2. Not the light, nor the source (I)
"Like hell I will."
The venomous retort rings out in the small space of Tuvok's office, Paris' anger having already surpassing the threshold for which Janeway had previously prepared herself.
"Lieutenant," she coolly warns him.
The use of his rank has the opposite effect of calming Paris' agitation, the pilot churning and seething in the seat across from the one Janeway occupies, her back now rigid behind Tuvok's desk.
With an inward sigh, the Captain decides she was right not to have Tuvok here for this. There are too many issues- too many thorny emotions- tied up with the proposal of this.
"How can you think I would agree to leave her? And for what? To possibly root out a spy even Tuvok hasn't been able to catch?"
Tom's horror, however dramatically expressed, isn't exaggerated. Nor is his anger, the foaming passion that's exploding here having, in some measure, bubbled in silence for several weeks.
"As I mentioned when I began this conversation," Janeway rejoins calmly, "it is fully within your rights as an officer to turn down this mission. But I want you to promise me that you've carefully considered the consequences of this. . . The effect your declining could have in the long-run for Voyager, your crewmates."
Paris openly balks at her attempt at manipulation, however well-targeted it may in fact be. In another time and place, had his priorities not changed so recently and abruptly, these words might have worked on him.
His recognition of this fact only adds to his anger.
"I will not leave my child without her only parent, Captain. Not for any length of time. You have a traitor on board your ship? Your problem. Not mine."
The first part of his outburst is a not-so-thinly veiled insult, if the first one of its kind he's put into words, following their time together in Sickbay, over a month earlier.
Janeway's mouth opens slightly before closing again, the line of her jaw rigid with tension even as the stoic expression remains in place.
"If that's your decision, Lieutenant-"
"It is. . . Sir."
Her grey eyes take on more steel, her patience for his acidic tone rapidly wearing thin.
She has here given berth to his insubordination, in light of what she is asking of him. To say nothing of other issues he has chosen not to bring up in public, save his accusing eyes when he nods to her on the bridge every morning.
But even in private, in this context, there is a line. And it will be enforced.
"If that is your decision," she begins again, her voice now louder, clearly carrying a warning, "I accept it. But given the nature of this, I'm ordering you to keep this conversation between us. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly," Paris replies crisply, his back drawing up in preparation to depart the very second he is given leave.
A moment of hesitation on the other side of the desk; a perceptible softening of the Captain's features as Paris watches, his cheeks still tinged with crimson outrage and his blue eyes flashing their own brand of warning.
"Tom. . ."
"If there's nothing further, Captain."
The briskness of his tone cuts short anything she would have said. She signals his dismissal with a quick nod, the Lieutenant shooting out of the chair and through the doors in record time.
Janeway doesn't watch him exit. And turning to the face the office's small viewport as the sounds of Tom's rapid footfalls recede and then abruptly end, the pale sliver of starlight does nothing to banish the shadows that contour the sharp angles of her face.
. . . . .
During the two minute turbolift ride, Tom fails to calm himself one iota, the short span of time he's left with only his thoughts- his thoughts and so too his memories- serving only to fan his fiery anger.
If this is your choice, Tom, I admire the depth of commitment you're showing. But this- being a parent to this child- is a choice. One I don't have the luxury of considering, as this ship's Captain.
The memory of Janeway's words to him, delivered so calmly, six weeks earlier in Sickbay, provide Tom with unwelcome company in the small space, his right hand clenching of its volition as he puts that conversation side-by-side the one he's just fled from.
Choice. Commitment. Does she even understand these words?
As the doors slide open, he seethes with the thought (and now, not for the first time) that Janeway deploys these terms when it suits her. But their underlying significance- the example that he's so blindly followed, this last year and half- is nothing but an illusion.
A verbal shell game that exists in an apparent vacuum of compassion; conviction; humanity.
He's almost to Sickbay when he realizes he needs to cool down, and fast. He doesn't want to have to answer any questions about his current upset, nor (he realizes after a moment) does he even have the freedom to do so, were he so inclined.
Convenient, he thinks, his expression clouding over one last time as he savagely bites his lip, then charges through Sickbay's entrance.
"Tom."
Kes' welcoming smile is helpful in cueing the pilot's own lips to pull up in parallel motion, the effort of feigning such things now seeming far less reflexive than they once were.
"How's it going in here?" he asks, mustering a cheerful stride.
