A/N: Just a reminder that this fic's rated M. Also, FFN makes it incredibly difficult to engage with comments, but you can also find this fic over at AO3.
Kathryn
USS Billings
Levodian Flu rips through the ship like wildfire. Only the Arali away team is spared, serendipitously absent in those first critical hours of exposure—something for which Doctor Bailey reminds them to be grateful, when she comes around with their boosters.
This good fortune has the simultaneous effect, however, of rendering Kathryn, Tom, Tuvok, and poor Alir Probert the four most able-bodied and in-demand officers on board. Kathryn spends her second double-shift in three days on hands and knees in a Jefferies tube, pushing her hair back from her sweaty forehead. Her microspanner, slippery in her hand, nearly shoots out of her grip as she shifts her weight. She exhales hard through her nose, consciously forces her shoulders to relax, and wedges the tool back into the nest of circuitry inside the open panel.
Every few minutes, she shakes out her hand, careful to keep her balance in the unforgiving space. The grid beneath her has long since imprinted its pattern into her skin, so for the past hour she's been attempting to work from an awkward squat, and her muscles protest every motion. As she leans in farther, her supporting elbow catches on the sharp edge of a conduit bracket. Her arm buckles, her balance falters, and with no room to correct in this godforsaken crawl space, her hand slams hard into the metal grate, wrist twisting at an unnatural angle.
"Damn it," she hisses, teeth clenched.
The doors at her back slide open.
She startles, having not encountered another living being for several hours; and her heart rate, far from settling, doubles when she looks over her shoulder and finds Tom there.
"I had a hunch the first officer might be overworking herself," he says, hosting himself inside.
"'Overworked' being relative, given the circumstances." She grips her wrist with her uninjured hand, wincing before she can stop herself.
"What's wrong?" Tom asks, already shifting toward her, his knees knocking against hers. And then, taking in her disheveled state, "How long have you been in here?"
"An eternity," she bites out. She shifts to sit back, legs awkwardly folded beneath her. "It's nothing."
"Here, let me see." Tom leans in close—close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating off him in the narrow space. Gingerly, he places her hand in his. He feels along the network of fine bones connecting wrist to hand, pressing down, monitoring her expression carefully. Her skin tingles, where he lingers. "Does any of that hurt?"
"No," she breathes
He rotates her hand gently, testing the joint—back and forth, side to side—with a look of serious concentration. She watches the slight frown, the set of his jaw. The care with which he cradles her hand.
"I didn't realize you were a medic now, too," she murmurs.
"I just can't help myself," he says, now running the pads of his fingers over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. "All that biochem."
She huffs, and with her free hand she bats at his chest. He catches it and holds it there, his fingers closing gently around hers.
Her breath hitches.
His thumb moves, slow and deliberate, stroking once along the side of her hand.
"There's no rule, you know," he says. "I checked."
She knows.
The distance she has tried to force between them since they'd met again, since she'd reacted so strongly to his mere proximity that first day in sickbay, is less to do with regulations than her own limitations, and her fear: that she, like her father—like Tom's father—can't ever truly have both things. That if she surrenders herself to this feeling, allows herself to want Tom as badly as she wants a ship… somehow, she will end up with neither.
And Tom probably deserves to know this. He has accepted her request that they wait until after this tour without question, giving her space—more or less—and if he flirts with her, off-duty, he can hardly be blamed for it, given her propensity to respond in kind. But this is also, fundamentally, who she is: the scrupulous separation of career and personal life practically her birthright, learned at her father's knee.
But to tell him so would reveal all of the cracks in her armor. And she does not think she could be so vulnerable with him, and then just walk away again.
Of course, one of them will have to. That's the deal. It always was. They'll have dinner, as promised; and then he'll go on to his next assignment, and she to hers. It has, she thinks, the ring of inevitability to it.
That's Starfleet, Goldenbird.
It takes longer than it should for her to pull her hand away.
A week passes, and the crew gets back on their feet; and in a morning briefing Captain Blum announces that rather than heading straight back to Starbase 621, Starfleet is diverting the Billings again, this time to a small volcanic moon. It's a survey mission of the type the crew had nearly given up hope of being assigned, as Command phases out the Constellation class cruisers—so when Blum asks, "I don't suppose anyone minds taking the long way 'round?" Kathryn could laugh out loud.
But just as quickly, she realizes the consequences of this for her, personally. Because this also means more time. Time to think, and wait, and want. More nights returning to quarters just a corridor away from Tom's—easier to ignore before he knew it, too.
He was only supposed to be aboard for a handful of months.
Around her, the room buzzes with excited chatter, that specific thrill of a scientific expedition. Blum indulges it for a moment, then turns to Kathryn.
"Commander, I'll need recommendations for the survey team by end of next week."
She nods, already turning over names in her mind. "Aye, ma'am."
Blum rises, gathering her PADDs. "We've got some downtime on the way there. I suggest you all make the most of it. Dismissed."
As the senior staff files out, Kathryn lingers by the table, flipping through the mission brief on her display. She taps in a few preliminary notes—systems specialists, geological analysts—then looks up.
