Chapter 5: Only a moment
Over lunch, Harry tries to hide his concern from Tom. Slowly eating his meal, he steals furtive glances at his friend, quickly ducking his head down again to his plate. After about the tenth nervous look, Tom looks at his best friend pointedly, demanding his attention.
"She's going to kill you," Harry announces, looking up from his lunch.
"She's not going to kill me," Tom replies dismissively.
Harry hesitates only a moment, looking back at the pilot as though his words failed to register.
"She's going to kill you," Harry repeats. "And as fond as we all are of you, none of us are going to show up at your funeral. . . Because she's the Captain."
Putting down his spoon beside his soup, Tom finds himself torn between the annoyance and fear that Harry's words inspire.
"It's just a surprise party," Tom remarks, with a wave of his hand. "It's going to be fine."
"She hates surprises!" Harry exclaims, lowering his voice when Chell walks by.
"She just hasn't had one she's liked before," Tom retorts.
The slight smirk on the Lieutenants' face is the only hint of the private thought that he has given Kathryn many surprises in the last six months. All of them of the same general variety, but each one incredibly well received.
Harry notes the expression, his own eyebrows drawing in slightly. He's happy for Tom as well as the Captain, but he's grateful that Tom doesn't go into details.
"It's just weird," Harry had said two months earlier, when one of his friend's comments had strayed a little too far.
"You find my personal life weird?" Tom countered, seeming slightly hurt.
"No. . . Yes."
The Ensign paused, putting down his ion mallet while their parrisses match was still in recess.
"I just don't want to know about her that way. . . It's like thinking about my mother."
Tom could have scolded the younger man. Made him feel ridiculous for thinking of his CO and best friend's girlfriend as anything like a maternal figure. But instead he's simply turned the tables around.
"Kathryn reminds you of your mother?" Tom asked, lowering his voice. "When we get back, I'd like to be introduced."
The appall on the younger man's face had lasted much longer than their parrisses match.
"She's going to kill you," Harry repeats again presently, shaking his head. "She's going to hate the fact that we threw a party. And when she finds out it was you who planned it, B'Elanna's going to help her incinerate your body in the warp core."
Looking at the table between them, Tom considers Harry's image. He and B'Elanna have come a long way in the last two months, even spending time together on the holodeck on three occasions. The second time, Kathryn had come in halfway through, looking for him, and B'Elanna's smile appeared effortless as the two women conversed.
It was something that brought Tom comfort at the time. But now, picturing his own motionless form being lowered into some dark corner of the ship, B'Elanna and Kathryn's chattiness leaves him feeling slightly uneasy.
"You're overreacting, Har. It's going to be great."
"Right," Harry mutters. "But just so we're clear. . . I had nothing to do with this."
Tom smiles. Thinking for a second he should reveal to his best friend that all of the invitations that are going out appear under the name 'Harry Kim'.
"Got it," the pilot chimes, only to receive a wary glance from his companion.
. . . . .
"Do you really want to wear red?"
"Why not? I look good in red. I even seem to remember a certain pilot telling me so on several occasions."
"Yes," Tom drawls. "But the point is that you look good in red everyday. Don't you want to wear another color while we're off duty?"
Standing in her bedroom, Kathryn folds her arms. In the week leading up to the party, Tom has grown more and more anxious. Distracted sometimes, moody others. But all around annoying the hell out of Kathryn.
If she hadn't already learned in advance about the surprise, she would probably be a little past irritated with him at this point.
"What would you like me to wear?" she asks, managing patience.
"Anything but red," he answers, and she throws up her hands, moving into the living room.
"I give up," she calls. "Just replicate something and I'll wear it."
"Fine."
When she comes back into the bedroom with a cup of coffee in hand, she's disappointed to see that Tom has replicated the same dress she intended to wear, only in a different color.
When he normally chooses clothes for her, perhaps grabbing something from her quarters after their shift or replicating something himself, he picks something a little sexier. A lower neckline, a higher hemline; a fabric that clings to her body.
And isn't so much that Tom prefers such things, as he responds to her the same way (to her continuing surprise) even in oversized pajama and no make up. Rather, it's that he knows she prefers such things. Despite that in her front of her crew, she chooses things that are classic and modest.
The dress laying on the bed isn't a bad one, just simple. 'Completely appropriate for a starship Captain,' Tom would normally tease.
