by Melanie
To Tell the Truth Series, Part 3/7:
Togetherness
By melanie ( www.ocl.net/~melanie's_mind )
Code: VOY, P, Tu, P/T, ALL
Rating: R (see Warning below for explanation)
Date: Story finished: July 1998. Revised (spelling mistakes/grammar corrected): December 1999
Comments, admiring or outraged, may be sent to me at: [email protected]
Note: Read Part One: "Spirit Guide" and Part Two: "Parole" first for some absolutely marvelous, Earth-shattering Notes from the author of this mess and the usual bended knee "thank yous to those who inspired these mental ramblings.
WARNING: In the second scene of this part of the series, there is a graphic scene involving Tom and the reason why Camet and Meer are so angry with him. The rest of the story is not graphic so the one scene may be skipped and the story still enjoyed. Skip from Tom looking at the scalpel in his hand down to the point the Doctor refers to Tom's patient and you'll be okay. Consider yourselves warned.
Thanks: I cannot express my thanks to Briony who beta-read this and told me Vulcans don't cry and Rosie who told me "You really ought to warn people." Thanks you two.
Comments, admiring or outraged, maybe sent to me at: [email protected]
Disclaimer: The usual -- theirs not mine, wish they were, but they're not, etc., etc., don't sue.
Togetherness (post "Omega Directive," pre "Unforgettable")
"So the last of the supplies are on board and we're ready to leave once everyone's had shoreleave, Captain."
Smiling at Chakotay, Kathryn set her coffee cup on the coffee table in front of their seats on the Ready Room couch. "Oh, I don't think there's any rush. How many are there still to go on shoreleave?"
"Twenty-seven."
"That's quite a few."
"Things came up with the repairs so they haven't made it down to the planet yet."
She nodded. With Voyager in orbit around Dartin VIII, the past few days had been the ideal time for performing the maintenance and repairs. They had needed the time since the incident a few weeks ago with the Omega Particles and the fight with the aliens to destroy the particles. Having to try to explain to the aliens the reason why it was so necessary the particles be destroyed on top of a miserable week before that had left everyone was exhausted. She closed her eyes and posed the question she dreaded asking.
"What about Tom?"
Chakotay sighed and leaned farther back into his corner of the couch. "He hasn't gone on leave yet, no."
"Is he still..."
"Avoiding everyone by hiding in his quarters when he's not on duty? Yes."
"And on duty?"
"I think the rest of the crew have started to realize something's wrong. I've heard whispers. He's acting the same as always when anyone other than the Senior Staff are around-"
"-But the crew's beginning to sense it's acting." She leaned her head back into the cushions. "Oh, why didn't we just listen to B'Elanna and leave him be?"
"Because we thought by administering the parole test we were doing the right thing, Kathryn."
"Well, we were wrong. Instead of making things better we only made them worse. He's retreated even further into himself." She surged to her feet to commence pacing. "I can't believe we tried to justify doing something so cruel to him as a way of helping him. We let him think Voyager finally had made it home then more or less swooped in and said 'Fooled you!'"
"If it had worked the way we'd thought it would, Tom would have realized his value and his problems, whatever they are, would be in the open. We could have helped him confront them."
"Instead he enacts an elaborate computer program that lets him take over Voyager, all Hell breaks loose, and now he won't talk to any of us beyond what's necessary."
"B'Elanna's a mess," he confided. "With every passing shift, Engineering descends further into Hell according to Joe Carey and Susan Nicoletti. Yesterday, they were deputized to come beg me of all people to do something to get the Tom and B'Elanna back together. They can't handle her mood swings anymore. It's too much stress for everyone, especially B'Elanna. When I said we already were trying, Nicoletti said whatever we were doing wasn't enough and she was going to Harry to see what he could do."
"I'm not surprised B'Elanna's upset. Tom finally tells her he loves her and then she finds out he won't be going with her when she leaves Voyager." She flopped down next to Chakotay. "What a mess."
