The doubts that find us
"Did you have a crush on me when we started out on Voyager?"
She calls the question to him first thing in the morning, at the end of their second week together. Strolling into the kitchen, clad in her robe and hair pulled back, she pours her first cup of coffee. Dropping the inquiry in front of him as though it's freshly made toast.
No "good morning, Tom," or idle discussion about how he rested. Just straight to the point.
Looking up from his work at the dining room table, Tom eyes her warily.
He can see even from his perch in the next room that she has a leather-bound journal in her hand. It's one of roughly twenty that they found when they cleaned out her mother's bedroom.
"Did your mother not keep a journal?" she asked a week earlier, the night they came home from the bar.
She'd noticed that his eyes had fallen to one of the journals she'd brought downstairs. She hadn't read it yet, and looking at Tom, she could tell he felt uneasy at the prospect of her doing so.
"She did," he responded, sitting down on the couch in the living room.
"But you didn't want to read it? Or your father didn't let you?"
He looked at her evenly as she sank down across from him in her father's chair.
"My father doesn't know about her diaries. My sister Moira found them and took them out of the house. . . She didn't want Dad to find them."
He hadn't needed to explain why his eldest sister spirited their mother's private thoughts away. Kathryn suspected, with mixed emotions, that Owen Paris had been as much an absentee husband as he was an absentee father.
Still, the expression on Tom's face when he looked at her contained more of a warning than an admission of family anguish. However much she yearned for some piece of her mother, the loss still fresh, she couldn't know what she would find in her journals.
And once Pandora's box was opened, the things that escaped could never be put back.
But, as Tom expected, she began to read them anyway. And sitting down their eighth night together, after dinner, she poured over the first journal across from him in the dining room. Her eyes trained on her mother's handwriting as Tom's analyzed holocode.
He hadn't expected her to share anything she read, and at first she didn't. But after two days of taking several months of her mother's private thoughts in at a given sitting, she looked up at him across from the table.
"Why did you ask B'Elanna to marry you?"
The question took him completely off guard, and he'd fumbled for an appropriate answer as she calmly sipped her coffee.
"Because I wanted to prove my commitment to her. . . I guess, because I thought it was time."
She looked at him, skepticism apparent on her face as she cradled her mug.
He was more thrown off by her silence than the initial question, and he put down his work as he regarded her with growing confusion.
"Why?" he asked, sitting back in his chair.
"My mother hadn't wanted to get married when she did. She thought she was too young."
"But?"
"She didn't think my father would wait around forever. It was clear he wanted marriage and children. . . she thought he wouldn't linger if she made it clear she didn't want the same."
Her face hadn't been distraught when she voiced the revelation. Just contemplative. Like she was back in Astrometrics, going over strategic options with Seven.
Across from her, his face twisted in thought.
"Did she regret marrying him? After, I mean."
"No," she responded, with a soft shake of her head. "But. . . she considered their happiness accidental. She thought they both got lucky. Not that she made a wise choice."
He cocked his head to side.
"Did that bother her?"
She paused, mentally considering the entries she'd read.
"No. I don't think so."
He looked at her with a searching stare she found uncomfortable, and she tried not to shift in her seat.
"But it bothers you?"
"Yes," she breathed, after a brief hesitation. "It does."
He smiled rather than looking at her with sympathy.
"Some of the best things happen on accident or without good reason," he warned.
She looked at him, unconvinced, which he found strange. Given the one hundred and fifty odd people she'd called family after being unexpectedly flung to the far corners of the universe.
"B'Elanna and I got married for ill-advised reasons. We got pregnant pretty early, too."
This had thrown her, and she looked at him with confusion.
"You just said you asked her to marry you because you were ready."
"No," he corrected, still smiling, "I said I asked her because I wanted to prove my commitment. Which, at the time, she was challenging. . .Since we were in the middle of a fight."
"You were fighting?" she asked with surprise. She hadn't known any of this. "But you were so happy when you got back to the ship, after the Antarians. "
"After I asked her to marry me," he pointed out. "Before that, she tried to dump me. . . Actually, she did dump me."
"She tried to end your relationship and you asked her to marry you?"
Her voice was completely horrified and he couldn't help but laugh.