"Captain," Kathryn says, halting Blum at the door. "I'd like to recommend Lieutenant Paris for conn."
"Paris? Not Torvek?"
"He's proven himself these past weeks. He's adaptable, quick on his feet, a good fit for the sort of instability we're expecting on the ground." She pauses, deciding how far to push her luck. "You should have seen him on the Arali mission, Captain. He's a hell of a pilot."
Blum considers this. "All right," she agrees. "But then you stay up here."
"What? Captain—"
"Finish that sentence if you want to start filling out a SIDF-c. Otherwise, it's none of my business. But."
"There's nothing to disclose," Kathryn protests, her face heating like the face of the sun.
"I believe you," Blum assures her. "But I'm not blind. And neither is Paris."
It's a blow. Kathryn had been eager to get down there herself. Her finger hovers over his name on her PADD—just for a moment—as memory intrudes: the heat of that cramped Jefferies tube, his fingers laced with hers, neither of them quite willing to let go.
She sighs, then taps him in.
Strictly professional. And well earned.
"You want my advice?"
"Always," Kathryn says.
"File the form. I don't know what's holding you two back, but it's rare—maybe you don't know how rare—to get to serve with… well, whoever Paris is to you. Take advantage of it, while he's still here."
Kathryn can think of nothing to say to this, not without unburdening her innermost thoughts to her commanding officer. She bites her lip, and nods. Blum squeezes her shoulder on her way out.
"Can I talk to you?" Kathryn asks.
Tuvok, sitting alone in his usual corner of the mess hall, looks up from his reading.
"Certainly," he nods.
She slides into the chair across from him. "What is your opinion on… shipboard interpersonal relationships?"
"They are generally ill-advised—though, perhaps, inevitable."
She smiles at this. "True. But—if you could have your wife aboard, for instance. Would you want that?"
"Yes, I would," he says, without hesitation.
"What if she were your subordinate?"
Tuvok frowns. "That is a more complicated question. But I believe that we could successfully navigate any conflicts that might arise owing to my… authority over her, in such a scenario."
Kathryn sighs, worrying at the skin of her thumb. Tuvok adds, "Perhaps if you shared your reasons for asking, I might be of greater assistance."
Lowering her voice, she says, "Tom Paris."
"Ah," he says. "Indeed."
"Is it that obvious?" she groans.
"Only to those who know you best. And in answer to the question you have not asked: I have complete confidence in your command abilities. Whatever you were to decide, I am certain that your judgment would remain sound, and your conduct beyond reproach."
Kathryn is quiet for a moment. "How can you be sure?"
"Because self-doubt does not indicate a lack of discipline. In your case, it is evidence of it."
There is a point at which the weight of being scared to do something is heavier than the thing itself. And she realizes that the decision to move past this fear—to set aside all of her doubt—is not, after all, made in the heat of the moment. This was Tom's concern, understandably, when she'd invited him into her quarters: that inebriation alone caused her to override her own ground rules.
But that's just the excuse. The justification of what she already knows.
The decision is made when his shoulder brushes hers, and she does not move away.
When his gaze lingers, and she meets it. Holds it.
When she steps inside the turbolift.
When she chimes at his door.
When she doesn't walk away. Over and over, she doesn't walk away.
He comes to the door bleary-eyed, his sandy hair sleep-tousled. He croaks, "Is everything okay?"
"You're transferring," she says.
He steps back, allows her to slip into his quarters. As the doors slide shut behind her, he says, "What if I didn't?"
"Neither of us has that kind of pull. Your father—"
"Adores you," he says. "And Caldik isn't a permanent assignment."
"So we could—later—"
"We could."
She is not sure that Tom appreciates the enormity of this suggestion. And she feels herself teetering at the edge of a precipice, because she knows that this is the way it starts. That after tonight, there will be no backing out of this thing unscathed.
But she is also considering, for the first time in years, the kinds of things she might want beyond her career. Things that Tom makes her want.
She moves toward him as if pulled, in just the same way they've been orbiting each other for months. Or maybe it's been years—since the Academy, when duty had pulled her away and she'd left him there in that classroom like it was simple, like it was easy; like she wouldn't always wonder, at least a little, what might have happened if they'd met just a semester or two sooner.
The tension in Tom's body is palpable, as he waits, as ever, for her to decide.
"I should warn you," he says, drawing his thumb along her jaw, "that I'm probably in love with you."
Her heart trips in her chest. But she looks up into his face, gathers all of her courage. Her voice is quiet, but sure, when she answers against his lips, "Good."
He groans, the sound low in his throat, and wraps his arm around her waist, drawing her into him in one fluid motion. The kiss is slow at first, exploratory—his tongue slides over hers and she moans into his mouth, her fingers bunching in the fabric of his undershirt. She tugs at it, but he's too tall—they break apart long enough for him to pull it over his head, and then her hands are on him again—familiar, yet thrillingly, overwhelmingly new.