He clasped one of her hands in his and squeezed. "We meant well."
"But we didn't *do* well. We hurt Tom in a horribly cruel way."
At the tears forming in her eyes, he threw protocol out the nearest airlock and gently wrapped her in his arms. After a second's hesitation, she laid an arm across his waist and pillowed her head on his well-muscled shoulder. "How could I have been so stupid?"
"You weren't stupid, Kathryn," he assured. "You were trying to help him. We all were."
"But I know him. Not as well as B'Elanna or Harry certainly, but I know him. How could I have done something like this?"
"You weren't alone in this. We *all* were apart of it and we *all* screwed up royally."
"But *I* gave the okay when Tuvok suggest it as a course of action. *I* had the final say and *I* said yes. I should have known Tom would be hurt by it, regardless of the outcome of the test."
"It never occurred to any of us he might do something as drastic as take-over the ship and offer the Maquis their freedom before Voyager made it to a Starbase. No one, not even Harry or B'Elanna, saw that one coming."
"I should have sat him down and demanded to know what was going in his head."
"This is Tom Paris we're talking about here. You know the direct approach won't work with him where personal things are concerned. We had to ambush him."
"Oh, we ambushed him all right. And he ambushed us."
Caressing the back of her head, he nodded.
"Any bright ideas for fixing our last bright idea?"
"Me trying to counsel him is not doing any good. It's only because you all but ordered him to that he shows up for our scheduled sessions. When he's there, all he does is sit there. Never says anything. Never moves. Sometimes I wonder if he is asleep. The last time I tossed a piece of fruit at him to see if he was and he caught it in mid-air before it could hit him. I've never seen reflexes that quick." His look of awe slowly faded and he shook his head. "Frankly, even my patience is wearing thin. We have to try something else. This waiting him out isn't working."
"I keep hoping he'll forgive us and he could work through his problems on his own. Maybe then things could go back to the way they were before the hiding out on the Holodeck, and ducking Sickbay and B'Elanna. Before the silences," she sighed.
"It's a long way home, Kathryn. He can't stay mad at us forever."
"I don't know. This *is* Tom Paris. When he's hurt, it's deeply. He just hides it. And *we* did the hurting this time, Chakotay. He might never forgive us."
Chakotay sighed and lowered his cheek to her hair.
-------
Tom Paris stared down at the holographic blood and the laser scalpel in his hand, not seeing any of it for what it was. He no longer was on Voyager, no longer in that time. Instead, he was on a small moon on the edge of Cardassian territory, years earlier, when the blood was real and the scalpel was the thin stiletto he favored.
"Carnage" was the only word that could be used to accurately describe the scene around him. In the small meeting room/office, there were five corpses -- *Cardassian* corpses.
'He had done this,' he concluded, feeling oddly detached from it all. 'He had to have done this. The bloodstained hands were attached to his arms. The blood-soaked cl
othes were on his body. The blood-encrusted knife was in his grasp.'
Flat blue eyes slowly moved around the room again. Two soldiers lay on either side of the door, both still bleeding profusely from neatly slit throats. A clerk, in his early twenties like Tom, was sprawled across his desktop, a growing wet spot darkening his uniform tunic.
Tom's gaze stopped at the small table in the centre of the room and its two occupants. Both were bound to their chairs and facing one another. The elder of the two -- what was left of him -- was slumped in the chair... and lying on the table and.... Tom looked more closely at the two maroon masses in the younger male's lap then at the gaping hole in each male's chest. 'Oh,' he thought casually, 'I hope they were dead when I did that.'
But part of Tom knew the Cardassians had not been lifeless when he had cut their hearts out.
'Why would I do this?' he wondered. 'Why would I kill all of these people?'
Like an automaton, he walked to the door and stopped in the doorway. Looking out into the hallway, he discovered at least seven more bodies. Were there more behind the closed doors lining the corridor? Somehow he knew the answer was "yes."
