Chapter 3: In the cold and the dark
When she settles in for the night, it's with her back to the cave wall and Paris beside her. On the other side of the XO is Harry Kim, though the young Ensign is already passed out, sagging heavily against the rock and Tom.
"I won't tell anyone that we cuddled," Paris had assured, trying to convince the Ensign to scoot closer to him.
"Fine. But know that I'm not too tired to put up a fight if you make a move on me."
In any other circumstance, the exchange would have made their Captain smile. But she'd only closed her eyes. Trying for a moment to block out the dim silhouettes of her tired and hungry crew.
"Still cold?"" Tom asks now, seeing her body shiver slightly.
"I'm fine," she dismisses.
He scoots perceptibly closer to her, turning his head to look at her as he leans against the rock.
"Not setting a very good example for the crew," he sighs.
She casts her eyes around the dark space. Some people are milling about, but most are trying to rest. Even those in the latter group seem to have trouble heeding her advice about conserving body heat; her gaze resting on a line of three crewmen sitting in a row, each a respectable distance from the next.
"You're right," she concedes.
There's a low rustling sound of clock on rock when she moves closer to him. She doesn't flinch when his arm comes around her shoulder, pulling her flush against his side.
"Hope Harry will forgive me," he murmurs.
"For what?"
"Cheating on him with you."
The joke doesn't produce any sign of amusement, but she does allow her head to rest against his body. Given how exhausted they all are, Tom considers this a victory.
It's sometime later that she realizes that Tom isn't sleeping, despite that he's completely still.
"Can't sleep?"
Her voice surprises him. He glances quickly at Kim's limp form before letting out a long breath.
"Not the most comfortable mattress I've ever had," he points out.
He's right, her aching back and tense neck remind her. But she knows this isn't the reason he can't sleep. As many nights as she's caught him milling about the corridors of the ship or working in the mess hall, she's spent enough time with him to understand that rest only eludes him when he's worried or upset. Physically speaking, he can asleep anywhere or anytime.
"Comfortable?" she'd once asked, coming into his office to find him half-asleep on his desk.
She grinned from ear to ear at his embarrassment, Tom snapping straight up in his chair.
"Neelix's proposal for the Prixin party might not have been the best thing to read after lunch," he'd replied, sheepish and blinking.
"Just try to look more lively during the actual party, will you?"
Slouched against him now, on the planet on which they've been marooned, the memory of their banter fails to stir any joy within her. It's just another reminder of the vessel, the home, that's been ripped from them.
She can only hope that B'Elanna and Pablo Baytart are still out there, on a shuttle somewhere. A faint trace of relief; even two members of her crew having escaped this fate.
"Are you thinking about Ensign Hogan?"
Her voice is just above a whisper even though everyone around them is asleep. He doesn't respond immediately, his hesitation in itself a confirmation. After a moment, he feels her head rest a little heavier against his body.
"Chris hated me when I was in the Maquis," he confides eventually, and adopting the same hushed volume. "I'm pretty sure even after Chakotay died, he would have rather punched me than given me the time of day."
When he pauses, he doesn't reflect on the fact that it has become old habit to refer to Chakotay's passing but not Tuvok's. One of the few taboos between them being any mention of her friend of many years, whom they'd been forced to kill.
When he continues, his voice is even softer.
"But while we were orbiting that planet. . . he found me one night in the mess hall. It was late and I hadn't eaten. I'm sure the look I gave him told him I didn't want any company either. . . But he sat across from me anyway. Offered to share his sandwich. Told me about his day in engineering. . . I didn't realize it at the time, but I think it made me feel less alone, with you away from the ship."
She remains silent, resisting the urge to bury her face in his jacket. Fighting, too, against the tears in her eyes that the wistfulness in his voice produces.
"He's the last one," he says, now slightly louder and sounding resolved.
"That last one of what?" she whispers.
"The last one we lose."
No one else sees the tear that escapes the Captain's eyelashes, running down her cheek, into her XO's uniform. Nor do they see the way her hand threads through his, his long fingers gripping hers tightly.
"The last one," she echoes.
When they rise in the morning, they both move with new determination.
. . . . .
"Tell that to Jenny," Tom teases, forking another bite of his food.
"I did! Two years ago, remember?"
Tom laughs at Harry's sputtered response to his barb, but abruptly falls quiet when B'Elanna walks into the mess hall. The engineer giving the First Officer a moody glance before she looks away.
