A/N: Spoilers ahead for Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds." If you prefer to avoid them, skip the italicized lines at the end of day 70.
I've just realized that FFN is doing odd things to my formatting. Sorry about that. Hopefully I've fixed it now.
Day 68, continued
Tom drags himself up to deck three, stopping wearily at Janeway's door. He'd told her that he doesn't do anything with the rest of his days, and it isn't exactly a lie. What he didn't say is that, after shutting himself inside his quarters, he is always called back to duty. That once he had tried leaving his combadge somewhere else, and they tracked him down anyway. Because Kes is still learning, while he has all the vast experience of his two semesters of biochemistry. An absurd measure of his qualifications.
It's getting harder, not easier, the aftermath of her deaths. He doesn't want her to think of him involved in all of it, hovering over her cooling body. His targetless rage, having to explain the circumstances of her death over and over again. And then the autopsy, and then the morgue, and impossible to recuse himself, considering the secrets he keeps. It's nobody's fault, but he blames them anyway, like they aren't trying hard enough to remember. Like they've abandoned her to her fate, and him as well.
He does his duty and returns. He does not tell anyone about the temporal disruption. He does not go anywhere else, doesn't dare risk it. So, no, it wasn't exactly a lie. Neither was it, exactly, the truth.
He requests, and is granted, access to her quarters, as she had promised. When the loop resets in a few hours the computer won't remember his privileges, a problem that he is sure she must have resolved, otherwise she would have said something. He looks around her living room and notices a PADD propped upright against the coffee pot from this morning. Its contents her own access code, so that he can come to her in the morning.
Since this, too, will disappear, he commits the sequence to memory.
He should leave. If anyone requests his location, he will have a lot of explaining to do and it isn't going to go well for him. Yet he finds himself leaning heavily against the archway that separates her living space from her bedroom, staring at her rumpled sheets, two pillows askew. He closes his eyes and imagines her wrapped in soft blankets, sleeping soundly for once, and—he can't help it—himself by her side. No nightmares, no headaches. The vision morphs against his will into the look on her face as she died in the holodeck, another theory shot to hell.
He opens his eyes.
He is so tired.
But this is a line he isn't prepared to cross in her absence. Still, he does not want to return to his own quarters when here he is surrounded by the things he has come to associate with her, the way a home always has a scent unique to its owner, the fresh peonies on a side table, even the incongruous orange light at her window. He decides that of all the things he wants, he will do the least harm by borrowing a pillow and stretching out on her sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes in a vain attempt to block out his memories.
Sleep does not come for a long time.
Day 69
"Janeway to Paris. Report to the Bridge."
Tom shoots out of bed, heart racing, halfway to the door before his brain catches up with him. He looks around, bleary-eyed and disoriented… and slowly realizes that he must have fallen asleep in her quarters, and woken up in his own. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries to compose himself, breathing hard.
Wait.
Report to the Bridge?
"Computer, time."
"The time is 0829 hours."
"Wow, alright," he mutters.
Unclear on the level of urgency in her order, he dresses hurriedly and heads out. As he steps onto the Bridge he sees that, except for Janeway, it is still staffed by junior officers.
"Take the conn," she tells him, without preamble.
"Yes, ma'am," he says, suppressing his many questions with difficulty.
Janeway waits for him to relieve Baytart, who shoots him a curious look, then says, "All stop."
He punches in the order. "Mind if I ask?"
She comes down to the conn, leaning in close. "We know it doesn't occupy a fixed point, but is it localized to the one region?"
Ah. They've tried to dodge Chaotic space before, but not this way, and not this early. If they stayed on course and at their usual speed, they would run into it in about an hour and a half.
"I don't suppose you brought anything to do while we wait?"
She rolls her eyes at him. He spins back around and studies the undisturbed space before them, sincerely doubting that their liberation will be so easy when they have repeatedly failed to navigate around the anomaly.
Which is not to say that it's not worth a try. Anything is worth a try.
