The Next Morning
Chapter 4
On Voyager's bridge, Alpha shift crewmembers were keeping one eye on the turbolift as they went about their duties. Tom Paris was due at any moment for his meeting with the Captain. Many of the crew ran unnecessary diagnostics so they wouldn't stare too obviously at the turbolift doors.
At 10:59 the doors opened and Ensign Paris stepped out onto the bridge. He looked around a bit uncertainly and then more confidently as many of those on duty smiled or nodded their greetings.
"The Captain is ready for you, Mr. Paris. You may go right in." Commander Chakotay informed him.
"Aye, Sir."
Tom stared at the ready room doors for a second, gathered himself, pressed the signal panel and went in.
Chakotay noticed the many pairs of eyes that followed Tom into the Captain's ready room. Several were still staring at the closed doors. "As you were," he said, to remind them to return to their duties.
At the Operations station, Harry Kim tried to occupy his mind with system checks. But it wasn't working. Every time the ready room fell within his line of sight his thoughts wandered from his work. He glanced over at the Tactical station to make sure that Lt. Commander Tuvok hadn't caught his latest lapse in attention. Tuvok, however, had also noticed something fascinating in the direction of the Captain's ready room. Harry cleared his throat and Tuvok looked over, irritated at being observed neglecting his duties. Tuvok then pointedly ignored Harry and made a display of diligent attention to his work. Harry suppressed a smile and tried to follow Tuvok's example. What he wouldn't give to know what was going on inside that room!
Once the doors closed behind him, Tom Paris took the regulation number of steps into the ready room, stopped and assumed formal Starfleet posture. His expression was carefully composed, revealing nothing and revealing a great deal. "Ensign Paris reporting as ordered, Captain."
"At ease, Mr. Paris." The Captain watched Tom relax his stance slightly. His expression was under tight control. She had to do something about that fairly quickly if they were going to get anywhere. She decided to try a complete shift from formal to informal terms. "How are you today, Tom? How are things going?"
Tom blinked. He supposed that he could answer 'fine'. But he sensed that his Captain was giving him an opening here, if he was willing to take it. Tom blinked again as he came to a decision. "Well, I'm not at my best right now, Captain," he admitted, relaxing his posture a little more. He tried to keep his breathing steady. His eyes swept around the walls of the room and paused longingly at the view of space outside the windows, before returning to look at her again. "It may take me a while to adjust to everything. But, I'll be okay," he assured her.
She was pleased with this start. He was being frank with her. If she moved carefully, he might take the next step. She noticed the tension in his face and the relief in his eyes when he looked out the ready room windows. She stood up and casually walked around her desk to stand in front of the railing that separated her work area from the informal seating area next to the panel of windows. Tom altered his position to face her. The lines of tension around his eyes eased perceptibly. His breathing began to slow to a more regular rate. "It will take some adjustments," she agreed. "But it's good to have you back." She smiled encouragingly and gave him a bit of time by turning the conversation to ship's business. "Chakotay told me that you were tracking down some problems with the helm controls."
"That's right," he said, breathing carefully. "They're minor glitches. They shouldn't present a problem under normal flight conditions. We still need to figure out what effect they'll have if we push the ship in an emergency. I'll know more this afternoon when I try out some maneuvers at the helm."
"Let Chakotay know what you find. We're heading into a large area of space controlled by a people called the Devore. From what we have been able to find out about them, they won't take kindly to unexpected emergencies. I want Voyager to be in top form when we enter their space."
"Understood."
"Tom." She gathered his full attention before she continued. "I want to know if you have any questions, anything that you feel you need to ask me."
Tom stared. There were so many questions, so much between them still unsaid. Was she saying that this was the time to discuss everything? If he had learned anything from Caldik Prime, it was that it was better to face problems sooner rather than later. So he looked directly at the Captain and said, "Captain, don't you want to ask me questions, about what happened?"
She looked at him speculatively. "That depends. There's a great deal that we both need to discuss. When I say both I mean that you have to be willing to talk as well. Are you ready to talk to me?"
