A/N: Thank you, as always, to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

Chapter Eleven

"You know what they say. It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

"Try it."

– Agent Jay and Agent Kay, Men in Black.

Mark left for Europe a few days after their friends and family had received an official 'Save the Date' email. They had set the wedding for the end of September. Phoebe was not impressed.

"It's only three months away," Kathryn's sister pointed out, when they next met up for coffee. "Seriously, how long have you two been engaged? What's the sudden rush? Don't tell me you're pregnant?"

"No, I am not pregnant, and it's not a rush," Kathryn told her, feeling yet another fight in the air and keen to avoid it. "We just decided that leaving it another year was ridiculous."

"We?" asked Phoebe. "Are you sure that shouldn't be 'he'? As far as I can make out, you've never been in much of a hurry to actually seal the deal."

"I've just been busy, that's all."

"Okay," said Phoebe, dryly. "And right now you've got all the time in the world, which is why you've decided to give yourself just three months to organise a wedding."

"Do we have to do this every time the subject of Mark and me comes up?" Kathryn asked, exasperated. "I know that for some reason, he doesn't fit whatever ridiculous ideal you have in your head for the kind of man I should be with. But he's a good man, and he's the man I've chosen to spend the rest of my life with. That should be enough for you to at least try to like him. Sooner or later you're just going to have to accept that I love him, Phoebe."

"I've never said you don't love Mark," Phoebe told her, softly. "I just don't think it's the right type of love, Kathryn. And that might be worse than not loving him at all."

"All right," Kathryn said. "Either we change the subject, or I leave, because I am not having this conversation again. Which is it going to be?"

Phoebe shook her head. "Fine. Here's a new subject for you: What are you going to wear to Owen's benefit gala? Aren't you giving the pre-dinner address?"

"I haven't even really thought about it," Kathryn said. "I'll probably just wear my blue Armani."

"What, again?"

"What's wrong with it?"

Phoebe shrugged. "Nothing, it's beautiful. You look gorgeous in it. I just thought you might fancy a change."

"I'm not made of money, Phoebe. And I've got a wedding to pay for."

Her sister raised her eyebrows. "I've got a great idea. Blow the wedding stash on a new dress. Much better use of funds. Something vintage, maybe. I've always thought you'd look amazing in Versace. That auburn hair is very Titian."

Kathryn gritted her teeth. "I thought we'd agreed to change the subject."

Phoebe held up her hands. "I did! You're the one that mentioned the wedding again, not me."

Kathryn couldn't find a way to argue with that.

Later, as they parted ways outside the café door, Phoebe hugged her tightly. "I just want you to feel alive again," she said. "And I do get it. I do. Mark's safe. What he offers you is safe, and after everything you've been through I understand how attractive that must be-"

"Phoebe. Don't-"

"But I want you to be with someone who makes all your nerve endings tingle at once. Someone who makes your heart hiccup and your knees weak. With the best will in the world, however good a man he is, you can't tell me that's ever been Mark."

Kathryn pulled away. "What I have with Mark is quieter, that's all. Love doesn't always come accompanied by fireworks. It's naïve and foolish to think it does. You read too many teen romances growing up."

"No, I didn't," Phoebe told her. "I had an older sister who fell for the perfect man who cared about the same things as she did. I saw how in love they were and it was more beautiful than any stupid teen romance I could have read at that age. It made me want that and I kept looking until I found it. I just want you to have that again, Kathryn. You have such a capacity to love. I don't want your heart to stay locked away for the rest of your life just because you're afraid of being hurt like that again."

Kathryn stared at her sister, hard. "'Just because'?"

Phoebe shook her head. "That didn't sound right. I just meant-"

"I know what you meant, Phoebe," said Kathryn. "And you don't know a damn thing about it."