"I told you. Ill-advised reasons. It could have been an awful decision."
She paused, starting to smile.
"You got lucky," she murmurs, conceding the point he'd made moments earlier.
"Yes. Yes, we did."
Now, sitting in the same chair he sat in that first conversation about the intersection of her mother's life and his own, he reflects momentarily on the delicate pattern they've established in his brief stay.
Over fourteen days, they've packed away five rooms, their efforts punctuated by six breakdowns and only one full argument. They sit together each morning and night, either at the dining table or smaller one in the kitchen.
He has refused to talk about the Monean incident, for one reason or another, four different times.
And each time Kathryn broaches a touchy topic like the present one, no matter how rewarding the conversation ends up being, she begins it with all the tact of a Klingon targ. Her inquiries charging at him without preface; completely unlike the way he gently slides his own questions to her, always careful of his approach.
"Before I answer, would you care to fill me in on the context?"
He nods his head to the journal in her hand as she comes to stand in the threshold of the dining room, leaning against the side of the wall.
Her face is pensive, dipping slightly into concerned.
"When my father was first made Admiral there was a woman in his office who had feelings for him. The officer was young. My mother thought at first it was just the standard conflation of respect and infatuation that happens with new officers."
"But then?" he presses, reading from her tone that this isn't all.
She crosses her arms, looking at the table rather than him.
"She walked in on them talking. . . Nothing inappropriate. But he was familiar with her in a way he never was with the people under his command."
"Your mother became jealous," he supplies.
"She was worried," she confirms. "He was at work all the time. She thought the move from commanding a Starship to being an Admiral would mean he was home more, but he ended up being away just as much. . . She walked in on him confiding in this woman in a way he hadn't talked to her in a month."
"And your mother had two small children to care for," he points out.
She nods slowly.
"I was six. Phoebe was three."
"She must have been scared," he murmurs, his face twisting in thought. "What happened after that- did she talk to him?"
"There's no entry that talks about it," she replies with a shrug.
He falls silently, watching her mind spin in thought.
Her mother's entries are long and painfully honest, but she didn't write in her journal consistently. Sometimes Kathryn gets glimpses of several weeks in a row, a worry presented and eventually resolved. Sometimes a concern or line of thought is abandoned in months of silence, the next entry failing to pick up on the thread of thoughts voiced in the last.
Right now, her mind hovers in the precipice between the entries. Struggling to fill in whatever distance she can for herself.
"I remember them fighting about it," she says, after a while. "At least I think I do."
"Really?" he says, his forehead crinkling. "How do you know it was about that?"
"I don't," she concedes. "But it was around that time. I remember because of the winter recital she talks about in the same entry."
He looks at her, reaching for a distant piece of imparted information.
"The Dance of the Dying Swan?" he guesses, the corners of his mouth tugging upward.
She rolls her eyes at him, but the brief twinkling in them betrays her mirth.
"One and the same," she says lightly, before dropping her gaze again to the table. "I remember my mother picking me up from ballet class and taking me to my father's office. . . I sat outside in the lobby with one of his officers. . . But I could hear them shouting."
He looks at her with sympathy, her own eyes on the table between them but images from forty years earlier flashing before her mind.
"I think the officer who sat with me might have been the same one she was worried about. . . I remember when my mother stormed out of my father's office and dragged me with her, she glared at the woman. I didn't understand why. She'd been so nice to me. Talked to me about ballet."
She says the last part in a small voice. As though her vague liking of a woman who may or may not have been her mother's rival was some kind of profound betrayal.
He opens his mouth to say something, but immediately reconsiders. She notices the hesitation but is too lost in her own thoughts to venture an inquiry.
"I'm sure there was nothing going on," he says, drawing her back.
"I'm sure there wasn't," she echoes, genuinely confident. "It's just strange to put together pieces of a puzzle that I didn't even know existed a week ago."
He looks at her patiently. He won't say 'I told you so,' even in his posture. But she knows he's thinking it.
She sets aside the knowledge, coming to sit at the table across from him.
"So are you going to answer my first question?" she asks, slipping into a chair.
He looks at her with surprise.