"I thought I would stick with your original choice," Tom explains, noting her look of disappointment. "Do you not want to wear it now?"
She doesn't, she realizes. It was something she picked out without much thought, and now, looking at it, the dress seems terribly. . . boring.
"I don't know that it works as well in blue," she lies. "I'll grab something else."
With a sigh and a check of the chrono, Tom excuses himself to the living room and sits down on her couch.
"Alright," she announces a few minutes later, emerging into the living room.
She wears a short cocktail dress in the same dark shade of blue Tom picked out, but the cut of it accentuates her curves.
"Are you sure you want to wear that?" Tom asks, eyeing her bare shoulders and the decidedly high hemline.
"I thought you would like it," she chuckles.
"Oh, I do," he assures. "But I don't know that you want young Ensign Kim to see you out and about in that."
She rolls her eyes at the now familiar joke as she fastens her earrings.
"We're just going for dinner on the holodeck," she shrugs innocently. "If anyone catches sight of me, it will only be as I disappear around a corner."
When Tom falls silent, obviously uncomfortable, she fights the urge to smirk. He looks for a moment like he's about to say something, but then he shrugs the thought off just as quickly.
"Let's get out of here," he says, and they both exit into the corridor.
Standing in the turbolift, Tom shifts with nervous energy, beginning to tap his hand on his leg. It would be kind of her to just tell him that she knows, thus heading off his worry that the party they're about to walk into will irritate her.
Too bad for him she's decided he doesn't deserve such comfort.
He's been plotting this little mutiny for weeks. Running around behind her back, co-opting her senior staff. Turning both Chakotay and Tuvok (even Tuvok!) against her with his silly scheme. She's glad he's nervous. And in truth, she's made him fret more at every possible turn.
Watching Tom's index finger tap out a nervous rhythm, Kathryn smiles sweetly.
"Everything alright?" she asks casually.
"Fine," Tom assures, as the lift doors part.
Halfway into the party, Tom seems just as nervous. Her entry into shouts of 'surprise' went well, of course, and she seems perfectly happy, chatting away with their friends and colleagues. But if she were upset, even downright angry, she would look the same way here; putting on a smiling face and laughing with crewmembers.
Waiting, very patiently, to blow up on him once they're alone.
When B'Elanna slips into the seat next to Kathryn after Chakotay vacates it, Tom is on the other side of the room. Stealing furtive glances at Kathryn and trying his best not to look scared.
"He must be absolutely terrified," B'Elanna says, her face completely even.
Kathryn has to fight hard to keep the smile from her lips, but she succeeds. Somehow managing to look stern for Tom's benefit.
"He is," Kathryn confirms, mirth evident in her voice.
"How'd you find out? Harry?"
"Mm hmm," Kathryn responds, sipping her wine. "When Tom started getting fidgety, I went to him." She adds, narrowing her eyes. "It look a week, but I finally got Harry to fold."
"It took a week for Harry to cave? That's impressive for him."
Kathryn's expression becomes a genuine scowl. She blames Tom for Harry's new-found ability to withstand her pressuring him. It's yet another thing she plans to punish him for.
"I believe Tom is perspiring," Seven observes, slipping into the seat across from B'Elanna. "The Doctor is worried he has fallen ill."
The subtle mirth radiating from the former drone indicates the intended joke. Still, she keeps the same stoic demeanor as her companions. Not allowing Tom any comfort by seeing his friend's face lit up with joy.
"Too bad there's no inoculation for being an idiot," B'Elanna remarks, but it's obvious joke isn't a malicious one and Kathryn makes a sound in the back of her throat to signal her approval.
"Have you decided how long you are going to allow him to suffer?" Seven asks.
"You think I'm letting him get too worried?" Kathryn guesses.
Seven only hesitates a moment before answering emphatically.
"No."
The response earns her a piqued expression from B'Elanna and an arched eyebrow from Kathryn. Tom is, after all, one of the young woman's closest friends.
"Last month Chakotay received Tom's help designing a program of Bajor's Kendra Valley. He took me on a picnic in an effort to surprise me. . . It rained."
B'Elanna leans forward in her chair a little, looking contemplative.
"When Mike and I got back together, he planned a surprise dinner after I worked a sixteen-hour shift. I was exhausted, but walked into my quarters to hear "Moon River" playing. . . Of all things." B'Elanna stops, shaking her head with disgust before continuing, "I'm convinced Tom had something to do with it. Only he could choose music that annoying."
