Tom
Starfleet Academy
To no one's surprise more than his own, Tom is among the first to arrive on the day of the final exam. His classes before and after this are all but wrapped up, projects presented, essays not due for another week. He takes his usual seat, dropping his bag on the ground and sliding a coffee over to where Kathryn will sit, for the last time. He bounces his leg up and down, trying to work off his nerves.
Her look of shock when she walks in a few minutes later is not particularly flattering. He scowls at her. "It's not my fault I'm always late, you know."
By way of response, she glances pointedly at the coffee awaiting her attention.
"Don't even think it. I'd rather be late."
Astonishingly, she blushes. "Am I so terrifying un-caffeinated?"
"It's not all about you, you know," he teases. "It makes you happy. That makes me happy. It's incredibly selfish of me, actually. Hardly anything to do with you at all, when you think about it."
She ducks her head, smiling in that way that gets his pulse fluttering, soft and uncomplicated. Before she can say anything else, Professor Vrba claps his hands together, rocking on the balls of his feet.
"Everybody ready?" he asks, grinning portentously.
"As I'll ever be," Kathryn mutters, as Vrba passes around the secured exam PADDs.
Tom murmurs his agreement, though it's not the test he's worried about. While he has little need for biochemistry, he does seem to have an aptitude; in another life, maybe he would've even pursued it. A medic on a naval vessel, perhaps, in this alternate universe in which his father did not demand fealty to the family business.
He glances sideways at Kathryn, her brow already furrowed in concentration. No, he doesn't really care about the exam, though he does need to finish it before she does. Timing, that's the real test of ability today—and his finally doing something he should've done a long time ago.
He tries to silence his brain, to focus on the glycolysis pathways and enzyme kinetics and exometabolic whatever in front of him, but in the back of his mind, he rehearses. Tries to imagine, for the hundredth time, how this will go—what he'll say; what she'll say; a glow of understanding in her face, her hand slipping into his. Took you long enough, maybe she'll chide him, and she'd be right to. He should've said something after midterm. Hell, he should've asked her out on the first day of class.
The minutes crawl past. For all that he's been worrying about Kathryn finishing ahead of him, he really should have known better than to think Vrba would set them an exam designed to take even a second less than the full period. Torn between nervous energy and abject boredom, his foot taps restlessly against his chair leg, a constant, unconscious rhythm.
Until Kathryn lays her hand on his knee to still him.
His head snaps up in surprise. Studiously, she keeps her eyes on her PADD, but he can see she's fighting a laugh. She squeezes lightly, leaves her hand where it is, and surely the surface temperature of her skin is not eight hundred degrees kelvin, but how else to explain the heat that suffuses his body at her touch?
Tom is not aware of himself grinning stupidly until Vrba catches his eye from the front of the room. He glances at the clock on the wall, raises his impressive eyebrows at Tom. Duly chastened, Tom bends low over his desk and behaves himself. The room is quiet in that way of classrooms at exam time, anticipatory, perfect but for the shifting of students in their chairs and the hammering of Tom's pulse in his ears.
"Time's up!" Vrba calls at last, startling them all. "Finish whatever you were writing, and submit your work, if you please."
Tom throws down his PADD and leans back in his chair, wiggling his cramped fingers. He stretches one arm, then the other, rolls the tension out of his neck. "The test's not so bad," he groans. "The sitting, though."
When Kathryn doesn't reply, he looks over at her. "Hey," he says, "you're not worried about it, are you?"
"It's not exactly my forte," she answers wryly.
"Ridiculous. Everything is your forte."
She huffs, but some of the tension leaves her shoulders. She rises, and so does he, slowly, fiddling with his bag while she digs around in her own. Around them, their classmates file out. It's good, right? That they're both stalling—that's a good sign, isn't it? Finally, she looks up, seems about to speak, to leave, probably. Just do it, you idiot!
"So I was thinking," he says, striving for a casualness that is, he fears, painfully transparent. "Are you busy now? I thought we could… celebrate, if you wanted. Believe it or not, I know a place that serves more than just coffee and sandwiches."
