Chapter 5: Between hope and fear
It's well past 23:00, but she doesn't really consider the possibility that the she'll be waking him. He's almost always up this late; doing work, reading reports- worrying about the decisions he's made or the ones that still await. Neelix has even begun to joke that he's not sure which of them is more bound to their work, the Captain or her First Officer.
As Janeway walks, she swallows a sigh at this. The thought raises another worry- another chain of regrets- she can't bring herself to think about presently.
Chiming at Tom's door, she hears his voice and moves forward. When the doors part, she's surprised to see Mike Ayala sitting in a chair, his shoulders hunched and his back to her. Though the security office isn't making any noise, it's obvious from the shaking of his body that he's crying.
As if the sight of Ayala's shattered stoicism wasn't enough to surprise her, added to it is the sight of Paris kneeling in front of the older man; consoling him in a manner that bids forward a vague memory of her father crouching beside her when she was eight and badly scraped her leg.
After a moment, Tom sees her over Mike's shoulder, making brief eye contact with her as she withdraws at her inadvertent intrusion.
On the way back to her own quarters, she tries not to contemplate the feeling of despair she saw in his blue eyes before she ducked her head and silently backed out of his door.
. . . . .
"I'm sorry I was busy earlier," Tom says, nonchalantly, when he appears at her door an hour later.
She's surprised he came, but realizes she shouldn't be. It's her habit to sometimes stop by his quarters unannounced, but rarely does she appear at such a late hour and, undoubtedly, looking a little worse for ware.
And though normally she'd appreciate his tact in skirting around the exchange she witnessed earlier, tonight she doesn't.
"He's missing his children?" she asks, knowing the question is general enough that Tom won't be able to beg off of it in the name of protecting Mike's privacy.
He nods slightly, sitting down slowly on her couch.
It's then that she notices how tired he looks, the tell-tale signs of exhaustion painted across his features. After almost four years in the second chair, he still doesn't hide fatigue as well as she does. But then, the decades he's had to practice the art of concealment haven't been spent trying to hide the same things as her.
"Rough week," she sighs, sitting down next to him.
He doesn't comment on this, pulling his legs up under him and regarding her coffee table, where the Joyce volume he gave her two and a half years earlier lays open. He fixes his eyes on the text as they plunge into silence.
"Why didn't you trust Arturis?" he asks eventually, and still studying the same two lines of the short story "The Dead."
She shrugs, debating her answer as she begins to study the dog-eared page he's been regarding for the last few minutes.
There were tells, of course. Things about their 'friend' and apparent way home that raised flags for her earlier than they did for anyone else. But she doesn't voice this, because she fears it doesn't quite capture all of the truth.
In the last few days, part of her has begun to think that she didn't trust Arturis because she's no longer capable of believing in happy endings. Despite the hope and confidence she tries to embody for her crew.
"Some things are just too good to be true," she breathes.
He nods, but his face becomes more contemplative . She now stares at him, waiting for him to gather his thoughts.
"I'm hardly naïve," he begins, his tone measured, "but I think I might have been as taken in as Harry and the others."
She pauses for a moment, considering the obvious optimism her XO showed only a week earlier; his apparent relief that there was an end in sight for the crew. For himself.
"There's nothing wrong with hoping," she says, trying to match his measured tone. "Hope is what keeps us going."
He looks over at her now, his face softening and the faintest trace of a smile appearing on his mouth.
"Hope isn't the only thing," he says, taking her hand. And as his fingers slip through hers, she closes her eyes and lets out a long, deep breath.
As much as she appreciates Tom's honesty, the fact that he doesn't pull punches when they discuss things professionally, it's sometimes these quiet moments with him that keep her sane after a long week.
Yet as much as his companionship presently brings her a familiar solace, it also carries with it a certain degree of heaviness. The memory of his now flamed-out optimism hailing the same channel of worry that echoed faintly in her head as she walked to his quarters earlier.