Kathryn snorts and Seven falls silent, the latter's alliance with the engineer indicated only by her refusal to smile when she meets Tom's gaze.
All three women hate surprises. But Tom loves them, spends endless hours planning them. Always drawing in co-conspirators to carry them out. Corrupting innocent men. Like Harry. Chakotay. Mike Ayala. The pilot's sins must be punished, it has been decided.
When Tom sees B'Elanna slip into the seat next to Kathryn, his stomach begins to do poorly choreographed flips. Like a cadet on a flight sim, it spins and then lurches, only to do so over again.
When Seven joins the two, failing after a while to return any part of the toothy grin he sends her, he feels even worse. Eventually wondering if Seven ever got around to reading the volume of Shakespeare's tragedies that he gave her. Tom's always been the fondest of the play Julius Caesar. And watching Seven sitting with Kathryn and B'Elanna, he replays Caesar's last line in his head, feeling a brand new sympathy for the fallen leader.
When the party is finally winding down, Kathryn slides next to Tom, presently standing in a corner and removed from other guests.
"Having fun?" he asks earnestly.
She could torture him some more at this point- perhaps draw out her reply or look like she's deciding on an answer. But the truth of the matter is, she can't remember the last time she had this much fun with the crew and she's grateful he did this. The fact that he's desperate to receive confirmation he succeeded at making her happy-beyond his fear for his own safety- earns him a genuine smile.
"I am," she says, and is rewarded with an ear-to-ear grin from her partner.
"I was worried you. . . wouldn't like this."
"Maybe I wouldn't have, once upon a time," she acknowledges. "But tonight. . . It was lovely to spend this time with everyone."
He smiles again. But then the smile falters and he looks at her searchingly.
"You knew, didn't you?" he accuses.
"No, I didn't."
He pauses, staring at her as she uses all of her command training not to twitch.
"Kathryn."
"Fine," she relents. "I knew."
"How? Who?"
She refuses to respond to him, but despite her silence it only takes a second for recognition to hit him.
"Damn it, Harry."
His disappointed look elicits an affectionate arm rub from Kathryn, who regrets that she can't kiss him here, as she would in private.
They're still cautious about public displays of affection, though they've all but announced their relationship to the crew. Anyone who didn't know already having finally put two and two together several weeks earlier, when the environmental controls malfunctioned and Kathryn charged onto the bridge in Tom's leather jacket.
She'd simply reached for the nearest article of heavy clothing available to her, given that it was in the middle of the night and she was in Tom's quarters. Regretting the unthinking choice once fully conscious on the bridge, with a dozen pairs of eyes watching her.
"I can't believe I didn't think about it," she moaned later, burying her face in her hands as she perched on the edge of Tom's bed.
Tom hadn't looked at her with any sympathy.
"How did you even manage to do this?" he asked, poking his finger through the hole in his jacket pocket and wagging it at her.
"That's what you take away from all of this? That's there a hole in your jacket?"
He'd looked at her with muted frustration. She sighed.
"Can I kiss the jacket and make it better?" she asked smugly.
"No. But I have other things that you can kiss."
The triple entendre made her chuckle, her laughter broken only when Tom kissed her, his tongue running along her teeth.
"It's almost the morning cycle," she warned. Her hands running up his back sending the opposite message.
"We were interrupted earlier," he reminds.
"Is that how you think of ship-wide emergencies now? Interruptions to our sex life?"
His only answer at first was to bite down on her shoulder, sending a pulse of energy down her spine.
"I think of everything outside of this room as an interruption to our sex life," he murmured finally, the tops of their uniforms already discarded.
"Even Harry?" she asked innocently, removing her uniform pants and underwear before straddling his lap.
"Especially Harry," he quipped, guiding her down onto him.
She thought about responding for a brief second, but chose instead to trace his lips with her tongue.
Looking at him now in the holodeck, she gets the same smoldering look she did then in his quarters.
"You can't look at me like that," Tom warns, his slight laughter hiding the fact that his breath hitches in his chest.
"Like what?" she asks innocently.
He only rolls his eyes, and she shrugs, dramatically feigning disappointment.
"I hear Baytart's still on the market," he consoles. "If you need someone to make out with in public."
"I don't think Baytart's quite up to my speed," she smirks.
"Really? What speed is that?"
She's just about to answer him when Tuvok interrupts them.
"I apologize for the intrusion," Tuvok offers, looking at Tom.