She slides her hands down, over the slope of his stomach, then lower, feeling him tense under her touch. His mouth finds her throat and she tips her head back, her eyes falling shut as his teeth rasp lightly at the skin just below her jaw. She gropes behind her for the zipper of her uniform, wanting to be free of this symbol of her duty—fumbles for it, and then stops, and pants an exasperated laugh.
"Here," he murmurs. "Let me."
She turns, and even through rough cloth, she shivers to feel his fingers brush her spine, goosebumps rising at the sense of him behind her, over her. He finds the zipper at the base of her neck and draws it down slowly, slipping the fabric from her shoulders, down her arms, revealing bare skin beneath.
She lets it fall away, stepping free.
She faces him again, and for a moment, his gaze strips away every defense she's ever built. Suddenly, she's caught between memory and possibility. Between all the years they haven't shared, and the gravity of what's been right in front of her.
"Come here," he says, his voice rough with want.
He might as well say, Surrender.
They crash together again, their second kiss nothing like the first, urgent, needy, and her whole body lights up, every nerve ending attuned to him: the rasp of his stubble against her neck, the solid weight of his thigh between hers, every shift of his hips shooting through her like live wire. He backs her toward the bed, her knees bumping against the edge. His hands catch her at the waist, steadying her—and then he lowers her down, hooking his fingers in her waistband and sliding them off at long, long last.
Her hands roam blindly, his muscles flexing under her touch, and when finally he pushes into her, the stretch of him makes her gasp his name like it's been torn from her lungs. He gathers her wrists and draws them gently above her head, and something about this makes her tremble, makes her arch off of the bed, straining upward to match his rhythm. She moves with him, legs tightening around his waist, heels pressing into the backs of his thighs. Her breath comes faster now, mouth brushing his collarbone, his neck, catching on a moan.
And then he shifts, changing his angle suddenly, and the sound she makes isn't entirely voluntary. One of his hands slips beneath her, anchoring her hips as he thrusts again, shaking now with restraint. She wants to feel him lose control—she wants to know that, beneath his unfailing respect, this means as much to him as it does to her.
But she breaks first. It hits her all at once, heat pulsing through her, her whole body tightening around him with a hard shudder. She hears herself cry out as the pleasure crests, everything inside her clenching, clenching—
and then she lets go.
It crashes through her, heavy waves of sensation, her hands coming up to clutch at Tom's back. He groans, burying himself in her, one hand fisted in the sheet beside her, the other gripping her hip hard. She feels the tremor roll through him, every muscle taut—until, at last, he shudders through his release, her name on his tongue as he comes undone.
They stay like that for a time. Pressed together, skin slick; his breath ragged against her neck, her heart pounding under his. Eventually, Tom sinks down next to her in a boneless sprawl. He presses his forehead to her shoulder, and then reaches for her hand. His thumb brushes her knuckles, slow, light, but somehow she feels it everywhere—and it's this small gesture, after everything they've just done, that draws a well of emotion to her throat. She swallows.
"It terrifies me, how much I don't want you to go," she whispers, into the hush that follows.
"We'll figure it out," he promises. "This time, we'll figure it out."
Kathryn
Quarra
Present
The bar is subdued when she steps inside. A mid-shift lull, common now, with so few workers braving the walk from the plant. The narrow corridor has become a kind of gauntlet, with the cutting wind, funneled between tall towers, compelling most to take lunch in the cafeteria. Her eyes sting from it.
She pulls off her parka. A woman's high laugh reaches her; a glass clinks, muffled under the clatter from the kitchen in the back, the whir of the vents overhead.
The same as it ever is. Routine. Ordinary.
Kathryn's eyes flick back to the door, then the windows—though they show nothing but the reflection of the interior, bright against the dark.
"Hiya, Kathryn," a server greets her, passing by with a tray. "Have a seat. I'll send Tom over."
She starts to thank him, but realizes she can't remember the man's name.
It sends a bolt of panic down into her stomach.
She crosses to her usual table and sits. Pulls off her gloves, sets them carefully off to one side. She folds her hands in her lap, fingers pressing into knuckles.
And her heart pounds.
Across the room, Tom stands with his back to her, speaking with a dark-haired woman, heavily pregnant, whose species Kathryn doesn't recognize. As she watches, the man who'd greeted her whispers in Tom's ear. Tom straightens and turns, finding Kathryn with practiced ease. He nods once, his brow furrowed. Raps twice on the woman's table, and then disappears behind the bar.
A minute later, he's at Kathryn's side, setting a cup of tea down in front of her.
"This is a nice surprise," he says, and she hears the question beneath the greeting. He leans in to kiss her check before settling across from her.
She shifts forward. With effort, she does not glance back at the doors again. "They're looking for him. Questioned everyone on the floor."
Tom's eyes widen, but he recovers quickly. "What did you tell them?"
"The truth. That he came over for a drink and then left."
"Did they seem—"
"Not yet," she grimaces, "but it's likely to be their only lead, isn't it? He ran straight to us."
"But he said, as long as they think he didn't tell us anything…."