It isn't so much because she has returned, full circle, to the start of the conversation, as this has already become the pattern of most of their dialogues. Rather, he's taken back because he isn't sure why she feels the need to hear him answer the question. When they both know his earlier dodge was as a good as a confirmation.
As she sits staring at him, he honestly has no clue what it is she's after.
"I was a bit infatuated I suppose," he begins slowly. "But I don't know that it was quite a crush. Maybe something between that and hero worship?"
"Hero worship," she repeats, with obvious doubt.
He smiles slightly. An expression that's more rueful than amused.
"Just because I was more cynical than Harry doesn't mean I wasn't capable of having heroes. . . I was just. . . slower to pick them than he was."
She waits, letting his words sink in, and he watches her. Trying to pinpoint the nature of her curiosity.
"Whatever feelings I had were vague at best," he says, shaking his head. "And I never gave much thought to them. They just evaporated on their own." He adds, crossing his arms, "I was never in love with you."
It's the kind of thing someone could say with the attention of inflicting pain. But Tom means his words as reassurance, and this is precisely how Kathryn accepts them.
"I know that," she responds, a little too quickly.
His eyes narrow slightly.
"Do you? . . . Did you?"
She lets of a deep breath, contemplating his challenge.
Neither of them will voice it, even now, but she knows that he's thinking back to the aftermath of the warp ten incident. That he's remembering the searching stare she had given him in Sickbay, after the Doctor transformed them back into (bipedal) human form.
"I guess I wondered at one point," she concedes eventually. "But I wasn't really concerned."
He raises an eyebrow; a further challenge. She looks back at him evenly.
"You were never very good at hiding those kind of feelings, Tom. Either with Kes or with B'Elanna. . . If you would have felt that way, I would have known."
He nods, accepting her answer, before getting up from his seat to start their day.
"Not all of us can be like the enigmatic Kathryn Janeway," he teases.
He doesn't see her face fall as she follows him into the kitchen. The way she freezes in the doorway.
"Tom?"
He hears her voice behind him and stops, but doesn't turn around to look at her.
"Hmm?"
"Was I too good at hiding my own feeling?"
She isn't talking about feelings toward him, he knows. And for the first time in days he's at a complete loss for what to say.
He can't possibly tell her that she did a pitiful job of hiding from her staff her feelings for Chakotay. Despite doing an impressive job of robbing Chakotay himself of any assurance.
He won't rip open an old wound. One that he isn't even supposed to know is there.
"Sometimes," he acknowledges, after a few beats. "Other times they were clear as day."
The response is vague enough to spare both Tom's conscience and the better part of Kathryn's feelings.
Still, when being work on the den later, she falls quiet; deep in thought for hours.
. . . . .
Seventeen days into Tom's stay, Kathryn is called back to Starfleet Command.
"I might have to stay in San Francisco tomorrow as well," she apologizes, putting on her uniform jacket. "There's been a shake up in the Romulan Senate."
"Again?" he asks incredulously. "Doesn't that government ever take a break from launching coups?"
She fails to reply, not at liberty to make any further remarks.
He watches her silently as she switches into professional mode, the way she's pulled her hair up taking him back in time.
"If you don't want to stay here, I understand," she remarks, putting on her lipstick in the entryway mirror.
She sees his reflection give a non-committal shrug.
"I was going into the office today anyway for that meeting on a new program we're being commissioned to write. I may stay there a little later, get some work done."
She nods, already distracted by thoughts of diplomacy and strategy.
"I'll see you when I see you," she says, the wistfulness in her voice the only sign that she doesn't want to trudge all the way to Headquarters to deal with a crisis that could be handled without her.
"Be careful," he admonishes, making her chuckle slightly.
"The rebellion is on Romulus, not Earth," she quips.
As she closes the door, he bites back the retort that she has a disturbing knack for finding any danger that exists within twenty parsecs.
. . . . .
When she returns from San Francisco, it's the same day and the summer sun is halfway through with its descent into the west.
Making away through the grounds that lead up to the old farmhouse, she expects to find Tom gone. Either in New Jersey, or at home in Portland. Desiring for one night to sleep in his own bed, despite that the familiar mattress is absent his sleeping companion of six years.
She's surprised to find Tom working away in the front yard instead. Ten meters of ground torn up around him, and six of them already punctuated with dark green shrubs.