She tries to mask it, but her face falls, and with it so does his heart. Shit. Can he have misread the situation that badly? Okay, he only sees her in class twice a week, but he'd thought for sure there was something there, something he'd wanted to…
"Oh, or not," he backpedals. "No problem."
"No, it's just… I'm shipping out," she says, and sounds like she genuinely regrets it. "To the Beta quadrant. I've been assigned to the Mary Kingsley—they're not even letting me walk at graduation."
Dumbly, he thinks, but I want you to stay. As though this turn of events weren't entirely inevitable. As though he couldn't have seen this coming light years away, because this is Starfleet. Because his father as good as warned him.
"That's—great," he hears himself say. "Of course, you would be in high demand. Congratulations."
"Tom—"
"It's okay. Really. We don't have to do this."
"Tom," she says again. She looks down the rows of seats to where Vrba is still collecting his things, and steps in close. "I would have said yes."
Which somehow just makes this all so much worse.
"Well. Rain check, then," he tries to joke.
"Yeah. Yes, actually. Next time we run into each other, I'll have dinner with you."
"But—" he splutters. But how will I find you? "'Run into each other'? In the Beta quadrant? I don't know if anyone's told you yet over in Quantum Cosmology, but space is, actually, pretty big."
"You never know." She smiles, and it's this melancholy thing that Tom—he may as well admit it—would like to kiss from her face, again and again, for as long as she'll let him. They look at each other, miserably, and he wants so badly to think of just the right thing to say here, to end on a high note, because he knows better than anyone that the odds of seeing her again are, well, astronomical.
But then Vrba coughs delicately, the sound echoing up to them in the emptied classroom—and the moment collapses.
"Bye, Tom," Kathryn says. She runs her hand down his arm on her way out, catches his hand in hers. Then she lets him go.
Chakotay
Voyager
Present
The vastness of space has never, not ever, been on Chakotay's side. It wasn't enough to keep the Cardassians from calling as their hubris outgrew the boundaries of their system, even as his own took him away and into the Academy. Wasn't enough to hide him from their forces and Starfleet's, when he decided to become what they'd made him by killing his father and leaving him homeless, physically and spiritually. Never enough of the cosmos to go around, except for when fate hurled him to the other side of the damned galaxy for all his troubles.
And now, again, there just aren't that many places the crew could be sheltering. Intrepid-type escape pods have an underwhelming maximum range and minimal resources, and there are only a handful of planets in range that can support humanoid life. None of them are pinging the Delta Flyer's long-range sensors, though long-range is laughably relative when what he needs is for Astrometrics to be online. But without Seven, without Harry…
"Negative for human life signs," Tuvok reports.
He should have left Tuvok behind. No fewer than two on an away mission, that's the policy—that's her policy—but it's not like they haven't broken the rules over the years. Four days in the Flyer hunting for any trace of their people; four days in which Tuvok could've been helping with repairs on Voyager, getting them flying again. They've only just gotten life support back up throughout the ship, only just pivoted to fixing every other damn thing.
Four worthless days, and the only conclusion Chakotay can draw is the one he'd decided ahead of time not to settle for.
"Is that all of them?"
"All that our sensors can reach, affirmative, Captain."
Don't call me that, he wants to say. The title pierces him like an injury, an obscenity. But he'll never win in a battle of protocol against Tuvok.
He turns the shuttle around. Instead of retracing their steps, he plots a circuitous route home. Tuvok withholds comment, which tells Chakotay just how desperate they've become—wandering in the dark, hoping to trip over the crew. He doesn't have any better ideas.
"Captain," Tuvok says again. Don't— he thinks (he always thinks), and then the urgency of Tuvok's tone cuts through his thoughts, and he looks up from his scans. Ahead, just cresting the limb of a moon, an unfamiliar ship.
"Why the hell isn't it showing on sensors?"
Tuvok frowns. "They appear to be orbiting in alignment with the moon's pole. The magnetic field would provide sufficient interference to obstruct our sensors."
That's got to be more than a coincidence. Out here in the middle of nowhere, hanging over an uninhabited moon? Quickly, Chakotay recalibrates to scan for the weapon signatures they'd picked up from the attack on Voyager.
It's a match.