Was he ready? He wasn't sure. Even after thirty days of thinking, some things were still all in a jumble. He had disobeyed the Captain's orders. He knew that his actions had caused problems for her. Still, he was convinced that if he was ever going to be the kind of person he believed he should be, he had to act according to what he thought was right.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I mean, I don't know what to say. I know that I should apologize for disobeying your orders. I am sorry about that. I respect you, Captain. I respect your decisions. I know I made things difficult. Maybe I could have handled things better, done things differently. It's just that I didn't know what else to do."
"Well that sounds to me like a start," she commented. "Thank you for the apology, Tom. But we're still left with a bit of a mess, aren't we? What were thinking down there?" she asked, probing further. "What about the risk to the Moneans on the mining station? Someone could have been injured, even killed."
"Riga knew that mining complex. He knew exactly how many people there were to evacuate from the facility we targeted."
"There was always the possibility that someone could have been missed," she pointed out.
"I ran a scan. I wouldn't have let Riga fire if there had been any life signs present."
"Something could still have gone wrong," she insisted.
"Captain, if the Moneans don't do something about their mining operations, that field generator is going to fail. How many people will be injured, how many will be killed if that containment field collapses suddenly?"
"You may be right. Or they might find another way to solve their problem. In any case, it wasn't your decision to make. You shouldn't have gotten involved."
"Didn't Riga have the right to get involved? He needed my help. He asked for my help."
"Maybe so. But there could have been other options for him to try, less drastic measures. He didn't need to involve you."
"There wasn't time to think about all that. We were going to leave at 14:00," he finished helplessly.
"Tom, you disobeyed my direct order. I couldn't just overlook what you did as if it didn't matter. We're out here alone in the Delta Quadrant. This is a Starfleet vessel. Your actions called into question the very basis of the authority under which this ship operates."
"Captain, no one on this ship was going raise those kind of questions because of me. If anything, they'd just think I'd fallen back into my old ways, acting like a loser again."
"Oh, really? After all these years and everything that you've done on Voyager, do you seriously imagine that there's anyone left on this ship who would believe that?"
Tom felt almost a jolt of surprise at her question. For so many years he had thought of himself as someone who didn't measure up. On one level he knew that he could be proud of what he had accomplished on Voyager. He knew that he had the crew's respect for his work as an officer. But deep inside, he still carried that image of himself as a reject and a screw-up. He realized that this is what he expected others to find if they looked long and hard enough. It threw him now to hear that he could be wrong about that.
"People count on you," the Captain explained further. "You're an integral part of the daily life on this ship - on the bridge, in Sickbay, in the mess hall, on the holodecks. You do more than your job. You care for others. You lift their spirits. You stimulate the crew with new ideas. Did you consider all that before you acted?"
"I knew that when I entered Monean waters it meant that I might not get back to Voyager," Tom said. He was firmly resolved to accept responsibility for his actions. "I was prepared to accept that."
"Were you? And what about everyone else on this ship? Didn't they have a say? Were your friends supposed to forget about you? And what about your responsibilities? Were you just going to walk away from your duty to this crew? Do you know how hard you made it for everyone when you left on that shuttle? Do you know how hard it was to fire that torpedo? This month has been difficult for everyone. Not just because people had to cover your duties. People worried about you. You've made a place for yourself here on Voyager. You can't just ignore that whenever it's convenient for you to do so." She was using some of her anger from last month to push through his composure. She only hoped it didn't backfire.
Tom's faced was flushed, trying to hold onto his control. "Captain, I know you have every right to be angry…"
"You're damn right I'm angry! You ignored your responsibility to this crew when you left this ship. You put your personal agenda ahead of your duty to them and to me."