The bridge is silent, the junior officers less comfortable talking amongst themselves with the Captain on deck. Tom shifts his weight a little, aware of Janeway's eyes on his back.
He waits.
His stomach rumbles.
And then, at last, she rises and excuses herself to her ready room, giving him the Bridge. He waits five minutes, and then hands the conn back to Baytart without bothering to explain.
"Sorry," she says after the doors close behind him. "It's odd enough, without immediately shutting ourselves in here."
She pours him a cup of coffee, the same blend that he treated her to the previous morning. It makes him smile, and she rolls her eyes again.
"Food?" he asks hopefully.
"Help yourself," she says, and so he does, ordering extra for her as well. She notices, raising an eyebrow.
"You're not getting lunch or dinner," he shrugs, striving for a casual tone that will not tempt her to resist him. And he must be getting good at this, because she sighs, throws herself down on the couch and picks up a croissant.
"'A small, good thing'," she murmurs.
He looks at her.
"Something I read once. Never mind," she says, seeming embarrassed. He lets it drop, vowing to look it up later.
Time passes slowly. As ever when they attempt a new strategy, he is torn between anxious impatience and a grim certainty that it is not going to work, whatever it is. He thinks that she must feel the same, which is why they don't discuss it. Janeway twists to keep watch through the window, searching, he is sure, for any sign of trouble. She grimaces periodically, pressing her thumb and forefinger into the ridge of her brow.
He stands and recycles the remnants of their breakfast, for want of anything else to do.
And then she is called back to the Bridge, and despite himself, his heart sinks.
They go together, Tom sliding into his chair and confirming that they haven't changed position. "It appeared out of nowhere," Ayala reports, sounding alarmed.
He should be, Tom thinks darkly.
"Here it comes," he calls over his shoulder, pointlessly throwing them into full reverse.
"Brace yourselves," Janeway warns the others, and the all-too-familiar swell of Chaotic space seems to shatter against their hull, engulfing them once more. Tom averts his eyes, his visceral loathing of the sight deepening with every loop.
"Senior staff to the Bridge," she orders, then moves down to his side again. "Tom, it's us."
His eyes widen as they meet hers.
"It's us," he echoes, understanding dawning. "Something is attracting it to us?"
"I told you this would come back to paradoxes," she says, exasperated, but her eyes dance with the thrill of the first actionable information they've gotten since they became aware of the loops.
"'Nature abhors a paradox'," he quotes, just to needle her.
"I abhor a paradox," she replies, as the rest of the senior staff file onto the Bridge.
He stands, expecting that she will immediately direct them all to the briefing room, but she lays a hand on his chest to stop him. "I'm not going to tell them about the rest."
And it's about time. The reactions they've gotten from the others on the subject of the temporal disruption have ranged from total apathy to outright hostility. Tom has been of the opinion that they should work on their own for some time now, and especially in the wake of Chakotay's previous outburst, a disturbing aberration they have yet to investigate.
He nods to signal that he'll follow her lead, as ever.
"We've determined that this pocket of subspace is unfixed, and is being drawn to Voyager somehow. I want you," Janeway looks at each of them in turn, "to find out how, and why."
"Captain, how do you know this?" B'Elanna asks, predictably.
"It's enough for now that I do," Janeway says. "I know that's not ideal. Do your best anyway."
Well, that's one approach. Tom conceals a grin behind his coffee mug.
"I want a preliminary report from all departments by 1300 hours. Dismissed," she says.
They gape at her. Tom can't blame them. It's the shortest, and strangest briefing that any of them have ever attended. When Janeway continues to say nothing, B'Elanna rises uncertainly and leaves the room. Harry and Tuvok follow, with Chakotay, unusually silent, bringing up the rear, throwing Janeway a restive look on his way out.
"You know what this means, don't you?" she says to Tom, once they're alone.
He doesn't.
"It means you," she says, smiling wryly, "are going to have a lot of reports to intercept this afternoon."
