Work Text
She kills the first Tuvok who shows up on her doorstep.Incredibly, they send another.Kathryn doesn’t need voice authentication and blood screenings to know it’s not him. But when the first imposter doesn’t revert to a liquid form, something settles into the pit of her stomach, roiling and dark. The Doctor would be able to tell her what she’s looking at without starting a panic; when she tries to reach him, she’s cut off. Her screen goes dark.She packs. Where can she go? She should avoid transporters, she thinks, where her DNA could be tracked across the planet. If Tuvok is compromised, then Tom is closest. She hasn’t seen him since the reunion but he’ll help her, if—instinctively, her mind tries to dart away from the thought—if he’s alive, if he’s still him. She could take the ferry to Sausalito, save an hour, but if they’re looking for her… which means she can’t cut through campus, either.She’ll wait until dusk, cross the bridge in the dark. Just a few hours away. She tugs on a dark grey sweater and weatherproof boots. She paces, her ears straining against the April rain pummeling her skylights. What else? Weapon, rations. It’s ridiculous, but—she takes her old communicator out of her desk drawer and tosses it into her bag. She’ll leave the other behind. She doesn’t know enough to guess how far this goes.She knows enough to be afraid.She knows enough to run, when the doorbell next echoes through her home.By the time she makes it to Tom’s she is soaked to the bone, the gloved hand that grips her phaser cramped and aching. She approaches carefully, silent except for her chattering teeth, skirting the side of his small house. She pauses beside a window, listening. That all seems quiet inside tells her very little, considering it is three in the morning. She takes two more steps toward his front door and she must trip something, because a light comes on and then Tom is there, eyes hard and a phaser leveled at her chest.“It’s me, Tom,” she tells him, not lowering her own weapon.“How do I know that?”“I don’t know.” If she offers to cut her palm, show him her blood, and he knows what she knows, then he’ll think she’s trying to deceive him. If she doesn’t make the offer, he may think it anyway. Everything they thought would keep them safe is worthless. Helplessly, she says, “Ask me something only I would know.”Because there are any number of questions he could choose, things no Changeling interrogator would think to extract from her before assuming her form, things they’d kept out of their logs all those years ago. He could ask her about the Billings, after the Billings. He could ask how he once convinced her not to consign the last dregs of a civilization to death for the crime of taking him hostage.“Your surname,” he says. “Tell me your surname.”An incredulous laugh bubbles out of her, closer to hysteria than she likes, and she covers her mouth with one tremulous hand. She drops the phaser.“Paris. It’s Paris,” she gasps, unaware until just this moment how sure she’d been that she would come all this way just to find him gone, replaced, and although he’s right in front of her a vision of his broken body dances in her mind’s eye and she thinks, Tuvok, then forces herself not to, not yet.His long legs cross the expanse of lawn between them and then he’s folding her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin, and it’s like her lungs have just remembered how to take in air for the first time all day; she sucks in a shuddering breath, steadying herself, sinking into him.“Let’s get inside,” he says, finally. “Something tells me we have a lot to talk about.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
By the rivers darkIn a wounded dawnI live my lifeIn Babylon
—Leonard Cohen, "By the Rivers Dark" Part I.
Tom
Starfleet Academy
Tom skids into the lecture hall with about six seconds to spare, which is pretty impressive considering he’s just sprinted clear across campus. From his podium, Professor Vrba scowls fondly, if such an expression is possible. Tom has the grace to look sheepish as he slides into the last free seat, offering a crooked smile first to Vrba and then to the girl next to him, who is watching this interplay closely.“I had him last semester,” Tom explains under his breath, wiping his face with his uniform sleeve.“Are you going into medicine, or did you fail it before?” the girl whispers back, and it’s a moment before Tom realizes she’s teasing him. His grin widens.“Astrophysics. The other electives were all full, but the uselessness of a second semester of biochem really irritates my father, so I can’t be too mad about it.”“Who’s—” she starts to ask, but then Vrba strides over to the classroom door and pointedly swings it shut, and everyone falls silent.Next to him, the girl pulls out a PADD to take notes. Tom tries, and fails, not to notice that she is very pretty, long auburn hair pulled back into a tight braid, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Now that he thinks about it, is she… familiar, somehow? She seems laser-focused on Vbra’s loving detailing of the course syllabus, but Tom must stare for a moment too long, because she makes a face without turning to look at him.“What?” she hisses.“What’s your name?”She rolls her eyes, ignoring him. She's very serious, he thinks, now that class has begun. After a moment's consideration of this, he whispers, "You're very serious."She scrunches her nose at him, and in a flash words come to mind that he has tried valiantly not to involve himself with of late; words like adorable, and interesting, and oh, shit.Which means he has two fairly straightforward options here: he can drop this class, graduate late, suffer the wrath of his parents but not, at least, the ignominy of falling head over heels for this girl who won’t tell him her name.Or he can stay put, and just do that last bit.Susie Crabtree! he reminds himself. Danger! Danger!These, he decides, are Tomorrow Tom’s problems. Today Tom opts to live to fight another day, pulling his own PADD out of his bag and dutifully taking notes he does not need and will never look at again. Tom likes Vrba very much, as a person, but his syllabi may as well be etched into the foundations of this building for all that they ever vary. Still, he doesn’t want to seem rude. At minimum, it will help him stay awake.There is a small hope, exceedingly small, that Vrba will break them into groups, invite them to introduce themselves to each other. Considering Tom will have zero extra minutes to get from this class to his next, it would be his only opportunity to talk to the girl. Unless he lets them out early… it is, after all, the first day.Dare he dream of hope?He perks up as they reach the last lines of the interminable, fifteen page syllabus——and the professor segues, heartlessly, straight into his lecture.Tom sinks in his chair, hunkering down for the long haul. Heroically, he keeps his eyes front for the remaining hour and a half.When the class finally wraps up, he picks his bag up off the floor, readying himself for another sprint. His schedule this semester is a nightmare of logistics, each of his classes somehow as physically far apart as it is possible to be without actually falling into the Bay. His stomach growls audibly, and he sighs. Maybe he should start packing ration bars on Tuesdays and Thursdays.“It’s Kathryn,” the girl says, and he wheels around to find her holding out half a sandwich, wrapped in brown paper.Yes! “Tom,” he grins. “Are you sure…?”“You look like you need it more than I do. It’s sad, actually. Your stomach is making me sad.”“I’ll take sad if it gets me a sandwich,” he agrees readily. He’s about to ask if he’s seen her somewhere before, though she doesn’t seem to recognize him, but already she’s sliding past, lips pressed together as she fights a smile. Tom watches her go, not even pretending to play it cool.“Get out of my classroom, Mister Paris,” Vrba calls from the front of the room, and Tom checks his watch, crams the sandwich into his mouth, and bolts. *
KathrynQuarra
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any whiskey,” Kathryn asks, slumping onto a barstool and dropping her head into her hands.“Bad day?” the bartender asks.“Four hours into my first shift at the Central Power Facility I almost started a core overload,” she tells him, her voice muffled. She hears him chuckle, and although she can’t explain it her heart leaps into her throat and, startled, she looks up. When she meets his eyes, he opens his mouth to speak, then stops, frowning a little. A pang of something trips through her chest.“Sorry,” he shakes his head. “You just looked so familiar for a second there.”“It’s fine,” she says softly, then offers, “Human,” because he seems to be, too.“I figured that, what with your distinguished taste in liquor. And no, I don’t have any whiskey, but I can get you close. It’s not Irish, but it’s not bad.”Which means they’re not only the same race, but he’s from Earth, too. He turns to collect a bottle, the content of which is at least the right color, pours two fingers over ice and slides her the glass, apparently awaiting her verdict. Gingerly, she takes a sip.“Not bad at all,” she allows, tipping it toward him in thanks.“On the house,” he says. Automatically, she starts to protest, but he holds up a hand. “For not melting down the power plant. Half my customers work over there.”She can’t help it—she laughs. “All right, all right. Thank you.”A large group she does indeed recognize from work comes in just then, and the bartender sets his rag down. “If you need anything, my name’s Tom,” he says.“Kathryn,” she returns, and she smiles.She picks up the not-whiskey and moves to a table where she can spread out the manuals she’s been assigned. Surreptitiously, she watches the man move around the bar. She’s sure she’s never met him before, she can’t have, but there is something, just around the edges, in the warmth of his voice, and it’s more than that they’re from the same place. His chuckle earlier had been like… like a well-worn sweater, easy, comfortable. She’d been sure, just for a moment, that she would look up and see someone she knew.Which is impossible, of course. The only person she’s spoken with so far, other than her boss, is—“I thought you didn't have time to socialize?” a voice says from behind her, and she turns to see to the man who’d really earned this drink today.“Jaffen,” she greets him. “I'm not socializing. I'm reviewing these manuals and having a drink.”“Well, I recommend the Latara wine and the section on thermal coefficients. Mind if I join you?”She looks down, swirling the amber liquid. When he’d rescued her from her console she’d found him charming, attractive in that effortless way of men who know exactly what they have to offer. He is very much her type—and he very much seemed to know it. If he’d asked her then to have dinner with him, she would’ve have said yes.Now, she hesitates. Offers him a rueful, “Really, I'm very, very busy.”She’s not entirely sure why she’s rejecting his overtures. He seems like a good man. Kind. If nothing else, she doesn’t know another soul on the whole planet. But she catches the bartender’s eye across the room, pauses a beat too long. Long enough for Jaffen to follow her line of sight, and although Tom has already turned back to the table he’s serving, he says, “Ah.”She winces. “I’m sorry.”