He returned to the table. All of the others appeared to be simple, quick kills. What was the story with these two mutilated wretches? Why were they given such special treatment? This looked like he had deliberately and methodically tortured the elder. Done before or after the younger had died? That he wondered about. Had he tortured the elder while the younger watched? He thought so, but why? This looked so like revenge. Yes, it was revenge for something, something horrible they had done to him. No. Not to him personally. To whom?
A voice like death itself echoed in his ears.
It was pure hatred.
It was his own.
"I am Thomas Eugene Paris. The son of Starfleet Admiral Owen Paris."
"Never heard of him," the younger of the two Cardassians spit out, trying to break-free from his bonds.
"Sorry. Wrong answer."
The elder screamed as Tom relieved him of one of his fingers.
The younger Cardassian launched into a spate of Cardassian profanity.
Setting the finger on the table, Tom Paris dispassionately regarded the speaker then continued, this time in Cardassian. "It has been a few years, Gul Camet. Perhaps you may be excused for forgetting about the capture of the Admiral and one of his ensigns." He leaned closer. "But you will not forget his name again. Not for as long as you live."
The Cardassian glared.
The human straightened. "You see," he said, "because of you, I lost my father. You did not kill him, not physically, but he never was the same after you captured him. He became even harder than he was before, more withdrawn. It broke the hearts of my mother and sisters. And it broke mine. I adored my father, even though he was hard and demanding. It felt like someone had ripped out my heart along with his the first time I saw him in an unguarded moment." He walked behind the elder male. "There in his study sat the great Admiral Owen Paris, slumped in his desk chair looking like a withered, old man long before his time. He had lost his heart. All because of what you did to him."
Another slew of off color language.
This time the elder lost one of his ears. Tom tossed it onto the table with the finger.
"Shouldn't have to hear that sort of language anyway," Tom remarked off-handedly.
The victim screamed and shook.
Tom laid a hand on a trembling shoulder and resumed the conversation where he had left off. "I did not know what had happened to him, none of the family did, until *I* found out by accident six weeks ago. I saw a file I never was supposed to see. Right there in innocent little print was the explanation for everything. It was then that I set out to find you and make you pay for what you did to my father." He squeezed the shoulder under his hand. "By capturing and torturing *your* father."
A black look was sent his way.
"When I started to try to find him and you, I automatically thought, like everyone else it seems, that your mother's mate was your biological father. Since it's common knowledge you two hate each other, you probably wouldn't have minded anything I did to him. I found that unfortunate. Luckily, it's also common knowledge that you have a distinct fondness for the dear Legate Meer, here." He patted the shoulder. "Treats you like a son, they say. So I thought why not do him then? More of an impact than doing your actual father. Imagine my surprise when I found out the reason he's treated you so well is because you *are* his son. I was rather pleased to discover that. It makes this so much more fulfilling."
The stiletto flashed as he raised it once again.
"What you did to my father destroyed the man we loved, Camet," Tom told him, switching back to Earth Standard. "Now it's Meer's turn."
Blood spurted everywhere. Meer's body writhed in its chair. His scream abruptly died though the body continued to twitch.
Tom set the still quivering heart in Gul Camet's lap and forced the Cardassian to look at it then back at him. The look Meer's murderer exchanged with Owen's former captor equaled each other in hatred.
"I like the symbolism, don't you? Because of you, my father lost his heart. He became a shell of a man. Now I've returned that favor."
Camet looked as though he wanted to say something yet seemed to forget it at the sight of the new look entering Tom's eyes.
There is one thing nearly every sentient species in the Galaxy has in common -- each knows Death when they look it in the face.
Looking at Tom Paris, Camet knew it now.
"What is my father's name?" Tom whispered.
"Admiral Owen Paris," the Cardassian choked.
"You ripped my heart out, Camet. Now I'm going to rip out yours."
