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She remembers him from years before, from before she was seriously part of Starfleet’s junior program, when her family spent entire months in San Francisco to be with her dad and they were neighbors of the Paris family. She remembers him well, of course she does. That stupid gap-toothed kid, always underfoot, forever quick on his feet and quicker with his words. He wasn’t actually stupid, he was smart, eerily so, and she has memories of him holding his own in the adults’ conversations.
She was secretly impressed and thought to herself, this must be the result of having Owen Paris for a father; someone to nurture your intellect from a young age, challenging you to become the best, smartest version of yourself. (Not that her own parents weren’t amply challenging her, but their focus lay elsewhere.) And not that Tom’s intellect seemed to be in want of much nurturing; when he was uninterested, he was simply uninterested, and nothing could change his mind. He was like his father that way.
“Thomas, if you can’t sit still anymore, you can leave the table”, Mr Paris told him one afternoon that the Paris family were hosting a few friends in their San Francisco home.
“Aw, great!” Tom grinned and made to stand up. She found this understandable, the boy was only six, after all. At sixteen herself, Kathryn was of course in the possession of enough stamina to follow and engage with the scientific topics as the adults discussed them.
“Hey, Kathy, do you want to come see my workshop? I’m assembling a real antique Stirling AIP engine from spare parts”, Tom said, clearly proud, grinning up at her.
“Thomas likes engines”, Mr Paris explained, somewhat disdainfully. Kathryn hesitated. She would much rather stay here and listen to Mr Paris and the others talk, but it was impossible to say no to the boy’s pleading eyes, so she found herself agreeing and was promptly rewarded by the solar system’s widest grin.
“Yes! Come on, this way!”
He took hold of her hand unabashedly and she had to jog to keep up with him. His workshop was across the garden, in a building that must’ve been a shed long ago, repurposed for tinkering with all sorts of gadgets and devices and the like. She had to duck under the door frame as she entered.
“What do you think?”, Tom asked. “This right there is the Stirling. Or rather, what will be the Stirling.” Kathryn looked at the low workbench with its spare parts that were loosely connected. To her, it looked like a body which had been flayed open, only connected anymore through veins. It looked oddly alive. The craftmanship above anything she’d have believed a six-year-old could do.
“It’s amazing, actually”, she told him earnestly, examining the contraption. “Your parents let you do this? Did they help?”
Tom moved some tools around and shrugged. “Yeah, ‘course, as long as I have my homework done. They made me promise not to build anything that could blow up, and sometimes Mom comes in here to check I’m keeping my promise. But I’m doing everything myself.”
He grinned. “I know what I’m doing! Look here!” Tom proceeded to explain the parts to her, and talk about which he still had to acquire to finish the engine.
Kathryn knew she was fairly smart herself, but she didn’t understand everything he was saying, pronouncing difficult words with ease and through a slight lisp owed to a missing tooth.
“And over there is my model collection!” Tom easily switched gears when he was done and swivelled around to show her. The models, hull to hull on a dark shelf, were not of Starfleet ships like she had expected, but of ancient nautical sailing ships.
When she had inspected them closely enough, admiring the details, Tom took her hand again and said, “We should go get hot chocolate!”
By now, Kathryn was very amused by the boy’s skittish behavior and agreed easily, listening to his chatter and telling somewhat abbreviated stories in return. She surprised herself by actually having fun hanging out with the six-year-old and promised to visit again when her parents got ready to leave.
They were never quite friends, but they got on well, had things to talk about and Kathryn always found it sweet how excited he was to see her whenever they unfailingly wound up at the same function again, being both brass children.
At one point through the years, Tom discovered his love for flying and would blab her ears off about the different aircrafts and controls, and whenever she’d have enough, she just cut him off by describing her newest experiment and the last expedition she was part of, now that she’d made it into the junior science team in preparation for the academy. That worked.