“Don’t be,” he says. “Really. If you’re ever in the market for a friend, you know where to find me.” He raps his knuckles lightly on the tabletop, then rejoins the group he came in with.And if she happens to observe that Tom tracks the other man’s retreat over his shoulder, well. She ducks her head, and pretends that it doesn’t affect her at all.Pulling Central Power Operations Protocols towards her, she sips at her drink and settles in, letting the white noise of the other patrons wash over her. She’s brought altogether too much to read in one sitting, probably looks ridiculous to the more seasoned workers. It’s just that she’s bursting with an inexpressible gratitude—to have found this job, and the security it offers. This diverse community so ready to welcome her into its fold.She wants badly to do well here. To put down roots, at last. And then there’s the fact that she is a little too used to excelling at most things she attempts, but that to do so here she’ll have to master this strange new technology, fast. Learn to speak its language. The science is universal, but the nuts and bolts of it all, the bones of it…But rather than feeling deterred by the learning curve ahead, the challenge excites her. And it’s been a long time since she’s felt this way. A long time since anything has captured her interest at all.Which brings her back to the bartender. Tom.She redoubles her focus—but she can’t help wondering whether he’ll check in on her, correctly clocking her interest and capitalizing on it as any man, any bartender, might. She spots him from the corner of her eye, messy blonde hair and a bounce in his step, making the rounds.He doesn’t come to her table.After a while, an enigmatic older woman replaces her drink with a wink. Kathryn thanks her, keeping the disappointment out of her voice—truly, she’s being absurd—then returns to scribbling notes in the margins, questions to ask her supervisor in the morning. The crowd swells around her, and then wanes. She shifts, propping her chin in her hand. She reads and reads, until the words begin to blur together, and then pushes herself a little more.“Hey,” the bartender interrupts, gently. She starts and looks around, abruptly aware that she’s the last one left in the bar. “We’re closing up—weekday hours.”She groans. “I’m so sorry, I completely lost track of time.”He cranes his neck to see what she’s reading. “Well, who wouldn’t. Technical manuals: a thrill a minute. Should help with the meltdowns, though.”“I would’ve corrected it!” she protests.He smirks, his eyes twinkling, but says nothing. She has to suppress an impulse—too playful, too familiar—to lean into him, nudge his arm with her shoulder. She busies herself with her drink, draining the last of it in one long pull.“If you want to wait a few minutes, I can walk you out. Do you live nearby? Maybe you’re on my way.” He grimaces, then adds, “That’s not a line, I swear. I just know how it is to be new around here.”And that’s curious, isn’t it? After not saying another word to her all night?She should say no. She doesn’t know this man, despite whatever had passed between them earlier, and although the city is supposed to be safe, wouldn’t it be foolish of her, naïve even?On Earth…“Have you been in the city long?” she stalls, packing her things away.“Uh, well. Just over a week.”“Practically a native, then. But—”But there are a thousand reasons to make an excuse and walk home alone.But she wants to say yes.“I… guess since I’ve already gotten lost once today, I’d better take you up on it. I’m in the Osa building.”“Huh, me too. What are the odds?”A human, from Earth, in the same housing complex. That’s… unlikely. She’s just about to say so aloud… yet something prevents her, a prickling at the back of her neck and then, just as quickly, the certainty that she’s being paranoid—and that she does not want him to think of her as such.She leans backwards against the bar while Tom makes quick work of stacking chairs. He calls, “You there, Umali?” and the woman who’d served her earlier emerges from a back room. For a few minutes they speak in low tones Kathryn can’t make out, until Umali throws Tom a knowing look, graces Kathryn with another wink, and saunters out again.“Is she…?”“A telepath? I can’t tell if it’s that, or if it just comes with owning a bar. She’s definitely got a knack for reading people.” Tom holds the door open for Kathryn to precede him outside. With the first blast of night air, she shivers.“It’s so cold here at night,” she says, pulling her jacket tight. “Do you get used to it?”“Not yet,” Tom admits. “And it’ll only get colder.”She can imagine. She’d been warned on the transport in that she was headed for the northernmost city, just in time for the region to enter a polar night. Four months of darkness. She’d thought, a bit romantically, that it sounded cozy. Pictured herself tucked away into her new life, safe, ensconced.And the reality so far has turned out even better than her hopes. Employee housing is so stunningly generous that after her building manager had left her with her new keys, she’d wondered why there was a labor shortage at all, why anyone would ever want to leave. There is an alcove of her apartment which overlooks the river, walls lined with shelving. A natural reading nook, once the rest of her meager possessions arrive. It’s as though someone had plucked the ideal living quarters from her mind and materialized them on the fifteenth floor, just for her.“It’s supposed to be beautiful in the summer, though,” he continues. “Where I’m from, the winters were wet, but not quite so dramatic.”Her pulse quickens as she asks, “You’re from Earth, right?” Because for all that she’d fled a violent, ruined planet, she feels its pull still, a yearning despite herself. Quarra may be her salvation, but Earth had been home, and time blunts the jagged edge of catastrophe.“San Francisco, actually.”“Oh,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”They reach their building and hurry inside, a rush of heat welcoming them. The guard at the security desk checks their identification and lets them through with a sleepy nod, summoning the lift for them remotely.Tom waits until the doors slide shut, then says, “It took me a few days to settle in. First job I found wasn’t a great fit. But even then, just being here, it felt like a weight was lifted off my chest. You know?”She does. Her rough start of a morning aside, she feels freer than she can ever remember. It’s like waking up, like becoming, all the unwritten chapters of her life drawing her forward, forward.And perhaps this is why, as the lift opens onto her floor, she teeters for a moment, and seriously considers asking him to join her.“Well. Thank you again,” she says instead, a little awkwardly.Tom shoves his hands into his pockets and smiles. “Any time.”She steps out and turns towards her living quarters, resolved not to watch him go.“Kathryn, wait,” Tom calls, jams his foot between the doors to hold them open. “I—just so you know, I didn’t bother you all night because Umali, you know. The reading people thing. But I wanted to.”“You wanted to bother me?” Kathryn clarifies.“All night,” Tom confirms.She huffs out a laugh. But before she can think of a clever response, Tom stands back with a wave, and allows the doors to shut between them.Letting herself into her quarters, she drifts through the main room, touching her few mementos as she goes, marveling, still, that she gets to call this space her own. She leaves the curtains open, dotted lights from buildings across the river like stars in the night sky. She pulls her uniform off and falls into bed, tucking an arm behind her head.She inhales deeply, and breathes out a contented sigh.*She makes a habit of Wednesdays, after that.“It’s quieter!” she insists.“For the manuals,” Tom nods sagely.“I am a stranger in a strange land, after all.”He scoffs. “You could probably run that place.”Which is nice of him to say, but privately, she thinks, sounds like a nightmare.Though she can credibly claim to be working, a marginally quieter bar also means that Tom’s got more time on his hands. Sometimes he’ll concoct new drinks and test them out on her: a nod of approval tends to herald the weekend’s special; a wrinkled nose, and it goes down the drain. Sometimes he’ll even join her, taking his ‘lunch’ at her table, having apparently received Umali’s blessing to break with professionalism.Always, he walks her home.The city edges closer and closer to its long night. The sun hangs low behind a now-familiar landscape, illuminating the sky only at dawn and dusk, all pastel pink and shocks of orange. In abject defiance of the habit of a lifetime, Kathryn wakes early to stand out on her balcony, to simply exist in this liminal moment, hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea and a blanket across her shoulders.It’s this sense of transition that at last makes her give up any remaining pretense, leave behind her pile of work and duck into the bar one night with a new novel, instead. Tom, serving drinks to Jaffen at a booth near the door, notices her immediately. A broad grin overtakes his features. Jaffen laughs out loud.“All right, calm down, both of you,” Kathryn says, exasperated.Jaffen raises his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say anything!”Tom puts on a show of seriousness, saluting her with a mock-scowl. She rolls her eyes at him, slides in opposite Jaffen instead of making for her table in the corner.“Be right back with your usual,” Tom says, and heads to the bar.“I’m sorry if we embarrassed you,” Jaffen says in an undertone. “It’s just nice to see you like this.”“Like ‘this’?”“Like you’re comfortable here.”Inevitably, she glances over at Tom. And he must sense her attention, because he looks up, finds and holds her gaze through the crowd.“Yeah,” she says, feeling herself smile. “I am.”*“Ready for this?” Tom asks, locking up the bar behind them.“Is it hubris if I say yes, my first time?”“Mine too,” he reminds her. “It’s only hubris if you run out of lightbulbs.” She tucks her arm into his, a human shield against the cold. Pulls her scarf up to cover her nose.Across the city, overwinter preparations are all but complete. The plant issued its workers warmer uniforms a week ago—insulated boots, gloves, hats, the works. Bobbing pinpricks of light now signal headlamped residents heading home for the night. She thinks she’s prepared, but she has to admit that it is daunting, the sheer amount of supplies the government advises. The implications of it all.“Can I show you something cool?” Tom asks.“’Cool’,” she chuckles. “Yes, always.”When they reach their building, Tom takes her up to the seventeenth floor without explanation. Her view from inside the lift is blocked by semi-transparent sheeting draped from the ceiling. It looks like a construction site.“Can we be up here?” she asks.“I bribed a guy,” Tom says. When she frowns, he takes her hand. “I’m kidding! We’re allowed. Let me show you.”He leads her through the barrier and gropes for a panel of light switches. He flips them on one at a time, overhead lights blinking to life down a long line. They’re in a kind of lobby, she now sees—on a level without living quarters. A glass door lies ahead of them, and beyond that… a veritable jungle. Tom holds the door open for her, and as she steps through the humidity hits her first, at least ten degrees hotter inside than out. Around them, the walls are alive from top to bottom with varieties of plants she’s never seen before, not that she’d have had occasion to. Some are even flowering, somehow. An artificial creek runs adjacent to the center walkway, and as she looks closer, she sees silvery fish—or anyway, something like fish—lazing between smooth stones.“What is this place?” she whispers.“It’s an arboretum!” Tom says. “More and more buildings here have them, apparently. One of my regulars is on the gardening crew. He told me the lights will actually simulate day and night, when it’s all done.”She’s never seen anything like it. This whole floor must have some kind of full-spectrum lighting to keep everything so green and lush. It’s nearly labyrinthine, the way the planters have been arranged to form winding paths through the space. She can just make out a bench down and around one corner. She runs a reverent hand across a fern-like bush.“Mid-level, so it stays warmer with less power?”Tom laughs. “You can take the girl out of the power distribution plant….”It’s overwhelming, frankly. She hadn’t noticed that she missed being in nature. She spends so much of her time below ground these days, her shifts ending well after dark, and it’s been fine, entirely fine—yet, pointlessly, she thinks of cottontail rabbits, a last holdout of Indiana’s decimated wildlife population. Emotion wells inside her, clogs in her throat. She bites her lip.When she doesn’t respond, Tom looks down at her, scanning her face. “You know what I miss?” he says, after a beat. “Birds. We used to have these parrots, wild parrots, just unbelievably loud. For a long time everyone thought they’d gone extinct. They always seemed so out of place… but then again, so did I.”He trains his gaze on the bank of shaded windows. And Kathryn understands the things he does not say.“Thank you, Tom.” She leans her head against him, and he shifts his weight to accommodate her, drapes an arm across her shoulders.“It isn’t… real,” he says, almost apologetically.
It isn’t Earth.