He spins to face Tuvok. "They're still looking for Voyager, after all this time? Why?"
"I don't believe so," Tuvok disagrees. "Sensors are detecting subspace mines at regular intervals. They are identical to the one that Voyager collided with."
"It's a trap line," Chakotay realizes. "Scavengers?" and then, with a jolt, "Can we follow it?"
They can. The same electromagnetic interference concealing the scavenger ship should prevent them from picking up the Flyer, so long as they don't trip one of the mines. They'll be overdue, and Tuvok advises against communicating with Voyager, which will cause no small amount of panic from the Doctor and Neelix. Still, it's the first lead they've had in weeks. They wait for the ship to slide behind the moon again, and then painstakingly pick their way across the expanse, always keeping the moon between their two ships. They follow the signatures of the mines at low impulse for twenty minutes, forty, an hour. That they detect no other ships in the area does not at all set Chakotay at ease.
And then, abruptly, the trail ends. And there's not so much as a satellite in sight, no planet, no base of operations on some asteroid.
Instinct tells him to keep going anyway. They've come this far—the answers they seek could be just ahead, just out of range. He's about to suggest as much, when the Flyer's proximity alarm goes off.
"One ship on an intercept course," Tuvok reports.
"Arm weapons."
"That would be unwise," Tuvok cautions. "We are significantly outclassed by their vessel."
"If we can disable them, we might be able to find out who they are and what they want. We're not gonna get another chance at this now they know we're here. Arm weapons."
"Sir," Tuvok says, in that Vulcan tone of voice that suggests an absolute lack of respect for the title. "We cannot—"
The Flyer shudders under the impact of phaser fire, cutting him off. Too late, Chakotay throws them into evasive maneuvers. "Red alert—hold on," he shouts, bringing the shuttle around hard.
"Direct hit. Shields at seventy percent."
"Target their weapons and fire!"
"No effect." The shuttle rocks again and Chakotay has to hang on to his console so he's not dumped out of his seat. "Shields down to sixty-two percent; two more ships have just dropped out of warp."
Chakotay curses, eyes darting across the sensor readouts. Options, he needs options…
"I cannot penetrate their shields. We must retreat," Tuvok insists, raising his voice over the clamoring of alarms.
Fuck. Chakotay slams his fist down hard on his armrest. "Can you mask our trail?"
"I can remodulate the plasma injectors to suppress our warp signature, but I will need several minutes to do so."
"Get started," he says, as the shuttle takes another hit. "I'll buy you the time." He slams them into full impulse and makes a run for the nearest hiding spot he's got on sensors, a mid-sized asteroid he hopes will be enough. Counting on the scavengers not to scan for their own tricks, he drops them into polar orbit, cuts the engines, and holds his breath.
The ships catch up with them mere seconds later. They circle, closer and closer, firing randomly like they think the Flyer might've cloaked. They've got a minute or two left, at best, before they're in direct visual range…
Who the hell are you people?
"Remodulation complete."
"Prepare to go to warp," he says. It feels very much like defeat.
The Doctor meets them in the shuttle bay. "Anything?"
Tightly, Chakotay shakes his head. To Tuvok, he says, "Find Neelix. See what you can do about Astrometrics." Tuvok just looks at him, like Chakotay's not aware of the futility of this order. "Unless you had somewhere else to be?"
Tuvok goes. After a moment, Chakotay starts to follow him out, though where he'll go—what help he can possibly offer—is unclear even to himself.
"Captain," the Doctor blocks him, a hand on his arm. "When was the last time you slept?"
"Now's not the time, Doctor."
"Captain—"
"Don't call me that."
The Doctor stops short, concern deepening the lines in his holographic face. His hand falls away. Absurd, Chakotay thinks, to be programmed to look so wary. Why bother? Why not spare the hologram the burden of his creator's humanity?
"Chakotay," the Doctor tries again. "I don't mean to pry…. That is, when we have a more… personal investment in our missions…."
But Chakotay can guess where this is going, and he has zero interest in having this conversation. "She's Tuvok's best friend," he counters.
"And… to you?"