"No intrusion," Tom assures. "The Captain and I were just talking flight mechanics."
Tuvok looks between them for a moment, neither one of their appearances betraying anything.
. . . . .
As Tom rubs her shoulders, Kathryn sags deeper into her seat on the floor in front of him.
After sometime even the grunts and moans stop, Tom assuming that she is dangerously close to falling sleep where she sits.
"Come on," he says, standing up from the couch. "Let's go to sleep."
"Sleep?" she asks incredulously, simultaneously failing to stifle a yawn.
"Sleep," he replies firmly, offering her his hand.
They'd both taken her look earlier in the holodeck as foreshadow of post-party activities. But the three hours of social time with the crew, coming at the end of an already long week, has completely taken it out of her.
Even as she almost falls asleep on her feet, she looks at Tom haughtily.
"I remember a time when you couldn't wait to get me into bed," she says, pulling on her nightgown.
"I think you're keenly aware that I still can't wait to get you into bed," he responds, a smirk on his face. "It's just that you're a lot more lively with a few hours of sleep in you."
He gets a pillow tossed at his face, but peace is declared by the time they settle into the mattress.
"I'm sorry I ruined your surprise," she murmurs into his shoulder.
"Don't be," he soothes, running his fingers through her hair. "Besides. . . It just means I'll have to be smarter about hiding what I got you for Prixin."
At this, she snaps wide awake, propping herself up with an elbow.
"You already got my Prixin present? . . . It's months months out still."
The corners of his mouth turn upward, but he doesn't respond or even open his eyes. She settles into the mattress with a huff, knowing that she'll never be able to sleep now.
When he moves against her a few minutes later, she steels herself against him, favoring him with a petulant look.
"What happened to going to sleep?" she scoffs childishly.
"We were. But now you're awake."
Her body doesn't respond when he presses into her suggestively, his lips finding her neck.
"I thought I was more lively when I had sleep in me."
Her bed partner chuckles, a sound that irritates her more than his subtle taunts about her next surprise.
"You're even more lively when you're angry."
His finger teases a nipple before drawing a line to her abdomen, and her breath catches in her chest.
"Tom," she breathes, her head suddenly spinning.
She finds it surprising that after six months they still have this effect on each other. She's even been waiting with silent worry for the day their passion begins to fade.
Undone tonight by just one touch from him, that day is no where in sight.
They're both naked, Tom's mouth trailing slowly down her abdomen, when she remembers their previous conversation.
"Are you going to tell me what it is?" she asks, her eyes shutting when Tom's mouth kisses her navel.
He eventually clues into what she's talking about, his voice amused against her body.
"Nope."
"Do I even get a hint?"
He stops his journey downward, resting his chin on her thigh and looking up, into her face.
"I'm a talented guy, Kath. But even I can't talk and do this. . . What would you prefer?"
"Hmm."
Looking past her breasts into her contemplative expression, Tom realizes with horror that she's genuinely torn.
He fights the momentary impulse to roll off her and settle with a grumble on his side of the bed.
"Make it so," she says finally, closing her eyes again.
Resuming his previous heading, he counts his lover lucky that he cannot presently voice any number of acerbic comments that float to mind.
. . . . .
Kathryn is completely lost in thought when she strides directly into B'Elanna, catching the younger woman's shoulder with some force.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes, grabbing for the PADD B'Elanna dropped. "I wasn't paying any attention."
"I wasn't either," B'Elanna confesses, casting a mournful look at the PADD Janeway hands her back. "I just came from a meeting with the Doctor."
Kathryn looks at her with interest.
"The list of all the fun things I'm no longer allowed to eat or do," B'Elanna remarks darkly, waving the PADD.
Kathryn only laughs.
As far as anyone knows, B'Elanna and Mike are the only couple effected by the breakdown of contraceptive boosters four weeks earlier, the result of unusual radiation being given off by an anomaly Voyager was studying at the time.
"Oops," the Doctors had said, over an open comm line with the bridge.
Some would find it amazing, much later, how long a momentary silence had felt. The longest of which stretching painfully between the conn and the Captain's seat.
"You're not pregnant," Tom had declared with relief, snapping a medical tricorder closed in her quarters.
Dating the ship's medic came with perks. Even if she resisted the very strong urge to call him into her ready room, his tricorder in hand, during their shift.