A few days later, Kathryn and Tom spent a hot, tiring Sunday tilling the soil. She'd thought about asking Chakotay to help – if not personally, then to find a couple of willing or at least semi-willing volunteers from his squad – but decided against it. As if her own edict to herself in the wake of her altercation with B'Elanna hadn't been enough, her latest argument with Phoebe had given her extra pause. She couldn't pretend that the last time her heart had 'hiccupped' had been through anything her fiancé had done. So she'd kept her distance, trying to make sure she wasn't in the office when Chakotay was in the gym. When they did end up overlapping, she'd kept their interactions as brief as possible. Chakotay didn't seem to have noticed, which was a relief. His indifference reassured her that she'd managed to hide her involuntary attraction and also that B'Elanna's bitter parting words held no truth in reality.

Besides, as she told Tom, hard work never hurt anybody. He grumbled and groaned to begin with as she showed him how to use the machinery, although from his subsequent efforts this seemed to be mostly for show. Now, Kathryn watched him on the opposite side of the site as they slowly worked towards each other, and found herself impressed with how Tom had thrown himself into the task. In fact, Tom had seemed more invested in the project as a whole since the day she'd left him in charge of the topsoil deliveries, which made her think that what he needed to bring out his potential wasn't more management, but more responsibility. She made a note to point this out to Owen the next time she had the opportunity.

As they worked, the square took on the look of a ploughed field, dark and fertile. After today it would be ready for planting. The question was, how and with what? She still hadn't finalised her designs, primarily because she hadn't wanted the garden to be solely to her design in the first place. Kathryn had kept hoping that regular work on the site would bring in more spectators of the sort that had surrounded the still-standing fence when they'd torn up the concrete, but even that interest had dwindled. She couldn't believe the lack of interest was simply indifference. It made her wonder what other bullying tactics the local gang had used to keep the residents in check.

That train of thought led her back to B'Elanna Torres, which in turn flooded her with a wash of guilt and anxiety that had become a familiar part of her thoughts ever since that night. The girl's predicament and what could be done about it had become a preoccupation so great that several times even Mark had noticed during their transatlantic Skype video calls. Kathryn always told him that she was fine and simply preoccupied with wedding plans.

This, though easily believable, was an outright lie, which in itself was another source of guilt, compounded by the fact that every time she did actually try to begin thinking about their wedding day, something in her put up a wall. It was the scale of the thing that she was shying away from. She'd have been quite happy with a quick and quiet civil ceremony followed by a wedding breakfast for family only, but Mark had other intentions.

"We'll only do this once, Kath," he'd said. "It doesn't have to be too fancy, but let's make it a party that all our friends can come to, at least."

He looked so genuinely happy every time the wedding was mentioned that she couldn't voice her fears that their ideas of what was 'too fancy' were distinctly different.

Once the wedding was out of the way, she kept telling herself, once they were married, everything would be fine. Nothing would be that different really, would it? They'd be the same couple they had been for years. It was just one day and there really was no reason why it shouldn't be as big as Mark wanted.

So why couldn't she just knuckle down and organise it?

"Please tell me we've finished," begged Tom's breathless voice, beside her. She turned to find him red-faced and sweaty, leaning over the handle of his stilled tiller.

Kathryn smiled, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair and surveying the site. "We've finished. Good work, Tom. Doesn't it look great?"

He scanned the bare earth and shrugged a little, back in the realms of teenage contrariness. "Whatever floats your boat, I guess." The minute the words were out of his mouth, a look of horror flashed across Tom's face. He stood bolt upright. "Oh God. I'm sorry. That just came out."

She smiled slightly, aware that it was probably a little lopsided as the pulse of guilt briefly flared into something else – something hotter and heavier and even more painful. "It's all right."

"I just didn't-"

"Tom," she said, softly. "Really. It's all right. Come on, we're done here. Help me get these rotavators inside, and we'll get ourselves a cold drink."

They returned to her office and Kathryn broke out two cans of Coke from the small refrigerator she'd added to the room a couple of days before. She went to stand in front of one of her design boards as they drank in silence for a few moments.

"Kathryn," Tom began, hesitantly.

She turned, steeling herself. "Yes?"