“No,” she agrees. “But it is beautiful.”They stay like that for another few minutes, until, reluctantly, she looks back to the lift. “Oh. You’re upstairs,” she realizes, accustomed as she is to him dropping her off at her floor.“Um,” he says. “About that. I’m actually on three.”She stares at him. “…You’ve been riding all the way up to fifteen, and then back down?”“Bought me a few extra minutes with you, didn’t it?”Her heart stutters and, quickly, she looks away. She never knows what to make of these comments, which seem like flirting except that he’s never asked her for more—never, for instance, invited her to come home with him, however long she lingers. In the lift she is acutely aware of his closeness to her, the physicality of him. She is, admittedly, never not aware of this, but she has been careful so far to toe the line of friendship, wary of ruining what they already have in pursuit of something she’s not sure he wants. His friendship means a great deal to her.More than he knows, probably.And with a flash of insight that makes her feel like a perfect idiot, she thinks: Oh.It takes less than a minute to reach her floor, but it’s long enough. She gathers her belated courage, and when the doors open, she faces him.“Maybe this is crazy,” she says. “You’ve never….” She stops, regroups. Tries again. “Tom. Would you like to come in?”He blows out a breath and laughs, and the way he looks at her then makes her feel at once giddy and a little faint. “Kathryn. I thought you’d never ask.”It’s on the tip of her tongue to counter, in her defense, but we hardly know each other, really! Except that she knows just what he means: that an age may as well have passed since that first night at the bar, for all that she has wanted him ever since.She leads him to her door, steps inside, switches on a lamp. Her back to him, pulse racing, she toes her boots off, starts to shrug out of her jacket. “Do you want anything to—”Before she can finish, he grasps her arm lightly and turns her towards him. His other hand, steadier than her own, comes to rest at her waist. “I’d like to kiss you now, actually,” he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “If that’s all right with you.”“I wish you would,” she breathes. He bends to meet her even as she comes up on tiptoes, winding her arms around his neck. But at the first lightning touch of his lips to hers, she pulls back.“Is something wrong?” he murmurs.“No,” she says slowly, shaking her head. “No. Just… a little dizzy. Déjà vu.”His thumb traces the line of her cheekbone. “Does that make me destined to kiss you?”She chokes out a startled laugh. “Oh, god, that’s an awful line.”“I’ll make it up to you,” he promises. He gives her another moment to pull away, then closes the space between them—and if she has struggled these past weeks to voice her desire, her body, now, does not. His tongue slides against hers and the whole of the world narrows to this moment: to the perfect fit of their bodies, his purposeful fingers slipping beneath the hem of her shirt, tracing a white hot trail across the coolness of her skin, the sides of her breasts.She groans into his mouth, clutches at the back of his shirt, needing more, needing closer. She can hardly believe she was ever unsure of this, feels the joy of it, the rightness of it in her every nerve ending, it sings through her blood, and when together they stumble, laughing, through the doorway of her bedroom, his voice, thick with want, whispers more promises into her skin, words that make her tremble, that make her buck against him, as he lays her across her bed, and takes her apart.The next morning, a pale sun rises for what seems like the span of a heartbeat, then dips again below its horizon, and does not return. *
Kathryn
Starfleet Academy
Kathryn arrives early to her second biochemistry lesson, as is her wont as a serious student, and not, certainly, because she wants to save a seat for a boy named Tom with a boyish charm and blue, blue eyes. If she drops her bag onto the desk beside her, it’s only so she can keep it off the floor while she rummages through it, extracting her PADD and, well, okay, there’s not actually anything else she needs right now. Impatient with herself, she blows a stray hair out of her face. Pulls up Professor Vrba’s syllabus and reviews it again, as though she hasn’t already highlighted the most pertinent information.She can hardly pretend to much interest in this class, when her focus is quantum cosmology. But she can’t graduate without it, and so here she is, determinedly not thinking about how she could be working on her thesis right now instead of mucking about with proteins and enzymes.All science is important, she reminds herself sternly, her personal mantra this semester.When Tom arrives, he’s a few minutes earlier than before and not quite so disheveled, probably because he couldn’t run flat out with the paper cup in his hand. Coffee, she thinks, longingly. Swiftly, she slides her bag under her own desk.“Kathryn,” he says, nodding solemnly.“Tom.”“I bring you an offering,” he says, holding out the cup. “In thanks. For the sandwich.”Involuntarily, she gasps. “How did you—”“I took a guess. Recognized the logo on the wrapping and figured you weren’t at a coffee shop for their PB and J’s.”“Good guess,” she confirms, bringing the cup up to her nose and inhaling deeply. Hazelnut hits her first and then dark chocolate, maybe vanilla? She takes a sip, letting her eyes flutter closed, and oh, it’s a good blend, smooth, medium-dark; perfect.When she looks up again, Tom is staring at her. “So, big coffee fan,” he says, fighting to keep a straight face.She feels herself flush, but is spared having to answer by Professor Vrba dimming the lights, signaling the start of class.After that, Tom starts bringing coffee for both of them on a semi-regular basis. She tries to object, but each time he overrules her, saying either, “I’m there anyway,” or, “I know a guy,” or just a good-natured, “Shut up, Kathryn.” She can’t figure how he’s doing it. She knows he has to make it here from north campus. Did he drop his morning class? Is it possible he really does have a secret coffee supplier?“You don’t know about the coffee cart?” he says, when she finally voices her confusion.“The what?”A wide, slow grin spreads across his face. “Well, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”“What? Why?” she demands.“Because then what’ll you need me for?”“Tom,” she says seriously. “Tom, where is there a coffee cart?”“Gotta go! See you next week!” he waves, and vanishes.In the end, it’s not that hard to find. She’s never gone up to the top floor of the Biology building, because why would she? She’s essentially here under duress. The coffee cart is tucked into a corner of the short wing, nothing fancy, but it’s near the ‘lift and it’s fresh and there’s no line, which makes its discovery on par with a spiritual experience, surely.And yet, having solved the mystery, she finds she wishes she hadn’t. She catches herself smiling a little wistfully, and she decides that, though it will pain her on the days he doesn’t bring her coffee, she won’t come up here again. She’ll let him keep his secrets.She’ll let herself need him in this small, sweet way.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
ChakotayThe Delta FlyerFour Weeks Ago
“I don’t give a damn about protocol,” Chakotay snaps. “Get out of the way.”“Commander—”“Need I remind you, Commander, that in Captain Janeway’s absence, you are acting captain. Your responsibility to the crew supersedes any personal—”“No, Tuvok, you need not remind me.”“Commander,” Neelix cuts in. “Why don’t you both go, together? I can stay and hold down the fort.”Chakotay takes a breath, deliberately releases his balled fists. Standing between himself and the rack of EV suits, Tuvok appears totally unmoved by the complete absence life signs emanating from Voyager. And even knowing Vulcans—even knowing Tuvok—as he does, Chakotay wants to shake him.“That would be an acceptable compromise,” says Tuvok, whose first foolish idea had been to reconnoiter Voyager alone.“Fine. Let’s go.”The homing signal which lead them to this hideaway nebula strikes him as more ominous than not. A beacon in the night, weak and encrypted, that’s lead them from nothing, to nothing. Five days trading with the Nar Shaddan, four since they returned to the rendezvous coordinates to find only open space, and they can’t be sure when it originated, but here’s the thing about homing signals: someone has to set them. Someone who wants to be found.But it’s entirely possible life support has been down for a week or more.It takes ten painstaking minutes to suit up. Mutely, Tuvok and Chakotay check the seals on each other’s boots, gloves, helmets. A muscle jumps in Tuvok’s jaw as the ambient lights blink on, nearly imperceptible but for Chakotay’s unwanted proximity.Damn.He tries not to think about Tuvok’s friendship with Janeway, the betrayal it represents. Upon this cognitive dissonance, in fact, is his entire relationship with her built. And with Tuvok, as well, for whatever it’s worth.“We’ll find her,” he murmurs when the internal comm is active, by way of apology. Then, “Beam us directly to the Bridge,” he instructs Neelix. He secures a tricorder to his hip; Tuvok hands him a phaser, which he arms. He misses Neelix’ reply, drowned out by the roar of oxygen circulating in his suit, the harsh tempo of his own breathing.He feels himself dematerialize. And braces to be beamed into a graveyard.The reality is stark in its disparity. The bridge is empty, utterly: no klaxons sounding, no flashing red, not even emergency lighting, just the flickering of computer terminals failing to tap into backup processors.Neither are there bodies draped across consoles, frozen by the vacuum of space in their final acts of survival.Chakotay exhales, slower than he might otherwise so that it won’t come through the open comm channel.
One down.
Tuvok climbs the steps to Ops, spends a few minutes attempting to access the main computer. Feeling useless, Chakotay paces, noting which consoles are offline altogether, wondering what they can possibly do about all this with just the three of them. He forces the hopelessness out of his mind, tries to come up with options, any options at all. And when Tuvok announces, “Sensor resolution is too low for internal scans. If any of the crew are aboard, we will have to locate them another way,” it does not surprise him in the least.They don’t have time—he doesn’t have the patience—for a deck-by-deck search. That means prioritizing Engineering, Sickbay, or Mess Hall. They should also check the escape pods.“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to split up.”Even through Tuvok’s visor, Chakotay spots the single raised eyebrow.If anyone is holed up in Engineering, they’re either fine for now, or else well past any help Chakotay can offer. Whereas a populated Sickbay might fill in some blanks. For better or worse.“Are the turbolifts down, too?”Tuvok walks over to one and waits. When the doors don’t open automatically, he retrieves the emergency hand actuators and pries them apart. Where the lift should be, an empty shaft looms; which means a long, slow crawl through the belly of the ship.Right. That’s not happening.He taps his combadge. “Chakotay to Neelix. The Bridge is a bust. Can you lock on to us and put us in Sickbay?”“Can do,” Neelix responds.He just has time to note the look of silent approval from Tuvok, which he supposes means he’s forgiven for earlier, before their molecules scatter, and reform in Sickbay.And here, too, there are no bodies—two down—but a picture begins to come into focus, one Chakotay does not love.Medical instruments are strewn across every surface, alongside shreds of uniforms torn away in haste. Slowly he circles the room, discomfited to find that the absence of bloodstains on biobeds does not reassure him much. If the crew left willingly, they don’t appear to have taken anything with them.His foot kicks something across the floor. Slow and stiff in his environmental suit, Tuvok bends to retrieve it, holds it aloft. It’s the Doctor’s mobile emitter.The Doctor isn’t with them.
The Doctor isn’t with them.
Adrenaline blasts through him as strides to a console and attempts to access the EMH program files. If he got knocked offline before he could transfer his program to the main computer—what the hell happened?—but no, he’s here. He’s intact. Chakotay reinitializes him manually.The Doctor shimmers into view, and although Chakotay is prepared to cut off his automated greeting, he cries, “Commander, Lieutenant! It’s good to see friendly faces. For that matter, it’s good to see any faces at all.”Which is how Chakotay notices, his chest tightening, that the Doctor is wearing command red, not blue.“Report, Doctor,” Tuvok says.The Doctor’s face twists. “We ran into a little trouble.”“I can see that,” Chakotay bites out. “Care to elaborate?”“Of course,” the Doctor says, apologetically. “About twelve hours after you left, we hit some sort of subspace mine. It wasn't long before I was inundated with casualties, all suffering from tetryon radiation poisoning.”“Tetryon radiation?”The Doctor nods. “Exactly. It couldn’t be contained, people were going to start dying…. The crew abandoned ship. I had just enough time to vent the bulk of the radiation when I was attacked again, this time by a ship. They were trying to take Voyager, said it ‘belonged’ to them now. I managed to disable them, but I took heavy damage, set the ship on auto pilot into this nebula… are we in a nebula?”“We are,” Tuvok confirms. “It was admirably difficult to locate you.”“Well, I was out of options! My program was destabilizing; I tried to transfer myself back to the main computer, but with all the damage, and no one aboard to reactivate me… let’s just say, I’m glad you found me.”The implications hang between them. Not only what if they hadn’t, but why hadn’t the crew found him first?“All right. Here’s the plan,” Chakotay says. “Doctor, start making repairs as fast as you can. We need life support before we can do anything else. We’ve only got twenty-four hours of oxygen in each of these tanks, so we’ll be living out of the Flyer for a while longer. Tuvok, get Neelix scanning for habitable planets, anywhere they might’ve taken shelter. Our people have been missing for nine days, and they need medical attention. We don’t have any time to lose.”He does not bother to add that they’ve got a week’s worth of repairs ahead of them, at least, just to make this ship habitable. Longer to be able to fly it out of here, if they’re being hunted. Shields, weapons, god, warp drive, and not one of them a proper engineer…Nine days, he thinks again. More than enough time to vent radiation, as far as Janeway would’ve known. She should’ve been in touch by now, or should have tried, and when she couldn’t get through… But they aren’t broadcasting a signal, wherever they are. The Flyer would have picked it up while looking for Voyager. And there was nothing, just the faint pinging of their emptied home, for their eyes only.The bodies are not on the ship.But he may yet be searching for a graveyard. *