"I thought you would still be in New Jersey," she says, shielding her eyes from the sun.
"Our meeting was postponed. It was with Starfleet, but no one from Headquarters could make it out today."
He doesn't ask about the events of her day, but whether he's trying to respect the secrets she must keep or he's become uninterested in matter of diplomacy, she can't tell.
"What are you planting?" she asks, dropping to her knees beside him in the dirt.
"Burning Bush," he replies, handing her a trowel. "I hope you don't mind. . . I thought the area around the porch could use some brightening."
She pauses, considering the appeal the plants add to the off-white structure.
She told him the day of the funeral that she planned on selling the house, and she still does. Despite this, she suspects he's planted the shrubs more for her own appreciation than to add curb appeal for prospective buyers.
She sighs her approval as she works at digging out a home for one of the shrubs. Discarding her uniform jacket when the heat gets to her.
"I hope whoever buys the house likes red," she comments, after they've planted the last shrub.
"Command red," he jokes, causing her to shake her head. "If not, they can just close their eyes for twelve weeks out of every year."
She eyes him with mirth, even more amused at the sight of him covered in dirt than his brazen disregard for the feelings of the property's future owners.
"You're quite the sight," she teases, accepting the hand he's offered her as she rises.
"You don't look so proper yourself, Admiral. . . I don't think that dirt is standard issue."
Walking up the steps, she snorts, smirking in a way he can't see as he follows her into the house.
"And despite it all, B'Elanna really decided to marry you instead of ending things? How terrible for her."
His chortled amusement, like their muddy footprints, trails behind her in the entryway.
. . . . .
"Phoebe's coming tomorrow," Kathryn informs him, the next night over dinner.
Tom swallows the wine he's just taken a drink of, looking at her with interest.
"How long?"
"Just for a day or so," she replies. "She can't leave her children that long given John's job, but I think she feels guilty she's left me to take care of the house by myself."
"You haven't been by yourself," he counters, failing to keep the wounded expression off his face.
"She feels guilty that I'm taking care of the house without her," she modifies, her tone apologetic.
"Are you upset she hasn't helped you?"
"No. . . Not really. I have weeks of leave built up that I've refused to take, and she just started a new teaching position at an art institute in Maryland."
He forks another bite of the dinner he's cooked, waiting for her to go on.
"Also- and please don't take this the wrong way, Tom- but I really wouldn't have wanted to do this with her."
He still waits patiently, chewing his meal and showing no outward signs of judgment.
"Phoebe's emotional. More emotional than I am. And as much as I love her and count her as one of my closest friends. . ."
"You're typically the one to care of her," he ventures, trying with his casual tone to ease her obvious discomfort.
"Typically," she echoes, rolling the thought around in her head. "It's been good to have the freedom to experience my own grief without having to worry about hers."
Tom puts down his fork, vacillating between several thoughts that compete for prominence in his head.
"Maybe she lets you take of her because you don't allow her to take care of you," he theorizes, after a period of silence.
Her head shoots up, and he can tell immediately that she's getting upset.
"You've never been very good at lowering your shields," he reminds her.
Studying him, she sees that his expression is soft and his eyes kind. Her agitation dissipates, its dissolution causing her a new frustration.
She can't maintain anger at him for longer than a moment anymore, and it's a shift that annoys her as much as it reassures.
"I don't know," she breathes. "I feel like it's a different with Phoebe."
"Different with her than it was with me? Different than it was the members of the crew would have laid down their lives for you, let alone coming to your mother's funeral?"
She searches his face for any sign of frustration, but all she finds is concern and a tinge of sadness.
"I don't know," she repeats, shaking her head and going back to her dinner.
When he gets up to clear the table not long after, he surprises her by dropping a chaste kiss at the top of her head before he straightens up, her plate in hand.
She looks at him questioningly, thrown off by the token of affection as much as she's pleased by it.
"Thank you for this," he says, his complete comfort a counterpoint to her obvious unease.
His words deepen her confusion. The last two and a half weeks have hardly been a vacation for him, and she thinks she should be the one thanking him for his support. And his patience.
He smiles at her expression, amused at how poorly she can read people in spite of her many other talents.