She comforted him one time when he cried and was conflicted when he revealed he was crying because of his father. Kathryn admired Mr Paris very much and she did not want to believe he could do anything to bring his son to such tears. He was strict, yes, but certainly never cruel. She felt like in some way she was betraying Mr Paris by comforting his son, but she did it anyway, telling Tom, to cheer him up:
“One day, we’ll serve on a ship together. How’s that sound?”
Tom sniffled and nodded. “That sounds great.” He thought for a moment and nodded again.
“Yes, you’ll be the captain and I’ll be your first officer!” He sounded so sure, so certain, and Kathryn could almost see this future herself.
“Did you hear? I got my first posting last month”, she said as soon as she sat down at his table.
She hadn’t seen him for at least half a year, maybe longer, her rigorous training clashing with his schoolwork and both their priorities elsewhere. But now she was almost done with Starfleet training and he, back in San Francisco. They might as well catch up.
She took note of the drink he’d been nursing before she arrived, something looking otherworldly and suspiciously like he was not yet allowed to actually consume it, but she didn’t comment. She wasn’t responsible for him in that way. Tom, all long limbs he hadn’t grown into yet and a smile he already knew how to wield, looked appropriately envious.
“Sweet.” He leaned in, eyes shining with happiness for her. “Where are you stationed?”
Kathryn smiled crookedly. “The Al-Batani.”
“Ah, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Dad only accepts the best and the brightest.” There was a quiet battle going on behind his eyes that made him both older and younger than his fourteen years and that Kathryn had no access to. But he smirked all the same.
“I’ll catch up to you yet, Kathy”, he promised at last and she believed him.
The more time passed, the less she had to do with the Paris family as a whole – apart from serving under then-Captain Paris at the beginning of her career, of course – so she saw Tom less and less, as he breezed through school and the academy, sure-footed because there was nowhere else for him to go.
She did hear what he was up to through the grapevine as soon as he started at the academy, and she could only shake her head and hope he never got himself into serious trouble with all the pranking and shuttle-pilfering he was doing.
She told him as much whenever they managed to meet up for coffee, which was maybe once or twice a year at the most, but he would only grin that grin of his that made him look like a little kid and that was always a little more genuine than the smirks she had seen him throw around on occasion, and tell her not to worry and that she was a hypocrite anyway, as she was nearly as reckless as he was, or so he’d heard.
Yes, they were both reckless, but that wasn’t quite true, was it; she was a smarter kind of reckless, she took risks and made delicate calls while he was just being plain stupid – never mind how clever she knew he was – what with him advancing from skipping class and taking shuttles without permission to covering up deaths he caused and then – stumbling and falling to disgrace, and because he was Tom Paris, he couldn’t stop there, so he fell further, off the face of the earth and into the arms of the Maquis and – prison, and nothing.
She on the other hand excelled, got promoted several times, got her new ship and a mission and then there she stands, in a penal settlement of all places, hands on her hips, all business, looking down at Tom Paris, serving a sentence instead of a ship, who’s focused on a task that couldn’t possibly keep even a quarter of his brain occupied for more than five seconds. And yet he only looks up when she says his name. She sees the moment the recognition hits.
To his credit, he is pretty put-together when he asks her what she wants. No “Kathy” and no grin, either. She herself also remains composed. They have parts to play, after all. No place for anything else in between, no matter that they hadn’t talked for several years. They’re not Kathy and Tom, anymore, they’re Captain Janeway and Mr Paris. (For the first time in her life, the “Mr Paris” denotes someone, him, being beneath her. When she had called Admiral Paris “Mr Paris” as a child, it was always with the utmost respect.)
And so she’s all business, telling him about this job, and he looks up at her with a straight face but a private laugh in his eyes as he tells her he’s all hers in this smarmy tone that makes her want to show her disgust on her face, but she can’t. Instead, there are details she needs him to know.
“You haven’t seen Voyager”, she says and she thinks she sees the envy in his eyes again, that she’s come so far, with her own ship that she can talk about lovingly, while he has nothing left. That he never had managed to catch up to her, after all.