Tom
Starfleet Academy
Just before midterm, Tom is summoned to his father’s office. Briefly, he considers ignoring the missive altogether—but this would only delay the inevitable, and he’s never been one to put off ‘til tomorrow what trouble he could get himself into today. Also: if he doesn’t go, he suspects his father will next send an aide to fetch him. An indignity he would rather avoid.“Let’s get this over with,” he mutters to himself, tossing his PADD back into his bag, shouldering it, and trudging off across the lawn. Never mind that his schedule is full enough without impromptu meeting ‘requests’ way the hell out at Starfleet Command. Never mind that he has availed himself of on-campus housing, despite his parents living just down in Portola Valley, for the express purpose of avoiding such interactions.He decides to eschew the transport system and walk the distance, a miniscule rebellion his father will never notice, but it makes him feel better to do it. Better, too, that by the time he finds himself standing outside the office doors, the instantaneous spike of his blood pressure has had time to settle, making him less likely now to start an incident, though the option, of course, remains.“He in there?” he asks his father’s aide.“Admiral Paris is in a meeting,” the ensign responds, without looking up from his terminal. Tom slouches into a chair to wait, irritated again, perhaps more than is strictly reasonable. Five minutes pass, then ten, and Tom is just beginning to weigh the consequences of walking out—he’s done his part just by showing up, if you ask him—when the doors hiss open.About time. He looks up, and where he expects his father to be frowning down his nose at him, he finds—“Kathryn?” Tom says blankly. “What are you doing here?”“Tom! Oh, Admiral Paris is my thesis advisor—”“And Cadet Janeway here is working on one of the most brilliant projects I have ever had the pleasure of overseeing. It’ll knock the folks over in Physical Cosmology right on their… axes,” his father interjects, looking proudly at Kathryn, who seems torn between embarrassment and gratification. Tom prods his feelings, searching for that familiar stab of bitter resentment—here is yet another person whom his father would seem to prefer over his own son. But it doesn’t come. All he finds is a kind of second-hand pleasure for her, and something strangely like pride, though he has no right to it.“This is Tom,” Owen continues, and Tom notices with no small amount of surprise that he doesn’t say my son, Tom—just Tom.“Tom Paris? You never said!” Noticing Owen’s look of confusion, Kathryn adds, “We have biochemistry together.”At this, Owen’s mouth flattens into a straight line of disapproval. Kathryn looks as though she’d very much like to agree.And then something else occurs to Tom, something that causes a flopping sensation in his stomach. “Wait, are you graduating? Why are you in biochem?”Kathryn grimaces. “I put it off. I was focused on my junior honors thesis, and… well.”Finally, several pieces fall into place. Why she’d seemed so familiar that first day of class, even though he’s positive he’d have remembered meeting her. He’s seen her here, coming out of his father’s office, nose buried in a PADD. Kathryn is the protégée his mother is very, very tired of hearing about. The Admiral’s daughter with the future so bright it blotted out Owen’s own family for half a year.Well, that’s complicated.“At any rate,” his father is saying, “I’m sure you have a class to get to, Cadet. Tom, shall we?”With a nod and a smile, Kathryn slips past Tom, who suppresses a mad urge to grasp her hand as she goes. Owen beckons Tom into the office, and they settle themselves on opposite sides of his imposing walnut desk, an antique so unlike his colleagues’ glass-and-metal monstrosities.“So,” Tom says, cutting to the chase. “What’s this about?”“I can’t just want to see how you’re getting along this semester?”“I have an advisor.”“Yes, and you have a father who never sees you at home anymore. Tom, I’m just asking how you’re doing. How are your classes? How are you?”Instead of answering, Tom picks up a framed photo on his father’s desk and turns it around. It’s himself, ten or eleven years old, posing with an ice cream cone at the Wharf. No surprise Kathryn didn’t put two and two together. He wonders if his father never updated the photo because everything was so much easier then. Easier for him, anyway. Never for Tom.It must have been like loving a puppy. And in that puppy’s place now is a fully grown son, who’s not half so malleable as his father would prefer.“Do you talk about me? With—people?” he asks, before he can think better of it.“Of course I do, Tom,” Owen sighs. “You’re my son.”Tom doesn’t know what to say to that. If he’d considered it for longer than the second it took him to ask, he would’ve guessed no. He doesn’t know what to make of an Owen Paris possessed of... what? Fatherly pride? He sets the photo back down.“She’s something, isn’t she?”Panic spikes hard from Tom’s gut up into his throat. “Who?”Owen gives him a look that’s entirely too shrewd for his liking. “Careful,” he advises.But this is a subject Tom is in no way willing to broach. “I was thinking of doing my physical training in France next year,” he volleys. “Marseille.”He waits for the explosion, the disappointment, the why can’t you ever just.It doesn’t come.Owen looks away.It isn’t at all what Tom thought finally winning a round would feel like. *
KathrynQuarraPresent
She’s on a ship.She doesn’t recognize it. But she knows, somehow, that this windowless space is not underground, that the thrumming beneath her feet is not from the central core. It’s larger than her transport into Quarra, larger than any ship she’s been on before, but she is certain, even so, that she is right.She’s afraid.A barren corridor stretches before her. Lights along the bulkheads pulse red before plunging her into darkness, one beat on, one off, neither allowing her eyes to adjust nor providing enough illumination to identify what lies ahead. The strobing makes her nauseous so she shuts her eyes against it for a moment, seeking equilibrium.Move, she thinks. You’re supposed to move.She opens her eyes, and moves.She seems to know where to go. The corridor is a river without junctions, apparently endless, and without knowing why she is afraid she thinks she’s right to be, but she does not falter. She goes on. She goes on.She’s alone.The thrumming beneath her feet is not from the central core, and after a while she realizes she feels but cannot hear her own footsteps. Just a dull press of silence, like plunging underwater only more, only worse. She thinks: dampened. She thinks: absorbed. But before she can solve this riddle—and she must, she must solve it—the terminus appears, as though out of a red fog. She approaches. There is, after all, nowhere else to go.Not until she’s right upon it does she recognize it as an airlock.With all the surety of having done this a thousand times, she steps inside, pulls the hatch shut behind her. While it is she who initiates depressurization now, she understands, too, that she could not stop herself if she tried.She does not try.A countdown begins, a woman’s voice in her head, ten, nine, eight“Kathryn.”No. Panic soars through her because this is wrong, this is wrong, she was supposed to be the last one out, the last—
seven, seven, six, five
She whirls around and sees herself standing there, nearly unrecognizable; her face marred with lesions, hair matted, pupils blown wide despite the darkness, alone, alone, alone—“Wake up,” her double says.
one.
The airlock cycles.She opens her mouth to speak—and is blown into space.
Wake up.
She does.Before she can make a conscious decision to do so, she’s throwing her legs over the side of the bed, panting, a swell of vertigo crashing into her. Reality coalesces in slow motion, her senses returning one at a time; she registers first a soft breathing behind her. Tom, fast asleep. Her bedroom. Her home.She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, until colors bloom behind her eyelids.Just a dream.She knows from experience that she’ll find no more sleep tonight. She spares a thought for the arboretum, open at all hours now that winter has set in. But she wants to see the sky, to ground herself, ironically enough, beneath the stars she knows and not the ones that subsume her.As quietly as she can, she slides out of bed and into the kitchen for a pain tablet and a glass of water, then folds herself into her window seat. She leans her head against the cool glass and looks up until she no longer feels like she might be sick.Eventually, Tom comes to find her. He drapes a blanket around her before settling in opposite, allowing their feet to intertwine.“Want to talk about it?”“It’s nothing,” she says. “Dreams.”“Dreams, plural?”She hums noncommittally.“They say winters here can do strange things to people.”They’ve all heard the stories. Cautionary tales. And maybe it is the unbroken night that causes her to dream of space. She’d thought so too, at first.But she feels fine. It doesn’t bother her at all while she’s awake. Actually she finds it comforting, and there is a slowness to life here, a necessary calm, that she cherishes. Already, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.And although she seeks the light of the stars in the aftermath of these dreams, it’s not darkness itself that unsettles her. It’s the emptiness. She is alone in that strange and hollow sky, and there is such an inevitability to it. The corridor. The airlock. It isn’t every night. But on these nights, the dream is always the same.“I’m fine,” she says again, when Tom starts to look worried. “Just dreams.”By now the automatic lights in the living room have begun to illuminate, signaling the start of the day in the absence of a sunrise. She pushes herself upright and stretches. “You should go back to sleep,” she adds.“Nah, I have some errands to run anyway. I’ll walk you in.”“Tom,” she says, placing her hands on her hips. “I’m fine.”“Who said you weren’t?” He rises too, drops a kiss on the top of her head.A hot shower goes a long way toward restoring her sense of normalcy; by the time they’ve bundled into their outerwear, the last remnants of her dream have left her. Tom hands her a headlamp, then pulls on his gloves. “You lock up,” he says, wiggling his fingers.“I don’t know why you don’t do that at the front door,” she says, rolling her eyes. They might as well be living together, the way she knows his habits by heart.Outside, snow crunches under their boots. Here and there people stop to greet them, puffs of hot breath rising between them like little clouds dancing in the lamplight. She will never get over how friendly people are here, how well everybody gets along despite hailing, more often than not, from wildly disparate home worlds. Tom and herself notwithstanding. She reaches for his hand and squeezes, having to work at it a little through their thick gloves.He looks over. “What?”“Nothing,” she says. “Just happy.”They stop at a tea shop along the way, as has become their habit since discovering it. The owner is a neighbor of theirs, a Brunali woman named Lyora who is sympathetic to Kathryn’s craving of what she refers to as alien delicacies. “I’ve got something new for you to try!” she says to Kathryn. “It doesn’t match your description precisely, but….”“Desperate times,” Kathryn nods.Lyora steps into the back room to pour the mystery substance; when she returns, she’s already put the lid on the takeaway cup.“That bodes well,” Tom snorts. “She doesn’t want you to see it.”“Don’t be rude,” Kathryn chides.“Oh, he’s not wrong,” Lyora says cheerfully. “But give it a try anyway. I think it tastes better than it looks.”Hopefully, Kathryn takes a sip.“Well?”With some effort, she swallows the… substance, thick like mud and about as flavorful. “Well, it’s hot,” she says, which is, after all, a point in its favor. Lyora sighs.“Two Yavrikan teas, please,” Tom laughs.“Coffee,” Kathryn moans.“I’ll keep looking!” Lyora promises. She hands over the teas, and waves them off. A tinkling bell rings out as the door swings shut behind them.“’It’s hot’,” Tom snickers, once they’re safely away from the shop.“It’s just that she’s so nice. I feel terrible about it.”“Lyora, of all people, understands.” Which is perfectly true, of course. She’d left behind everything she’d known, sought refuge here, just as they’d done, when her people refused to relocate after repeated Borg attacks. They’d rebuilt, and rebuilt, and Lyora couldn’t convince them to find another way. Kathryn can’t imagine the difficulty of her decision. By comparison, leaving Earth seems simple enough.“Aren’t you going into town?” Kathryn says, realizing they’re nearly to the plant already. “You’re going to have to backtrack.”“Why, did you want something?”“I knew it! ‘Errands’, he says.” She shakes her head. “How you lie to me.”“You love me,” Tom smiles.She lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose that’s true.” An hour into her shift, Jaffen finally shows up. She’s about to tease him for this when she takes in his pinched face, shining with exertion. He’s stripped his uniform down to the base layers.“Where in the world are you coming from?” she asks.“Had to run over to Maintenance,” he says, bending over to catch his breath. “They called me in early. Someone on swing didn’t show. Again.”“Ouch.”“Tell me about it,” he grouses. He heads down the rows of terminals to his own station, crossing paths with a data runner balancing a stack of tablets.“The specifications you asked for,” he says, handing one off the top to Kathryn.“Oh, good, thank you.” She scans the data quickly, confirming her suspicions, then catches Jaffen’s eye and signals for him to come back over.“What’s up?”“How are your coils today?”“That’s a rather personal question,” Jaffen deadpans. She scowls, so he adds, “I haven’t had a moment’s peace since I logged in. Do you want me to check now?”“I’m having a hell of a time regulating these thermionic emissions. And look at this,” she adds, handing over the tablet. “The frequencies are rotating way faster than spec.”Jaffen frowns as he reads. “When I was down at Maintenance—”“This station doesn’t require two operators.”Kathryn jumps. The Efficiency Monitor, a tall, blonde woman who moves with now-legendary stealth, looms behind them.