Chapter Text
When I met Kathryn Janeway I was a different man.
I spent most of my time figuring out how I could get ahead and screw over everyone else. I chose what was easy, what was quick, whatever amounted to cheap fun and a way to escape.
Unfortunately, when I joined up with the Maquis, I chose wrong.
And landed myself in a Federation prison.
Lucky for me, I adapted. It's easier than you think, surviving when you don’t really have any standards, any hope.
You just exist.
The days in the prison were monotonous, numbing, each one bleeding endlessly into the next in an interminable sea of mundane tasks and routines.
There were drugs and alcohol freely available, if you were smart enough and resourceful enough to trade. I used both fairly liberally. Most of us did. I needed it to keep the sharp, yawning darkness from swallowing me. I needed it for the nights when I would wake up, soaked in a cold sweat, the screams of my friends echoing in my ears, the brilliant orange of the exploding shuttle still flashing beneath my eyelids.
No one paid it any mind. We all had our demons. So we tried to forget them, and we didn’t ask questions. It was easier to be numb. To not care.
And really, what was there for me to care about?
No one visited. No one sent me letters.
Not that it surprised me. When you kill three of your best friends and desperately cover it up like the spineless coward you are, you aren’t exactly popular.
Not the type of son, the type of friend, that anyone asks about over dinner. Sometimes I wondered what my parents said about me, when my mother met her friends for lunch or my father visited the bar frequented by the Admirals.
Maybe they told people I died.
In the prison it didn’t matter who you’d killed, what you’d done. You acted in your own interests, no one else’s. No one gave a damn about anyone else. We just wanted to know what the bottom line was.
I was good at that. At screwing people over and not giving a damn who I used. I ran the betting pools amongst the other inmates, developed enough connections to get contraband smuggled in and out at will. It was the same life I had been living on the outside, just with walls.
Trade, barter, steal, lie.
And so, all things considered, I survived just fine.
Then Kathryn Janeway showed up, starched and pressed and irritatingly perfect. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.
She was too much like me. Or too much like the person I was supposed to be.
Starfleet royalty. Raised up in the shadow of one of the greatest men to ever wear the uniform. Bred to lead. To serve.
Except she had somehow done it. Met the impossible standards that had been forced down her throat from the time she could look up at the stars. From the time our first toys were telescopes and tiny metal spaceships. From the time the tales we heard at bedtime were about the great explorers named Kirk and Spock.
People like us, we knew there was no other path for us to take. Study. Excel. Lead. Serve.
She wore that damned uniform like a second skin, looking completely comfortable under the suffocating fabric of command red. Everything about her screamed Starfleet.
And I’d been running from Starfleet for a long time.
She walked with that upright, proud stance they taught as at the academy. Show no weakness. Emanate power. Give no quarter. Never second guess yourself.
I should have admired her. Instead, I told myself she was a sell out. Pathetic. Living the life someone else chose for her.
I already guessed why she was here. Likely on a mission of mercy from the great Owen Paris. A pep talk to get his wayward son to begin toeing the line. It was a new low for me, my father sending one of his people to try and motivate me to stop being such a fuck up.
I assumed she had served with him. Of course she had. She had that look when she mentioned him that made me grit my teeth and fight back the dark swarm of anger that swelled behind my eyes. Like she was talking about a god.
Well, now she has seen that even gods have failures.
And I was his.
When she said she had an offer for me, she got my attention. She might have been an unfailingly uptight Federation princess, but she had power. And influence. I was never one to turn down on opportunity.
A ship. A mission. Starfleet.
My skin crawled at the thought of being back on a ship. I tried to hide the cold sweat that broke out all over my body at the thought of it, of being surrounded by ‘Fleeters again. I wanted to throw up, or get blindingly drunk. I know she noticed, but she didn’t question me. There was no condemnation for the pathetic, flawed excuse for a man she was inviting on to the most advanced ship in the history of Starfleet.
As terrified as I was, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew this was a shot to get out of here, and the last thing I wanted was to spend any more time slaving away in a damn prison.