"Thank god," she breathed. Her relief abruptly dissipating when she took note of his quickly clouding expression. "Tom, I want children. But I can't have them now."
"I understand."
She knew that he didn't want children this in early in their relationship either. But this wasn't what she meant by the statement. However much time she's managed to find for a personal life in the last year, she still can't take on the responsibilities of parenthood while being the Captain of a ship struggling to get back home.
"Tom-"
"Hey," he said, derailing her worry before it could build up steam. "I know. And it's okay."
She hugged him loosely, her cheek resting on his chest.
The Doctor had yet to give that opening lecture on menopause, but Kathryn took the fact that they'd engaged in (frequent) unprotected sex without incident as a sign that the lecture loomed just around the bend. She wondered whether Tom would have misgivings, then, about being with someone older.
"I don't have any regrets," he remarked, seeming to read her thoughts. "Knowing everything I do, I would choose you in an instant."
"But will you still feel that way in five years?" she asked, pulling away from him.
"I think in five years we'll be home," he began sincerely. "In which case we'll have any number of options available to us."
"But what if we're not? I know you want you children, and I-"
"I want you," he interrupted. "What I want is you."
She buried her face in his chest again. Hoping if she pressed far enough into him, she would find some confirmation there that his words were the truth.
"Captain?" B'Elanna asks presently, noting Kathryn's fair away expression as they stand in the corridor.
"I was just thinking," Kathryn says, shaking her head and straightening up. "I'm so happy for the two of you, B'Elanna."
Torres watches the woman in front of her closely, the way she shifts easily into a mask that hides her own emotions and fears. But still, if only for a second, she saw it on Kathryn's face. The doubt. And also the slight envy.
"It's a bit scary," B'Elanna admits, her face softening. "Mike and I want this, but it isn't exactly something we planned."
"It's going to be fine," Kathryn soothes, and B'Elanna mostly believes her.
For all of their differences over the years, Kathryn typically finds a way to disarm B'Elanna's skepticism, as well as her worries.
"If I make you the baby's god-mother, you'll get to babysit."
It could be a cheery statement, but B'Elanna voices it as a taunting threat.
"If you make me babysit, it means Tom will also be babysitting. Do you really want the corruptive force that is Tom Paris around your child?"
B'Elanna feigns concern and then horror.
"You're right. I'll ask Sam to be god-mother," B'Elanna announces jokingly, turning to leave. "It's bad enough Tom's corrupted the ship's Captain. Don't want him getting to the new generation, too."
As the engineer departs, Kathryn shoots her a glare that would have made her nervous, several years earlier.
When Kathryn walks into Sickbay, Tom is no where to be found. Just as she expected.
"Hi," she greets, leaning in the doorway of the Doctor's office.
"Captain," the EMH greets. "To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you today?"
"Just strolling through," she shrugs. "Thought I'd stop and say hello."
The Doctor glances at her briefly over the monitor he scans. Kathryn doesn't 'stroll' anywhere during her shift, even at lunch. And she especially doesn't stroll into Sickbay, unless a certain pilot is present.
"I don't know anything about your Prixin present," the Doctor announces. "But Tom warned me you'd be by to snoop."
"I am not snooping," she shoots back, seeming indignant.
"So you came by just to talk to me?" he asks slowly, and with marked skepticism.
"You are my favorite hologram," she jokes.
"Well, as much as I would like to chat with you, I'm afraid I'm a little absorbed in these labs right now."
"Really? I was hoping you could squeeze me in for a physical."
Now he abandons his work entirely, looking up at her with a quizzical expression.
"Your last physical was three months ago."
"So?"
He arches an eyebrow at her, and she continues to look innocent. Desperately trying to buy herself a few more minutes of conversation with him, even if it means enduring an exam and the ensuing lectures.
"Are you feeling ill?" he asks.
"No."
"Tired?"
"No. . . Well, no more than normal."
"Otherwise odd or out of sorts?"
"No."
"Well than I can save you some time and a few scans by giving you my prognosis now. . . You suffer from a crippling strain of It's-None-Of-Your-Business. My prescription is that you stop snooping." He adds, with a perfunctory sniff, "I'm a doctor, not an informant."
In font of him, Kathryn begins to fume with frustration. The Doctor was one of her last hopes in figuring out her Prixin present, the week-long holiday now only a few days away. This time Tom wisely told Harry nothing, leaving in the dark both Chakotay and Tuvok, too. And there's no way he would have ever told B'Elanna.