"Just about finished. The Doctor is just finishing his third scan."
"Third?"
As Tom repeats the word, his eyes dart nervously to the bed where the Doctor stands, consumed with the surrounding monitors and whatever information they're presently displaying.
"There's nothing out of the ordinary," Kes is quick to reassure, "the Doctor is just being. . . thorough."
In the brief hesitation, the Occampan mentally summons and then dismisses words like 'paranoid' and 'obsessive.'
However accurate such terms might be in describing the CMO's recent behavior, their harshness is undeserved, the hologram having yet to accept his failure with regard to the other offspring, and his guilt having manifested in a near-neurotic concern for the one surviving child.
"Well," Tom sighs, "at least Erneil seems to have taken to the guy." He continues, managing a smirk, "we'll have to work on her taste level at some point."
Kes' smile grows tentative, her concern sparked by the use of child's name rather than Tom's harmless jab a the EMH.
"I'm still surprised you decided to keep that name," the young woman admits now. "I really only called her that because I didn't want to keep calling her 'the infant' while you were recovering. I'm . . . genuinely sorry if I robbed you of the chance to name your daughter."
"You didn't rob anyone of anything," Paris shakes his head firmly. "You gave my daughter your grandmother's name. Which, in my book, is a pretty neat gift."
The smile his lips here produce is sincere but short-lived, his fleeting joy usurped by the recognition that when Kes told him of the appellation, he was filled with a profound relief that the baby had been given a name that bore no ties to his own ancestry.
No dutiful, perfunctory nod to one of the illustrious members of the Paris clan to come before him; an act of recognition paying homage to some example that was held up to him, time and again in his youth, and especially on those occasions in which he failed in some spectacular fashion.
No. His daughter, and so her given name, were born far, far from all of that.
Wholly and distinctly independent of it.
"Besides," he drawls, throwing an exaggerated wink to Kes as he approaches Erneil's wriggling form, "I spelled the transliteration in a way that looks francophone. So she'll fit right in at Sadrine's."
As Tom slides into the spot beside the EMH, he immediately sees that his daughter's expression is one of boredom and fatigue. So far, she's a child rarely moved to fits of crying, even here, with the odd sights and sounds of Sickbay. But even so, her flailing arms and twitching legs bespeak her current irritation.
"How's my girl doing?"
Though the question is directed to the Doctor, Tom locks eyes with Erneil's, making an animated face for her benefit. The child's grey eyes grow wide and her pink lips part, small arms shooting out in an awkward, futile reach.
As the infant's joy gradually shifts back to impatience, Tom hazards a look at her physician, the EMH having yet to acknowledge the additional presence beside the bio-bed.
"Doc?" Tom prompts finally, the frustration of not being able to pick Erneil up quickly overtaking his self-control.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," the Doctor murmurs, his face remaining but a few centimeters from one of the smaller screens. "By all means. Keep my patient company as I finish up one last thing."
Tom doesn't hesitate to scoop the girl up, following the Doctor's invitation. Cradling her tiny frame, he's too overcome with flooding warmth to immediately register the chubby fingers reaching at his uniform jacket, the soft brush of blonde locks that occasionally graze his chin.
"Was the Doc good company, baby?" Tom questions, when he's sure the hologram's attention has finally been pried from the diagnostic computers.
Erneil gurgles, her hand reaching to touch her father's face as his features shift from one exaggerated expression to another.
"I guess that's a 'yes'," the Doctor comments dryly, if not without some tinge of affection. "Which, Erneil should know, is a mutually shared opinion. I am happy to say your daughter's social skills have already far surpassed your own."
The comment earns a snort from the Lieutenant, his gaze remaining on his daughter even as his grin now shifts into a lopsided smirk.
"Gee. Thanks, Doc."
"Try not to be too envious, Lieutenant. Erneil is proving, all around, a textbook-worthy specimen of human development. Her hand-eye coordination and dexterity have both improved dramatically. Her height and weight are well within desirable parameters." The Doctor adds, his voice without any trace of humor, "your child is, in short, growing like one of Mister Neelix's tubers."
The deadpanned joke produces a giggle from Kes, who remains on the other side of the room, putting away instruments used earlier in the afternoon.
"One day, baby girl," Tom whispers, "you're going to realize how incredibly insulting it was that the Doc here just compared you to a leola root."