Opening her eyes, she pushes the thought away once more.
"I'm not sure how many more speeches I have in me for Seven," she says warily.
He chuckles at the statement; a low sound that conveys amusement at her confessing it rather than at the situation.
"Just start making them up," he says, flippantly. "It's what I do when I have to lecture some crewmember."
"You don't make those lectures up," she scoffs.
"Sometimes I have to," he defends breezily, slumping a little on the couch. "Like when someone's breaking a regulation that's always seemed ad hoc to me. 'Just don't do that' only gets ya so far."
She smiles, regarding him with an innocent expression.
"So what you're telling me is that you've been bluffing your way through all of this?"
"I'm pretty sure you knew that," he jokes. "And besides, are you really implying that Kathryn Janeway never has to wing it?"
She pauses for dramatic effect, sipping the coffee she replicated when he first walked in.
"Never."
To her credit, she's able to maintain the deadpan delivery, her XO laughing for both of them as she continues to drink her rapidly cooling beverage.
"You know you don't always have to be the one to shepherd Seven," he points out, his mirth subsiding as he picks up the previous thread of conversation. "There are over a hundred and forty people on board who've also struggled with the diverse pains of humanity. It isn't as if she can't turn to the rest of us. Or else that it can't sometimes be me who reins her in, rather than you doing it every time."
It's an obvious statement of facts, but it's clear from his tone that he thinks she's overlooking something, plain or not.
"I know that," she retorts quickly. "It's just that I have a unique relationship with her. I feel. . ."
"Responsible for her?"
"Yes."
"You're responsible for everyone," he points out again. "But so am I. What makes Seven any different than Harry, or Jenny Delaney, or Naomi Wildman?"
"Because, Tom, I'm responsible for Seven in a different way than anyone else on board."
"What way is that?"
She lets out a sharp, frustrated breath and regards him with impatient eyes. He looks back at her with an undaunted expression and a gaze that doesn't waver.
If she's honest with herself, she will admit that it sometimes annoys her that he's no longer the insecure young officer who was terrified of becoming her XO, easily bull-dozed with a look or a few words. He's now spent months, years, dealing with crew members and going toe-to-toe with department heads. He has had to stare down hostile aliens as acting CO, and pretend that their ship was capable of overcoming overwhelming odds in battle. And in all of this, he's learned two key things.
The first is the depth of patience. And the second is the ability to hide his own fear from anyone, including his current companion.
As they sit looking at one another in steely silence, she can't decide whether it's the first or the second of these that irritates her more.
"She didn't choose to be an individual," she continues, her voice even lower than normal. "I chose that for her. And now I need to see her through this process."
"I seem to recall it being more than just you in the room when we made that decision," he presses. "You still haven't answered why it has to be you and only you who helps her in this."
"Why are you pushing me on this?" she asks abruptly, and crossing her arms.
"Because I'm worried."
"About what?"
"You."
"Me?" she puzzles. "Tom, I'm fine."
"Fine?" he questions, his eyebrows raising slightly. "Kathryn, two days ago we were almost killed by someone whose entire family- whose entire civilization- was destroyed by the Borg after we helped them. And you have haven't said a single a word acknowledging it."
She opens her mouth, but before she can voice a retort he's barreling on.
"I'm not talking about out there," he gestures, pointing toward the corridor. "I'm talking about in here. In private. You haven't said a word. You've just. . . sunk yourself further into work. And reclaiming Seven's individuality."
"I don't what this has to do with Seven of Nine," she says, dodging the observation.
He scoots closer to her on the couch, angling his body to directly address her as he takes a moment to contemplate his reply.
"I'm worried that you sink yourself into the project of saving Seven because you don't want to confront other worries- you don't want to acknowledge the guilt you have over decisions you've made. Decisions we've made."
"Tom-"
"Listen to me. I care about Seven of Nine. And I want to see her acclimate to life aboard the ship almost as much as you do. But saving one former drone isn't some act of salvation that can erase everything else. Sacrificing yourself- your own sanity- isn't going to change anything that's happened in the last year."
