"Never"
copyright 2000
by Maisie (maisierita@comcast.net)
(Voy, P/T and C, PG, 1/1)
Feedback: Sure, I love it. Especially 'coz this was unbetaed. ;)
Disclaimer: Tom and Chak are not mine. <sob> Neither are the rest of the characters, but I'm not going to cry about that.
Archive: Okay, but ask first.
Spoilers: For Drive. You have been warned.
*****
I never had a chance with him.
Not really.
I knew it from the beginning. And even if I had had a chance . . well, there were just too many things that went wrong. Somewhere, in whatever Cardassian hell she inhabits, I'm sure Seska's laughing.
And now he's standing here, holding on fast to B'Elanna's hand, and even though they lost the race, even though they were very nearly killed, he's glowing. They've got a favor to ask, he tells Kathryn, and my heart constricts just a little because I know damn well what it will be; it's practically written on their faces. So that will be it then. In a few months, a few weeks maybe, they'll be married and there will be no hope left. Not that there ever was hope. Not really.
"He won't stay, Chakotay," Seska told me, on that first day. And she was right, I knew she was right. Hell, we all knew she was right. Tom Paris, dissolute, disillusioned and dispirited, would never last with us. We'd get a few months from him, probably, maybe even half a year, but no more. We needed him to fly, and so he'd fly, and heal. Then, soul mended, he'd take a good look around at himself and his life . . . and leave. It was inevitable.
And yet we were desperate. Desperate enough to take the tattered wreckage of a Starfleet scion and nurse him back to health, so he could fly for us for as long as he could stand it, before a buried sense of loyalty drove him back to Starfleet.
"We may have to kill him," Seska said casually, a few days later. "He'll talk when he leaves."
"He won't," I answered tersely. "He's not the type. Besides, we won't tell him anything important."
She raised an eyebrow at that and shrugged delicately, letting the matter drop for the moment. A small victory for me, or so I thought at the time. I left her then, and headed to the makeshift gym we'd set up in one of the cargo bays. Paris was there, playing basketball one-on-one with Kenneth Dalby. "Twelve-seven," Ken called out after sinking a flawless shot through the rickety hoop, and Paris nodded tersely. I watched in silence for a few minutes, musing passively on the time-honored male ritual of bonding through sweat, and saw Dalby sink another three shots while Paris scored only one. "That's the game," Ken said, panting a bit after his last basket.
Paris shrugged, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. "I'm out of practice."
Dalby smirked. "Sure you are." He jerked his head towards the door. "I'm taking a shower, then heading to the canteen. Coming?"
Paris shook his head. "No thanks. I'm gonna shoot a little more."
Ken was unconcerned, and nodded genially to me on his way out
I watched Paris take a few halfhearted shots towards the basket. "It helps if you aim," I said dryly.
He grimaced. "I can't concentrate." He was fidgety and restless, and sweatier than the game would account for. As we stood there, he reached up to the back of his neck and winced, massaging the obviously sore muscle.
I said nothing, though I could have apologized for our lack of better medical treatment. Check into a detox center and they break your addictions as gently as a whisper. We didn't have quite the same luxuries in the Maquis. The hypos took care of the cravings and the withdrawal symptoms, but they had unfortunate side effects. Restlessness and irritability, occasional muscle spasms, insomnia. Fairly unpleasant, but it had been Paris's choice to join us, and he'd known from the outset that he'd have to sober up to fly.
He bounced the basketball once against the floor. "You want to play?" he offered. "I can almost guarantee you'll win."
I laughed, and accepted. I'd probably have beaten him anyway -- growing up on a frontier planet, we still played a lot of the old fashioned sports, and I was the one who'd installed the hoop here -- but it wasn't even a contest. He called a halt when the score was thirteen to two, and sank back against the wall. "Forget it. I know when I'm beat."
He looked awful. "You should eat something, Paris."
He paled, and shook his head. "It'd just make me sick now. I'll wait until later."
"But B'Elanna's probably in the canteen now."
He looked at me suspiciously. "So?"
I met his gaze impassively, and he flushed.
"Damn. Am I that obvious?"
I shrugged. "Yes."
He groaned theatrically, but stopped as a tremor ran through his body.
I eyed him critically as he rode it out. He did not look at all well. "When was your last treatment?"