Tom groans. "That was dirty."
"There should be some benefits," she says, and he supposes he can't argue with that.
Day 70
Unfinished business weighing on Tom's mind rouses him from sleep early. He expects Sickbay to be empty at this time of day, but when he enters he finds the Doctor speaking with Chakotay, whose eyes snap up to meet Tom's. Both men look strained.
"I just came for an analgesic," he lies smoothly.
The Doctor hesitates, then seems to decide that he does not want to leave Chakotay's side. He points to a tray near his office. "I trust you know how to prepare it yourself," he says, in a tone that might be called condescending if it didn't sound so laced with worry.
Tom nods and goes to the cluster of instruments, calmly swiping a medical tricorder on his way by. He moves glacially, stalling for time, rifling through the items in front of him like he can't tell a hypospray when he sees one, something he knows from experience the Doctor might even believe. After another moment, Chakotay and the Doctor resume speaking in low, serious tones. Tom catches the words gene and triggered, before he feels himself being watched.
He scoops up what he came for and hurries out, thanking the Doctor over his shoulder as he goes.
Back in the corridor, a sudden memory seems to bludgeon Tom over the head. The Doctor, defensive, on the heels of one of Janeway's early deaths. I have only examined one patient today, and it certainly wasn't either of you, he'd said. Tom hadn't given it any thought at the time, furious as he was, and nor has he considered it since. He should have known better.
Chakotay is the patient.
"Janeway to Paris."
"Go ahead," Tom answers.
There's a pause on the other end. "Are you not in your quarters?"
Tom blinks, then he realizes what she's not saying. He could laugh at the reversal. "Let yourself in. I had to run an errand; I'll be there soon."
When he returns, he finds her curled up on his couch with one of the few physical books he keeps around. He recognizes the aqua cover immediately.
"Not exactly light reading, War of the Worlds," he says, smiling. "Have you read it before?"
"I haven't. Martians, huh?"
"Forty or fifty years after it came out, someone else—a different Welles—created a radio play out of it, made it out like a news broadcast. Started a panic, actually."
"I'll have to look it up some time," she says, sounding genuinely interested. She starts to mark her page and then hesitates, changes her mind. Tom pretends not to notice.
"So," she says, clasping her hands together in her lap. "Busy morning?" She indicates his little pile of stolen medical supplies.
He holds up the hypospray. "How's your headache?"
She wavers for a moment, then nods her consent without argument, which tells him everything he needs to know about how bad it's gotten.
He moves around his coffee table and sits down next to her, their shoulders just brushing. He hesitates, then gently draws her long hair away from her neck, allowing his thumb to linger against her cool skin for the barest of moments, goosebumps rising where he touches her, her breath catching. With his other hand he presses the hypospray to her throat, its telltale shhk heralding, at long last, some small respite. Her eyes flutter closed.
He expects to see, even fractionally, a change in her demeanor, a softening of the lines in her face, a sigh of acknowledgement. Perhaps her shoulders would fall with the unburdening of her near-continuous pain. He is expecting, he realizes, for himself to feel the profound relief of her relief.
Nothing happens.
She looks at him. Dread settles in the pit of his stomach.
"It didn't work?" he asks, to be sure.
She shakes her head.
"Why wouldn't it work?"
"Why does anything not work? We're playing a game we don't know the rules to." She rubs her forehead. "Something else to check off the list."
He can think of nothing to say of this new cataclysm, because his next thought had been to give her another dose right around 1300 hours.
"I had another idea, too," he says, to break the awful silence. "But you won't like it."
"That'll be a novel experience."
He gestures to the medical tricorder. "I want to monitor you throughout the day. I know what you're thinking," he adds, heading off her protest. "We know what we're looking for better than the Doctor does at this point. For all we know, there's something wrong with the Doctor. I mean, there's something wrong with everybody."
There is no reason for her to say no to this, but he can tell that she wants to anyway. On principle, if he had to guess. He keeps his mouth shut, waits for her to come to the same conclusion as him.