To him, indeed. The irony that Kathryn herself had once asked him to define their parameters is not lost on him. He'd never done it. Not for her, not to himself. But he must be tired, because the Doctor's reason for asking only then hits him, like a sucker punch. In an instant, fatigue morphs into fury. "Are you asking me if I need to recuse myself?"
"You've been going nonstop for weeks. You know that I could be relied upon to—"
"Thank you for your concern, Doctor," Chakotay interrupts. "But there's nothing to worry about."
Is it a lie?
He doesn't know.
He's never known. Thought he had, once, on that planet which was almost a home but never quite, five years gone now and they never speak of it, never. It's a pressure against his sternum that never relents, and maybe the precise nature of their relationship is simply unknowable, as she so often seems to be herself. But maybe not: maybe it's cowardice that keeps him from broaching the subject again, fear that he already knows the answer she'd give him if pushed, finally, to come to a decision, or else give voice to the one she's already made.
I know I don't have any right to feel this way, he's sometimes said. She's never disagreed.
"All right," the Doctor says. "If you say so. I'll be in Astrometrics, I suppose."
He should go too. He doesn't know what good he can do there, but it would be better than combing through sensor data he can recite from memory by now. He feels useless, utterly. A commander without a crew; trained as a pilot, trapped on a ship stuck in idle.
People like Tuvok, like Kathryn, somehow they seem to bend space to their will, so that impossible distances buckle and reform, the final frontier just a step out the door, no trouble at all. It has never been this way for Chakotay, the span of the galaxy at once too much and never enough, like so much else in his life. Maybe that's why he'd eventually gravitated towards anthropology. Both feet on the ground, surveying the action from a critical distance, always apart until the time of his choosing. But then again, here he stands: separate, still, despite all his best efforts.
One hundred and forty-five people don't just vanish. It doesn't make any sense. Alive or—well, one way or another, there are only so many places they could be.
In theory.
In practice, he fears that the possibilities are nearly infinite.
Tom
Quarra
Present
Tom shoulders open the front door, three moving boxes in his arms blocking his view entirely. "We're taking a break," Kathryn calls out. "I simply cannot unpack one more thing. I can cook, or we can get takeout."
He finds the dining table by running into it, unburdens himself with a sort of controlled collapse of his precarious tower of boxes. An ominous crunch comes from the bottom of the stack, and then, equally ominous, he registers the offer she's just made.
"Uh," he says. She comes out of the kitchen wielding one of his spatulas, eyes narrowed. Sensing danger, he adds, "You pick. I just want to go get one more load."
She scans the many, many crates of Tom's things occupying every flat surface of her—their—small living room. "What haven't you brought up yet?"
"Dishes, mainly, I think. Pots and pans. I could just give them away?"
"Are they nicer than mine?"
"Uh," Tom says again.
She rolls her eyes. "Go on, then. I'll hunt and gather for us."
"Soup?" he asks hopefully.
"Lataran it is," she agrees, planting a quick kiss on his cheek. She rubs her thumb along his stubbled jawline. "Scratchy."
"I'll shave, if you're threatening to stop kissing me."
"No, don't. I like it."
"Keep looking at me like that and we'll be taking that break right this second."
"Soup!" she says, dancing out of reach. "Go, I need to bundle up."
He pats his pockets to confirm he's still got his keys and identification, then rides the lift back down to his floor. Propping his apartment door open, he stands in the kitchen and considers the dishware: are his better than hers? How does one judge a set of white dinner plates against another?
A knock on his open door makes him turn; his neighbor across the hall leans in curiously. "Hey, what's all this?" Jenny asks.
"Movin' on up," Tom says. "Up to level fifteen, anyway. Do you want these plates?"
"You're moving in with Kathryn? She got permission?"
Permission? "I… we didn't know we needed permission."
"Our overlords are very attentive," she says darkly. "Megan wanted to get out of her tiny one-bedroom across the river. Somebody reported us for not having a waiver."
"Wait. You're identical. How did they know?"
"Search me," she says, "but god help the guy who did it, if I ever find out. Here," she adds, grabs a pen off Tom's counter and writes down the name of the office he needs on the back of a moving box. "Good luck. They're real assholes over there."
She starts to return to her own apartment, but Tom calls, "Hey—why do they care where we live, anyway?"