He wiped his forehead wearily. "Six hours ago."
Two more hours until the next one, then. It certainly explained the lack of appetite. "If you're not going to eat, you should at least rest. When did you sleep last?"
He shook his head. "I haven't. Not since I got here."
"It's been three days."
He shrugged helplessly. "I've been drinking myself into a stupor every night for the past two years. I don't think I know how to fall asleep anymore. The stimulants in the detox drugs don't help, either."
"Come with me," I offered. "I've got something in my quarters that might help."
I made him the herbal tea, and as he sipped it slowly, we talked. He told me about his first shuttle ride, and I told him about my first pet, a dog named Brownie. We laughed a bit, and after a second cup of tea he thought he might be able to keep some food down, so I served him some day-old bread with Bajoran jam, and had a piece myself. Then he asked about B'Elanna and we spent the rest of the time talking about her. He left when it was time for his next hypo, and that was the first and last time he set foot in my quarters.
It was hopeless. I knew that even then.
"He talked," Seska fumed a few weeks later. "They only sentenced him to 18 months. He must have talked."
"He didn't. He couldn't have," I said quietly. "He didn't have anything to tell them."
She snorted and stalked out of the room.
"He hacked into the computers," she announced vindictively a little while later. "From the terminal in his quarters, the day before he was captured. He downloaded almost a quarter of our database. I'm telling you, he talked, Chakotay."
She was good, I'll give her that. How could I help but believe her, especially when Starfleet intercepted our next two scheduled weapons shipments? "He talked," she insisted, and I finally conceded.
"That traitor Paris," she took to calling him, and soon everyone else began to call him that as well. Months afterward, she reported that he'd been seen talking to a Starfleet captain in the penal colony, and speculated darkly as to what it might mean. When I saw him on Voyager's bridge a week later, I thought I might kill him with my bare hands.
He never protested the animosity of the Maquis over the next few months, though he seemed faintly puzzled by the depth of it. It was only after Seska's treachery was revealed that it occurred to me that I could no longer trust anything she'd ever said. Tom nodded when I finally spoke to him, and said he'd figured it was something like that. "I never told them a thing," he said, shrugging. "I couldn't have if I wanted to. I didn't have anything to tell them."
I shut my eyes and looked away, silently cursing Seska in three different languages. "Why did you agree to help track us down, then?"
He shrugged again. "I didn't think it would make a difference. I didn't have the slightest idea where you were."
We became friendly after that, and I felt the same attraction I felt that night in my quarters a year before, when he drank herbal tea from a chipped mug and ate a huge piece of slightly stale bread slathered with sweet jam. I never spoke of it when I began pining for him again, and if he noticed, he never said.
Then came B'Elanna, and he was far past noticing anyone else.
And now they're standing there in singed flight suits, excitement gleaming in their eyes, and I know I've lost him for good, if I can lose someone I never really had. "We want to get married," he says to Kathryn, and I see him give B'Elanna's hand a squeeze.
Kathryn's delighted. "Of course. Just pick a date, and-"
"Today," B'Elanna interrupts.
"Now," Tom adds. He turns and grins at his lover, and I remember that same grin from seven years ago, when he beat me at a game of basketball two days before Starfleet captured him.
Now. They want to get married now. Not in a few months or weeks after all, but right here, right now. Kathryn is protesting but Tom and B'Elanna are insistent, laughing but insistent, and no, they don't want to wait, they don't want to change their clothes, they'll replicate some rings later . . .
"Please, Captain," Tom asks, and I know she'll say yes, because there's no way anyone could refuse him anything right now, not the way he looks. He's incandescent.
It's over before I've even begun to comprehend it, a ceremony that takes five minutes to arrange and half that time to complete. There are no long speeches, no special vows, no toasts nor music nor flowers. Just Kathryn, smiling sweetly and asking if they will give themselves to each other forever. When they say 'yes', my heart breaks just a little.
Then they're kissing, and Kathryn's eyes are wet, and I don't think I've ever seen Harry this happy -- you'd almost think he was the one who'd gotten married -- and even Seven is smiling gently.
And I smile too, on the outside at least, because he's so happy, it's hard not to smile.
Anyway, I never had a chance with him.
Not really.
*****
The End.
THE END
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