
She raises a mischievous eyebrow at him, but mercifully refrains from commenting.
"Speaking of breakfast: Doyle."
He groans. "It doesn't matter. At all."
"Tell me anyway."
"What's to tell? You know I wasn't exactly well-received in the beginning. By Starfleet or the Maquis."
"Yes," she says slowly. "But that was months ago. We've been through so much since then. And you've been an exemplary officer."
"And things have mostly settled down," Tom agrees. "Doyle is a holdout."
"There are others?"
"Captain," he tries again. "It doesn't matter. What I did—"
"You made some mistakes," she cuts in. "Everyone deserves a second chance." She looks so serious that he doesn't know how to respond. He swallows thickly.
"Is that what you told dear old dad? I'm surprised it was enough. Until you sprung me I didn't realize he even believed in second chances."
Now it's her turn to look away. A startling thought occurs to him.
"At the penal colony, when you introduced yourself to me..."
She looks wary. "Yes?"
"You didn't go through my father, did you?"
She sighs. "Admiral Patterson."
His mind reels. He's been thinking that her reason for acting like they hadn't met before was to avoid the appearance of nepotism, that she had either been sent by his father or come with his blessing, neither option likely to be looked favorably upon by the Rehab Commission. He had understood the offer of a fresh start beneath her words, despite his initial resistance. A job we'd like you to do for us, she had said, but he'd had quite the hell enough of doing jobs for the Federation by then, no matter how glad he'd been to see her. But when she made it clear, subtly, too subtle for the Commission to stop her, that the job was for her…
Well then, I guess I'm yours.
But then she had never mentioned it again. And so he carried on as they were, as though all their history did not exist. He'd thought that was the deal: their past for his future. Too high a price, except that he'd thought it was what she wanted, her phantom engagement ring looming in his mind even as she never wore it.
He has to know.
"Why? Surely he would have done it for you."
She looks down at the mug clutched between her hands like a lifeline. "Your father... he thought we were too close. Thought it wasn't good for my career."
At that, Tom stills.
"Were we?"
Finally, she looks up. A complicated expression plays across her features and he sees a guilt in her eyes that he doesn't understand, but also something else, something dark and so familiar. She searches his face, for what he can't imagine, and parts her lips to speak. He holds his breath.
"Kim to Paris."
They both startle.
"Tom, are you there?"
"Answer him," Janeway mouths.
"What's up, Harry," Tom responds, striving for calm.
"We were supposed to meet five minutes ago. Did you forget?"
"Shit," he says, with feeling. Then, seizing on a sudden idea, he says, "Harry, hey, could you come to my quarters instead?"
"I guess so. Everything okay?"
"Yeah, Harry, just want to run something by you. See you in a few."
He ends the call and looks urgently at Janeway. "I don't want to go."
She keeps her expression neutral. "What's your thinking?"
"Harry's called to Engineering every morning. I want to figure out what we can change, and what we can't. And why. Come with me," he adds, very much not wanting to separate if they don't have to.
She looks doubtfully down at her pajamas, then his. He's just about to tell her that he can hold Harry off for a few more minutes, that she can change first, when Harry's voice fills the space again.
"Kim to Paris. Tom, B'Elanna wants me to help her out with something. Mind if we reschedule?"
Tom curses. "Harry, it's really important. Can't you put it off for an hour? I need to see you."
"Sorry, buddy," Harry answers, not sounding sorry at all. "I'll let you know when we're done, okay?"
Tom kills the comm line without responding. "I could try to intercept him," he says to Janeway.
"You'd never make it, not with his head start. But get to him earlier, next time. It's a good idea."
With a grimace, she pushes herself up from the table. "If Harry's calling you, then I'm up next," she reminds him at his look of confusion.
He drops his head to the table and sighs.
"And that proves we're stuck in some kind of loop?"
Tom fights a powerful urge to roll his eyes. Soon he will be able to quote this entire briefing by heart. Janeway believes that there is a chance, with each new loop, that the rest of the crew will break through whatever keeps them from recognizing their circumstances. Tom thinks that there are eight hundred thousand better things they could be doing with their time. She has just gotten to the part about the accuracy of their "predictions"—memories, that is—and then adds that they have so far not been able to circumvent certain key events.
"Key events?" Chakotay snorts skeptically. Tom stares at him, surprised. "Like what?"
Janeway, too, looks at Chakotay uncertainly. "Mr. Kim," she says after a beat, turning to face Harry, "is summoned to Engineering every morning. Crewman Doyle picks a fight, the same fight, with Mr. Paris at breakfast. And of course, we always run into Chaotic space."
"And," Tom prompts significantly.
"And," she relents, rubbing her forehead, "I develop a fatal brain aneurysm."
A bewildered silence descends over the room.
"I've heard enough of this," Chakotay says, standing abruptly. He seems… punchy, for want of a better word. For the first time since they'd integrated the crews Tom finds himself feeling nervous about Chakotay's proximity to Janeway. He has witnessed first-hand what Chakotay is capable of when he feels that his cause is righteous. Tom comes to his feet cautiously.
"Commander," he starts, but Chakotay strides over to him, a mean look in his eyes.