"Well… they say it's for," she affects a deep, stern voice, "'the safety and security of residents in the radiation zone'. Make sure nobody gets sick, that there are enough injections to go around."
"But that doesn't explain—"
"No, it does not," she scowls. "And if you find out more, let me know. Like I said: assholes."
Tom and Kathryn go in together the next morning, riding the train into town. The Auditor's Office is a charmless building, all metal and shades of beige. A cavernous hallway leads them to another, smaller office, a sea of ugly puce carpet and a line of bored workers behind an L-shaped counter.
"Excuse me," Tom says, approaching a man who looks marginally less cranky than his compatriots. "We're here to, uh, declare our intent to cohabitate, I think."
He does not look up from his terminal. "Employee housing?"
"Yep," Tom says, popping the p and not bothering to hide his annoyance. Kathryn elbows him.
"You family?"
"No, but—"
"Married?"
"We're, I mean, we are together," Kathryn says. To emphasize the point, Tom snakes an arm around her waist.
"Sorry, doesn't qualify."
"Listen, uh—" Tom leans in to read his name tag. "Jarynd. Hi, Jarynd. How's your day going? We've heard there may be waivers for this sort of thing, and—and we are engaged," he improvises, and prays that Kathryn will forgive him. "So how about cutting us a little slack?"
Jarynd barks an ugly laugh and, finally, looks up at them. "Yeah, I've heard that one before. When's the wedding?"
"We were hoping to find a place to live first," Kathryn offers.
"Uh huh. Come back when you've got paperwork. Weddings are down the hall," he adds, so snidely that Tom entertains a brief fantasy of punching him in the face. "Next!"
"Tom," Kathryn says, tugging him aside. "What if we did?"
For a moment, he thinks she somehow read his mind about decking the guy. He blinks. "Oh. What, get married?"
"It would solve your housing problem."
"I can't let you—"
"But what if I wanted to?"
The rest of Tom's objection dies on his tongue. What if she wanted to marry him? He's just been waiting for her to realize how much better she can do than him. Two days ago he'd figured his moving away would be the end of it all, just a matter of time, really, and someone else would swoop in—Jaffen, probably, god knows he'd tried once—and that would be that. And it would make sense. She seems happy with him, so happy that to think of it at all makes his chest ache with something like longing, something preemptive and pathetic, because he knows she'd be better off finding someone more… well. Someone more.
What if she wanted to marry him?
Despite himself, a whole life flashes behind his eyes: his and hers, hard won and built together here in this place so far from Earth, in the face of such stunning odds. He pictures late nights and slow mornings, her frozen feet pressing into his calves beneath the bedcovers, her laugh ringing out through their home, their home, and—and a family, even, maybe. One day.
It's everything he's never allowed himself to want.
His mouth is very dry. "What if it doesn't work out?"
"Then it doesn't work out. But, Tom," she holds his gaze with bright eyes. "What if it does?"
It's not like he's ever been risk averse. If anything, recklessness has been something of a guiding principle in his life.
He's also never had quite so much to lose.
"I know it hasn't been very long," she says. "But when we're together, everything feels so…"
"Easy," he finishes.
"I was going to say right, actually. Are you calling me easy?"
"Only if you want me to call you easy." She smacks him on the arm. "Seriously, though. I realize we've already had this conversation once before, but I don't want you to do anything just because I'm about to be out on my ass in the cold, dark, streets—"
"Shut up," she says. "I love you."
"In defiance of all common sense." He kisses her until he feels her smile against his lips, and a wild sort of giddiness overtakes him, because her sensing his answer gives him the confidence to say it aloud. "Okay. Let's do it. Quickly, before you realize what a huge mistake you're making."
A sign on the wall reads BIRTHS, DEATHS, MARRIAGES in three languages, one of which he and Kathryn can read. She grabs his hand and pulls him down the hallway, but as they pass the cafeteria, Tom stops her.
"Wait here," he says. He approaches a Quarran woman eating alone at a table. "I'll give you twenty notes to do us a real quick favor," he tells her, pulling the money out of his pocket. "I promise to have you back to your sandwich in no time."