Harry notices the silent exchange but doesn't say anything. Even though the rumors of what happened in the Sakari caves have circulated throughout all fifteen decks of the ship, the Ops officer knows the boundaries of his friendship with the man across from him.
Personal information is a one-way corridor, and any attempt to travel the opposite direction will be rebuffed, however artfully, by Paris.
"I should go," Harry announces suddenly, looking at a chrono and standing up.
"If you're late for your shift I'm not writing you a note."
"As if the Captain would accept it," Kim snorts.
"What wouldn't the Captain accept?" Janeway asks, walking up to the table and sliding into the seat Harry has just vacated.
Tom smiles slightly while Harry stands sputtering.
"Just go, Ensign," she laughs. Mercifully ending his awkward groping.
"Good morning," Tom greets, when Harry's retreated. "You seem chipper today."
"I am entirely caught up on reports," she beams. "And this is my second cup of coffee."
"How nice for you," he comments. Abruptly suspicious of her good cheer.
She smiles at him a moment too long. And he sips his juice, waiting for the inevitable dropping of the shoe.
"Have you talked to B'Elanna?" she asks casually.
"Kathryn," he breathes, rolling his eyes.
"I'm not asking as Kathryn. I'm asking as your Captain. I need to know that things are going to be alright between my First Officer and my Chief Engineer. . . I need know that despite that you feel awkward and she's angry, we're going to get through this as a staff."
He pushes away his breakfast, leaning back in his chair.
"Are you really worried about the professional dimension of this?" he demands.
She doesn't really consider lying to him. Even if she did, he wouldn't believe her.
"No," she admits. "I'm worried about you."
"I'm fine."
"I'm also worried about B'Elanna."
"She's fine, too!" he declares, his voice rising.
When crewmembers begin to look a them, they briefly fall silent. Janeway looking at him searchingly and Paris looking everywhere but her eyes.
"Neither of you are fine," she says eventually. "And neither of you are going to be fine until you talk about this."
His indifferent façade cracks. He meets her gaze with eyes that betray with all the confusion and frustration he feels.
"What's there to say, Kathryn? You read my report. . . There are things that I don't think I can really address with her."
"Why not?" she presses.
"Because. . . I don't share her feelings."
She hides any trace of skepticism concerning his statement, recognizing the fine line she's treading even as his friend.
She'd worried months earlier that his avoidance of B'Elanna was because of his title, his personal life suffering under the weight of his responsibilities. The stolen looks between her two officers then shifting into a cold silence after the Blood Fever incident, the Klingon now looking at Tom with hurt and anger rather than masked longing. That is, when B'Elanna bothers to meet Tom's gaze at all these days.
But now, Kathryn's begun to think that Tom's running from the engineer only because he's scared of a romantic relationship. Or else, because he thinks he'll be unable to juggle both his job and a lover. Either way, she sympathizes.
"We might be out here a long time," she warns.
The irony of her, of all people, voicing this sentiment isn't lost on him. He looks at her evenly until she averts her eyes.
"Do you take a personal interest in all your officers' love lives?" he asks, crossing his arms.
"Only the ones I share god-parenting responsibilities," she smirks.
He gives her a put off look, wishing she hadn't brought up Q. Or his offspring.
"Let's just hope he doesn't ask us to babysit," Tom quips.
"I'm not sure why you're the one getting angry. It was you who gave him aid and comfort in his attempts to mate with me."
"Aid and comfort?" he exclaims, and to her amusement. "He wanted to know how to break through your 'icy exterior'."
"And you responded!"
"I told him you liked people who respected boundaries," he corrects. "Which you should appreciate. Since he'd planned to seduce you with a heart-shaped bed."
"Still," she huffs, "you encouraged him."
"No. . . But I should have."
She cocks an eyebrow at him, the sternness of her mouth justaposing with the mirth in her eyes.
"I would have been nice to have an omnipotent friend," he elaborates. "I could have pizza whenever I wanted it. Even grab it in Italy, at the drop of a hat."
"You'd sell me out for a piece of pizza?"
"In a nanosecond," he nods. "If it was really good pepperoni."
Her expression turns from feigned anger to mock pity.
"Poor Lieutenant Commander Paris. You wanted an unlimited supply of Italian food and instead got an omnipotent god-child."
He doesn't roll his eyes at the use of his rank change. After almost a year, he's gotten used to it. And her subtle taunts concerning it.
"If there are ever any diapers involved, I'm leaving it up to Aunty Kathy."