The hard expression she's been regarding him with as he spoke gets even darker. Her mouth opens and shuts as she bites back thoughts too acid to voice even to him.
Only months earlier, they would have argued here. They would have shouted and they would have screamed, and after about an hour there would have been some kind of resolution. But these days, they don't have the energy for the shouting. Not when Kathryn spends so much time battling Seven of Nine. And each of them already expend more energy than they would ever admit waging their own mental debates about choices that have already been made.
So instead, most of the things that once would have once been sorted out in an hour-long argument now transpire in twenty seconds of silent looks and deep breaths.
"Talk to me," he says finally.
"I'm not sure what you want me to say," she responds, shaking her head slowly.
"The truth," he supplies. "I want you to tell me the truth about what you're feeling." He adds, looking rueful, "hell- I want you tell yourself the truth about what you're feeling."
She pinches the bridge of her nose savagely, her head now dully beginning to throb. This isn't why she came to find him earlier. Or maybe it is. Either way, all she wants, now that he's confronting her, is to be alone in her quarters, re-reading the same book she's practically memorized.
"What good does the truth get us?" she remarks wearily, gesturing with one of her hands as she begins to speak without thinking. "It doesn't buy the ship or the crew anything to dwell on the consequences of what we did. The fact that an entire civilization was wiped out because we allied with the Borg. All the lives that we ended."
"We didn't end their lives," he says softly, his eyes locking with hers.
She hadn't meant to say it. She's barely allowed herself to think it. But now that the words float in the air between them, she can't bring herself to deny ownership of them.
"Didn't we?"
He considers her for a beat. Pulling together the thoughts, the lines of reasoning he's been puzzling over himself as of late.
"No," he replies in a confident voice, "we didn't. We tried to protect the quadrant from the greater of two threats. That we couldn't protect it from both can't be held against us."
It's partly the truth, Kathryn recognizes, but it's also partly rationalization. She doesn't point it out to him because she's sure on some level he already knows of the many lessons she herself has learned out here in the Delta Quadrant, key among them is that rationalization, like hope and the companionship of friends, keeps them all going.
They fall into another silence. Not entirely comfortable but not quite awkward either. Breaking with their usual custom, she's the one to end this one.
"I vaguely recall you once fearing that you would never be the one doing the reassuring in our relationship," she says, her expression slightly wistful.
"True," he acknowledges. "Just like I remember the days when you spoke to me politely instead of telling me to shut up."
"I do not tell you to shut up," she declares, her eyes twinkling despite her efforts.
"No. You tell me to shut the fu-"
"Anyway," she cuts off forcefully, causing him to laugh at her rather predictable boundary.
"Anyway," he echoes slowly, his mischievous grin in place. "Before Mike stopped by, I was going to come by and see you. I have a bit of present for you."
"A present," she repeats, looking at him with measured interest.
"I'd planned for it to be a Christmas present, but then . . . the week kind of got away from us."
She does the mental math in her head and realizes that it's now December twenty-eighth by the old Earth calendar. She breathes heavily, torn between the surprise that Tom is still so attached to his parents' traditionalist ways and the rueful thought that, once upon a time, she used to be, too.
"So," she prompts, not wanting either of them to dwell on how they actually spent Christmas day this year, "is this gift perchance a resolution not to be so mouthy to your friend and Captain?"
"I said it's a present, Kathryn. Not a miracle."
She rolls her eyes at the quip, standing from her couch with growing expectation.
"Well," she prods, "are you going to make me wait, or can I have it now?"
"You may have it," he announces, rising as well. "But we'll have to fetch it from Sickbay."
Her eyebrows shoot up at this, as he knew they would. The worry now occurring to her that this is all some ruse to get her down to the Doctor, likely for some kind of test that's either slipped her mind or been put off for weeks.