“And good morning to you, too, Annika,” Jaffen greets her.“He was just helping me with a question,” Kathryn offers, while her pulse returns to normal. “We’re almost done.”Annika looks like she’s about to argue—with heroic effort, Kathryn does not sigh pointedly—but then the blood drains from her face. “Do it quickly,” she says, and starts to move off.Jaffen and Kathryn share a look. “Are you all right?” he asks Annika.“I’m—” she starts, but suddenly buckles, has to catch herself on the edge of a terminal. Kathryn hurries over to her and slides under her arm, easing her to the floor. She’s a head taller than Kathryn, so she doesn’t notice the other woman’s eyes roll back in her head, doesn’t recognize the warning signs until the trembling begins.“Go to Medical,” Kathryn instructs Jaffen. “Annika. Can you hear me? We’re getting help, hang on.” She strips off her jacket, bunches it up and carefully slides it under Annika’s head. Workers, noticing the commotion, start to gather around them, speaking in low, alarmed tones. It is, Kathryn thinks, the worst sort of white noise. Familiar and ominous; the soundtrack to every disaster.It’s difficult to judge how long the tremors last, but when they stop it’s all at once, an unnatural stillness overtaking her as she finally slumps into unconsciousness. It feels like an age, but must be mere minutes before Jaffen’s sprinting back with a medical team. “Make a hole,” he shouts, and the gawkers part to allow the group through.“I think she had a seizure,” she tries to tell one of the med techs. But he moves past her without looking at her, briskly lifting Annika onto a stretcher.“Wait,” she says, reaching for the man’s shoulder. “Don’t you want my statement?”“Your supervisor will be in touch if we require information,” he says shortly. And then they’re spiriting Annika away, and the supervisor does indeed appear as though summoned. Addressing the crowd at large, he calls, “You can all return to work. Everything’s under control.”Which is, evidently, the beginning and end of his job here.“What the hell was that?” Kathryn mutters to Jaffen.Instead of replying, Jaffen takes her by the arm, leading her into a shadowed corner behind their control panels. “Have you noticed anything unusual around here lately? Anything else, I mean.”“Other than the regulators? Just that our power usage is way up. But I understand that’s to be expected?” That’s what she’d been told, anyway. The city cuts all nonessential lighting to compensate, so they can keep everyone’s homes warm and well-lit. Still, yes, it’s a strain on the grid. But it’s a planned strain.“Maybe,” he says.“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking, or—”“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” he says, lowering his voice. “I heard someone up on nine had to be carried out.”“Some transplants just don’t handle the transition well,” she says, parroting Tom’s words from this morning, but declining, as before, to include herself in this assessment.“I don’t think that’s it,” he says slowly. “When I was down at Maintenance, I overheard some of the guys talking. They’ve been doing a lot of work over at the Central Hospital. That’s why the grid’s running hot. They’re operating at full power, 24/7.”“Is that… not normal?” she asks. “For a hospital?”“Maybe,” he says again.The skin on the back of her neck prickles unpleasantly.“So what, then?”“I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s just damned odd, isn’t it?”But she can’t even begin to know what to consider odd. She’s never overwintered before. And they’d all been warned this could happen, hadn’t they? Workers who can’t handle it transfer south, no harm, no foul.And then a terrible thought occurs to her. Her hand flies up to her throat. “You don’t think…”“No,” he says, and now, at least, he sounds sure. “We’d know if it was the radiation. We’d all be sick.”Still, she rubs at the site of her injections, and finds that she welcomes the signal to break for medical. And when the med tech presses her daily inoculation into her skin, she feels herself relax minutely.The remainder of their shift passes without incident, for which she is profoundly grateful. Jaffen begs off joining her at the bar, citing his impromptu double-shift, so she packs up and heads out alone. She’s looking forward to Tom’s steadying influence—looking forward to sharing what she’s learned with him, and having him tell her that everything’s all right, that Jaffen needs a vacation, anything to help her shake off this strange day.But when she arrives, Tom looks… grim.“I’m taking my lunch,” he calls to Umali, who looks like she’s been expecting it. She nods her approval. Tom leads Kathryn over to a small table in the back.“Bad news,” he says, then, “wait. Are you okay?”“Tell me what’s wrong first, then I’ll explain.”He takes a deep breath. “The Housing Authority’s kicking me out.”“What?”“I should have known this might happen. Apparently there’s been this big influx of workers, and they need somewhere to put them all. Employee housing isn’t really for the waitstaff, you know. I was assigned my apartment when I worked at the plant. Guess my lease is up.”She goes cold.They’ll hardly see each other.Oh, there’s the train, of course, but her shifts are long and non-employee housing is clear on the other side of the city, and would Tom get a new job? It’s a long commute when there are a dozen other bars that would hire him in a second. She imagines herself getting off work late, walking home alone each night to her empty apartment. Maybe they’ll spend weekends together, but it won’t be the same, and over time… over time…“I’ve got a lead on a little studio just outside of town,” Tom is saying. “It’s not much, but—"“Move in with me,” she blurts.Tom freezes. He scans her face. “Are you serious?”Oh, god. Mortification washes over her. “I mean—” she stumbles. Her face feels hot, she must be flushing. “That is, I would understand if you didn’t want—”“No! No, I just don’t want you to offer out of, out of pity or something, because—"“No, you’re right, and I shouldn’t have sprung this on you.” Awkwardly, she tries to smile. “Long day. Weird day.”“I want to. I’d love to.” He reaches across the table for her wrist, urging her to look at him. “Let’s do it.”“But if—”“Kathryn,” he says, cutting her off. “Can I move in with you?”She laughs, a little shakily. “Well, when you put it that way. If you’re sure.”He pushes his stool out and stands, comes around to her side of the table.“I’m sure,” he avers. And quells her doubts with a kiss. *
KathrynStarfleet Academy
Reaching the courtyard, Kathryn pauses, then redirects. Instead of heading to the transport station as planned, she doubles back and settles herself into an alcove adjacent the office building. The Command campus is quiet at this time of day, and the sky for once is nearly cloudless. She hardly ever takes the time to appreciate these things, rushing from one lecture to the next, home to Indiana for Friday night supper whenever she can swing it and then back that same night, weather-permitting. The past two years in particular have been a whirlwind, and she’s enjoyed it, she thrives when pushed to her limits… but today, she finds that her curiosity is greater than her desire to stay on routine.She’s long been curious about her mentor’s son. Admiral Paris speaks of Tom often, pride animating his stoic features as little else does. She’d envied Tom this. Wondered what it would be like to have a father so free with his praise. She tries to imagine her own sharing her every accomplishment with his colleagues, with junior officers, and she just—can’t. The vision won’t come, not even as a fantasy. It’s her sister who’s graced by their father’s attentions, for all that she seems to want or value them. And Kathryn didn’t join Starfleet only to make him proud of her, but what would it be like, she can’t help think, to have him take an interest in her work now and again? Brilliant, Admiral Paris had called it, like it was easy for him to do so. Like it cost him nothing to be so generous.Stop, she orders herself. It doesn’t matter. She digs through her bag for a PADD, thinking she may as well pass the time doing something useful, but then she hears footsteps and twists in her seat, spots Tom emerging from the building. He does not look pleased, and, damn, she hopes it’s not because of her. She stands, wiping dirt from her uniform, and smiles ruefully when he notices her.“This must be strange for you,” she says.“’Think not, is my eleventh commandment’,” Tom quotes, waving it off.“You never said,” she presses.“Neither did you, Cadet Janeway.”Well, he’s got her there. “It’s just… a lot, right from ‘hello’. I don’t want people to think—”“Yeah,” Tom says. “Yeah, I understand.” He hoists himself up into the alcove she’s just vacated and she joins him, their legs brushing. She holds herself still, waiting for him to shift away from her.He doesn’t.“It’s a habit,” he allows, finally. “My father hates it. ‘Be proud of the family name, Tom!’ Which is all the more reason not to announce it, frankly. I don’t really think about it anymore.”She frowns. Something in his tone reminds her of his words on their first day of class: it really irritates my father, so I can’t be too mad about it. Suddenly, she’s not so sure she’s been right, these past two years, about the Paris family dynamics. “He speaks highly of you, you know,” she tells him.He studies her, like he’s trying to decide whether to believe her. “I didn’t, actually.”She doesn’t know what to say to that. At his words, she feels a tightness in her chest that she can’t express, or else can’t face voicing aloud. An understanding she would rather not possess.They make quite a pair, it turns out.Impulsively, she reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing lightly. “He’s very proud of you. He says so all the time.”Tom looks away from her, snorting, and she doesn’t like what this suggests about the man who has given her his full support at every turn, once she’d convinced him of her seriousness. Her worth. She feels… disappointed in him. It’s as though a curtain has been lifted, the illusion broken. Perhaps this is why Admiral Paris has never offered to introduce her to Tom, despite his showing off a family photo at their first meeting.But Tom seems to very much not want to talk about it. And this, too, she understands.“Escort me to the transport station, Mister Paris?” she asks. He rewards her intuition with that crooked smile she’s come to know so well.“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees, hopping to attention. Her hand slips out of his. And that’s fine, perfectly fine.The sky is a hazy purple-pink as he walks her home.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tom Starfleet AcademyTo 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
VoyagerPresent
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—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. *
TomQuarraPresent
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 Quarren 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. *
KathrynUSS 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 Adegeda to visit Arali 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 shipboard 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.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tom
USS Billings
The first time it happens is an accident.Once something’s captured Tom’s interest, he tends to have one speed: pedal to the floor. And Kathryn Janeway’s had his attention for a long time, the intervening years between the Academy and now doing nothing at all to lessen the way that she makes him want to turn his whole life upside down if it means she’ll keep smiling at him in that way she does, warm and inviting.But she asked him to wait. And he’s waited this long, after all. So he controls the habit of a lifetime: he backs off. And, sure, he could make some crack about how flying at impulse is a hell of a lot more fun than warp, anyway. But the truth is, it means something to him to get this right.But then one day he walks into Kathryn’s office with a navigation report and she’s standing perilously on her desk chair, heels lifted high as she strains to reach one of her upper wall cabinets. Automatically, he drops his report onto her desk and comes around to hold the back of her chair to stop it swiveling.“Do you want me to…”“No, I’ve got it,” she pants, using an empty mug to extend her reach. Fascinated, he watches as she slides a stack of PADDs right up to the edge of the cabinet, then tips them over and catches them one-handed on their way down.“Impressive,” he says.“Take this,” she laughs, passing him the mug, then hops down before she has a chance to fall, and also before he can get out of her way. She catches herself with a hand on his chest. Their bodies now inches apart, he looks down at her from his considerable height advantage; notices, too, the way her lips part, that her gaze tracks upwards to his own mouth. Her desk is just behind her and she twists to set down the spoils of her victory.“They didn’t design these ships for people my height,” she says, a little breathlessly, when she faces him again.“Well, I am ever at your disposal,” he says. She has pinned herself between him and her desk and in the split-second before he moves away he imagines the opposite, imagines stepping into her, lifting her easily onto the desk top and sliding between her legs, one hand curling around the nape of her neck while the other—He takes two steps backwards.“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” She touches the inside of his wrist as she passes, so lightly that he might’ve imagined it, except for the blush high on her cheeks.It’s not that Tom tries to find opportunities to recreate these conditions, after that. It’s just that he’s normally coming on duty right as she’s getting off, and if he happens to wait until the last possible moment to call the turbolift, so that she’s likelier to be inside when it arrives at his deck, surely he can’t be faulted for that. And if he allows his hand to brush hers as they trade places—if she pauses just a beat longer than necessary before proceeding down the corridor, the warm press of her skin lingering long after the doors shut behind him—Well. It’s going to be a long mission, is all.The Billings arrives at Arali Prime just in time for their chief helmsman to come down with a case of the Levodian flu. Captain Blum taps Tom in at the eleventh hour, summoning him for a flash briefing en route to the shuttle bay, Lieutenant Tuvok at her side.“It’ll be a bumpy ride,” Blum warns, “and their atmosphere is so dense it’s practically opaque. Sensors can’t make heads or tails of what you’ll find down there, so you’ll be flying blind. You up for this?”