"It's been nice to spend this time with you. Talk like this. . . It's something I've wanted for a long time."
Her eyes well with tears that it takes her a little longer to blink away than usual, and when she starts to speak, her chin wobbles slightly.
"I'm sorry it's taken this long. I should have-"
He cuts her apology off with a disapproving shake of his head and a hand on her shoulder.
"No more apologies. From either of us."
Helping him put away dishes in the kitchen, she falls silent as she did when they packed away the den. Her mind circling around the one apology she still needs to voice and her worry that he won't give her the chance.
. . . . .
The day that her sister comes, Tom spends most of the day in New Jersey. His meeting with Stafleet has been rescheduled, and though he could put if off again, he thinks it best to allow Kathryn some time alone with Phoebe. When he enters the house late into the afternoon, he decides it was a mistake to return at all.
Having grown up with two older sisters, he would rather be caught in the middle of a bloody Romulan coup that continue into the living room; the two raised voices therein indicating that Kathryn and Phoebe are fighting.
"You aren't getting any younger, Katie."
The words make him freeze. Phoebe is venturing to go where neither Tom, nor anyone else in Kathryn's life, has boldly gone before.
"I believe the effects of gravity make that painfully clear to me, Phoebe. Everyday that I wake up."
He can't help but chuckle at the reply. He's had is own share of distress at the shifts in his body, the last few years.
He immediately curses his passing amusement. His laughter, however low, alerting the warring women to his presence.
"Tom?" Kathryn calls, desperately wanting a reason to derail the conversation.
"Hi," he greets, strolling into the living room with an ease he doesn't at all feel.
Phoebe regards him for only a moment before choosing, without any apparent reservation, to draw him into the battle.
"Tom, would you please tell Kathryn that her personal life, if you could even call it that, isn't going to wait for her to finally choose it over her career."
The jarring tendency to skip preambles is a family trait, Tom decides, looking between the two women who are sure to cause him physical harm if he sides with the other.
He leans against the couch. A move that's meant to buy him time more than anything else.
"I don't know," he drawls innocently, "Kathryn is as lovely now as the day I met her. Who knows how stunning she'll be in another ten years."
The compliment makes Kathryn flush and Phoebe laugh. A victory, Tom thinks, giving himself a mental round of applause.
"That being said," he adds, looking at his former Captain. "I would like to dance at your wedding one of these days."
"Dance?" Kathryn asks, crossing her arms. "At my wedding?"
"Yes," he responds, strangely undeterred. "I expect the first one, as a matter of fact."
"Isn't that an honor reserved the groom?" Phoebe admonishes, a sly smile on her face.
He looks at Kathryn rather than Phoebe when he answers, emboldened by the younger Janeway's frankness.
"To hell with him. . . Whoever he is."
When Phoebe throws back her head and laughs, Kathryn runs a hand over her forehead. Deciding, with dark amusement, that it was a mistake to let her sister spend any time with Tom.
. . . . . .
After spending four hours between the warring Janeways, Tom is relieved down to his toes when Phoebe seconds his idea to go into Bloomington and have a few drinks.
He has watched the two siblings, in both word and posture, argue over everything from what to do with their mother's furniture to Kathryn's decision to read the journals.
"I don't want to know," Phoebe had exclaimed, covering her ears when Kathryn began to tell her about something she had read in the last day.
Tom eyed Phoebe with sympathy, understanding her sentiment, and Kathryn shot him a pointed glare.
He would be punished for mutinous behavior. Whether or not there was a waiting brig.
"No shortage of cornfields or bars," he reminds Kathryn presently, a hopeful smile on his face when Phoebe echoes his suggestion to go out.
She looks at him with moody eyes and a put off expression.
"You two can go out. I don't feel like it."
His face falls at this, and he turns to her with pleading eyes.
"I'm not going without you. But if you don't feel up to it, we can stay here. Maybe build a bonfire in the backyard."
She deflates moments later. Abruptly guilty for wrongly punishing him for the irritation her sister has caused her.
"No," she says quickly. "You're right. We should go out."
When Tom goes upstairs to change and comm B'Elanna, Phoebe looks at Kathryn with a small smirk.
"Too bad he's married."