"No tricks," he promises. "The Doctor just kindly offered to hold onto it for me."
This tidbit piques her interest even further. She grabs her jacket, discarded on the couch, and runs a hand through her hair.
"So we'll have to relieve him of it," she declares, already making for the door.
He smirks a little at her impatience, feeling relieved that at least her mood has lightened a bit. As they make their way to the turbolift, he silently hopes his present will encourage such levity in the future.
"Or we could wait. You know, prolong the mystery."
She glares at him and he bites back the laugh that creeps up his throat. She's never been very good with someone holding something over her head, however small it might be.
"If you know what's good for you, Commander, you won't keep your CO waiting."
As they step into the lift, he clasps his hands behind his back, summoning an innocence that is not now, and has likely never been, believable coming from him.
"Are you really threatening me, Captain? I mean. . . that seems in rather ill-keeping with the Christmas spirit."
As the turbolift doors close, a passing crewmember hesitates in the corridor, catching the last few syllables of a retort the Captain hisses at her XO.
"-uck up, Tom."
. . . . .
When Kim moves into the darkened space, his eyes fix on the only two forms in the empty room.
The stillness of the Tom's silhouette, his long legs pulled up underneath him and his palms placed flatly on his lap, is juxtaposed by the frenetic energy of the miniature Irish Setter playing below him on the ground. As the pup chomps happily on a toy, the squeak-emitting noisemaker already mercifully killed, her bipedal companion watches the blue orb that teems relentlessly just beyond Voyager's low orbit.
"I thought Amelia was with the Doctor," Harry comments, realizing belatedly that his entry went unnoticed by one occupant while happily ignored by the other.
"She was," Tom replies, quickly recovering from the start the younger officer gave him. "But I thought it best to take her away from high traffic areas for the rest of the day."
Harry smiles at this, imagining the EMH's masked disappointment whenever Tom came to fetch the Captain's dog from his care. All the hologram's huffed assertions that he is 'a Doctor, not a veterinarian' notwithstanding.
"Does the Captain know yet that Amelia got all the way down to Main Engineering this morning?"
The pointed look the former pilot shoots him indicates a strong negative, and Harry quickly raises his hands as a sign that he has no interest in being the one to inform her. If Tom has performed the miracle of calming B'Elanna after a dog ran laps around her warp core, Vorick absurdly chasing after the creature at his boss' angry directive, the XO has earned the news of Amelia's escape from Sickbay staying far from the Captain's ready room door.
"I'm still not sure how she got all the way down there," Tom confesses. "It isn't as if the Jefferies tube she went into had anything close to direct access to deck eleven."
"Looks like she takes after her namesake. Enterprising explorer and all that."
Tom shakes his head slowly, giving the animal in question a rueful look. He's just gotten Kathryn to stop blaming him for ruining the dog's training by feeding her table scraps. He can't imagine what she'd say about the day's events. Nor does he want to find out.
"Serves me right for naming her after a pilot," Tom mutters, the dog losing interest in her rapidly deteriorating toy just long enough to bark at him and wag her tail.
"It's a good name," Harry smiles. "Perfectly fitting for the Captain's pet. But are you admitting pilots are a rogue lot?"
The rueful smile slips from Paris' face, Kim failing to understand why the joke fell flat. Tom can't voice to him the thought, the fear, that the last thing he feels these days is 'rogue'.
Encumbered maybe. Duty-bound perhaps. But definitely not rogue.
"Any news from the Captain yet?" Kim asks, trying to re-establish the conversation.
"Not yet," the XO replies, "though frankly she wasn't optimistic when she beamed down."
"Riga's findings should at least give them pause," the younger man assures. "I find it hard to believe that the Moneans would continue on without thought of the possible consequences."
At this, Tom falls silent, leaving his friend to assume that he isn't able to further comment on the Captain's on-going negotiations.