The echoes of Camet's screams and the memory of the feel of the thick, warm blood drenching both of them had Tom so consumed he almost did not hear transporter beam and the gasps of horror behind him. Calmly, he turned and looked at the three heavily armed humanoids clothed all in midnight blue.
"My gods, Sunbird, what have you done," one of the hooded soldiers whispered.
Tom Paris frowned a little then turned back to the scene he had been attempting to figure out.
He started as a hand clapped onto his shoulder.
"Congratulations, Mr. Paris, your patient is dead."
Suddenly back on Voyager in the here and now, Tom whirled on the Doctor in a defensive crouch, brandishing the scalpel like a stick knife. Naturally unconcerned for his own safety, the hologram calmly stared into the stone cold eyes, unflinching. It took a few seconds until Tom's mind knew where it was and his body slowly relaxed.
"I'm sorry, Doc," he murmured in a voice devoid of all emotion.
Frowning, the Doctor watched his student turn back towards the now deceased holographic patient on the biobed. The EMH reached over to a console and shut off the patient.
"That's enough for today."
"I haven't finished the arterial reconstruction exercise."
"Yes, I think you have." He removed the scalpel from Tom's hand. "You're in no state to properly concentrate on the exercise. When was the last time you had a proper break? You haven't taken shoreleave yet, have you?"
Silence.
"Well then, until you do, I don't want to see you back in here. You've been in here enough in the past two weeks to more than make up for the time you spent hidden away on the Holodeck working on your plan to free the Maquis."
The EMH saw the brief stiffening of Tom's posture. It happened every time he mentioned the parole test of two weeks ago or he disturbed Tom's thoughts. Obviously those thoughts were of the disastrous results of said test.
The hologram could not stop thinking about it either. In spite of reassurances from the Captain about his fate, the seed planted in his head by Tom's words during the simulation refused to whither and die. Instead it flourished. There were times he thought he would fry his relays he was thinking so hard about his future.
What he needed was for Tom to talk to him about mo
re than medicine again. Since the parole test, he, Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok had reviewed Tom's research into the legal argument for he and his family being declared alive. If Tom would talk to them again then perhaps together they might find something all of them had missed, some angle left unexplored. As it was, the chances of mounting a successful defense with what little they had was about sixty-forty against. Not good odds when one's very existence was on the line.
He knew from working with Tom that the pilot was far more intelligent than he let on. Plus he had experience with the legal system. Bad experience granted, but experience all the same. On their own, the four of them were getting nowhere and the Doctor was becoming desperate. In all his searching of Voyager's database, he could find only one precedent which even came close to a hologram being given the rights similar to that of a sentient being. Maybe, if he took over Voyager like the holocharacter named Moriarty did the Enterprise, Starfleet might bargain with him as Jean-Luc Picard had done with Moriarty.
He shoved that idea away. Enough people, present company included, had taken over Voyager without him adding his name to the list. The judge would be forced to make new law that was all. It was obvious he was sentient.
Still, the nagging worry about his future would not go away and now certainly was not the time to attempt to broach the subject. From the sallow skin and taut nerves, it was evident Tom was exhausted. He needed rest and diversion and coincidentally they were in orbit of a planet that offered both in spades.
"As Chief Medical Officer of this ship I am ordering you to report to the transporter room for shoreleave within one hour, Lieutenant."
"I have Bridge duty at-"
"I will tell the Commander to find someone to fill in for you. There's nothing too challenging about maintaining orbit. I'm sure there must be someone on your staff who's competent enough to handle that task."
That got his attention. Tom's jaw clenched, as his companion knew it would. One of Tom's main sources of pride always had been his expertly trained Conn staff, especially since he was said expert. To insult their abilities was to insult him and his abilities and no one insulted the flying abilities of Tom "The Best Damned Pilot in the Delta Quadrant" Paris. He could not offer a logical argument for disobeying the CMO without admitting he had failed to adequately train his pilots. And never would he admit that.