Kathryn feels appalled at first, thinking she's suggesting Tom for herself. But when she remembers the appreciative look Phoebe gave him when they were first introduced after Voyager's return home, she realizes her sister's thoughts aren't quite so selfless.
"Well he is married. Happily, might I add."
Phoebe only rolls her eyes. A happily married woman herself, she hadn't meant anything serious by the comment. It was just a joke. A private confession between sisters.
"I find it terribly distressing," Phoebe begins dramatically, putting on her earrings, "that in all the things you discovered in the Delta Quadrant, the ability to take a joke wasn't one of them."
When Tom comes back down stairs, both women have fallen into an eerie silence.
Switching on the porch light as they leave, he wonders if this is how the future Janeway felt as she approached the Borg hub. Knowingly heading for certain death.
. . . . . .
Two hours into their stay at the bar, Tom has forgotten his reservations.
He and Kathryn's sister have the same dark, inappropriate sense of humor, and they exchange animated anecdotes as they drain beers, the empty glasses accumulating between them with impressive speed.
As Kathryn sips her second glass of wine, she watches Tom and her sister with mixed emotions.
It's rewarding to see the two of them getting along so well. She suspected, in fact, that they would. But seeing Tom so easily share with Phoebe stories he's never shared with her- colorful accounts of pranks in the Academy; even more horrifying tales of things he and Harry Kim conspired to pull off - Kathryn feels the steady prick of jealousy.
It's ridiculous, she scolds herself, to feel this about Tom. A man ten years her junior and who used to be her officer. Someone's who's wedding she performed with joy, whose wife she adores, and whose child she feels honored to be the god-mother of.
More baffling, she's never had romantic feelings for Tom, even in passing.
So why is it when she sees Phoebe (who has an astounding ease with people and none of her own inhibitions) touching Tom's arm, she feels the desire to put her wine down and stalk away?
When Phoebe inevitably spots a long-lost friend in the bar, Tom looks at Kathryn with an odd expression as her younger sister moves to the other side of the room.
"She knows everyone in Indiana," Kathryn jokes, forcing a smile.
The smile doesn't make it to her eyes, and Tom quickly changes seats to be across from her.
"You've been awfully quiet," he probes.
"I've just been watching the two of you. . . I'm glad you like her so much. You have a lot in common."
Tom pauses, suspecting that there's something beneath the false cheer she's offering him.
"I do like her," he confesses, examining the contents of his glass. "But. . . I must admit, I like her sister more."
She closes her eyes. Embarrassed that he's located the irrational jealousy she feels around Phoebe. When she opens her mouth, he resumes speaking before she can get out an apology.
"Please don't tell her," he requests, with mock seriousness. "I mean, I'm sure she would understand. But at the same time. . . I am hard to get over. Women have died because of their longing for me, I'm sure."
He punctuates the joke with an impish grin, and whatever discomfort she feels is washed away by amusement.
However mature and compassionate he's become, Tom is still Tom.
When they both stop laughing, he looks at her with a soft expression.
"So. . ." she says, sipping her wine, "you want to dance at my wedding."
He closes one eye, a lopsided smile appearing on his face.
"The wedding I don't so much care about. But it would make me happy to see you find someone who brings you as much peace as B'Elanna brings me."
"You bring me peace," she says, touching his hand briefly.
It's as much a dodge as a compliment, but he lets it slide.
"Now, as far as the dancing," he declares, standing up. "That needn't wait for a wedding."
When Phoebe comes to stand beside Tom, she looks at her older sister, whose expression is a dubious one, with an arched eyebrow.
"I'm trying to convince your sister to dance with me," Tom explains, looking at Phoebe.
"Oh, go on, Kathryn. It's not going to kill you."
After tossing Tom's co-conspirator a glare, Kathryn looks at her former helmsman with lingering uncertainty.
"It'll be fun," he assures, his face far too innocent. "It's good to let your hair down for a while. . . Especially given all the time you spend pinning it up."
Kathryn shoots him another disapproving look, taking his proffered arm anyway.
"You better not step on my feet, Mister Paris."
"Never, ma'am."
As Tom leads Kathryn away from the table, Phoebe watches them. Silently wondering if her sister secretly appreciated her comment back at the house after all.