"I know. I just—it took them a week to start asking. That feels like… like they didn't want their interest in him to be public knowledge."
Jaffen had gone to ground after that disquieting night. I'll reach out, he'd promised. Stay low. Don't draw attention.
So they hadn't. They'd gone to work and come home, at all times on alert now for—what? They don't know. Phantoms in the dark, silencing questions even Jaffen hadn't understood, even as he'd asked them.
After a moment's hesitation, she adds, "They're calling him dangerous. Said he needs to be hospitalized."
She does not say that she feels a desperate desire to believe this. To erase everything that happened, chalked up to the rantings of a madman. The impulse is so staggering in its force she can scarcely credit it. It seems to exist… outside herself. Despite herself.
But on the other hand, everything about her inability to remember the most basic details of her recent past thrums, wrong, wrong, wrong, between her every other thought.
"That would be easier," Tom says, gently. "But it's Jaffen."
"I know," she says. "I know."
They lapse into an anxious quiet. Kathryn doesn't have long, but neither can she think of anything else to say. Her fingers twitch, restless in her lap. She glances around the room, searching for something to latch on to. Her eyes catch on the unfamiliar woman again.
"Who is that? You seemed to know her...?"
"What? Oh," Tom refocuses. "I've seen her in here a few times since switching shifts." He lowers his voice. "She's all alone. I don't know the whole story, obviously, but I offered to connect her with some regulars here. A couple expecting their first baby in a few weeks."
Of course he did. Of course he would, even now, that instinct of his to reach out, to ease what he can, apparently as natural to him as breathing.
And in a week where nothing else has felt solid under her, here is Tom: kind, and steady. And it suffuses her with so much feeling, she hardly knows know what to do with it all.
Surprised by her own reaction, all she can manage is, "That was nice of you."
"I can be nice," Tom mock-protests.
Reaching across the table, she takes his hand in hers. "Always."
The tension doesn't leave her body, but something about this small moment lets her breathe again. The normalcy of it, in this place where they'd first met, on the heels of their wire-taut week of waiting for something to happen. It floats between them for a second, fragile. Needed.
He clears his throat. "Hey, uh. Do…"
"Do?"
"Do you… want kids?"
Her first astonished impulse—You're asking me this now?—doesn't make it out of her mouth. It collides against a second, stronger sensation. A blast of déjà vu.
I've thought about having children…
She blinks. The thought comes from nowhere and lands with a heaviness she can't explain, familiar in a way that she is certain it shouldn't be.
Some of this must show on her face, because Tom watches her with growing concern, his eyes searching hers.
Slowly, she asks, "We haven't talked about this before?"
"No?" Tom frowns. "Have we?"
She does want children. She can't ever remember not wanting it; had accepted, though, that the time had come and gone. Like so many others, she'd elected not to reproduce on Earth. Overpopulated, polluted, very little work left amidst the climatological ruin, it had seemed… inhumane, to bring a child into that world.
But she'd believed, too, that she could be happy living some other life. A fresh start—a safe planet—and wasn't that more than countless others could claim? It was, she'd thought, stepping onto that last transport out, more than enough.
And yet—here is a door, creaking back open.
And if she says yes, but he says no…
But he won't. Somehow, she knows that he won't.
"I do," she answers.
He looks at her with a kind of wonder, and it takes her aback. How long has be been wanting to ask her this? Had he been waiting for her to say it?
Or did it catch him off guard, too, this wanting—sudden, and aching, and so, so improbable?
"But," she says, forcing reality back over them, "we have to figure this out, first. We have to be—"
"Smart," he agrees. But it does not stop him from grinning at her.
"Okay, okay." And she laughs, in defiance of all common sense.
When Kathryn returns to work, she finds Jaffen's abandoned terminal swarmed by a group of grim-faced men in uniforms she can't identify. She stops next to the station opposite hers, where Lydia Anderson is pretending not to gawk.
"What's going on?" she whispers.
"They said they're from Data Security and Logistics," Lydia hisses back. She inclines her head at one man at the edge of the group, younger than the others. "That guy's the Deputy Director. What did Jaffen do?"
Remembering Jaffen's advice, Kathryn crosses to her own station and logs back in, feigning calm. As the system chirps its recognition of her, the man looks over; and evidently he has been waiting for her to arrive, because he immediately hands his tablet off to an aide and strides over to her. She steps back from the terminal, clasping her hands tightly behind her back.
"Are you Kathryn Janeway?" he asks, though it's clear that he already knows the answer.
"I am."
"Deputy Director Harry Kim. I know you've already been questioned about the disappearance of your coworker. We're just here to verify subsystem integrity. We flagged some anomalies in the dataflow—nothing critical, just enough to trigger a sweep." He pauses, seeming to gauge her reaction to this information, though she has no idea what it might mean. Then he asks, "Did you happen to notice anything irregular in Mr. Jaffen's work? Unusual routing, anything that didn't align with standard procedure?"
"No," she says, "but our duties only rarely overlapped. You can ask the Efficiency Monitor."