"Fine," she relents, and Tom stifles his sigh of relief. "But in the meantime, tell me about the data from yesterday."
"Thanks again for that, by the way," he says. What he wouldn't give to just hand her a PADD in response, having instead had to memorize what seemed like relevant details, way outside his expertise. "It was inconclusive, as you might imagine. Since nobody is building on information from day to day. There was something odd in some of the algorithms Harry and B'Elanna ran on the energy signatures, but they didn't get to the bottom of why Chaotic space is following us."
To his surprise, she does not seem discouraged.
"Paradoxes," she reiterates.
"I… had been thinking, if we tried powering down to grey mode…"
"I don't think it would make a difference," she says. "I think Chaotic space is drawn to us because we've already been here. That first time triggered the temporal disruption, somehow. Once it took hold, we were damned to re-enter Chaotic space no matter what. It did cause this. But we have to fix time before we can fix space."
Tom is quiet, letting this information sink in. It's the chicken or the egg, he thinks. They can't really know for sure. But he'd put his latinum on her intuition any day.
"We need to launch a probe," Janeway decides.
When it's time for her to hold the usual briefing, she tells him not to bother joining them, that she is again going to conceal the temporal disruption. She orders Ayala to send a class II probe into Chaotic space, and then gives Tom the Bridge, disappearing into the briefing room with the others.
He paces while Ayala preps the launch protocols. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. He feels the loss of every second as the clock winds down to 1302 hours. He wants this to pay dividends before their time is up, wants her to have the satisfaction. Not to mention that it would be nice, for once, to go into a new loop with a definitive plan in place.
Another five minutes elapse before Ayala calls, "Ready with the probe, sir."
Tom stills halfway between the Engineering and Science stations. "Bombs away," he orders.
Immediately, an array of errors sound at Ops. Tom looks over sharply. "What happened?"
"I don't know, sir," Ayala answers, frowning. "The probe is gone."
Tom strides over to the briefing room and leans in. "Sorry to interrupt," he says, "but you should see this."
Janeway doesn't even pause to dismiss the others as she follows him out. The three of them crowd around Ops while Ayala reiterates for her the little he'd told Tom.
"Did the launch mechanisms fail?" she asks.
"No, ma'am. The launch was successful. The probe seems to have been… obliterated, somehow, on its way out."
Tom waits in the ready room while Janeway sets Harry and B'Elanna to analyzing the problem of the probe. It's getting late, or late for them. He fiddles with the medical tricorder, snapping it open, shut, open, shut. Taps his foot on the floor impatiently. When she finally reappears, he wordlessly holds the tricorder aloft. She sits down next to him and drops her face into her hands.
"I have a question that's going to sound unrelated, but bear with me. How is Chakotay today?" he asks while he scans her.
"Not good," she says, her words muffled. "He seems on edge. He… well." She looks up. "He was looking at me, but it was more like he was looking through me. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't take in a word I said."
"There's something wrong with him," Tom says. He explains about his trip to Sickbay and finding him there, the conversation he'd overheard.
"I think he's been going to Sickbay for a while," he says. "The Doctor mentioned it to me pretty early on, though not by name. Your headaches are getting worse, aren't they?" he adds, and she nods.
"Then I think it's safe to say Chakotay could be getting worse, too."
"'Gene, triggered'," she repeats, staring off into the distance. "Well, I have no idea what that might mean, in this context. But I'm reluctant to chalk anything up to coincidence. I'll go in the next loop," she promises.
"In the meantime," he says, "I had an idea to pass the time, if you're game."
At her nod, he queues up the "War of the Worlds"radio broadcast. She graces him with a radiant smile. "It will spoil the ending of the book, though," he warns.
"That's alright. I'm not likely to finish it any time soon," she says lightly, though Tom can hear the undercurrent of bitterness. He lifts one arm wide and waits for her to settle in against him, resting her head on his shoulder as the recording begins.