"Lieutenant," Chakotay says. "I don't know what you two are playing at, but I want you both to report to Sickbay for evaluation."
Janeway looks shocked. "As you were," she says warningly.
"As you were," he snaps. "We're stuck in his hellhole pocket of subspace and you two are wasting our time with some shared delusion—"
"Tuvok," Janeway interrupts. "Get him out of here."
Tuvok nods once, and escorts Chakotay out of the room. He does not go quietly.
"The rest of you work on finding a way out of Chaotic space. I want the entire crew on it." She scans the uneasy room, does not seem to like what she sees in their faces. "Dismissed," she says, and they flee.
Tom moves to her side. "That's not good," he says, unnecessarily. She throws him a look.
"We should go," she says.
"Wait," he touches her arm lightly. "Let's not go to the Science Lab this time. Let's try anywhere else."
She frowns. "Where else can we take the necessary readings?"
"I was thinking more in terms of a practical experiment," he says. "It's always the Science Lab. Then Sickbay. I wondered whether…"
"…I would still die somewhere else," she finishes. "I've wondered that, too. But the data—"
"Has been worthless so far." He knows she doesn't want to admit it, but they're getting nowhere in the Science Lab. All their data is useless so long as it's so totally devoid of temporal variants. But they're running out of time, today, to figure out an alternative. This is something they can still try.
She closes her eyes resignedly. "Alright. Where to?"
Tom bounces on the balls of his feet as the computer queues up his program. "It isn't finished," he warns her. "I haven't had time, ironically."
"I didn't know you designed holoprograms," she says, surprised.
"Oh yeah. Since the Academy."
The computer intones that the program is ready, and the doors open onto a dimly lit room. He gestures for Janeway go in ahead of him, more nervous to receive her judgment than he'd expected. She steps inside, her heels echoing on the uneven hardwood floor, and then stops, stands stock still in the vacant space. He's been so focused on accurately reconstructing the details that he hasn't taken the time to create any characters yet, and the air isn't as hazy as it ought to be. The place looks, honestly, a lot more respectable like this than it actually is. So it's not how he'd prefer to unveil this particular program, barebones and lifeless, but he just couldn't shake the idea once he'd had it this morning.
It's killing him that he can't see her expression from where he stands. When she doesn't say anything, he clears his throat. "It's—"
"Sandrine's," she breathes. She turns around beams at him, her first uncomplicated smile since this whole ordeal began, face alight with a joy he's maybe never seen, or not since they arrived in the Delta Quadrant.
It steals his breath away.
She moves around the room, running a reverent hand along the old oak bar, taking in the meticulous crown molding, the fogged glass of the windows. She looks lovingly at the upright piano in the corner as she props herself against the pool table opposite. "Who was that guy—"
"Gary. 'Gaunt Gary'," Tom says with a chuckle.
She smiles again, circling the pool table. "Your father was so furious when he tracked us here," she recalls.
"His deadbeat son teaching his star protégée to play pool in a dive bar? Can you blame him?"
"Yes," she says softly. "I can."
Tom isn't sure what to say to that, so he says nothing. Janeway settles herself at a table and gestures vaguely around the empty room. "No Sandrine?"
"It was next on my list," he admits. "But in the meantime…" he moves behind the bar and pulls a couple of bottles out from a cabinet. "What'll it be?"
A slow grin spreads across her face. "Oh, the usual."
"Irish Whiskey it is," he says, and pours them both a couple of fingers, figuring they've earned it. He hands her the glass and sits down in the adjacent chair, raising his own drink as he does.
"To Marseille," he says, pure, helpless sentimentality.
"Marseille," she echoes warmly.
They share a comfortable silence for a few minutes, pleasantly warmed by the synthehol, she studying each painstaking detail of his recreation, he drinking in her every reaction. Eventually, she notices his attention and scrunches her nose at him, to his perennial delight.
"Dance with me," he says on a whim.
"What?" she laughs.
"Come on," he says, lifting her glass out of her hand and drawing her to her feet. "You like to dance."
"No piano player," she points out.
"Computer, play 'Sunday Kind of Love'. The Etta James version."
"You've got to be joking," she says, but the grin on her face betrays her.
He pulls her to him as the music fills the room, resting his hands lightly on her waist as she tentatively loops her arms around his neck. His eyes drift shut and he allows himself to be caught up in the rhythm of the song, the swell of the violins, the good-natured longing in the vocals. Slowly, achingly slowly, he feels Janeway relax into him as they sway to the beat, revolving lazily on the spot.
"A little on the nose," she murmurs against his chest.
"That's me," he says, smiling into her hair.
If anyone were to find them like this, he simply cannot fathom what they would say to explain themselves. They've grown accustomed to the graviton shears that periodically buffet the ship, complacent, he supposes, after so many resets, the ship seemingly retaining none of the prior damage. And so while the entire crew scrambles to extract them from an objectively deadly region of subspace, every groan of the ship's hull adding to their sense of urgency, Tom has secreted their captain away, whiling away the precious few hours they have together with whiskey and blues.