When she cringes at the nickname, he smiles to himself. Thinking the distraction might have gotten him off the hook from their previous conversation.
"So you're not going to talk to her at all about this?" she asks, after they've sat for a few beats in comfortable silence.
He inwardly groans. Strangely longing for the days when they fumbled around each other professionally and engaged in (mostly) polite small talk.
"Why does this matter to you so much?" he asks exasperatedly.
"Because you're my friend." When he doesn't respond, she smiles at him, reaching for his hand over the table. "My best friend."
It's the same sentiment he expressed to her a month earlier, after her near death experience.
She'd been surprised then, when he hugged her in her ready room; the intimate title he assigned her, confessing how scared he'd been - kneeling over limp body and trying to revive her.
It's also the same sentiment he'll shout at her in anger, a year and a half later, when she locks herself away as they pass through a starless void. Their raised voices echoing out from her quarters far louder than they've ever they rang out on Deck One.
"Remind me to pick someone less annoying for my next best friend," he remarks presently, standing up from the table.
She merely glares at him as she follows him out of the mess hall, but he knows better than to think she's dropped the subject. Kathryn Janeway doesn't withdraw. She just rethinks her strategy.
. . . . .
"I'm not comfortable with this," he says, adamantly shaking his head in her ready room.
"It's the only way, Tom."
"It's making a pact with the devil!"
"Exactly," she says, and Paris looks at her in appall. Surprised and horrified at both what she's suggesting and how calm she is while she does it.
"It's their nature to murder- to destroy everything they touch. The fact that there's something out there that might be worse than them doesn't change it. They're still the Borg. They can't be trusted, Kathryn."
She looks at him searchingly, hoping there's some chance she can convince him.
Hoping, beneath that, that swaying him will mean she can convince herself.
"Are your concerns only prudential?" she asks, sitting down on the couch.
"No," he replies, shaking his head. "They're moral, too. Helping the Borg will mean unduly shifting the balance of power in the quadrant- giving them a new method of assimilation and destruction. It's untenable."
"More untenable than the destruction that Species 8472 will bring?" she scoffs.
"I'm not quoting the Prime Directive at you," he notes. "I'm not saying we should stick our heads in the sand or retreat. Pretend the problem doesn't concern us. But there's a difference between shifting the balance of power for the sake of preserving something of value and doing so out of self-interest."
The accusation strikes her with more force than he intended. Her eyes flash with pain. And then with anger.
"Is that what you think I'm doing? Making a decision without regard for anything beyond the hull of this ship?"
"Not consciously," he corrects. "But going through with this means putting our interests in front of countless star systems. All the pain and suffering it could cause outweighing- possibly many times outweighing- the sacrifice we made when we destroyed the Caretaker's array."
She turns away from him in anger. Her rage and hurt bubbling up and over her restraint before she spins back around.
"Tell that to all the planets Species 8472 will slaughter!" she shouts, gesturing widely with her arms. "Tell that to Harry Kim!"
His cheeks immediately flush, his jaw clenching after his mouth opens and closes.
After a moment of starting at her, he stands rigidly at attention. His face the same cynical mask he wore when she met him in Auckland, and his blue eyes icy.
"I should return to the bridge, Captain. If there's nothing else?"
She regrets her words even before his cool formality. She knows, better than anyone, that the ailing Ensign she's cruelly used against him is like a younger brother to him.
She nods slightly, looking away from him, and he exits the room in silence.
. . . . .
She isn't surprised to find Tom in Sickbay after their shift, but he makes it that much harder for her to go to him. When sees him at Harry's bedside, his pain and worry unconcealed, she stops in her tracks, just a few meters from where Tom sits.
They were lucky not to lose the Ensign after he was attacked by their newest foe on the abandoned Borg ship. Janeway, as she so often has, finds herself pushing through the guilt that one of her command decisions has put one of her officers in jeopardy.
"The nanoprobes are working faster," he tells her bleakly, his eyes remaining on Kim's prone form. "The Doctor made another adjustment; sped up the rate of eradicating the alien DNA."
Janeway looks relieved, nodding to Kes with a smile as the young woman departs Kim's monitors. Unlike their EMH, the Ocampan can read social situations fluently.
"I'm sorry about earlier," Kathryn begins cautiously. "What I said was. . . uncalled for."
"You were upset."
His words are an observation rather than excuse or an apology. She collects her thoughts as she looks at Harry's ravaged face.
"I was hurt that you think I'm willing to put our agenda before anything else." She adds, casting a glance at him, "I guess I'm still hurt by it."
