Work Text:
“There you are.”
The captain’s voice is soft, affectionate. She’s been like that with everyone lately, command distance gone as the crew that became a family prepares to leave the ship that became a home.
He turns from the helm, chair squeaking in the eerie quiet. Starfleet teams are gone for the evening and this is his last night … his last night before …
“I have your separation orders ready.” The captain holds out three padds. “You, B’Elanna, and Miral are cleared to disembark in the morning.”
His arms cross — self-protection, deflection, knowledge that what he’s about to say is right and wrong and everything in between. “Kicking us out?”
The captain’s head shakes. “Never.”
Except she is. Starfleet is. That’s why she found him alone on a bridge that used to thrum as a place of life, of motion, slated to settle into stillness as a museum, an honor — so they’ve been told — for their everyday to become enshrined as part of a dazzling display of the defunct.
He swivels back toward his station, checks course and speed out of habit but the display is zeroed out. On the viewscreen, it’s as if McKinley Station and Earth are fixed, immobile. Impenetrable.
Carpet muffles her steps, but her chair creaks as the captain sits.
“Quite a view.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The three padds he didn’t take clack together as she lays them on top of her computer. “What do you see, Mr. Paris?”
He sees a baby girl he loves with a ferocity he didn’t think was possible.
He sees a wife already feted by Starfleet for Delta Quadrant engineering accomplishments as long as his arm.
He sees himself, a screw-up, an ex-con back at the scene of the crime — the quadrant where he thought he had messed up his life irrevocably— except now everyone’s talking as if he’s some sort of hero.
“I see New Zealand.” The viewscreen shows South America. “I see a captain with fresh pips and her hands on her hips, and she’s offering me a get-out-of-jail-free card. And I still don’t know why.”
There’s silence behind him.
His throat aches and his fingers twitch. His console. His console. It’s all he can do not to try to rip the helm station from the deck plating, heft the machinery over his shoulder, and stack it with the storage containers labeled for transport to the Earth apartment he and B’Elanna chose with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.
“I remember what you said about wanting my help to find the Maquis.” He forces his hands to rest on his lap, fingers splayed, useless. “But we both know you could have gotten that information and not taken me along for the ride. This has been the best seven years of my life and … before I go … I want to know why.”
Her chair, always so quiet when the ship pulsed with activity, creaks again. He swivels and the captain is the same size she’s always been, yet also somehow smaller.
“Looking back can be dangerous, Mr. Paris.” She glances toward the viewscreen, then at him. “Sometimes the best course is forward.”
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe he should let this go, live with the mystery he’s tried to ignore for fear of an answer that could have nothing to do with him and everything to do with duty to his father or to Starfleet or to the captain’s own mistaken belief in what a prisoner on parole could contribute. Maybe it’s better to keep living around near-certainty that the best thing that’s ever happened to him could have nothing to do with him, just dumb luck in the chaos of a life that he didn’t know how to control anyway.
Maybe not.
“Sometimes,” his legs extend toward her, cross at the ankle as if he has all the time in the world instead of a journey he thought would be measured in decades ticking away in minutes until his life changes yet again, “but last I checked, spatial orientation required fixed points for reference. No fixed point, no path forward.”
One side of her mouth curls upward. “An apt analogy, Mr. Paris.”
The ache in his throat threatens to close. Fear? Nerves? This might actually be happening. Years of space flight only to circle back to find an answer to the existential why.
Silence stretches, not even a creak of her chair to say something — anything — in the quiet.
He uncrosses his ankles, recrosses them in the other direction, fights the urge to swivel toward his station to check course and speed, fights the urge to joke the analogy was so apt it took her breath away, fights the urge to do … anything.
Except wait.
And hope.
“Fathers.” She stares at the viewscreen, land and oceans gauzy with clouds. “Ours were among the best, as you know — at their jobs. Birthdays, graduations, a skinned knee on the tennis court were unimportant in comparison to the deep and all-encompassing, immediate and constant needs of Starfleet and the Federation.”
He’s not a tennis player, but she’s talking about both of them all the same.
She continues to speak to the viewscreen, to him, to the silence, to the people on the planet where they both grew up. “Great men, so everyone believes, so everyone tells their progeny, so everyone is convinced of greatness down the line, in the blood. But to grow and mature in a shadow, no matter how great that shadow may be, still leads to darkness that can blot out the sun — darkness that can lead to accidents, mistakes, overreach, the banner of a family name both medal on the chest and stake to the heart when that family name seems to precede … everything.”
And he understands.
She didn’t go to New Zealand to meet with a convict. She went to meet with a compatriot, another heir to the admiralty following in too-big footsteps that smooth yet gouge the path, expectations like minefields, the worry of not being good enough a hurdle to surmount every day, the impossible task of proving exceptionality only to achieve the expected. He tripped and fell, dragging the family banner down, and in his mistakes, his disgrace, she saw the herself that could have been with the just-right misstep.
Yet here they are.
Home.
Heroes.
Circled back to where they started, yet not the people they were then. Not by a long shot.
He uncrosses his ankles, stands tall, extends his hand.
“It’s been an honor to serve with you, Captain Kathryn Janeway. Thank you for …” he won’t let his voice crack, he won’t, “for that path forward.”
Her chair creaks as she stands, her gaze on him gentle, appreciative. “The honor’s been all mine, Lieutenant Tom Paris. Thank you for your service.”
She steps toward him, shakes his hand.
And this journey, this seven-year, lifetime journey, has reached its destination.