For the next hour, he scans her continuously. Her eyes are closed but he can tell by her stillness that she is listening raptly. He glances down at the readings—still nothing—and then to her face, gratifyingly relaxed. He listens to the play with half an ear, more worried with each passing minute that he might miss something vital.
The voice of Orson Welles, left a little tinny for the sake of authenticity, seems to reach them from on high. "Suddenly, my eyes were attracted to the immense flock of black birds that hovered directly below me…"
There. Something… Tom squints at the tricorder, his pulse quickening.
"They circled to the ground, and there before my eyes, stark and silent, lay the Martians…"
For the first time, he can track it, the beginning of her aneurysm. It's tiny and Tom marvels at it, that such a little thing could wreak so much damage.
Janeway groans.
"…with the hungry birds pecking and tearing… Later when their bodies were examined in the laboratories…"
And then it grows, fast. Wildly, unnaturally. He has witnessed this event now countless times but he has never seen the damn thing itself and he is horrified by it, sickened by its spread. And then it ruptures, and Janeway slides to the floor and he with her, and it is massive, violent…
…and he understands, better than ever before, why the Doctor, with his combined medical knowledge of untold advanced civilizations at his disposal, has never been able to revive her.
"…that they were killed by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared, slain, after all man's defenses had failed, by the humblest thing that God in His wisdom put upon this earth."
"I have an idea that you're not going to like."
Tom looks up. "That'll be a novel experience."
They'd tried everything they could think of in the wake of his scans. They know that she will die no matter where she is on the ship. She died when they placed a level ten forcefield around themselves, in case the aneurysm might be the result of exposure to, well, Tom wasn't really sure. A shot in the dark, he acknowledges, that didn't pay off. Stronger analgesics have been no more effective than their first attempt; when they tried to sedate her completely, nothing happened at all. And now they are again in her ready room, pouring over data that Engineering has just delivered, with just over an hour to go.
"The stasis units," Janeway says.
Tom stiffens. "We'd be separated."
When they'd tried the forcefield, he had insisted on being inside it with her despite that the more scientific option would have been to isolate her. He has never, in all the loops he remembers and, as far as he knows, the ones he doesn't, allowed her to die alone. To consider it now chills his blood.
"You can override the locking mechanism at any time," Janeway says bracingly.
"It takes, what, a minute to power down?"
"Forty-five seconds."
He stands up and faces the window, counting to ten in his head. He does not want to get upset. He does not want to do this.
"Tom," she says, gentler now. "There is never anything on my scans until the moment it begins, right?"
"In defiance of all medical doctrine," Tom mutters.
"The stasis chamber will monitor me. More comprehensively than the tricorder, even. You'll be right there the whole time." She joins him at the window, places a beseeching hand on his arm. "I want to try this."
He shifts, so that her hand slides down into his own. "Alright."
Chakotay, seated in his chair on the Bridge, does not acknowledge them when they emerge from the ready room. Tom would be worried about the glassy look in his eyes except that, at this point, the Bridge is probably the least consequential place any of them could be.
In the privacy of the turbolift, Janeway says, "I need to follow up on him."
Tom has to agree. They've been prioritizing her deaths over every other thing, driven, at least on his part, by the sheer horror of having watched the aneurysm bloom and grow inside her head. He has found it increasingly difficult, since then, to see past his myopic dread. But there are other avenues they've neglected, as well. Harry's daily summoning to Engineering, for one.
The stasis units on deck fourteen lay in neat rows under a cavernous grey ceiling. The room is what Tom can only call unwelcoming, a long and otherwise empty space, chilled to prevent the equipment stored here from overheating when in use. His footsteps echo on the metal floor. The pods look, with their narrow, person-shaped frames, like so many coffins awaiting their dead.
He shivers.
Janeway, pragmatic to the last, activates the first unit in the row closest to the door, pushing the clear lid up and over.
A thought occurs to him, one that might even get him out of this. "How am I going to explain why you're in a stasis chamber?"