Tom lets out a low breath, tearing his eyes away from his friend's vital signs.
When he finds her gaze, she's startled by how much older he looks under the bright lights of the room. The stress of his position has aged him prematurely, and she knows he isn't the only one that rank has done a number on.
"I don't think you're doing it consciously," he explains. "Or that you're giving up on all our principles, after three years of fighting for them. Suffering for them. It's just that I know it's . . . easier than you think to convince yourself that you're doing something for one reason, when it's for another entirely. . . Tempting to take the low road and then say it's the only one available." He pauses, looking suddenly rueful when he concludes, "take it from someone who knows."
"You really think this is the low road?" she asks, her voice hushed.
He looks back at Harry's bed briefly, his posture one of defeat when he answers.
"I honestly don't know anymore."
They fall into an uncomfortable silence, though the discomfort lay solely in the future's prospects. They share the same worries, roughly the same burdens, and by now they each know they aren't alone. However lonely they sometimes feel.
"I miss Tuvok," Kathryn breathes.
"I know you do."
"Oh, Tom. I didn't mean-"
"It's okay," he cuts her off. "You don't need to apologize for missing him. . . You never needed to apologize for missing him."
He places his hand on her arm and she closes her eyes. Allowing herself to succumb to the dull ache for the friend and officer who's been dead more than two years.
"He always helped me put things in perspective," she admits, shaking her head slightly. "Even when there were times I didn't want to hear what he had to say."
He waits while she works through her thoughts, becoming curious when a smile tugs at her lips.
"Did you ever hear how I met Tuvok?" she asks.
"He served with you before this, right?"
"He did," she confirms, "but that's not how I met him. We weren't exactly friends the first few years I knew him."
This piques his curiosity. She's heard her refer to her friendship with Tuvok as having spanned well over a decade, but he didn't realize there was period before that when they weren't friendly.
"He once dressed me down in front of three Admirals," she confides.
"For what?" he demands, taken aback.
"Failing to adhere to protocol," she answers, mimicking Tuvok's monotone voice.
"Of course," Tom laughs, shaking his head.
"Well . . . It took a few years for my ego to recover. Especially as he was right."
"He had a bad habit of doing that," he observes. "Being right, I mean."
"He also had a habit of forcing me to see things that I didn't want to. Making me reconsider my decisions." She looks at him, covering his hand on her arm with her own fingers. "You remind me of him a great deal sometimes."
"Of Tuvok?" he puzzles. "I'm not sure how. . . I suppose you've noticed that my tendencies kind of run the opposite way of a Vulcan's."
"They do," she agrees. "But you have the same habit of making me rethink my positions. Challenge my presuppositions in ways I don't expect."
"You know that I support you," he says, suddenly concerned.
"Oh, Tom, I know. That's the reason it means so much to me. I know you're behind me, one hundred percent. But you still debate with me - refuse to back down in private. . . It's rewarding."
"Except, of course, when it isn't," he sighs.
"I really am sorry about earlier," she repeats.
"So am I," he says, shifting his body so their shoulders and legs are flush.
"What you said earlier. . . And then a minute ago. . . It resonated. I'm not sure what to do anymore."
He stands up, needing to stretch his legs. When he leans against Harry's bio bed, he looks at her over the screen that flashes with Kim's changing pulse and blood pressure.
"If Tuvok were here, what would he tell you?"
"He'd tell me to take my emotions out of the equation."
"Which you can't do," he immediately retorts.
"So what then?"
"You can take us out of the equation," he says, and she looks confused. "You can abstract away our vested concerns."
"How can I do that," she presses, "when as you've just reminded me, it's impossible to objective about the situation at hand?"
She's right, he knows. The twin processes of self-deception and rationalization being as dark and nebulous as they are manifold. He glances around the room, noting Kes' distance from them and the Doctor's preoccupation with the monitor in his office.
"Let's assume- just assume," he begins slowly, "that this is a no win scenario for us. Not only can be not get around the Northwest Passage successfully, but whatever we do, the ship will be destroyed."
She nods, looking vaguely uneasy at his hypothetical, and he presses forward, groping to finish his thought.
"If what happens to us is the same either way - if there's nothing we could possibly gain. . . would you ally with the Borg anyway? Or would you stay out of it, let fate decide the victor?"
While she falls silent, considering his question, he diverts his eyes to Harry's freshly healed hand. The repaired tissue flush with heat and throbbing life as a result of the nanoprobes.