He confirms, apprehensively, when she mentions him knowing Chakotay, and it makes her realize that he really has lived a life after Starfleet, after he slipped out of her perception, and then he lets out a long-suffering sigh and gets into an entirely rehearsed speech about the differences between Chakotay and him that she doesn’t quite believe. He still has that smart mouth, of course, and he’s an arrogant, cocky bastard that she would dislike more if she hadn’t known him over half her life and most of his.
“He considered me a mercenary, willing to fight for anyone who’d pay my bar bills.” He’s finishing, stopping, standing almost ramrod-straight at attention, but with a defiant slouch. A parody of actually standing at attention. A posture she’d call him out on, were he actually serving under her right now. Trying to look down on her but not succeeding, she’s not letting him. Seeming taller than full-grown men she outranks is something she has been excelling at for over a decade. He’s half smirking, looking for a fight.
“The trouble is, he was right”, he drags, and surely, he seems so brave to any outsider, but she’s known him too well, too long, and can see right through him and the face he wears. He must realize, because he doubles down.
“I have no problem helping you track down my friends in the Maquis, Captain.” The title rolls of his tongue like an insult. “All I need to know from you is what’s in it for me.”
She could hate him for the attitude alone. But she hates what life has done to him more. And she’s a professional, and she states the reward, and he argues. Pulls a face, “Hell, I’m the best pilot you could have.”
There’s the challenge in his eyes, the pride, something he knows he’s good at. Look here! he’s saying. I know what I’m doing! She doesn’t relent and he accepts, flippantly.
And then that’s out of the way and she thanks him for his time, fully expecting him to turn around and leave her standing there.
“I’ll walk you back”, is what he says, though, and they fall into step next to each other.
“Tell me, what have you been up to”, she asks and tries to use a softer tone than before, to signal she’s not trying to be Captain Janeway right now. She’s never been particularly good at combining command and personal situations.
He smiles, looking straight ahead. “I don’t think I should, Captain, not like this”, he replies, not unfriendly.
She nods, and their following silence is a bit more companionable.
When they were much younger, they’d talked about the possibility of him serving under her one day. But not like this. They hadn’t accounted for all that had happened later, what he’d done, he hadn’t made his father proud, like she had. She’d always soaked up every praise she got from Admiral Paris, never thinking he’d leave none for his actual children.
Yes, she loved her own dad and wanted to make him proud, and she did, but Edward Janeway’s priorities when it came to Starfleet had been slightly elsewhere than her own, even with his achievements and admiralty. No matter what she had done, her dad had genuinely congratulated her on her success all her life and the remainder of his.
But Owen Paris – he was the scientist and explorer she’d always wanted to be. His praise meant something that her dad’s could never match. (And though he had three children in Starfleet, Kathryn used to tell herself when she was young, none were like Owen Paris quite like her.) If Tom caught on, he never told her.
There’s no time for any of that, at first and later; there’s the mission, her Voyager, her all-new ship. She takes note of Tom out of the corner of her eye, but he has to fight his own battles here, and he’s nothing if not suave, and then single-minded, when he needs to be. She’s glad; she’s never seen him in an actual real-life stressful situation.
Soon, they all have another battle to fight, and after everything’s gone down and there’s nothing left to do but try to make their way home, there’s a certain peace that settles in for the two of them. It’s still the beginning, she’s still only the captain for nearly everybody, and it feels good to know there are a handful people who know her, however fleetingly.
She has Tuvok, and she’s unbelievably glad to have him here with her, however selfish that may sound, but she’s somehow also happy that Tom is here.
He’ll have another chance; maybe she can get that bright-eyed kid back. Maybe she can gain him as a friend who knew her before. She realizes, sometime in those first few weeks in the Delta quadrant, that they’ll all be family, at some point.
It might still not be enough. But maybe it will be.