It's entirely clear where the half-Klingon's loyalties lie.
Despite her close friendship with the Doctor, she held out hope that Tom would have told him something anyway. For all Tom's desire to keep this secret from her, he still has the same problem with impulse control that he always did. His shifts in Sickbay, with long, boring stretches of lab work, being the perfect conditions for him to make a spontaneous confession to anyone within hearing distance.
"He really hasn't told me anything, Kathryn," the Doctor assures.
He seems sincere, but she still doesn't quite believe him. However prone to gossip the Doctor is, he can keep a secret when it really counts. Unlike Tom.
Although, in fairness to Tom, she muses, the EMH hasn't had to withstand the same level of assault as the pilot when it comes to her inquiring after her Prixin present.
"Is it in your quarters?" she'd asked Tom, only two nights before.
"What?" he managed.
"My present," she replied, slightly breathless, as she rotated her hips slowly on top of him.
"Not telling," he half-moaned, cupping her breasts and watching her body intently.
"You don't have to tell me where it is. I just. . . want to know if it's small enough to fit in your quarters."
She coupled the statement with an acceleration of her movements, Tom's face distorting with pleasure.
"Did they teach you this. . . interrogation technique. . . in. . . command school?" he demanded, his words punctuated by shallow breaths as she moved above him, and his hands sliding to her hips to further quicken her pace.
"No," she breathed, leaning forward slightly and closing her eyes, "I'm proud to say this technique is all my own."
It was the last thing either of them was able to say for several minutes.
"I have no idea where he learned to be so sneaky," she now says haughtily, crossing her arms in front of the EMH.
"I'm pretty sure I have an idea," the Doctor murmurs.
She only grumbles before turning on her heel to exit the office.
Tom strides in just as she's about to leave, favoring her with a huge smile as he sees her.
"Captain," he greets, and she fights the urge to roll her eyes.
"Lieutenant."
"Having a good day?"
"I was. . . Until I ran into you."
If he had any doubt that she came here to nose around, her sour mood eliminates it. He begins to chuckle.
"You should be careful, Mister Paris. An angry Captain is bad for the crew. They may feel the need to seek retribution on whomever caused my poor humor."
"Maybe," he concedes. "But if they come after me with sharp objects and phaser rifles, you'll never find out what your present is."
She rolls the thought around in her head, weighing the joy of seeing Tom tortured against the satisfaction of finally finding out her present.
"Fine," she declares. "But if I'm not impressed by it, I'm throwing you to the waiting mob."
He barks out his laughter and she finally cracks a smile.
"Have Seven and Harry sorted out the last transmission yet?" Tom asks, still smiling.
"Not yet," Kathryn replies, sounding suddenly solemn. "But they should have most of it by the end of today."
Tom takes note of her abrupt shift in tone at the subject and thinks to worry. In the last cycle of communications with the Alpha Quadrant, she finally received word that their would no formal consequences for her having relationship with a subordinate. Still, something Owen Paris had said in a private message to her belied all the reassurance Command's pronouncement brought her.
Only you can know if your relationship with Tom compromises your command, Kathryn.
It's the same thing Tuvok or Chakotay may have said to her. But there was something in Owen's voice and face when he said it that revealed a more profound concern or lingering doubt.
Perhaps, too, a subtle disappointment.
Though Kathryn replayed the message several times, freezing it at the moment Owen uttered that sentence, she never shared its contents with Tom.
He gathered most of what he needed to know from the omission.
"Well, I'm late to meet Seven in Astrometrics," she says, moving to exit Sickbay. "I'll see you tonight at dinner."
"Kathryn," he calls, and she turns around just outside the door.
He looks at her for a second, crossing his arms to indicate gravity while she waits.
"Don't waste your time asking Seven about your present. She doesn't know either."
As the door closes behind her, the last thing Tom hears is her muttered curse.
. . . . .
When the week of Prixin comes, Kathryn spends the first three days of it on the bridge.
The Delta Flyer has been captured while on a routine scouting mission, and Tom, B'Elanna, and Samantha Wildman are being held hostage.
The first two days Kathryn is focused, desperately trying to negotiate with the mercenary species who wants to trade the lives of her crew for technology she can't in good conscience give them.
But on the last hour of the last day, learning that one of the hostages has been shot, she completely freezes. And sitting in her chair on the bridge, she doesn't hear Tuvok giving a tactical report or see Harry's worried expression. Instead, images and sounds of Tom float before her.