"I trust by then her sense of indignation will be outweighed by her deep and abiding gratitude that I exposed her to the brilliance of Verdi and Beethoven. Saved her from her father's more primitive tastes by introducing her to the profound and stirring depths of tragedy- the passion embodied in masterpieces like Aktuh and Maylota."
"Don't count on it."
"So perhaps not Klingon opera," the Doctor concedes, turning on his heel and heading toward his office. "If you aren't in a rush, Lieutenant, there a few things I found today that I'd like to discuss with you."
At this, Paris' head snaps up, his feet quickly moving to trail the hologram.
"What's wrong?" Tom asks hurriedly. "Kes said everything was fine."
"It is," the Doctor replies with a confused frown, not recognizing his faux pas. "But there are still small things from her scans that we should go over."
"Such as?" Tom prompts, shifting Erneil in his arms as he moves to sit down.
"To begin with, it appears she carries the genetic marker for asthma."
"Asthma?" Tom echoes, obviously surprised.
"So it doesn't run in your family?"
"No one that I'm aware of has ever been treated for it."
"Well, it's possible members of your family had it but underwent genetic therapy for it early on. Such a scenario also doesn't rule out the possibility that you would have passed it on to Erneil." The Doctor taps the screen on his desk, pulling up a variety of scans. "Of course, it's also possible the trait was inherited from her mother."
When the hologram shifts his attention back to Paris, he takes in the dark expression that's appeared on the man's fair features.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," the Doctor stammers. "But I- I mean strictly speaking-"
"It's alright," Paris cuts him off, not caring for this line of conversation to drag on any longer. "Genetics are genetics. Even if they're just that."
The Doctor doesn't take the time to bask in the clemency he's just been offered, especially as it's paired with a terse statement for which he has no adequate reply.
"I think it would be prudent at this point to get a more thorough family history," the EMH barrels on. "I don't think there's anything to be terribly concerned about. But information is one of the most effective preventives."
"Sounds good," Tom nods, moving to stand. "Just tell me what you need from me and when."
"I will. That being said, however. . ."
As the Doctor's voice trails off, his thins lips twist in a hesitant frown.
"However. . . you need the Captain's family history as well?" Tom finishes, attempting to keep the rancor from his voice.
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"Seems sensible," the pilot mutters. Trying to imagine how on earth he's going to get through such a conversation with Janeway without it erupting the way it did only an hour earlier.
"I can bring it up with Captain Janeway tomorrow," the Doctor offers. "If you don't mind my taking the . . . initiative."
It's a considerate offer, Paris realizes; one that easily makes up for the Doctor's earlier gaffes.
"That would be greatly appreciated, Doc."
"Consider it done then."
Paris nods a final time before heading out of the office, his attentions so directed on his new concerns that he doesn't stop to acknowledge Kes as she lifts her head to bid him a good evening.
. . . . .
"Kim to Paris."
Hearing Harry's voice ring out from his commbadge, Tom rolls his shoulders as he watches Erneil's eyes go wide, confused as to the source of the familiar sound.
"Paris here," Tom replies, plucking his badge from his chest, then holding it up to his daughter's ear as his tired body lumbers forward. "Whatta ya need, Har?"
"I'm starving. Have you and the bean sprout eaten dinner yet?"
"Ya know, you call her a bean sprout and the Doc just compared her to a leola root. Is there some kind of plant metaphor memo that I missed?"
"Leola root?" comes Kim's snorted reply. "That's low. Even for the Doctor."
The comment wrings a low chuckle from Tom, the tale end of which turns into a yawn.
"So," Harry's tinny, altered voice prods, "have you eaten yet, or haven't you?"
"Mademoiselle Paris has had her normal snack of dry cereal and chopped bananas, while her father has thus far had. . . water. About five hours ago."
"Perfect. I'll see you in five minutes for dinner."
"Har," Tom warns, fighting another yawn, "itt's been a really long day. I just want to go to my quarters, excavate the spot where my couch used to be before it was covered with junk, and maybe have a piece of pizza."
"You need to get out of your quarters," Harry chides. "Both of you."
It's a familiar discussion, this current exchange, but one that's so far proven fruitless.
Tom doesn't like the idea of bringing Erneil into the mess hall, or anywhere else that's likely to hold a crowd. He simply spent too many months suffering the darker aspects of ship-wide scrutiny to now be eager to thrust his daughter into the same phenomena- no matter how seemingly welcoming the crew has been to Voyager's youngest arrival.