It should alarm him a little that his next thought is, I could get used to this. But his favorite song soars around them, in this facsimile of a place that meant so much to him, and he cannot bring himself to care.
As the music winds down Tom holds Janeway to him anyway, unwilling to let the moment slip away, hard-pressed to think of a sweeter three minutes in his life. Their dancing slows, and then stops, becomes nothing so much as an embrace. Her arms drop from his neck and come to rest on his chest, and, to his surprise, she tucks herself into him. He feels, suddenly, all the emotion of the bottomless calamities they have endured together this past days, or has it been weeks, months, even? He tightens his arms around her, wills himself to be calm. Because if he loses it now, he is not sure how they will go on from here.
"Tom," she says after another moment, pulling back a little to look up into his face. "There's something you should know."
And it's as though he's just had cold water poured over him. Never in the history of Tom's life has he enjoyed a conversation that began with any variation of the words we should talk. He steels himself for the worst. "If I've made you uncomfortable…"
"No, it's not that. This is wonderful," she says, glancing around the bar, but she looks miserable as she says it. "About earlier. The penal colony."
She takes a steps back, and he feels the loss keenly. "I was… trying to protect you. Patterson and your father, you know. There was no chance he would tell Owen what we were up to. But I realized, months ago actually, unless you talked to him… Tom, the first time he would have heard you were out of prison…"
For a minute, he doesn't get it.
And then he does.
"Oh," he says, not sure what it is that he's feeling. Not sure how to feel about his dad only finding out he was released because Voyager went missing. They're probably presumed dead by now, of course. He drops into a chair, and she cautiously seats herself across from him.
"I was trying to get you assigned as my helmsman," she continues unhappily. "Observer was the best Patterson could do, but it was still so obviously a favor, I thought, if there were so much as a whisper of bias…"
"It's okay," Tom interrupts. And he means it. He is acutely aware of what it would have cost her to go behind his father's back like this, and after everything they'd been through together, the Cardassian prison he's not supposed to know about. "Thank you. You were right. If anything, I can't believe I ever thought he would have signed off on my release. He probably would have stopped you."
And he knows exactly what he's feeling, now. Tentatively, he reaches for Janeway's hand.
"Thank you," he says again, infusing it as much as he can with all the things he isn't sure she would want him to say aloud.
She shifts, runs her thumb across the back of his hand.
"Not much to thank me for," she says. "After all that, I got you stuck in the Delta Quadrant. And now this."
"Nowhere else I'd rather be," he says. "Well, except for tomorrow, maybe."
"Speaking of which," she sighs, taking a long pull of her whiskey, "it's almost time."
"I was thinking," Tom says carefully. "The headaches. Unless this works, it might help if I could… get into your quarters. Just in case."
"Yes," she says neutrally. "I was thinking the same. Which is why I gave you access privileges after you left this morning."
He exhales dramatically. "Well that was easy."
"The things you do to get into my quarters," she chuckles. He tightens his grip on her hand.
"Anything," he agrees.
They lapse into silence, neither one of them willing to break the spell of Sandrine's by asking for the time. Tom allows himself to imagine that this might actually work, that there is something about the Science Lab they hadn't noticed previously, that they will wake up tomorrow and it will be Monday and they can vent the whole damn deck into space.
It will be like the thirteenth floor of ancient Earth hotels, he thinks, a story he's never been sure he should believe but loves anyway. That an absolutely arbitrary superstition about a number could influence generations of humans to collectively pretend there was no thirteenth floor in a given building. And that's precisely how he feels about deck eight these days, not just superstitious but actively hostile. If this works, and they wake up tomorrow and find that it is Monday, he may simply never acknowledge the existence of deck eight again.
And then she winces.
"God damnit," he says, getting up from his chair to kneel at her side.
"No Doctor," she says, screwing her eyes shut. "No point."
"Alright," he says quietly. He eases her down to the floor so she can curl in on herself, holding both of her hands tightly in his.
The only upshot is that it all happens very quickly. Without the usual chaos of medical intervention, it is a horribly quiet affair. She's panting unevenly, white as a ghost, her face twisted in pain. He thinks the dimness of the bar might be better for her than the harsh overhead lights of Sickbay, or maybe he just wants to feel like he's done anything useful today. She begins to convulse and he holds on tight, murmuring nonsense to her, thanking her, apologizing, promising things he has no power to promise. Her skin feels clammy against his. Through it all, she does not let go of his hands.
And then it's over.
He blinks rapidly, smoothing the hair back from her face. "See you soon," he rasps, and kisses the top of her head.
Then he stands, straightens his uniform, and alerts Sickbay. Hating as he does so that not a single one of the crew will recall their warnings, just a few hours ago, that Janeway was going to die.
A/N:
I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last past Saturday night
And I'd like to know it's more than love at first sight
And I want a Sunday kind of love
—Etta James, Sunday Kind of Love
Janeway makes a point to tell Tom, in "Caretaker," that he is just an observer, but then she quickly promotes him to her senior staff over who knows how many others in line for the conn. Later, in "Relativity," she explicitly tells Patterson that Tom's piloting skills are what would make him an asset to the Badlands mission. So. Here we are.