“Always,” he grins. But he has to ask, “If the Adegedan delegation is shuttling up, why aren’t we just going back down with them?” Not that he minds a challenge, but their knowledge of the terrain would sure make this a hell of a lot safer.“They are properly identified as the Adegeda, Mister Paris,” Tuvok says.“And they don’t want to be left up here without their own transportation. They’re not used to visitors—as far as we can tell, they hardly leave their planet at all.”“Got it,” Tom says. “Anything else?”Blum passes him a PADD. “Landing coordinates. Don’t crash, don’t cause a diplomatic incident, do follow Commander Janeway’s lead. Think of this as a first date. If all goes well, the Federation Diplomatic Corps will come out to do the rest.”When they arrive at the shuttle bay, Kathryn and Ensign Probert are already there. “The Adegeda flight officer just commed to say they’re running behind schedule,” Kathryn reports. “Should we—”“Just go,” Blum says. “Wave if you pass them mid-flight.”“Aye, ma’am,” Kathryn chuckles. The away team piles into the Class 2 shuttle and Tom begins his preflight checks, then punches their coordinates into the navigational computer.Kathryn leans around Tom to shut the hatch. “Good to have you with us, Lieutenant.”“Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am,” Tom replies, but quietly, mindful of Tuvok in the row behind them. Once Kathryn slides back into her seat, Tom taps out a series of commands, and feels the shuttle lift into the air.“Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times,” he says, louder now, easing them through the outer forcefield.“…What?” Probert asks.“Old holoprogram, Ensign. Don’t worry,” Kathryn assures him, rolling her eyes at Tom. But before he can begin to feel properly cowed, she whispers, “This is an aggressive ride.”Tom chokes.But this, as well as Captain Blum’s warning, turns out to be a vast understatement. They breach the thermosphere and, in the same instant, lose all visual input. The stars vanish, swallowed by a wall of swirling green that seems to cling to the shuttle. The cabin glows emerald like the inside of a bottle, throwing strange shadows across their faces.Instinctively, they fall silent.Tom shifts in his seat, all seriousness now as the shuttle shudders under turbulence. Beside him, Kathryn braces herself with one hand, her other hovering over the auxiliary controls. The shuttle bucks again, harder this time, inertial dampers lagging half a beat behind. Tom counters easily, hands light over the controls… and then the altimeter blares once, and blanks out.“Is that normal?” Probert calls from the back.“Autopilot’s out too,” Tom says, eyes on the raw data. “Switching to manual.”Kathryn nods tightly. Tom redirects power from the aft maneuvering thrusters to forward pitch control. The atmospheric density is higher than projected, so that every movement feels sluggish, the shuttle fighting him like it’s pushing through molasses.“I don’t think this is quite what the captain meant when she said we’d be flying blind,” Tom jokes to cut the tension, though blind isn’t exactly how he feels, so much as that he’s flying gut first, as exhilarating as it is alarming. “Hold tight,” he warns. “There’s shear ahead.”The shuttle drops, hard. Everyone lifts an inch in their seats. Tom throttles back, the hull groaning under the strain; through the viewscreen, the cloud cover thins just enough to reveal terrain—jagged rock formations, uneven but solid. He scans for anything flat enough not to kill them on landing.“There,” Kathryn says, pointing. “Ten degrees to port.”“I see it.” He adjusts course, easing off the main thrusters. He guides them down, nice and steady… the shuttle hovers briefly—he ignores the familiar, hollow lurch in his stomach—and then they touch down with a muted thud.Behind him, Probert blows out a huge sigh of relief.“Shuttle’s intact,” Tom announces. “Not to brag or anything.”“The bare minimum mission requirement,” Tuvok intones. Tom catches Kathryn’s eye, grinning.They step out into warm air, a breeze tugging gently at their uniforms. The green haze filters the sunlight, casting everything in a soft, surreal light. The field they’ve landed in is mostly empty, though not far from the boundary of a village.“Nice work, Mr. Paris,” Kathryn says, squeezing his shoulder.“Are we early?” Probert asks.“You are precisely on time.”Tom turns in time to watch a boulder shift and reform, stone sloughing away like nothing he’s ever seen before. A figure stands in its place—lithe and not quite solid, as though the light around it can’t decide what to do. A second later, a second form emerges beside the first, apparently folding itself into existence.“I hope we didn’t startle you,” one apologizes. “We were inhabiting another plane when you arrived.”“Another—?”“I believe you would call it an alternate dimension?”“Did we know this about them?” Tom murmurs to Tuvok.“We did not,” Tuvok replies, an eyebrow raised.“I am Ambassador Irizasi,” the taller of the two says. “This is my Acolyte. It is an honor to host you.”“The honor is ours,” Kathryn says smoothly. She introduces each of them in turn. When she gets to Probert, the Acolyte brightens.“Ah, the xenobotanist! I have the pleasure today of taking you to the ash meadows. The flora are perhaps unique to you in that they, too, are transdimensional. You’ll be welcome to collect samples, of course!”“Transdimensional? Is it safe?”“Oh, yes. It is our way. But—” The Acolyte looks uncertain, his face falling comically. “But it is some distance from here. I hadn’t thought…”“I can fly us out there,” Tom offers, looking first to Kathryn and then to the Ambassador. “As long as there’s somewhere, uh, dimensionally stable to land.”“Perfect!” The Acolyte claps his hands together happily.As is the apparent custom of every alien race at first contact, the Ambassador will take Kathryn and Tuvok on a tour of the city center while the others investigate the ash meadows. They arrange to meet back up at what the universal translator tells them is a night market, leaving Tom, noting the sun high in the sky, hoping very much that this planet rotates faster than he thinks it does. He makes to follow the others to the shuttle, but Kathryn holds him back.“Do not let Probert get sucked into any kind of transdimensional vortex.”“Just Probert?” Tom grins.“You, either. No vortexes, no portals—”“Yes, ma’am. But if I do get pulled out of spacetime, tell them I was lost a hero.” He pauses, then adds, “But come and rescue me, too.”Fighting a smile, she gives him a little shove at the small of his back. He jogs to catch up with the botany party. It’s early evening, as far as Tom can tell, by the time he sets the shuttle back down at their original landing coordinates to rejoin the away team.“I’ll leave you here,” the Acolyte says, apologetically. “I’m overdue elsewhere—our realms align imperfectly at twilight.”“If it’s all right with you, sir, I’d like to stay behind to stow the samples properly,” Probert adds. So Tom heads off on his own, following the path into town by the light of two moons, music drifting on the wind.He’s only just reached the bazaar, ducking under a low wooden archway to enter the open-air enclosure, when he spots Kathryn and Tuvok at what looks like a fruit stand. Kathryn notices him at the same time and intercepts him, grasping his arm to drag him out of the main thoroughfare.“Thank god,” she says, keeping an eye on Tuvok over Tom’s shoulder. “Tom, I need you to keep me from making an ass of myself.”“It’s going that well?”“It is,” she says darkly. “It is going so well that the Ambassador invited us to celebrate with a number of important dignitaries over a ceremonial nectar. Fermented nectar.”“Good thing you’re not driving.”She grimaces. “Tuvok’s waiting for a final word with their Chief of Security. She’s on the way. Just—”“Say no more.” Tom repositions Kathryn’s hand to rest in the crook of his arm. A flash of light catches his eye and he looks up over the top of her head, noticing for the first time that bonfires dot the darkening hill ahead of them, half a dozen or so.“What is all this, anyway?” he asks. “Some kind of festival?”“It is the moon’s end,” the fruit seller calls. Kathryn tugs him back toward the stand, where Tuvok examines something resembling a pomegranate but twice its size, a single black flower set on its stem. “We take from the old moons what was good, and bring sweetness into the new.”“You do this… every week?”“We do this with the moons. There is always something new to honor, don’t you find?”Tom can’t say that he’s ever thought about it before. In Starfleet, time is necessarily tracked by duty shifts and little else. It is the hardest thing about this life, for him: the scarcity of variation to any routine, the clothes he wears, the view from his quarters. All made worthwhile only by the odd high excitement—and even these are hit or miss, since in space excitements are more often life or death than they are as fun as the Academy simulators.He has sometimes wondered whether he didn’t make a mistake, yielding to Starfleet rather than pursing the Naval Patrol—another military by any other name, perhaps, but at least on the open ocean there is weather to contend with, wind and salt spray and not a single inertial damper in sight; and gravity, real gravity, with real stakes.But there are some advantages to serving aboard a starship, these days.“Not weekend, Tom,” Kathryn says, gazing up into the night sky. “Moon phases. The translator is misunderstanding.”“We work hard,” he confirms. “And we rest well.” He gestures to the produce Tuvok holds, then selects another from the stand, quartering it deftly with a small blade. “My name is Amjl. It tradition to partake of the iinod fruit, in the summer months. Join me,” he says, offering a slice to Kathryn.“Oh, I—,” she falters.“It’s fresh,” Tom points out in an undertone.“Please,” Amjl repeats, kindly. “A gesture of friendship, our first visitors.”Tuvok, perhaps thinking along the same lines as Kathryn, draws his tricorder from its pouch and scans the fruit. The merchant scowls at him.“You’re causing a diplomatic incident, Tuvok,” Tom chuckles. “Now you have to try it.”Tuvok looks discomfited, but before he can object, his Adegeda counterpart waves him over, the final meeting scheduled before their departure. Kathryn shoos him away, and as he goes she accepts the fruit, carefully, cupping it in both hands. She seems unsure how to eat it.“Just bring the fruit to your mouth," he says, handing Tom his own piece and then demonstrating for them. Kathryn looks to Tom uncertainly. He shrugs, and takes a bite, then immediately yanks his body back, away from the juices spilling from the overripe fruit. Kathryn, in the same predicament, tries to catch the juice with her other hand, laughing.“It’s delicious,” she says. “A bit of a learning curve, maybe.”For his part, Amjl seems unphased, allowing the juice to fall to the ground. He finishes the fruit and wipes his hands on a cloth, which he then passes to Kathryn.“The ‘learning curve’,” he says, “is to understand that iinod is never easier to eat. You must let it be what it is.”Kathryn smiles her understanding. She’s missed a streak of fruit across on face; already, her lips are stained a soft purple. He supposes his must be, too.“Here, you’ve got—” He reaches over, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. He lingers there, gentle, before pulling away.“Thank you,” she breathes. Recovering quickly, she adds, “And thank you,” to Amjl.A glance over at Tuvok confirms he is still absorbed in a conversation neither of them have any interest in joining. Wordlessly, Tom offers Kathryn his arm again, which she accepts easily. He leads her up the road, away from the crowd. The music dwindles as they put some distance between themselves and the main square, and after a few minutes, Kathryn leans her head against Tom’s shoulder. His chest constricts with something that feels dangerously like hope.The light here is strange. Not quite dusk, not quite moonlight, but something in between—as if the planet hasn’t settled on a single definition of time itself. Shadows stretch at odd angles, softening the edges of buildings that don’t seem entirely fixed in place. Now and then a passerby bends and folds and disappears mid-step, vanishing as casually as ducking into a doorway, and leaving a lamp post, a cobblestone in their wake. Once, he and Kathryn have to quickly sidestep a tree, fully rooted into the sidewalk, as it morphs into a person carrying a dark red bottle by its neck.“That's handy,” Tom comments.Ahead, a wagon cart laden with textiles comes into view, intricate fabrics swaying in the light breeze. On a low stool off to one side, a woman with long, white hair sips at something aromatic enough for them to catch the scent of it from the road. She raises her cup in greeting.Kathryn slows to look at the fine silks hung from string. She brushes one gently.“That would look lovely on you,” the woman says. “Try it on, please.”“Oh—thank you, I couldn’t.”“Why not?” Tom asks.“Tom, how often am I out of uniform? I’d never have the chance to wear it. It’s beautiful, though,” she adds, wistful.Before the merchant can regroup, Tuvok reappears, rounding the bend. Kathryn disengages herself from Tom and goes to meet him, leaving Tom alone at the cart.He lowers his voice. “Got anything more… practical?”The woman smiles knowingly. “A blanket, perhaps?”Tom hums noncommittally.“Is it for the woman, or for the officer?” she asks, taking in Tom’s uniform.“Does that change your suggestion?”“Changes everything.”He glances sideways at Kathryn. “She’s… a friend. A gift for a friend.”The woman tsks at him, but disappears behind a heavy tapestry and comes back holding something in soft blues and greens.“A shawl,” she says. “Practical, but also a comfort. She can wrap herself up in it, and think of you holding her.”A flush creeps up his neck. “How much?”“Special deal for hard luck cases. Four strips of latinum.”“It’s not like that,” Tom protests. Wrapping the parcel in plain brown paper, she spares him an unimpressed look; from the corner of his eye, he can see Kathryn on the move again. “Listen, can we just—”“Take it, take it,” she says. “Good luck to you.”“Lieutenant,” Kathryn calls, and Tom joins the group. “What’s that?”“Souvenir!”She clearly wants to wheedle more information out of him, but Tuvok warns that if they want to make their return window, they have to leave now.“Home?” Tom asks.“Home,” Kathryn agrees. The Billings is on gamma shift by the time they dock. The away team files out of the shuttle and is met by Doctor Bailey, masked and wielding a hypospray.“Were we exposed to a contaminant?” Kathryn asks.