"We don't have to go to the mess hall," the Ensign plows on, anticipating his friend's next objections. "I was thinking the holodeck."
"Harry. . ."
"I'll buy."
Having arrived at his quarters, Tom stops just before the doors, his eyebrows raising with interest.
"You'll buy?"
"Yep. I'll consider it the cost of having the lovely lady Erneil as my dinner companion."
"Deal. See you in ten." Keying his code into the console, Tom murmurs to himself, "assuming I can find my way out again."
Tom has never been a tidy person. But the event of having a child- more to the point, having a child unexpectedly- has turned his normally sloppy living area into a glorified storage facility, if one that is remarkably safe for tiny fingers prone to grabbing things without warning.
It takes him ten minutes to gather toys and get Erneil dressed; another five to find two shoes that actually match, after getting the first ones her on her kicking feet and then realizing his mistake.
"You think this is a game, don't you?" he asks the squirming girl, as she tugs at one of the shoes he's just slipped on her. "What you have to understand is that you never, ever keep a friend waiting. At least not when they've offered to buy you dinner."
With a little luck, they're on their way in twenty minutes. Twice the projected time he'd quoted to Harry, but Kim by now is more than able to work out the math of parental physics , and may not have even left his own quarters yet.
Or so Tom hopes, sliding onto the turbolift, child and bag of necessities in tow.
When the lift stops halfway to his intended deck, he inwardly groans, certain now that Harry is likely waiting for him. And while he waits, eating all the food he's likely replicated for both of them.
"Tom," Chakotay nods, getting on the lift. Upon seeing the pilot's traveling companion, the Commander's smile grows tenfold. "How are you two doing today?"
"Running late at the moment," Tom replies impatiently. "But this seems to be a theme."
"Right," Chakotay says, but then awkwardly stops; unsure of how to continue the conversation.
There are so many things the First Officer hasn't voiced to the younger man, he doesn't even know where to begin casual conversations anymore.
A statement of admiration? An apology? A self-indulgent admission of guilt?
"Have a good evening, Commander," Tom says, oblivious to the older man's conflicted feelings.
"You too, Tom."
As Paris shoots out of the lift, his long legs attempting to make up lost time, Chakotay watches the retreating form. A pair of familiar grey eyes peering over Tom's shoulder as a small, angular face bounces with each hurried stride.
. . . . .
"How is it possible for you to be twenty minutes late when your quarters are located three decks from here?"
Harry's incredulous (if not quite angry) statement greets Tom before his eyes can even adjust to the bright sunshine of the program.
"Have you ever had to dress a baby?" Tom defends. "I swear to god, she takes off the matching shoes and somehow puts on different ones in the ten seconds that I'm not looking."
"So you're saying she's sneaky?" Harry drawls, setting up an obvious joke.
"I know, I know," Tom chimes, traversing the holographic lawn and setting his daughter down on unsteady legs that are already attempting to stand. "Serves me right if my kid is proving a sneak, just like her father."
"You said it. Not me."
"So what are you replicating for dinner, anyway?"
Harry, perched on the grass, looks up to reply, then pauses momentarily, watching his best friend lace fingers through smaller ones as Erneil attempts one shaky step, then quickly topples backward.
"She's determined," Harry notes.
"She is," Tom confirms. "Which fills me with fear as much as it does pride, given all that her walking will imply for my quarters."
The mere mention of Tom's quarters, calamity that Harry knows they have become, causes a wry expression to appear on the Ops officer's face.
"So," Tom prods, his eyes shifting from Harry's telltale face to his daughter's renewed attempt to stand. "Are you going to feed us, or what?"
Harry rolls his eyes, gesturing behind him to a picnic table with plates and some sort of covered dish.
"Pizza for your majesty."
"Har," Tom declares dramatically, "you are the best pal a guy could have."
"Yeah, yeah, Paris. Just be grateful I like your kid enough to feed you in the bargain."
"Oh, I am."
It takes ten minutes of shifting from lawn to picnic table and back again, but eventually Harry settles on the bench, plate in lap, and Tom stretches out on the grass with Erneil.
In between bites, Tom watches his daughter, her focus alternating between the food on her father's plate and the random movement of trees, currently stirred by a welcome, if intermittent breeze.
The program is Harry's. A holovid of a house near Lake Michigan his family used to pass a few weeks at every summer, until he went to the Academy. The sprawling yard they sit in is attached to a modest house located in an understated neighborhood. But the grass is green and the sun is always shining, and down the street is a playground Erneil has already shown some fledgling interest in.
