Chakotay to Paris.

Tom didn't even bother answering the first officer this time. He simply burrowed further under his pillows and tried not to think about what was happening to him. The time loop had been fun at first. He'd gotten to play and goof off and do all kinds of crazy things he'd never normally do.

Eventually, though, even Tom Paris' imagination ran down and he was at a loss for anything to do. But still the day kept looping around and around and around. It was starting to drive him a little nuts. He'd taken to simply staying in his quarters all day.

Janeway had sent him to the Doctor on more than one occasion to see if the EMH could discover the cause, but the Doctor was at a loss. To everyone else, Tom's depression had come out of nowhere. Only he knew the reason for his loss of hope. There was no point in telling anyone else, no one could help. Tom was ready to try anything to get out of this loop, but nothing ever seemed to work.

Paris, are you there?

He moaned and curled up into a tiny ball of misery under his covers. "Tom Paris is dead today," he told Chakotay. "Please try back some other time." Tom realized then that when he said he'd do anything to get free, he really meant anything.

Tom was determined not to try anything too drastic without having explored every other viable option. Many hundreds of ideas had been formed and rejected in the past loops, but he'd never done this before. Paris walked around the Earhart one more time, completing his pre-flight check. He figured that since the Earhart was also doused in chronitons, she too was exempt from the neverending round of this day. So maybe they could get away together.

Running away was his next-to-last option to break out of the loop. If he could just take the Earhart far enough away to get out of range of whatever was happening, if he could live through a few days in which something different happened, maybe then he could come up with a way to save his ship. After he saved his sanity.

Tom glided the aeroshuttle out of the hangar bay and pointedly ignored the frantic shouts from the comm asking why he was doing this. Voyager's tractor beam frightened him for a minute, but his skills were no match for Tuvok's and he easily avoided being captured. He was away at last, and no one was going to stop him.

Happy as Tom was to be doing something different, he still felt a twinge of guilt over leaving his crew stranded. To live the same day over and over a thousand thousand times without knowing it... Tom shuddered, grateful for once that he knew what was going on and that he could help to save them.

He flew a straight course back the way they'd come. There was no guarantee that whatever was causing it wasn't behind them, but Tom guessed that familiar ground was safer than the undiscovered country. He stayed awake for as long as he could, then switched to autopilot so that the aeroshuttle would keep on running while he slept.

Tom Paris awoke the next morning to his own bed on Voyager and a persistently nagging first officer in his ear. He laid there in shock, stunned that his plan hadn't worked. How could it not? How? Chakotay called to him over and over again, but Tom didn't listen. He just rolled over, put his face in his hands, and cried for the first time in years.

There was no escaping this thing alive, Tom told himself. Alive. That was the key. Perhaps, if he died, then at last he could have some peace. He'd even thought that maybe he was the reason the loop continued at all. Maybe with him gone, everyone else could move on. Tom had been through some pretty bad spots in his life, but he'd never, ever, been suicidal before. But now death was the only way out that he could see. Death was easier in many ways than a life on a hamster wheel of time. Tom looked down and contemplated what he held in his hands. Pills or a phaser?

Thus began the dark days, as Tom forever after thought of them. Usually, though, he tried not to think about the many ways he tried to kill himself in the next dozen or so loops. He tried many poisons, dematerializing himself using the transporter, phasers and knives, blowing himself up, scores of holodeck programs with the safeties off... Any way his overactive imagination could think of was used to terminate his existence and still he looped. Every morning he awoke to die again. Nothing ever changed except the manner of his short-lived death.

At last, Tom Paris ended it. He didn't want to die another day. There was no point in doing it over and over if nothing ever worked. Tom was reduced to a wreck of himself, ghosting around the ship and looking through people who spoke to him with dull eyes. Living like this was no life at all. It was a hell in which he was granted no release. Was it any better for these poor souls, the ones who had no idea what was happening to them? Or were they just as desperate as he, in their own way?

Paris knew only one thing was left to try. And if it didn't work... Well, he didn't want to think about that.

Paris sat at a table in the mess hall, hands wrapped loosely around a mug of coffee, staring into space. He looked like death warmed over, he knew that. He hadn't even bothered with a uniform, simply walking here in his pajamas after doing his evil deed for the day. Harry Kim sat down and eyed him warily. "Hey."

"Hey, Harry," Tom replied listlessly. "How goes the fight?"

"Alright," said Kim cautiously. "What about you? How are you doing?"

Tom chuckled softly, because the answer was so obvious. "I'm terrible, Harry. Want to know why?" He never did this anymore, never told anyone what was happening to them. But maybe talking to someone again would be nice.

"Sure, what's up?" asked the young ensign in concern. He leaned forward, interested in Tom's story already.

So Tom told him. He told him the story of a lieutenant who'd slept late for his shift and found that in the night his world had doubled back on itself. He told the story of the hundreds of loops he'd been through: the tries at solving the problems, the goofy fun he'd had, and even all the ways he'd tried to end it all. Harry was a captivated listener, eyes wide with fascinated horror.

"Nothing works?" he said when Tom finished. He started to panic a little. "We're going to be stuck like this forever?"

"Relax, Harry," Tom soothed him. "I've got one more trick up my sleeve. If this doesn't get us loose, well..." He shrugged and drank the last of his coffee.

The Ops officer caught a tone in Tom's voice and looked up at him. He had a really bad feeling about this trick of Tom's. "Tom, what did you do?"

Before the conn officer could answer, Janeway's voice came over the comm. "All hands, report to escape pods. I repeat, all hands report to escape pods. This is not a drill. Report to escape pods immediately."

Harry hit his badge quickly. "Captain, this is Kim. What's going on?"

"It's the self destruct, Harry. It's set to go in three minutes and we can't seem to shut it down."

The ensign looked back at Paris, who hadn't moved a muscle even as the hall had quickly emptied of people. Harry felt his heart thud to a stop at the dead, distant look in Tom's eyes. His friend had gone crazy, and now he was going to kill them all. "I'm coming," he told the captain and dashed out of the hall.

"See you later, Harry," Tom Paris said to an empty room as the ship started to shake apart around him. "Well, scratch that. I hope I never see you again." Then he put his head down on the table and waited for the fire that would consume the entire ship and maybe, finally, end this cursed loop.

Chakotay to Paris.