"Of course. Still—did he ever mention trouble with the system interface? Frequency drift? Anything that seemed off at the time, even if it didn't mean much to you?"
She hesitates. "Not that I recall."
"I understand," he says, not unkindly. "If you do see anything out of the ordinary, I'd appreciate it if you'd log it manually and flag it for escalation. That way it reaches my office directly."
He gives her a brief, polite nod, and rejoins the others.
She watches him go, uneasy—and uncertain how much of the conversation to believe.
Because it wasn't Jaffen who'd noticed anomalies in the system. She'd asked him about it, ages ago. And what had he said?
The grid's running hot…. It's damned odd, isn't it?
But Jaffen handles secondary distribution—overflow routing, downstream regulation. She monitors the primary reactor coils. They have to know she'd be the first to catch a problem with the converter frequencies.
Apprehension edges in behind her ribs.
She turns back to her console, and forces her hands to move.
At shift change, Kathryn does not rush. She finalizes her handover report. She waits to log out until her relief arrives. Walks calmly to the locker room to collect her things. Rides the lift up to the surface with ten or so others, and steps out into the frozen dark.
Though the afternoon winds have died down, the temperature has plummeted. The city has slipped into a cold she's never known before, dangerous—they've been warned not to touch metal with their bare hands. She sips air through her scarf in shallow, measured breaths so that it doesn't sear her lungs.
After a few blocks, the group she left with begins to disperse. The intracity tram pulls away, leaving a cloud of exhaust in its wake; sighs of warm air from underground vents float into the street and freeze in midair. Ice fog clings to the ground in thick, rolling pockets, drifting between buildings like a living thing.
Her headlamp tries to cut a narrow path, but it's like walking through light itself. The beam scatters through suspended crystals, turning every step into a half-guess. Shapes loom and vanish, the city reduced to a haze of amber halos cast by its street lamps. She keeps to the middle of the cleared walkway, where the frost isn't as slick.
She is nearly halfway home when she registers the crunch and scrape of a second set of boots behind her, keeping time with hers.
She forces herself not to react. She tells herself it's nothing. Someone late off shift. Someone from her own building, even.
But then she slows. And the footsteps behind her slow, too.
Her breath catches against her scarf. She listens hard, straining to hear over the sound of blood rushing in her ears. She risks a glance back. Just a flick of her headlamp, a fraction of a turn.
Something moves at the edge of her vision. A smudge of shadow in the white fog. Her fingers curl inside her mittens, though she has nothing to reach for, nothing that might help her.
Then—a figure. Hunched and hooded, it emerges from the haze—
—and overtakes her without a word, unhurried, turning down an alley to her left.
She watches the person disappear.
But the feeling lingers. The sound is gone, but the skin on the back of her neck crawls.
Maybe she is imagining it.
She has felt, since the night Jaffen came, like she might be losing her mind—straining, relentlessly, to access memories she knows should be there. Because they must be there, because she can read Quarren, easily, fluently, and not knowing how gnaws at her, like an open wound. Like dread.
And she hasn't been sleeping. Her nightmares have worsened, in intensity, in frequency—Tom dies, Tom dies, Tom dies—and she wakes soaked in sweat and horror, the residue of which clings to her like a film. The reassuring warmth of Tom, safe and whole beside her in their bed, is always at such odds with the chill in her blood that it leaves her lightheaded.
And maybe the Lichtenberg figures of these dreams have seared themselves into her waking thoughts, etched behind her eyelids like an afterimage, forking under her skin, mapping danger where none exists.
She tries to stride ahead like someone with no reason to be afraid. She shoves her hands deeper into her pockets. And, still, there are no footsteps other than her own. Yet the sense of a presence coils behind her right shoulder, pressing in, so that she imagines a hand, just out of reach, lifting, stretching—almost—
A sharp crack breaks the silence.
Her heart stops. She whirls around, terror clogging her throat. Her headlamp swings across the empty path, glinting off metal railings, revealing…
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She exhales so hard she thinks for a moment she might vomit. Feels the pressure of a headache beginning at her temples. Ice, she thinks. She wants to think. She clenches her jaw, furious with herself, for how easily she is unraveling. There's nothing there. She knows it. She knows it, but she doesn't know how to believe it.
She walks the last block slower. If someone is following her, they'll have to pass her now, or stop altogether.
But no one does.
A motion sensor clicks as she nears her building, and an overhead light sputters to life—flickering once, twice, then holding. It throws her shadow long and sharp across the snow-packed street behind her.
Two shadows.
She blinks, turns—but when she looks again, there's only one. Just her.
Enough. She's done. Breath clouding in the cold, she scans her ID and the double doors slide open, a rush of warm air beating back the endless night as she steps inside. The doors seal shut behind her.
Tom gets home late.
She hears the lock disengage, then the sound of him kicking snow from his boots in the entryway. The small, familiar noises are a relief, and something inside her eases slightly—enough for her to realize how tightly she's been holding herself. Pain shoots from her shoulders into her temples, and this is how Tom finds her: curled in on herself in the corner of the couch, a cup gone cold in her hands.