He took a deep breath. "Can I show you something? It's something B'Elanna's been working on. I think it's brilliant, and I've told her that she should show you herself, but she won't. For some reason she thinks you'll just tell her to sling it, but I know you won't, especially not once you've seen it. And you'll know what to do with it next. So will you take a look?"

Kathryn blinked as his quick words flew towards her, both surprised and relieved that the conversation had taken a distinctly different turn to the one she had been expecting.

"B'Elanna?" she asked.

Tom nodded. "B'Elanna Torres. You know." He grimaced. "She's the girl I yelled at when-"

"Yes," Kathryn said, with a frown. "Yes, I know B'Elanna. Tom. You know Coach Chakotay told you to stay away from her."

"We've just been talking, that's all," Tom said, defensively. "That's not against the law, is it?"

"No, but Tom-"

"Please, just look at what she's been working on," he pleaded.

"All right," Kathryn said. "Show me."

Tom went to his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a few sheets of paper, which he spread out as Kathryn moved to his side.

"What on earth is it?" Kathryn asked, looking at the pencilled outlines and scrawled notes.

"That day that the topsoil was delivered, we got talking," Tom explained. "She was saying that the garden would never survive because there isn't enough water. Then she came up with this amazing idea, that there's a lot of water lost in waste food."

Kathryn looked up from deciphering a note about varying filtration.

"We were just standing there, talking, and she comes out with this thought that there must be a way of reclaiming it, instead of dumping it all in landfill," Tom went on. "So I told her that I bet she could work out how. I didn't really expect her to do it. But she has, or at least she's begun to. Look!"

For a fraction of a second, Kathryn was torn between looking back down at the schematics and studying Tom's earnest face as he looked at B'Elanna's work. His eyes were lit with something that she recognised. It was a recognition that twisted her heart painfully enough to bring a shock of tears to her eyes. Because just then it occurred to Kathryn that Tom was probably the same age that Justin had been when they had first met, and she remembered being on the receiving end of looks like that many times. It had always made her nerve endings tingle and her heart skip a beat, and-

Kathryn swallowed and blinked, turning back to the papers before them. It took her a moment to speak, which told her that Phoebe's lectures, coupled with Tom's unintentionally insensitive verbal slip out there on the site, had wounded her more than she'd realised. She pushed it all away, forcing herself to concentrate, cursing Phoebe for making her think of things she had set aside years before.

"B'Elanna came up with this?"

"Yes!"

Kathryn turned the plans around. They were surprisingly detailed. "How does she know about these chemical reactions? And these filters – are these her own designs?"

"Yeah. And she's good at chemistry. Seems to me she's good at everything. And she said she'd been researching stuff in the school library, trying to see how it could work. She says she can't get any further. But I don't want her to give up, Kathryn. I don't know anything about this stuff, but there's got to be a way to make it work, right? She can't give up. Look at what she can do. It's not right that a loser like me can get into college when she's not even sure she'll graduate High School."

Kathryn looked up. "You're not a loser, Tom. Don't think that way."

He shrugged. "Fine. Whatever. Just please tell me you know someone who can do something about this."

"Leave it with me. OK?" Kathryn smiled. "I'll do my best."

The grin that split Tom's face was complete and joyful. "I knew you would! Thank you."

"Now I think you should go home, have a shower, and take the rest of the day off. You've earned it."

"Thanks. I will," he said, gathering up the schematics and putting them back in his desk. "Are you staying?"

"Not for long," she said, returning to her own desk, dropping her empty Coke in the trashcan as she went. "I've just got a few loose ends to tie up, then I think I'll head off, too."

Once Tom had left, Kathryn sat at her desk for a long time, simply absorbing the quiet of the building and sorting out her thoughts. Then she checked over the rotavators and called the hire company to let them know they could be collected the following day.

She could have left after that. But instead, Kathryn went to Tom's desk and retrieved B'Elanna's designs, taking them back to her own workstation. Sitting down again, she studied the schematics, thinking.

[TBC]