Kathryn knows, both from dying once herself and surviving more loved ones than she cares to count, that there's some truth to the old Earth fable about one's life flashing before them as they die. Only instead of it flashing in a moment- like lightning- in front of the person who's dying, it enfolds slowly- across an entire lifetime- for those the departed leaves behind.
A dozen memories of loss fill her mind, from those of the first crewmembers she ever lost as a CO to Joe Carey's lifeless body being transported back to them, three years earlier. But after all of this, her last coherent thought is of another pilot, two decades earlier; the image the wreckage of the small ship that contained him and one other sinking below meters of icy water in only a few seconds.
And now, that thought be laid side by side the image of Tom's shining eyes.
She's just about to voice the option that they consider a technology exchange when Tuvok announces that he's found a method of penetrating the alien vessel's shields. The ensuing events feel like they're going on without her, though she hears the sound of her own voice register dimly in her ears.
Making her way down to Sickbay an hour later, Kathryn arrives just in time to see the three hostages materialize in the center of Sickbay. While Samantha Wildman appears unharmed, B'Elanna has a large gash across her face. The Klingon cradles in her arms Tom's limp, bloody form.
Kathryn feels her legs almost give out below her, and Seven, having arrived just after her, seems to sense it. Grabbing the older woman's arm to steady her as the Doctor moves Tom to the surgical bay.
"What happened?" Seven asks, after B'Elanna's wounds have been treated.
When the engineer begins to speak, she seems shaky, having difficulty uttering the response.
"When they went to take me from the cell, he fought them to protect me. . . He fought to protect me and they shot him."
B'Elanna's voice is desolate. Survivor's guilt is an acquaintance, though once whose association she's tried desperately to distance herself from. Watching the Doctor perform surgery on Tom, the engineer feels her old companion of five years snake once more around her torso. Vaguely certain that if Tom dies, the cold embrace constricting her chest will not leave her, even for a moment.
As Seven looks at B'Elanna hesitantly, Kathryn's eyes remain locked on the scene in the surgical bay.
"He prayed," B'Elanna says suddenly, and more to herself than the other two women.
"What?" Kathryn asks, her gaze not shifting.
B'Elanna looks disoriented, torn between the emotion running through her and the memory that's quickly fading.
"When I held him. . . . After he was shot. He prayed. . . He prayed that he would see you again."
As Doctor continues working feverishly on Tom, Kathryn and B'Elanna remain silently watching. Seven standing stoically beside both of them.
. . . . .
When Tom wakes up the first time in Sickbay, it's Seven rather than Kathryn that's at his side.
"Kathryn?" he asks, squinting his eyes in the light.
"She was here earlier," Seven explains. "But she returned to the bridge."
Tom opens his eyes fully, looking at Sickbay's ceiling through the bright light that accosts him.
"There was nothing," he murmurs after a minute. "I was alive. . . And then there was nothing."
The realization isn't a surprise to him. After all, he's been dead once before. Still, there's the faintest trace of pain in the admission. As if he hoped somehow he would be proven wrong this time.
"You should rest," Seven admonishes. "The Doctor will want to check on you soon."
Tom nods, but doesn't close his eyes. Squinting instead at the illumination above him while he contemplates the light he failed to find.
. . . . .
When Kathryn finds Tom in his quarters his first night out of Sickbay, it's the first time they've spent any length of time together prior to his ill-fated mission. She stopped by Sickbay several times to see him, but never when they were able to be alone.
The first two times he thought it was coincidence. But after that, he began to worry.
His worry has only increased his first day free of Sickbay, Kathryn failing to come and see him either before her shift or during lunch.
"Hey," he says, smiling wildly as she enters his quarters.
"Hey," she echoes, kissing his cheek. "How are you feeling?"
"Mmm. Like I was in the passenger seat of the Studebaker while Seven drove the Indy 500."
She laughs at the joke, but it's a weak one and obviously for show. He laces his fingers through hers and pulls her to him slightly.
When she doesn't really move, remaining where she is, he closes his eyes. Feeling a phantom of pain materialize in his stomach.
"I didn't see you much in Sickbay," he remarks.
Even though the observation hurts him, it isn't so much an accusation. More the beginning of a something he's felt coming since he woke up in Sickbay without her beside him.
"I know," she breathes. "And I'm sorry. I wanted to stay with you, but I couldn't leave the bridge."