"I know that!" he burst out. "I know that," he repeated in a more measured tone, somewhat shocked by his own outburst. "I know that it seems like I didn't care about my responsibilities, that I was saying that this ship and this crew aren't important to me. That's not true! I don't know how to explain what I did without making it seem like I didn't care about this crew. But being on Voyager is one of the best things that ever happened to me." He stopped and tried to gather words together that would make sense to the Captain. Make sense to the Captain? Hell, that would make sense to him.
"I made sure that the Moneans couldn't blame anyone but me for my actions, not the way I set things up. But, there was so little time," he explained. "And turning my back on Monea, giving up, doing nothing, it felt so wrong. I had to do something, or at least try."
"It was that important to you?" the Captain asked, more quietly this time.
Tom nodded slowly. "I've done so many things in my life that I knew were wrong. What kind of person am I? What kind of person am I ever going to be if I don't try to do what I believe is right?"
"And what about the rest of this crew?"
"I'm no good to this crew. I'm no good to you. I'm no good to myself if I'm afraid to do what I think is right. I'll still be a fraud, a shell of a person with no sense of right or wrong, with nothing but a set of regulations to keep me from making a mess of everything again."
"Is that what you really believe?" She waited, but it was clear that everything was still too raw for him to be able to answer right now. "Things don't always come wrapped neatly in packages marked right and wrong, do they?" she asked sympathetically. "Sometimes there are only difficult choices with no easy answers. You make the best decision that you can and then live with the consequences."
Tom understood that she wasn't just talking about his actions.
"You once told me that it was your own good opinion that should matter to you," she said. "I think you're right. But if it's worth anything, I admire a great deal about the person you've become."
"It's worth something, Captain. It's worth a lot to me."
"Tom, I want you to understand that, no matter how many light years we are from home, Voyager is a Starfleet vessel. I have to be able to count on my officers to uphold and to abide by Starfleet rules. I can't depend on the judgment of someone who won't respect the laws that I have sworn to uphold. As long as you are an officer on this ship, you will abide by Starfleet regulations and follow protocol. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"I don't want either of us to be surprised this way again. You need to figure out who 'Tom Paris, Starfleet Officer', can be. While you do that, there is a condition that I am going to ask you to accept."
He looked at her questioningly.
"I won't ask this crew to count on you, only to discover that you've found some other cause or decided that we'd all be better off without you. I want you to give me your word that you will not ask to resign from your position on the ship for one year. If you decide you want to leave after that, you're free to do so, the same as always. I would hope that you'd want to stay with us. There will always be a home for you here on Voyager."
She stopped him before he could try to answer. "I don't want you to answer right now. This is not something to be decided in a moment. You need time to examine your feelings honestly. You resume your helm duties as Chief Pilot this afternoon. You are still the best pilot that we have. The rest of your responsibilities can wait until you're ready to tell me that you're willing to make a commitment to stay. Consider the matter carefully. I will hold you to your answer."
"I understand."
"I think we've covered quite a lot this morning. We'll talk again, soon I hope. You'd better go now and get some lunch. You're due back on the bridge this afternoon."
"Yes, Ma'am." He ventured a tentative smile that was a question and a hope.
She nodded affirmation. Give it time. It was going to be okay.
"Dismissed."
After Tom left, the Captain walked up the steps to sit beside the view into space. No matter which quadrant of the galaxy they were flying through, the stars were always beautiful. Sometimes when she buried herself under all those reports, she forgot to look up at the beauty and the wonder around her.
She chuckled softly to herself. Who would have thought when they began this journey that Tom Paris would get himself entangled in a cause? She had long suspected that her cynical, smart-mouthed helmsman had an underlying streak of romantic idealism. It was an idealism that he had denied. Maybe it was because he felt tainted by his own mistakes. Maybe it was because he had grown up too close to Starfleet.
She had been lucky, she supposed. Having an Admiral for a father naturally gave her a better understanding of Starfleet than most people. Still, her home life had been protected. Her father kept his family well away from the daily life of Starfleet.
Tom's family lived close to the center of everything Starfleet. He became too familiar with Starfleet at too early an age. He saw the foibles and the imperfections and lost his appreciation for how these imperfect people could still strive toward, and even achieve, greatness. He had become a cynic.