"Headache, or nightmare?" he asks from the doorway.
She tries to smile. "Why limit ourselves?"
But it comes out sounding stretched, thin, and he hears it, too. He moves toward her, studies her face in the lamplight. He waits.
She looks down at her hands. "I think maybe we should leave. Just for a little while."
"Yeah," he says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "I've been thinking about that, too. The plant workers. Double inoculations. It's getting worse, isn't it? Something isn't right."
"There's more," she says. She tells him everything—the data she'd noticed weeks ago. Deputy Director Kim's questions today. Her increasing fear that Jaffen is not the only one they're after—whoever they are. As she speaks, Tom's face darkens; when she gets to her walk home, something breaks.
"You were followed?" he says sharply, crossing to the window like he might be able to see, from fifteen floors up, the person who'd stalked his wife through the night.
"I don't know. That's how it felt. But I never—there didn't seem to be anyone there."
Tom stands at the window a moment longer, a muscle working in his jaw. "Let's go south," he says. "We can get the first train out in the morning. Take the weekend, figure out what to do."
For a moment, neither of them moves. And despite everything she's seen, and heard, she thinks: but how can this be real? How can any of this be real?
"South," she says, at last. "Okay."
They wake early. Their bags, packed the night before, hold only their essentials.
"So it doesn't look like we're running," Tom had said.
Kathryn had to bite her tongue on the words, we're not, because she is not at all sure this is true, anymore.
They reach the train station with time to spare, and join the queue at the ticket counter. Somewhere nearby, a heating unit ticks like a metronome.
When it's their turn, Tom steps forward, sliding his ID across the counter. "Two southbound tickets, please."
The attendant doesn't look up. "Authorization?"
Kathryn stares. "For what?"
"You're guest workers," he says, as though this explains everything. "Intercity travel requires clearance from the Health Authority."
"But we ride the train all the time," she protests.
"Light-rail? Intracity?"
"Yes…"
"Health code doesn't apply."
"Look, we're not sick," Tom argues.
The attendant finally meets their eyes. "And I don't make the rules."
He says it with the kind of finality that suggests repercussions, if they keep pushing.
Kathryn touches Tom's arm. "Come on."
He doesn't move. He looks for all the world like he is about to do something that will get him hauled out of here by force. "Tom," she says, more quietly still.
"Fine."
She leads him to an alcove near the restrooms. Beyond, she can just make out a few yards of track before it's swallowed by the low fog, dense and unmoved since last night.
Tom paces a short line, stops, rakes a rough hand through his hair. "There's got to be a way out of here. They can't just lock us down without declaring an emergency!"
Kathryn swallows against a rising panic. She keeps her arms crossed tight, her breathing even—and her back to the security officers at the entrance.
"We'll think of something," she says. The words ring hollow in her own ears.
Somewhere down the platform, a train departs without them.
Kathryn
USS Billings
"—so if the SO spikes fifty parts per million, you pull out. I want both you and the hull intact, Tom. No heroics."
"Yes, ma'am," he agrees. She pretends not to notice him fighting a grin at her expense.
They stride down the corridor in sync, their boots muffled on the carpet. Without pausing, she hands him a second PADD. "Updated atmospheric predictions and plume overlays," she says. "Ops picked up a new vent field northeast of the main caldera."
He scans the data quickly. "Might mess with the descent corridor."
"Already has." She passes him a third PADD.
"But you're not worried," he says, smirking down at her.
"It's Arali all over again," she admits. "Plus explosions. Thermal shear's unpredictable, and the particulates in the atmosphere are going to scatter the shuttle's sensor readings. I have no doubt," she adds, with a long-suffering sigh, "that you will find a reason to switch to full manual. Per usual."
"I'll be careful, Commander."
"I didn't ask for careful," she says. "I asked for you. So don't prove me wrong."
They slow as they approach the shuttle bay. Looking both ways, Tom pulls her backwards into a storage compartment before she can protest. When the doors are safely shut, he says, "I thought I'd been proving you right for weeks already."
She rolls her eyes at him, but doesn't resist when he leans in, one hand braced against the bulkhead above her. The kiss is slow and easy, unhurried in a way not at all befitting their being in this glorified closet. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she marvels at how familiar this feels already—how natural it is to tilt her head just so, to find his mouth with hers.
"You'll be late," she murmurs, when he finally pulls back. "And Blum will know why."
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you. About my transfer."
She stiffens. "What about it?"
"I have what we might call a radical idea," he says. "If we got married, you'd be allowed to bring me back aboard in six months. After Caldik, so I wouldn't even be shirking my assignment."
Kathryn doesn't answer right away.
She studies him—the shape of him in the dim light, the bravado he wears like an armor. The suggestion of something real beneath it.
"First of all," she says, stalling for time, "this is how you propose to me?"
"It's more like I'm suggesting that you propose to me," Tom says easily. When she doesn't respond, he adds, "I have at least four really good reasons why you should say yes to this. I could start listing them, if you'd like."