She pauses, considers. "You could move me. Or not," she adds, at Tom's frozen look.
"Or we could not do this at all," he suggests.
"Site-to-site transport to the Science Lab," Janeway decides, ignoring this last. "You can use my authorization code, clear the logs when you get there."
So much for that.
She climbs in and slides down the tight space. He squats beside the unit, gripping her hand. "It also unlocks from the inside," he reminds her.
"It'll be fine, Tom. It might even work. What do we have to lose?"
Plenty, he thinks. He squeezes her hand once and then helps her shut the lid, and, entirely against his better judgment, initiates the stasis sequence. The internal life support whirrs, set to take over control from her body's own systems.
She closes her eyes, readying herself.
He scrutinizes the readout on the side of her unit. She's still fully conscious. In another few seconds, if all goes well, she shouldn't be.
"Computer, time."
"The time is 1246 hours."
He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. It's her choice. It's her choice. It's her choice.
She twitches, barely, but he sees it. He curls his fingers into his palms. She twitches, and then she's writhing, and her eyes snap open and meet his, and she tries to say something but her face shutters and she tries to twist away to vomit, but there's nowhere for her to go.
He immediately enters the emergency override code, but the life support system has to complete its current cycle before it will power down and release her. He slams a hand against the lid, willing it to open, willing her to open it from the inside. She lifts her own hand, a huge effort, presses it against the glass, and he slides his own down to meet it. He's shouting, he thinks, he's not sure, but she can't hear him, and her eyes roll back into her head.
Fifteen seconds.
And then the convulsions take hold of her, by now so familiar but he will never get used to it, her hand falling away from his. He tries to physically pull the damn thing open, standing now, yanking the handle back with all of his strength, but it doesn't budge. He has a wild thought to break the glass but there's nothing here, nothing that could do it. The timer counts down, three, two, one, and a low beep signals that the cycle is complete. He throws the lid open and heaves her out, and she's gone, of course, but he clutches her to him anyway, trembling violently.
What did they have to lose?
Everything.
Day 75
He finds her in a shuttle, powered down except for navigation.
"We are not doing that again," he says.
"No," she agrees.
He sits in the vacant chair next to her. "How much of it do you remember?"
"All of it."
He'd feared as much. He tries to imagine having the memory of your own innumerable deaths in your head at all times, every detail of it, and the next always only hours away. If there were an ounce of mercy in this universe, she would black out in the middle rather than retain with perfect clarity the inexpressible pain of it all.
Instead of voicing any of this, he asks, "Going somewhere?"
"The probe," she says. "There was nothing to scan, but if it had passed through some kind of temporal barrier…"
"We scanned every centimeter of the hull," he says, confused.
"I know."
"We found no sign of temporal fluctuations."
"That's true."
"Then what?"
"I don't know," she admits.
Tom studies her profile with growing concern.
"I was wondering," she says carefully, "whether we shouldn't try killing me some other way."
He leaps up, alarmed. "Absolutely not."
"Tom—"
"No! What if it breaks the loop? What if it's permanent, Kathryn?"
They stare at each other. It's his first lapse in all this time. He waits for her to correct him, to dress him down, reestablish the boundaries that have carried them this far. A gut-punch that he would nonetheless deserve.
But she doesn't.
"What if the reason we're stuck here is because my death isn't permanent?" she asks quietly.
"Then we'll loop forever," Tom says, kneeling in front of her and taking both of her hands in his. "I don't care. That can't be the way out."
She exhales harshly. Powers down the navigational computer and folds herself into the chair, pressing her face into her knees. Tom shifts to wrap his arms around her, and if he feels her body shudder as she tries to repress a sob, he keeps it to himself. He holds her close.
It's all he can do.
A/N:
Janeway quotes Raymond Carver's short story, "A Small, Good Thing," in which a baker, learning that his customers have lost a child, tries to ease their pain: "You probably need to eat something," the baker said. "I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this," he said.