"Well," Kathryn commented aloud to the empty room. "His idealism has certainly resurfaced with a vengeance now." She shook her head in amusement at the endless ironies of life.
On the bridge, Tom took the steps up from the ready room and then on up to the turbolift level in single strides, a bemused, but nonetheless pleased expression on his face. Several curious gazes followed him. He didn't notice. He wouldn't have noticed if the whole bridge crew had stood around in a circle, staring at him.
"Mr. Paris!" Chakotay called and just managed to get his attention. "Report back to the bridge at 13:00."
"Aye, Sir." Then the turbolift doors closed and he was gone.
Chakotay raised one eyebrow, and then smiled. "Mr. Kim," he said turning to Harry. "You'd better start right away if you want to catch Mr. Paris in time for lunch. It looks to me like he's flying."
"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." Harry turned his station over to his relief and hurried off to follow his friend.
Tom Paris paced around inside the turbolift working off excess energy. His thoughts were racing around inside his head. Some people might think he was crazy to feel good about his life right now, just out of jail, rank lost. But if this morning had shown him anything, it was that he hadn't lost the things that really mattered to him, B'Elanna's love and support, the support and understanding of his family here on Voyager, the Captain's respect, the opportunity to keep doing work that he cared about, his own self-respect.
He was starting to appreciate just how complicated life was. The confession that had cost him his career after Caldik Prime had freed him from the trap of having to live the rest of his life as a lie. The action that had gotten him captured and sent to jail had saved B'Elanna, Chakotay and the rest of the Maquis cell from the same fate. The sentence that had placed him in the penal colony in New Zealand had led him straight here to Voyager. Things weren't nearly as simple as they were in the games that he had always liked to play.
Tom stopped his pacing to laugh at himself. "So get on with it," he told himself. "Figure out where you're going to go from here, where you want to go from here."
He knew that right now some doors were closed to him. Others would open, if not today, then someday. Tom knew that the Captain wasn't happy about the way that he had handled things on Monea. But, he also knew that she would support him in whatever decisions he made about his future. She would understand too what he meant about life not being all good or bad, or all black and white the way he programmed his holo-adventures.
Holoprograms were still great places to let your dreams fly, though. He'd have to tell the Captain that - someday.
The End
Author's notes:
1) In the two stories, Matters of Discipline and The Next Morning, in addition to exploring several of the questions that people have raised over the years about Thirty Days, one of the tasks that I set myself was to move the characters from the traumatic events in Thirty Days toward the very comfortable interactions that we saw, quite soon afterwards, in the briefing room in Bride of Chaotica, and throughout that episode. I hope that, in this version of events, this speedy transition makes more sense.
2) I was curious about the fact that in the episode, Thirty Days, Tom responded to the Captain's hail and confirmed that he was disobeying her direct order. He didn't have to do that. In the episode, Alice, he simply cut communications when the Captain said that she wasn't going to let him leave. The only reason that I could think of for him to take the time to respond to the Captain's statement that he was disobeying her orders in Thirty Days was that he wanted to put it on record that he was acting without authorization and that he alone was responsible for his actions.
3) The promise that Captain Janeway asks Tom to make in this last chapter, not to leave the ship for one year, is my own invention. But, it does fit in with some events in the series.
a) It gives another reason for the amount of time it took for Tom to get his rank back.
b) In the Season Six episode, Alice, Tom tells the Captain that he's with Alice now and asks her to let him go. She refuses, saying that he knows she can't do that (not won't, which is what she usually says when she doesn't want to let someone leave, but can't). Since she was presumably able to let Tom, along with everyone else, leave the ship in the Season Two episode, The 37's, I was curious about her choice of words. Why did she say that she 'couldn't' let him go and why was Tom, with his brain hooked up to an alien ship and already not thinking clearly, expected to know what she meant? There may be other plausible explanations, but I decided to create this one and make use of it in my story.