The woman looks dubiously over at Kathryn. "He's harmless," she assures her.
"Okay…" the woman agrees. She follows them through glass double doors into the Marriage Records office, where there is yet more of the puce carpet. A case to the side of the main desk boasts the least inspiring wedding keepsakes Tom's ever seen, and a variety of what look, if he had to guess, like handfasting ribbons.
Which reminds him, "Oh, damn, no rings here. I'll have to owe you one."
"It's not important," Kathryn demurs.
But already Tom's got an idea in mind. He files it away for later. To the woman behind the counter looking curiously at the threesome, he says, "Who do we talk to around here about getting married?"
"That would be me," she smiles. "Do you have a marriage permit?"
Tom and Kathryn turn to each other, alarmed.
"It's fine!" the woman reassures them quickly. "We're a one-stop shop here." She introduces herself as Merea, and Tom forces himself to stand still while she walks them through the paperwork; he signs his name where indicated, then, feeling like his heart is caught somewhere in his lungs, looks on as Kathryn does the same.
"Wait," Tom says, noticing a line missing from the form. "What about our witness? Does she sign afterwards?"
"Your what?"
"Our… oh. It's… a human thing. I just assumed."
Behind them, the worker he'd bribed coughs a surprised laugh. "Is that what I'm doing here? I didn't want to intrude."
"Sorry," Tom apologizes sheepishly. "Thanks anyway, though."
"Hey, what are friends for, um—"
"Tom," he says, offering his hand. "Tom and Kathryn."
At the very bottom of the document, there are two additional lines, in the event either of them wants to change their names. And this, too, is something Tom had not considered.
"You don't have to," he says under his breath. "I don't know how it is here, but on Earth, you know. It's old fashioned."
He'd never ask it of her. He doesn't even want to influence her decision. It doesn't matter what she chooses. But his sudden wanting of this thing surprises him, because he's never had any particular attachment to his surname. Quite the opposite: the long shadow of his father's career had, for as long as Tom can remember, blotted out all his own ambitions, driving nothing so much as a need to get away, to be someone else, somewhere else.
And yet, he feels like in taking his name she'd somehow transmute it, his whole chain-link legacy overwritten by the love of this woman who, incredibly, wants him as he is. Together they would make it theirs; and if—if they did ever have children…
"My mother took my father's name," she says. "I always assumed I'd know what I wanted when the time came, and I do. I'd like to. If that's all right with you?"
His throat too clogged with emotion to speak, he nods. Watches as she writes, carefully, Kathryn Paris on the final line.
Outside, there is a courtyard with a small canopy, weatherproof heaters on either side. A string of lights rings the perimeter, so that the snow on the ground glitters in their low, warm glow. It's very simple—though still more than he might have expected from a government office.
"You don't have to have a ceremony at all," Merea tells them. "I keep the permit, issue your certificate, you sign it, and you're all set. It's your choice."
He looks at Kathryn. "What do you think?"
"I think it's perfect," she says, beaming at him.
He leads her underneath the canopy. Purple-pink polar lights dance overhead, new since they'd arrived and so vivid he can hardly make out any stars; and even bundled up in her oversized coat, Kathryn, awash in their luminance, is so beautiful he has to remind himself to breathe.
"This can only end badly for you, you know," he says, "Woman like you and a schmuck like me." He's only partially joking. He hasn't done a thing to deserve the life she's giving him, to deserve this look in her eyes, sure and shining with love—for him, somehow—
But she just smiles up at him. "Then we won't let it end."
—and he swears to himself that he'll make damned sure he earns it, every single day of his life from now on, for as long as she'll have him.
Kathryn
USS Billings
"Crew rotation should be just about complete," Captain Blum says. "A handful more just beamed aboard, but I've been summoned by Admiral Rush and he says it can't wait, which means it's completely inconsequential but I can't get out of it. Would you mind—"
"Say no more, ma'am." Kathryn picks up the PADD with the updated crew manifest, scans the first few lines. "Beck in Stellar Cartography, that's a loss."
Blum hums her agreement, then pushes back from her desk with a sigh. "The ones who haven't checked in should still be in Sickbay. I appreciate it."