“Not yet,” Bailey says grimly. “Lieutenant Torvek’s flu. Thought we’d caught it in time. That’s what we medical folk call hubris.”She presses the hypospray to Kathryn’s neck with clinical precision, then moves down the line, dosing each officer in turn.“The Captain?” Kathryn asks.“Fine, but it’s been a long one. Said to tell you not to bother reporting in ‘til morning.” Bailey’s eyes narrow, taking Kathryn in properly. “Are you…”“That’s why I asked. If I’m in command, I should—”“Do absolutely nothing to ruin this fine buzz you’ve acquired. I haven’t seen you this relaxed since drydock.”Tom snorts, but Kathryn seems to have no argument for that. Exiting the shuttle bay, they fall into step, the corridor quiet at this hour. Probert peels off first, muttering about cross-referencing data in the science lab. Tuvok continues on until the next junction, then bids them good night with a nod.Tom and Kathryn walk on in sleepy silence.“This was nice,” she says, after a moment. “Thank you. For not letting me make a fool of myself.”Privately, he thinks there was never any real danger of this. She is nothing if not a model Starfleet officer. “You know what the captain called it? ‘A first date’.”She turns sharply, and he chuckles. “She didn’t mean us. A diplomatic first date. But, you know. We could mean us.”She slows, and he thinks she’s working on a suitable response—something, he guesses, to let him down easy. But then her eyes widen. She looks at the door they’ve stopped beside. So does he.He blinks.“Did you just—”“Damn,” she says. “I was on autopilot.”Tom, appalled, demands, “Are you telling me we’ve been living on the same deck this whole time?”“What did you think was happening when we met at the turbolift every day?”“I thought—the mess hall—”She laughs. “You could’ve looked this up ages ago.”“I could’ve,” he allows. “I was hoping to be invited.”She considers him, a smile tugging at her mouth. “Well, then,” she says, her voice low. “Would you like to come in?”And oh, yes, he is tempted. He leans in, tucks a strand of hair that’s come loose from her ponytail behind her ear. He could kiss her, he thinks. She looks up at him, happy, relaxed, and he knows that she would let him kiss her.“Yes,” he says, finally. “I would. But ask me again when you don’t have alien nectar coursing through your blood stream.”She looks surprised, and then, if he’s not mistaken, a little hurt. Quickly, he adds, “But until then, take this.”“Your souvenir?”“I don’t have room for it,” he says. “I was hoping you could store if for me in your vastly superior officer’s quarters.”“Our quarters are the same size, Lieutenant,” she mutters, but she shakes out the little package. She looks at it, then Tom.“Try it on,” he says.First glancing up and down the corridor, she wraps the soft fabric around herself, pulling it close. Her smile is like the rising sun.It’s a sight that warms him as he falls asleep in his own quarters, that night. *
Tom
Quarra
In a twist of irresistible irony, the party they throw to celebrate their coup—that is, their wedding—nearly gets them thrown out of the building. They’d extended an open invitation not just to their friends but also, in a fit of goodwill, Kathryn’s coworkers. Tom looks around the room with something like awe, figures the headcount to be three or four times over the dozen they’d counted on. A woman he only vaguely recognizes adds a wine bottle to the growing cache of empties tucked behind the propped-open front door. Her long black dress glitters as she disappears back into the packed kitchen.They hadn’t meant it to be a formal affair. Tom has to believe there was a conspiracy amongst their friends, who’d shown up dressed to the nines to make up, they groused, for missing the wedding itself. Now the properly suited-and-booted partygoers are very much at odds with the neon-colored party hats someone had brought, and the streamers they did not themselves hang around the room.That must have been Jenny, Tom thinks, what with her particular grudge against the Housing Authority.He is just weighing the cost of slipping out for a resupply against abandoning his new wife to the throng when Kathryn appears out of nowhere and drags him away from the door.“Don’t you dare,” she warns.“What?”“You know what,” she accuses, poking a finger into his chest.Laughing, Tom catches her hand in his and guides it behind his neck, drawing her up and into a kiss he means to be brief—a joke, almost—except that she deepens it unexpectedly, bringing her other hand up too, lacing her fingers together to hold herself steady. Dimly, he registers someone’s catcall, a loud whistle that cuts through his pleasant surprise. He feels the huff of her laugh against his mouth and can’t help but smile in return, their lips just brushing in that space between love and absurdity.Finally she pulls back, her skin flushed, losing several inches of height as she drops down from her tiptoes. And over her shoulder, Tom spots his boss smirking in the doorway.“Umali!” She is armed with reinforcements, a crate packed with liquor bottles like a travelling minibar in her arms; Jaffen, close behind, hauls in another. “You’re a lifesaver,” Tom says, lifting it out of her arms. He sets it down on the sideboard they’re using as a makeshift bar.“Your wife sent out a distress call,” Umali drawls, winking at Kathryn.Jaffen grins at him, clapping him on the shoulder. “This is some party. How do you two even know this many people?”“Hell if I know,” Tom admits. “It seems like everyone I’ve ever served showed up.” Behind Jaffen, people have spilled out into the hall and are drifting in and out of Ashmore’s adjacent apartment.Umali gives him a pitying look. “People like you, darling,” she says, patting him on the cheek. “They like you together. Hadn’t you noticed? It’s wonderful for business, I must say.”Tom had not, in fact, noticed this. But he feels a flush of embarrassed pleasure, and something like pride. He doesn’t quite know what to do with these feelings, all his profound gratitude for the sheer dumb luck of ending up on this distant planet, alongside the first person he’s ever wanted to build a life with. Well—a life already well on its way, Tom amends, looking down at his wife. Kathryn tucks herself into his side, and he squeezes her in a one-armed hug—before someone from the plant materializes, pulling her by the hand back into the crowd again.Umali and Jaffen move off, too, and Tom, left momentarily alone, leans back against the dining table cluttered with half-empty glasses, the remnants of snacks someone had donated to the cause. He lets the hum of conversation wash over him. Through the wide living room windows, thick, swirling snowflakes obscure the view of the river, and in the glare from the lamplight he catches Kathryn’s reflection, her head thrown back in laughter.It's a strange, warm feeling—a sort of fullness he hasn’t felt before. The easy way they both fit in here, in this place where neither of them ought to belong.Still, when building security shows up a few hours later and threatens to throw every last one of them out into the blizzard now raging outside, he can’t say he’s sorry to wind the party down.On his way out, Jaffen takes Tom aside. “I’m happy for you, man. Truly.”“Thanks,” Tom says, surprised. There’s never been any ill will between them, but still, “I know you two—”“Nah,” Jaffen cuts him off. “It was all over the second she walked into your bar. She’s only ever had eyes for you.”Again, Tom finds Kathryn across the room. Even as he’s hardly seen her all evening, each of them pulled in different directions, he has felt himself peripherally aware of her at all times, his center of gravity as she’s moved around the room with her light touches, her easy smile. She’s still surrounded now, deep in conversation, but as if sensing him she pauses mid-sentence and looks up, eyes scanning the room until they land on him. Softly—knowingly, Tom thinks—she smiles.Beside him, Jaffen snorts. But there’s no edge to it.“I’ll see you two crazy kids tomorrow,” he says, and sees himself out.When the last person has left at last, Tom surveys the carnage of their—their!—apartment. “Well. That was successful, wouldn’t you say, oh wife of mine?”Kathryn collapses against him, face in his chest, arms hanging limply at her sides. “I would indeed. But let’s not elope again, hm? I imagine we violated a number of fire codes tonight.”“You got it. One and done, that’s my motto. Well, maybe not as a bartender,” he grants. “But as your husband, certainly.”She sighs happily, but as she pulls back she presses her fingers into her temples.“Hey,” he says, catching her by the hip before she can move away. “You okay?”“Oh, fine,” she waves him off. “I’m sure I didn’t drink enough water tonight. Everything just—”“Exploded,” he laughs. “Yeah. How do we know all those people?”“There was definitely at least one group that I think just followed the crowd. I didn’t recognize a one of them.” She fingers the cuffs of his sleeves, unbuttoning one, and then the other. “I vote,” she says, lowering her voice as she runs her thumb across the bones of his wrist, “that we clean all this up tomorrow. Thoughts?”“An excellent idea,” he agrees. “Enlightened. Exactly the sort of quick thinking I married you for.”“Literally,” she notes, wryly. She slides the palm of her hand into his, and leads him through the maze of misplaced chairs and pillows and excess streamers, and into their—their!—bedroom. Tom wakes some time later without immediately knowing why. From the gritty dryness of his eyes, the lack of illumination from beyond the bedroom door, he senses it’s early, still. He scrubs a hand down his face, scratching at the short beard there. With a groan, he rolls over, reaching automatically across to the empty space beside him.“Kathryn?” He pushes himself up to his elbows, leans over to see through the doorway and into their living room. Nothing.“Kathryn,” he calls again, louder, just to be sure. When there’s no response, he drags his legs over the side of the bed. Checks the clock on his nightstand: it’s been two hours since they’d gone to bed.He throws his robe on over his pajamas, steps into untied boots while he pockets his keys and ID card, and takes the lift up to the arboretum.He finds her wearing a heavy, oversized sweater which should not be needed in the artificial humidity of this place. She is sitting on the bench she tends to favor, her knees drawn to her chest. Beside her, little silver fish flash in the underwater illumination of their pond.She does not look up as he approaches. He settles down next to her, loosening the tie on his robe even as she draws the neck of her sweater higher. Slowly, she leans into him; he can feel the huge rise and fall of her chest.They haven’t talked about it, the changes he’s noted in her the past few weeks. He’d tried, of course. She’d dismissed his worry again and again—I’m fine, headache, didn’t want to wake you. But he feels in his bones that it’s gotten worse since the wedding, and unless he’s missed his mark, whatever’s happening inside her head is bleeding into the daytime, now. She struggles to shake it off each morning, her smile slower to reach her eyes.“Do you remember sunflowers?” she asks.He frowns at the non sequitur. “Of course.” They hadn’t grown anywhere near him. If they’d ever grown in California, they’d long died out by the time he’d left the planet. He tries to think of the last time he’d seen one. Had he only ever in photos?“We had them on the farm,” she says. “As crops go, they’re a pain. Mold, mildew, aphids, god. And the harvest. Every fall, my sister and I, we’d….” She trails off. “Well. We gave up, eventually, just let them grow for the beauty of it. They could last into October, did you know that? But by then most of them are this black-brown color, hunched and shriveled… strangely haunting. And there’s this… mythology, about sunflowers. That when the weather turns, and they can’t find the sun, they face each other instead.”“Is it true?” Tom asks.“No.” At last, she turns on the bench to look at him. “No, it isn’t. As they age, actually, they sort of lock in place, point east and… hope for the best. Catch the very last dregs of the autumn sun before it’s all over. It was my sister who told me the story, and I was skeptical, you know”—her mouth twists into a grim smile—“ever the scientist. Eager to prove my chops, back then. But I was sorry to know the truth, in the end.”Tom can picture it easily: a tiny Kathryn Janeway, budding scientist on a mission. Trying, and failing, to take her findings in stride. He wants to hug then-Kathryn. He pulls her to him, now, and kisses the top of her head with a deep sigh.“They’re just dreams,” she says. She’s said it a dozen times since they’d begun sharing a bed, and if at first she seemed to want to reassure him with these words—just dreams, just her unconscious mind apparently clawing its way to the surface—more and more she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. She never does tell him what they’re about, and to his mind this secrecy is considerably more alarming than whatever she’s dreaming. But he’s on the verge of resigning himself to learning no more tonight than any other, when she adds, “You keep dying.”It sounds as though she’s forcing the words out. “It was me, before,” she continues. “I would die, and that wasn’t great, but it wasn’t… like this. Over, and over, and over, Tom, you die. And I can’t—”“Hey,” he says. He wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to do this, after all. He doesn’t have to know. But now that she’s begun, she can’t seem to stop.“I don’t—I can’t ever really tell what’s happening, not clearly. You’re in space, like I always was. Only you’re in a shuttle, I think. And you—crash.”“Well,” Tom says. “You’re right, that’s totally unrealistic. Space travel makes me sick.”She huffs a watery laugh.“It was a long ride out here from Earth,” he adds gently. “Those stasis ships, they stress me out, to be honest with you. It’s like stepping into your own coffin. Do you think that could be it? Your subconscious catching up to itself, all that missed time?”“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. That’s not how it feels. But I don’t know what it feels like.” She rubs at her forehead, and Tom realizes that she never did overcome her headache, earlier.“Do you want to go to Medical?” It’s an option that’s been on his mind for a while now, except that he hasn’t wanted to overreact. He has a feeling she could dig in, if pushed too hard.“No. No, god, I’ve never even been sick enough to go to a hospital. Just….” She looks up at him, her blue eyes so tired. “It feels—like an ending. In those moments just before I wake up, it feels like the end of everything.”