If Kathryn Janeway was going to be foolish enough to give me a shot at freedom, I sure as hell was going to take it.
It wasn’t as if I’d have any responsibility, I reasoned. I’d be “an observer.” Even though i could probably outfly whatever wet behind the ears pilot she had sitting at her helme with my eyes closed.
I couldn’t be trusted, after all.
So I agreed, and when I looked up at her, there was something in her eyes that grabbed me by the throat. It wasn’t pity, or hatred. It was something else.
Understanding.
For all her composed, immaculate perfection, she understood the torment that was rolling through me as I stood in the warm sun with a dirty prison uniform on my back and the taste of liquor from last night still in my mouth, acting like an unaffected, selfish bastard.
I knew with a certainty I couldn't ’t explain that, at some point, she had hit rock bottom too.
She was offering me a way out.
And that's how I eventually found myself on a transport, headed to Voyager. When I saw the ominous silver gleam of her hull, the sharp glint of her rows of windows, I had never been so humbled. I wasn’t sure yet if this ship was going to be my salvation or my condemnation.
But there was no way for me to turn back now.
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It didn’t take long for me to see why Kathryn Janeway had become one of the youngest captains to be given such a prestigious commission.
The woman was a damn warrior.
And possibly a little crazy.
She held up her hand to a known terrorist in the middle of her bridge to keep him from punching me into next year, eyes blazing fire and her voice edged with steel. . And a man I’d watched draw blood with his own hands fell in line with the rest of us.
She owned that bridge with an iron-edged power I’d never seen before. I had never met anyone who led like that. As if the Delta Quadrant had better not dare to send its hellfire raining down on her ship. Because she’d give it back tenfold.
I’d spent the last few years being afraid. Afraid of who I was, what I’d done, and what possible future I could have.
But this woman was utterly fearless.
And, slowly, she helped me realize, I had it in me to move beyond my past.
When she gave me the uniform I felt raging, absolute panic. Terror that I would fail her, fail this crew. That if we lost someone else it would be on my hands. I wasn’t sure there was enough of me left to serve. And I knew I wouldn’t survive failing again.
But of course, I didn’t show her. That’s not what Tom Paris did. He was cavaliere, flippant. He was a hotshot who wasn’t afraid of anything.
I knew I was a great pilot. That wasn’t the issue. I’d taken the helm at numerous ships over the years. For money or passage offworld. But not for Starfleet. Not with lives depending on me. Not since the accident. And I couldn’t put into words why it was different.
There was no doubt in my mind I was the most qualified person on board to pilot this ship. A part of me even longed for it. The thrill of driving all that power, of guiding a massive ship through space. There’s nothing quite like it; the adrenaline, the rush.
But I’d see how horribly it could all go wrong.
The night after she instinated me as an officer I got falling-down drunk on synthol. It was the only way I knew to escape the stranglehold that kept me in its grip when I thought about all the reasons I should never pilot this ship. The next morning, I puked my guts out before managing to stagger to the bridge, looking like I’d just been chewed up and spit out by a targ. Harry tried to say something to me as I squinted in the bright lights near his station, but I shook him off.
He didn’t understand this. Couldn’t understand.
There was no way I could ask the Doctor for a hypospray, so I sat at the helm with shaking hands and a headache that bored into my skull, bile rising in my throat.
Kathryn Janeway came over and put a hand on my shoulder, “Set a course, Mr. Paris,” she said, in that matter-of-fact tone she had. I knew she saw my hand falter, the tremor of my fingers.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt mortified. Embarrassed beyond measure that she might think less of me. That she’d see the crack in the facade.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d given a damn what anyone thought about me.
She stood next to me for another five minutes, her steady hand on my shoulder, her eyes on the stars ahead of us. Finally, she gave my shoulder a firm squeeze, and said firmly, “You and I, we’re going to get this crew home.” And then she walked back to her chair, as if nothing had happened.
As if she hadn’t just held the shattered pieces of a man together in the middle of her bridge.
I knew then, that I’d follow her into hell.
And as I watched the stars of the Delta Quadrant gleam on the viewscreen, I took my first step back.
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