It's only half true, Tom suspects. And as patient as he's become over the years, he still isn't the kind of person to wait for the other shoe to drop when it comes to matters of the heart.
"Couldn't come down to Sickbay because of the remaining crisis? Or couldn't come down because you barricaded yourself in your ready room?"
Kathryn freezes, suspecting wrongly that someone from the bridge staff has come by to visit him.
"I know you Kathryn," he says, shaking his head. "I know what you look like when you're making a decision. And I know what you look like when you've already made it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she lies, but this only angers him.
"Don't you dare dodge this," he warns, his voice low. "I think the very least I deserve is the truth."
"Tom, I. . . " Looking at him, her voice falters and her eyes begin to well with tears.
"Kathryn," he pleads. "Talk to me."
"I froze on the bridge," she admits eventually, and in a small voice. "I froze for the first time in nine years. . . If Tuvok hadn't found a way to transport the three of you back to Voyager, I would have begun negotiations to trade technology for your lives."
"We've been together as a crew for a long time," he points out. "By the book answers are going to get more and more difficult to follow through with in situations like this. Even when those answer are right the ones."
The observation about her feelings for her crew is a correct one, but it isn't the center of her concern, and they both know it. She looks at him, her eyes alight with pain and fear as well as another emotion he's rarely seen on her.
It takes him a few moments to recognize it as shame.
"Tom," she whispers, "it wasn't about Samantha or B'Elanna. As horrible as that it is. . . It was about you. Two other crewmembers' lives were in jeopardy and the only thing I thought of was you."
He falls silent, unsure what to say. His foreboding feeling only worsening when he realizes her words, however raw with pain, indicate several cycles of contemplation. She's thought about this for days, he realizes. Has even argued about it for hours with Chakotay, the Commander likely falling into a dejected silence when he couldn't allay her concerns.
"What did my father say to you in the last transmission?" he asks suddenly, and unable to look at her.
She hesitates, startled at how quickly he's able to connect the dots. Even the ones she hasn't drawn for him.
"He told me only I would know if my relationship was undermining my command."
Tom closes his eyes again, silently cursing the father he's only a few years into learning to forgive.
"And you think it is now? Because of one crisis?"
"Not just one crisis," she responds, shaking her head. "My ability to act in a crisis. The safety of my crew and my ship. We've gotten lucky these last nine months. There hasn't been anything prior to this that's directly threatened you above and beyond threats to the ship."
"Lucky?" he asks.
"You don't have the best track record when it comes to returning safely."
"So our relationship is dangerous because I'm too risky in my on-duty behavior?"
"Our relationship is dangerous period. And it would be no matter who you were or what you did."
He looks at her, meeting her gaze in a forlorn way that further fills her eyes with tears.
"How long were you going to wait to end things?" he asks bleakly.
She expected him to fight her tooth and nail on this, not that his protests would have mattered. But she realizes now that he already knows there's no swaying her. That the woman breaking up with him is the Captain not Kathryn, however symbiotic the relationship between the two identities is.
The fact that he understands her commitment to her job enough not to fight it- not to think for even a second that he stands a chance against it- makes her decision that much harder.
The first tear escapes. Then another and another, until she's sobbing uncontrollably.
It was one thing to wait until he was healed, but the reality is she wanted to give herself one more week with him. Bask in the warmth of his joy when she gave him his Prixin present. Lay next to him in bed, trying to memorize the contours of his body while she listened to him breathe in bed next to her.
She will decide later that the only thing more selfish than her reason for wanting to wait is the fact that now, as she ends things, it's her who buries her face in his lap, her tears rapidly collecting in the fabric of his pants. Her who he comforts, whilst she chooses one hundred and fifty other people over their relationship.
"Kathryn," he soothes.
As he runs his hands through her hair and lightly over her back, she cries harder.
"I'm sorry," she says eventually, drying her eyes.
"You don't have to be sorry," he points out, his own panic finally catching up to him.
She ignores the intention of the comment, looking at her lap as she begins to speak shakily about her desire to remain friends. The words not quite finding him, his heart thudding in his ears and his head beginning to spin.
When she finally stands up to leave his quarters, he expects her to pause before she reaches the door. Maybe look back at him, if only for a moment, with eyes filled with all the longing they both feel.
She doesn't. And as soon as the doors close behind her, Tom's own sadness comes crushing down on him.