"Tom…."
"I love you," he says, ticking it off on his index finger. "You love me. This is entirely regulation, very Starfleet of us—"
"Tom," she says again. "Stop. Let me think."
And she does. She thinks about that very first day in Professor Vrba's class, and how long ago that was. How young they were then… and yet, how little has changed.
She thinks about the ease with which she'd fallen into a new rhythm with him. That it's only been a few weeks since she'd finally relented, but that already it feels like the beginnings of a new life.
Logically—rationally—she takes his point. And there is also, if she's being honest with herself, a thrill behind her sternum at the idea of it—of marriage. As reckless, as absurd as it sounds.
"I've never been particularly good at refusing you," she admits.
"So don't," he says, helpfully.
She almost smiles. "Let's… talk about this after the mission. Anywhere else but here."
"That's not no," Tom points out.
"It's not a yes, either. Now get going," she says, giving him a light push.
"I'm going, I'm going," Tom says, grinning as he backs out of the compartment, hands raised in surrender.
The view from the bridge gets old fast. Kathryn doesn't regret sacrificing her spot on the away team, but after three hours, with no visuals on the surface and only spotty telemetry from the shuttle, there is very little to occupy her attention.
She waits.
And she thinks.
He did promise, she realizes belatedly. This time, we'll figure it out, he'd said, and oh, did he ever. It's the perfect loophole, so totally by-the-book that she can't come up with a single argument against it.
And this feels like something she should resist. Except that the part of her that usually says no—the part that keeps everything in her life neatly compartmentalized—is quiet now. There's no rule to hide behind, which on its own should be enough to make her dig in, to swallow all of the things she wants and ground herself in duty. It's what she does. It's what she's always done.
But she doesn't want to resist.
She doesn't want to say no.
"Gas concentrations stable," she says aloud, as the shuttle's latest telemetry comes through. "Hydrogen sulfide's drifting, but not dangerously."
Blum settles deeper into her chair, elbow against the armrest. "Any seismic activity?"
"Nothing new. The last tremor registered forty minutes ago." Kathryn taps through to the next screen. "Surface team's readings are nominal."
Blum nods. "We'll take nominal." She glances over at Kathryn. "What's wrong with you?"
Kathryn huffs out a laugh. "Nothing."
Blum narrows her eyes at her, and Kathryn braces for an interrogation. But before she can respond, Lieutenant Alfasi cuts in from Ops.
"Atmospheric conductivity just spiked—twenty percent and climbing."
Kathryn's head comes up. "That was fast."
"Started about two minutes ago. Could be a phreatic eruption—maybe a shallow fracture. Whatever it is, they're right on top of it."
Kathryn doesn't wait to be told. "Bridge to Away Team. Status."
Static. Then a brief garble—her name, maybe—and the signal cuts out.
"Telemetry's fragmenting," Alfasi reports. "Suit vitals are dropping. Overpressure at ground level—"
"Injuries?"
"Can't confirm. Ash plume's rising, silicate-heavy. Probably what knocked out comms. If it climbs much higher, the shuttle won't make it out."
Blum is on her feet. "Keep trying. I don't care how faint it is, just get me something."
"Their EV suits," Kathryn murmurs. "If a plume overtook them—"
"I don't know." Blum turns to her. "Prep the other shuttle. If we don't get signal in five, we'll go get them."
"Vale, Pello, with me," she says, already making for the turbolift.
"Wait," Torvek calls from the helm. "Captain, I've got movement."
"The shuttle?"
"Looks like an emergency ascent. Still no comms, coming in hot."
"Do we have visual?"
"They just cleared the upper atmosphere. Visual lock… now."
Radiation interference flickers across the viewscreen before the image stabilizes. The shuttle's hull is scorched, trailing vapor and particulates.
"Captain, they can't dock without comms. We can't be sure—"
"Bridge to Transporter Room One," Blum interrupts. "Lock on to the away team and beam them directly to sickbay."
"Acknowledged."
"Tractor the shuttle in and hold it," Blum orders Alfasi. Then, quieter, to Kathryn alone: "Go."
It takes her eight minutes to reach sickbay.
Lucy meets her at the doors, pulling off bloodied gloves and replacing them in one smooth motion. The room is a cacophony of noise and movement—monitors chirping, nurses calling out vitals, the crackle of sterilization fields. Burned fabric reaches her first, then blood. Ash in the air, metallic in the throat.
"Report," Kathryn hears herself say.
"Vasala is being prepped for surgery," Lucy says, jerking her head to indicate that Kathryn should follow. "Taln's scrubbing in."
She matches Lucy's pace, following her to the nearest biobed, where Ensign Anaya is being stabilized. "Concussion, dislocated shoulder," Lucy is saying. "Some internal bruising. Nothing surgical."
Kathryn nods tightly.
At the end of the row, Lucy comes to a stop.
And Kathryn sees him: face streaked with soot, half out of his suit, Tom lies motionless on the last biobed. There's a thin cut along his temple, already sealed, and the smear of blood where it began.