"It's my actual job as your first officer," Kathryn reminds her. "You must be the only captain in the fleet who greets all the new personnel."
"Old habits," Blum allows.
They walk out together, the captain veering off at Ops while Kathryn continues into the turbolift and down to deck six. She's eager to get underway again. Their next mission should be considerably more interesting than anything else this past year, not to mention farther afield. She's aware of the rumors that Starfleet Command intends to phase out these old Constellation class cruisers, but the way they've been treated with kid gloves lately is absurd. If true, Command may as well let them run the ship into the ground doing what it was built to do: exploration, not transport runs.
So this invitation from the Agegeda to visit Aralia Prime comes not a moment too soon, their proximity to the planet forcing Admiral Rush's hand; and if, afterwards, things go back to status quo, she'll just have to request a transfer. It's only that she dreads having that conversation with Captain Blum, with whom she truly enjoys serving; and Tuvok, too, unless she can persuade him to join her.
She may have swapped her science blues for command red, but she is still a scientist at heart. A scientist who is desperately bored.
The Sickbay doors open onto a cluster of men standing around a biobed, chatting while they wait to be released by the CMO. Two science officers, two engineers, and a bridge officer still being scanned, a duffel slung over his shoulder.
"Commander," Doctor Bailey greets her over the top of the man's blonde head. "Those four are wrapped, just haven't logged them yet. And this one here is all… done!" she adds, snapping her tricorder shut with a flourish.
"Thanks, Doc," the man says, and, involuntarily, her pulse speeds up, but… why? She glances down at the PADD for their names, tapping through pages and pages of crew replacements, then, exasperated, looks up again. Blue eyes meet hers—and all the air rushes out of her lungs.
Tom?
Recovering quickly, she clears her throat. "Gentlemen," she says, nodding to them all. "Commander Kathryn Janeway. The captain wanted to greet you herself, but she was called away."
One by one the officers introduce themselves, polite, professional, and she won't remember a single thing about them when Blum asks later today. Tom Paris. She hasn't seen him since the Academy, longer ago now than she feels like admitting. She can tell that he recognizes her, too, and she finds herself nearly apologizing for not keeping in touch, which is ridiculous, of course. She'd been in another quadrant for most of the time between then and now, always on the go, and they'd only had the one class together, so who's to say he'd have wanted to hear from her anyway? And why is her heart racing like this, damnit?
She distributes duty assignments to each of the men in turn, and they see themselves out. Tom lingers behind.
"He's free to go, too," Bailey nods at him.
"Actually, Doctor, would you give us a minute?"
She'll pay for this later; the CMO is the primary driver of the onboard gossip mill. And, indeed, she looks between them with wide eyes, failing entirely to hide her interest.
"Lucy," Kathryn hisses.
"I'm going!" the doctor says, hands raised in surrender. She disappears into her office with the greatest reluctance.
"I believe you promised me a date. Ma'am," Tom grins, glancing at her pips.
"Did I? That was rash of me," she murmurs.
"I do tend to bring that out in people."
"I can't help but notice you don't seem as surprised to see me as I am to see you."
"Some of us read our orders ahead of time," he teases, which she supposes she deserves. She pulls his file up, as much for something to do with her hands as anything else. He's on beta shift, which, based on the drumming of her mutinous heart, is for the best. Conn officer. He's only here for a few months, filling a personnel gap before rotating out again to Caldik Prime.
"All right, Mister Paris," she says, feeling that she can stall no longer. "I'll have dinner with you." Rising up on tiptoes, she leans in to whisper in his ear, "When we dock."
"Would you look at that, we're docked right now. Did you want to change first, or—"
With herculean effort, she represses a smile. "You're on deck nine. You'll want to settle in before we head out, I'm sure."
"And you're on deck…?"
"One of them, yes." He affects a mask of hurt she doesn't buy for a second, but she adds, "You could just ask the computer."
"Hardly seems sporting, ma'am."
Finally, she laughs, shaking her head. "I'll walk you to the turbolifts," she says. And as he steps into the 'lift backwards, offering a mock salute just before the doors shut between them, she thinks again, definitely a more interesting mission than the last.