Watching Erneil's attention fix on a limb bending far above her head, Tom fills with gratitude that Harry chose to share this private memory, so obviously cherished, with a child that isn't even his own kin.
"How'd the flight sims go this afternoon?"
Harry's voice brings Tom back to the events of the day. The pilot shifts where he crouches, unable to tell Harry where he really was, but unwilling to spend too much energy selling his friend a lie.
"The usual," Tom shrugs. "Don't hit that asteroid, dodge that torpedo. Try not get lost in the nebula with anomalous readings."
They both fall quiet, and after the pause goes on too long to be normal, Tom leans back, tossing a glance at his best friend's expressionless face.
"Jarod relieved me early today," Harry says, his voice impassive. Somehow off.
"That was nice of him."
"I stayed late for him the other week. He thought he owed me."
"You're not one to keep score," Tom notes, already feeling something deep in his stomach begin to churn.
"I went looking for you on Holodeck Two. Thought I'd drag you to the mess hall after your sims were over."
Tom closes his eyes, shaking his head. Only Harry and the infamous Ensign Kim luck.
"And then what?" Tom questions, his voice now adopting the same monotone as Kim's narration.
He can easily guess the rest, but he also knows that Harry needs to tell him, needs to put this into the words. It's one of the differences between them that Tom has charted, these last two years of friendship.
"When there wasn't a simulation active, I wondered where you were. So I asked the computer."
"And it kept telling you I was on Holodeck Two," Tom supplies.
"Which I found odd. So I ran a few checks. Then did some more probing. . . not quite the normal stuff."
"Harry," Tom hisses. "Tuvok's going to skin you alive if he finds out what you did and how you did it."
Harry doesn't to respond this, even though Tom is unquestionably right. But as the pilot isn't himself the paradigm of following protocol to the letter, the younger man doesn't feel as self-conscious as he once would have, admitting all of this out loud.
"Tom, why did I have to go through four security lock outs to find out that you were in Tuvok's office? And what were you two doing there for two hours that you couldn't tell anyone about?"
Asking this flies in the face of every gram of Harry's Starfleet training, the genuine, continued devotion he has for duty and regulation.
As much as Tom knows he can't answer Harry honestly, he also recognizes that Kim's mere act of asking this is a humbling testament to the bond they've formed.
"I wasn't talking to Tuvok," Tom says, deciding that the best method of deception is often a partial truth, rather than an outright lie. "Tuvok wasn't even there. . . I was talking with Janeway."
Waiting as Harry attempts to fill in blanks for himself, Tom lies down flat on his stomach, his hand stretching out to tug at his daughter's arm.
"Did you talk about Erneil?"
"Yes."
"Did you argue?"
". . .Yes."
The last affirmation is barely more than a breath, torn from Paris' chest as he holds onto the child who has no concept of a mother. A child whose entire universe begins and ends with him.
"I'm sorry I pried," Harry offers. "It wasn't my business."
"It's alright," Tom says, squinting in the sun to find Harry's downtrodden face. "Really. It's alright."
When Harry falls silent again, Tom leaves him to his thoughts. He knows that the younger man is of torn loyalties, confused emotions, and Tom has no desire to further complicate those things. Filling Harry with anger at Janeway won't change anything for the better. It will just make Harry's life a bit more miserable.
This a bit of wisdom Tom thinks he didn't have before Erneil, and lacing his fingers through hers, he presses his cheek into the cool, crisp grass, casting his thoughts back, to the beginning of all of this.
Kes has told him that when he first woke up in Sickbay, he spoke of 'them' and how 'they' needed him. Yet, turning over his fragmented awareness of those events, he can't find any trace of Erneil's siblings in his memory.
He feels a kind of guilt over this. But it's a guilt that's intellectual. Distant. A pain he thinks should be there, but somehow, mercifully, isn't.
But this love he has for his daughter is all-consuming. Immediate. And it has been, from the second he woke up in Sickbay, with her pressed against his chest.
How can Janeway not feel this?
How is it possible for her to turn away from her child, and not feel as though part of her body, her very core, is being ripped away?
Curling his torso closer to Erneil, he pushes this anger to the back of his mind.
It will be enough that his daughter has one parent who is devoted to her. One parent, however imperfect, whose universe begins and ends with her.