"Head trauma," Lucy says, quieter now. "His suit's pressure seal held, but it looks like something threw him pretty hard. Cranial scan showed diffuse axonal strain—he's out cold, but stable. We're monitoring for swelling."
Kathryn doesn't respond. Her eyes are on Tom's chest, tracking its slow rise and fall.
"I don't know how the hell he flew them out of there," Lucy adds, bracingly, "but he did. He's going to be fine. We'll patch them all up, good as new."
"Doctor Bailey, we're ready for you," a nurse calls from across the room.
"Keep me updated," Kathryn murmurs. Lucy nods, and strides away.
Left alone, the noise around her recedes, as the world narrows to a single point.
If it can be recovered, the data collected by the away team might be enough for a working report. Another crew could finish it. Command wouldn't order them to stay, not after this—three officers down, a disabled shuttle, and the Billings already months beyond when the crew was supposed to be home.
She watches Tom. Counts the seconds between each shallow breath.
Three officers, seriously injured under her command.
For what?
Preliminary data?
She turns for the door. No one sees her go.
Chakotay
USS Voyager
Present
Chakotay sidesteps an engineer crouched at a wall panel, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. At Ops, a team is tearing into a fried EPS relay—the fourth today, as far as he's heard. Though the day is young.
Still, it's more progress than he'd had any right to expect.
No one looks up as he passes, wholly absorbed in their work. He doesn't take this personally. He is, after all, not their commanding officer.
The briefing room doors are still jammed half-open, the lowest of priorities on this deck. He angles himself through the gap and finds Tuvok, already seated, reviewing data on a portable console, while the Doctor paces at the far end of the room.
"Where's Neelix?" Chakotay asks.
"Here!" Neelix shimmies in behind him, slightly out of breath. "Sorry—I just got back."
"They said oh-nine-hundred," the Doctor mutters. "Clearly, that was an aspirational estimate."
He turns to look through the windows behind him, and, automatically, Chakotay follows his line of sight. Outside, the curve of the moon stretches wide and pale, its paramagnetic core all that's stood between them and annihilation these past three weeks, masking their energy signature from the vessels beyond. Tucked into a crater half a kilometer away, the Norvalen ship is invisible from Voyager's vantage point, but close enough that their repair teams pass like ghosts between the two every few hours.
"What time is it now?"
"Oh-nine-twenty-two," the Doctor answers.
"Well then," Chakotay says, settling into the chair at the head of the table. "Let's catch up while we wait. It's been a few days."
"Impulse engines remain stable," Tuvok reports. "Phaser relay output is at seventy-eight percent. Shield integrity is holding at sixty percent. The Norvalen engineers project an increase of up to five percent within the next twelve hours."
"Warp?"
"Still offline," Neelix answers. "But we're still trying to rig the two systems. Compatibility's been… tricky."
"What about—" Chakotay starts, but is cut off by the chirp of an incoming comm signal.
"Commander Chakotay, we're ready."
He nods at Tuvok, who routes the signal to the screen on the far wall. It activates, resolving into the image of the Norvalen ship's commander, Captain Esar. Her posture is upright as ever, though the shadows under her eyes suggest the kind of exhaustion Chakotay himself feels keenly.
"My apologies for the delay," she says. "There's been a development."
Chakotay leans forward. "Good news, or bad?"
"Both, you could say. We picked up a signal early this morning. Low-band, almost looked like an automated diagnostics ping. But there were Norvalen civilian codes buried in the encryption. A distress call."
"One of your missing?"
"No, in fact. A civilian engineer. He left the homeworld two years ago. No alerts, no flags. But—" She pauses, eyes flicking to someone off-screen. "We know why we haven't been able to locate our people."
The mood in the room shifts immediately. From the corner of his eye, Chakotay sees the Doctor and Neelix exchange a look.
"We gave him your crew manifest," Esar continues, "along with our own lists. He asked to speak with you."
She steps aside.
A man moves into frame. Late forties, maybe. Lean, grey-haired, with the hollowed look of someone who could use a meal and a good night's sleep. The side of his face is mottled and bruised, and the fabric of his tunic is streaked with grime. But his gaze into the screen is steady. Alert.
"I know this woman," he says, lifting a PADD. "And her husband. A handful others. We worked together. We're—friends."
Chakotay's heart slams into his throat.
B'Elanna?
The thought just about knocks the wind out of him. And this, exactly this, is why he'd ordered Voyager to stay in that nebula for so long. Why, after months of being hunted by some nameless enemy, they'd risked everything to go for help when they'd stalled out on repairs, and leads, and every other damn thing. Why pursue the Flyer, after all, if there was nothing to hide? Why lay a trap line in the middle of nowhere unless there's something, someone, on the other side?
Tom and B'Elanna. Their unborn child.
He'd known they weren't dead. He'd felt it.
He rises. Both hands grip the back of the chair as he asks, "Who? Who do you know?"
The man looks to Esar, then back into the screen.
"Kathryn," he says. "Kathryn and Tom Paris. They're on Quarra."