“We’re just getting started,” Tom promises.And whether or not she believes him just then, she allows him to take her home.*The blizzard blows itself out over the next few days, replaced by clear, star-studded skies. Tom watches the city blur past, scattered lights smeared across fogged glass, his reflection faint in the window. This early, the train car is mostly empty. He slides low in his seat, hands tucked into the pockets of his parka.Kathryn had been called in before dawn, another emergency shift. She’d left in a rush, weary and uncaffeinated, and he’d seen her off with a kiss instead of the argument brewing in his mind that maybe she, too, should call out of work, if there is something serious going around. But the city is still claiming there is no public health crisis, and Kathryn, too duty-bound for her own good, could never be convinced to leave it all to the too-few workers left on shift.So the seat beside him is empty, for a change, her absence folded into the quiet of the car. But Tom has been waiting for an opportunity to duck out on his own for a few hours. Though he hadn’t meant it to come at the expense of his exhausted wife.The train trembles as it crosses onto the bridge. He feels the shift, a faint vibration through the floor as steel meets steel, the rhythmic clunk, clunk, clunk of the rails. He leans toward the window; below, the river sprawls dark and still, sealed under thick ice. The surface gleams dully in places, crisscrossed with pale fissures. It’s a sight, at once eerie and beautiful, he thinks he may never get used to.And then the train begins to slow, and he watches the platform slide into view, aglow in the pale bluish hue of early morning—overhead lights casting their synthetic dawn, an artificial sunrise for a city without daylight. He rises before the train stops fully, pulling his thin wool liners back on, heavy mittens clutched in one hand.The doors hiss open with a blast of frigid air. He steps down carefully, mindful of ice on the concrete. Even as he’s prepared for it, his breath catches, sharp, in his chest. Above, a sign warns of the train’s imminent departure; next to this, bright amber letters flash: CAUTION: COLD WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT.Tom glances down the tracks. A few brave, bundled figures move briskly, heads down, shoulders hunched against the wind. He tugs his mittens on over the liners, tightening the straps at the wrist in a now-familiar ritual against the chill, his breath curling like smoke around him. At the far end of the platform, he takes a set of stairs down to the nearly empty street and then cuts across salted pavement, past empty benches fringed with icicles, and the last line of lamp posts before the terrain slopes away into inky darkness. He pushes his hood back just long enough to loop his headlamp around his knit cap. He clicks it on, adjusts the angle of its narrow red beam, and begins to ease himself down to the riverbank.Scattered lanterns illuminate the ice, tents pitched over fishing holes to blunt the wind. At the river’s edge he squats awkwardly, brushing away a small patch of snow until he finds the dark sand beneath. He struggles to grip the zipper of his parka with mittened hands. Cursing softly, he realizes there’s nothing for it—he pulls the right mitten off with his teeth, unzips enough to withdraw a glass bottle from an inner pocket. Carefully, he coaxes half-frozen sand into the bottle, trying not to dirty it, pausing every minute or so to flex his fingers. When he can’t fill it any further without spilling what he’s already got, he stoppers the bottle and tucks it safely away again. Then he turns, replacing his mitten with a relieved sigh, and prepares to heft himself back up the rocky hillside—but a hand on his shoulder, barely discernable through his many layers, stops him. Startled, he slips, catching himself hard on a half-buried boulder.“She isn’t here,” a voice says, high and urgent.Tom spins around, heart thudding against his chest, and finds a Brenari woman inches away. Her eyes are wide, catching the red glow of his headlamp.“Excuse me?”“The woman. She isn’t here.”Before he can think of a response to this, a man hurries over from one of the fishing tents, his spiked boots rasping against the ice, jarring in the hush of the morning. Hearing it now, Tom can’t imagine how this woman managed to approach without his noticing.“Sorry,” the man pants, pulling her backward, away from Tom. “She isn’t well.”“No harm done,” Tom says, uneasy.Without another word, the fisherman hurries the woman away. Tom adjusts his hood and turns from the river, clambering back up to the road.The jeweler’s shop is narrow and unassuming, wedged between a bookstore and a brightly lit café. As Tom steps inside, warmth rushes to meet him. He draws a deep breath, unzips his coat, and feels a tension he hadn’t noticed in his neck and shoulders begin to recede.A small Quarren man comes out from a back room, smiling when he sees Tom. “You’ve got it?”“Finally,” Tom agrees. He withdraws the bottle, grimacing at the sand clinging to its sides. “Sorry, Marek, I came straight here.”“Good that you did. You saw the weather advisory?”“I’ll be home in plenty of time,” Tom assures him. “Switched shifts.”“Good, good,” Marek says. “This’ll be plenty,” he adds, holding the bottle up to the light. The sand inside glimmers midnight blue, and for a moment Tom’s almost sorry it won’t stay as it is.He’d found this shop by accident, back when he’d thought he’d be losing his apartment. The sign in the window advertising something called sandcasting had intrigued him, though he’d had no use for it at the time. But when he’d discovered that Quarren wedding traditions do not include an exchange of rings, he’d known exactly what to do. It’s fitting, he thinks, to forge their wedding bands from this particular sand. Two humans so far from home, together not just on this planet, but this city, the same building, overlooking the river.He doesn’t believe in fate. But if he did—well. Quarra makes a good argument for it.“I brought one of her rings,” Tom says, setting it down on the counter. “But she wears it on her other hand, I don’t know if…”“It should be close enough,” Marek says kindly. “Her band can easily be resized.”“Okay. Okay, good.” He didn’t expect to be so nervous, and laughs at himself for it, rocking on the balls of his feet. “How long?”“A week, maybe two. I’ll cast hers first, then yours. The metal, I’ve already sourced from your description. Then the engravings, and that’s it!”Tom nods, glancing again at the bottle in Marek’s hands. The sand will be pressed into a mold, he understands, shaping a hollow to be filled by molten gold. They’ll be simple bands, lightly textured by the grains—matching, yet necessarily unique, and hers smaller and more delicate than his own. A thin half-circle etched inside each band will form a complete circle, when the rings are stacked—this had been Marek’s idea, after hearing Tom’s explanation of what wedding bands meant to those humans who wore them. And though Tom had worried it was a bit much, the idea had taken hold once spoken aloud. Circles within circles.He thanks Marek, bracing himself to face the cold outside. Before trudging back to the train station, he ducks into the used bookstore next door, thinking to cheer Kathryn up with a new addition to her collection after her long, early shift. He runs a hand over the spines, fingers pausing on a familiar author, then pulls a slim paperback from the shelf.He tucks it into the pocket where the bottle had been, and heads out to work the lunch shift so as to not get caught in tonight’s weather. When Tom arrives home that evening, he finds Kathryn perched on a small ladder, clad in one of his shirts, which falls to her knees—and a pair of his socks, too, if he’s not mistaken. She has paint on her elbow and her long hair is piled high on her head, so he kisses her bare neck in greeting, and then smirks when she shivers.“You went with the blue,” he notes happily. “I would’ve helped.”For weeks, she’s had a rotation of paint swatches all over the apartment. He’s been hoping against hope she wouldn’t go with the teal green.“Got the supplies on my break! Didn’t want to wait.”Tom eyes her suspiciously. She’s running on about three hours of sleep—she should be flat on her back by now. “Oh, I get it. They gave you stims.”“Yep,” she confirms. “After lunch. My heart rate is through the roof right now.”She says it lightly enough, but he feels his jaw tighten. “They can’t keep doing this to you.”“I think you’ll find they can. We’re just so understaffed right now.”“No public health crisis,” Tom mutters. “Maybe we should—”“They’re going to double up our inoculations.”“What?” Tom gapes. “How do you know?”“Kashimuro. He’s been moved over to Control part time, heard it from the swing supervisor. They’ll probably announce it tomorrow.”“Is it everyone in the radiation zone, or just the plant workers?”“I don’t know,” Kathryn sighs. “But I hope it helps. I’m doing the work of three people right now.”It’s on the tip of Tom’s tongue to voice what he’d been thinking that morning: that maybe they should be taking this more seriously. Maybe even leave the city for a while. Yet, as before, he holds back. He tells himself that she’s had a long day—and another hard night, before that. But also, the thought of saying it aloud feels… wrong. Too heavy, for this moment.Tomorrow, maybe. If the announcement really does come.“Well, speaking of which,” he says instead. “I got you something.”He digs in his coat for the book and holds it up for her, mindful of the wet paint on her hands. She beams at him.“I love her! Oh, Tom, thank you. This is great.”“Anything for you, my love, love of my life,” he says dramatically, and then ducks when she swats at him with her towel.“Wait—did you go across the river? Why?”This, Tom realizes, is a critical error that he absolutely should have anticipated. He thinks fast—what else is over there? Umali sent him on an pickup run? Should he be lying to his wife about their wedding rings? But he is saved from having to answer by a sudden knock at the door, sharp enough to startle them both. He looks toward the sound, then at Kathryn, who glances down at herself doubtfully.“Should we ignore it?”Another knock, louder this time, and then the chime rings out through the apartment.“Better not,” he says. The soles of her socks—his socks—are smeared with paint, so before she can say anything else he scoops her up, one arm behind her back, the other under her knees.“Tom!” she gasps, laughing.“We’re protecting our security deposit.” He twists awkwardly to reach the door handle from under her legs. He flings the door open and staggers back quickly, nearly overbalancing in the attempt.“Jaffen!” Kathryn says. “Oh my god, your timing is—”“Exceptional,” Tom says. “Truly. Please come in. Would you also like a pair of my socks to destroy?”But Jaffen doesn’t answer. He steps through the doorway, shoulders tight, and shuts it quickly behind him. Tom’s smile fades. He finds Kathryn’s tarp and sets her down gently.“What’s happened?” Kathryn asks.Jaffen looks around the apartment, eying their bookshelves, then the new paperback laying on the floor. He stoops to pick it up, studies it. “I’ve never read this author. You like her?”“Yes…” Kathryn says. She shoots Tom a worried look.“How long did it take you to learn to read Quarren?”“Jaffen, what—”“Took me ages. Nightmare of a language, isn’t it? How long for you, Kathryn?”“I don’t—I’m not sure. I don’t recall exactly.”“And the cursive, wow, might as well be a totally separate alphabet. Don’t you think?”Tom frowns. Kathryn’s handwriting is fluid, precise, and it strikes him for the first time that when she leaves notes for him they are in Quarren, not English.Kathryn is silent, but Jaffen plows ahead anyway. “How did you two get here from the other side of the galaxy?”“…A ship. A stasis ship.”“Where is the ship now? Who captained it? Did Medical process you?”“I—”“Did you have tremors after you arrived? Muscle fatigue?”“No, but—”“And why here? Why this far?”Suddenly, Tom remembers Kathryn’s words from the other night. I’ve never been sick enough to go to a hospital. But shouldn’t they have, actually? Both of them, when they’d disembarked, if not before? He’s seen the ships arrive, new workers quarantined before getting their assignments.He doesn’t remember being quarantined.“How can you read this book, Kathryn? The day I met you, you were engrossed in your work manual like it was a favorite novel. If you’d only just arrived, how could you read it? How did you read your marriage license?”“Stop! Just… stop,” Kathryn says. “Let me—I need to change.” Abruptly, she leaves the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself.“Jaffen,” Tom says. “What the hell is going on?”“Someone from Division Six came for me. At the bar.”“Division—”“Neuropathology.”“You came through Neuropathology?”“No. No, I did not.” Jaffen pulls out a chair and drops down into it. “Sorry, just—I ran here.”“From the bar? Jesus.”Silence stretches between them, heavy and uncertain, until Kathryn reemerges, wrapped in a robe and cradling a cup of hot tea. She sets it in front of Jaffen, but does not sit down.“I’m sorry,” Jaffen says again. “I didn’t want to involve you two. But—you are, I think. I think you’re part of it.”“Part of what?” Kathryn asks, gently, and Tom has the feeling she isn’t completely certain he doesn’t belong in Neuropathology.“I’m not sure, yet. A lot of things aren’t adding up lately. That woman who collapsed a while ago—Annika? She never came back. She was human, too, which made me realize it’s not the Quarren workers out sick, is it? It’s only the ‘guest workers’. Why?”“But you’re not Quarren.”“No, but I remember things that others don’t. I remember how I got here. I remember why I left. And I ran into another Norvalen last week—not unheard of, here, but rare. Really rare. I came alone, not on some big transport ship like you. And this guy… it’s like we're from completely different worlds. Nothing he said made sense.”“Things might’ve changed since you left.”“Not this much. Not this fast. It’s only been two years.”“Okay… so what are you suggesting?”“I don’t know. But someone’s not happy I’m asking questions.” He looks at Kathryn, an apology written in his face before he says again, “How long did it take you to learn the language?”Kathryn is quiet for a long moment. She looks down at her hands, clasped tightly, her thumb tracing her forefinger. When she looks up again, it’s Tom, not Jaffen, she addresses.“I don’t remember. Anything.” Her voice falters. “I don’t know how I can read Quarren. Tom—”Tom crosses to her, his heart racing, and folds her into his arms. “Okay. It’s okay.”“No,” she says. “I don’t think it is.”