"Well," Harry sighs, unsure what to do with the silence, and all of his efforts to play with the Setter being firmly rebuffed in favor of the canine's current objective of chewing, "I should get going. I've got the early shift tomorrow."
Tom nods absently, it not even occurring to him that Harry is leaving the mess hall without acquiring the food he undoubtedly came for.
"See you tomorrow, Har," Tom calls belatedly, the door's shutting behind the retreating man.
It's only the a few minutes later that his comm badge beeps, the familiar noise causing Amelia's ears to perk up.
Janeway to Paris.
As the gravelly voice fills the room, the dog barks and jumps up next to Tom. Attempting to shush the pup, he silently thanks the stars that he had the foresight to ask the Doctor to produce a dog smaller than a standard Setter. He can only imagine how much more difficult she would be if she were a larger dog and this unruly.
"Paris here," he says, his tone all business even as the dog tries to lap at his face.
Was that Amelia?
He hesitates at the tone of her question: a little past amusement and into accusation. She still doesn't like Amelia being anywhere but crew quarters or Sickbay, and he isn't going to lie about where he's at if she asks.
"Yes," he replies slowly. "She needed a break from the Doctor. . . I couldn't really blame her."
Over the comm line, he hears a snorting sound followed by a small chuckle.
I don't know, Mister Paris. Taking a tour of the warp core seems like enough of a break to me.
Looking at Amelia's bright puppy eyes, he pulls a face. Wondering which one of his treacherous crewmembers gave them up.
"You can hardly blame her," he begins, "she's a redhead. They're notoriously stubborn. Reckless, too. . . It really can't be helped."
His comment is met with a laugh, but not her natural one. The forced air of mirth acts as a catalyst for the already swirling nebula in his stomach.
"I take it things didn't go well," he says, cutting directly to the chase. And as he closes his eyes, the dog nuzzles him, her warm breath feeling wet against his suddenly cold skin.
I'm sorry, Tom. . . The Moneans weren't prepared to listen to Riga's findings.
As she says it, the glimmer of hope he has been nursing the last few days disappears completely, leaving a vacuum of fear in its place. The idea of that ocean- that beautiful ocean disappearing. . .
Tom? Tom, are you still there?
He pets Amelia slowly, smoothing down the feeling of desolation and despair as he answers.
"Yeah. I'm here, Kath."
We have to have faith that they'll come to terms with this on their own. It's still possible, even if they won't see it now, that they will see it in the future.
It's a possibility, but not a likely one. He doesn't think to point this out for any number of reasons, the least of which being that Kathryn herself knows the scenario she's asking him to cling to is an illusion.
He presses his eyelids together a little tighter, trying to block out the image of the ocean he can still clearly see in his mind.
"I know," he says instead. "I know."
In the silence that ensues, the woman on the other end of the line gropes for any confirmation that he actually believes what he's saying.
If she were only in the same room with him, she would see the truth, of course. The pain evident on his face now confirming her fear- and one she's forestalled for months- that bit by bit he's been forced to cede away more and more of himself. Shouldering a burden he never asked for, a responsibility he never wanted, as time and again he's had to let go of another thing he loved.
"I'll see you when you get back," he announces, ending the silence with a casualness he doesn't at all feel. "Maybe regale you with the tales of a traveler named Amelia and her clash with a daring and angry foe named B'Elanna, as well as her evil henchman Vorick."
Perhaps over a late dinner. . . See you in an hour?
Her response is measured. Not quite hopeful, but something less than fearful. It's a place Tom once comfortably lived in.
"Sure," he replies, his eyes now locked on the swirling waters that seem close enough to touch with his fingers. "See you in an hour."
When the line closes, he doesn't move immediately, falling into stillness once more as his gaze remains unwavering.
As Amelia lays her head down on his lap, his thumb absently stroking the soft fur at the top of her head, her two brown eyes fix with interest on his collar. The three small metallic objects there, lined neatly in a row, shining faintly in the meager light that streaks through the darkness.