The PKSP Archive - Tear Exchange
by envoy (envoy@mjc1.demon.co.uk)

---

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine! Also, cheesy
dialogue warning!

---

I raise my head to Tuvok's voice and smile a
different smile from before.

Paris has missed another shift.

I have known Tuvok well enough, I think, to know
what he implies by that terse sentence; that there has
been a time for compassion and grief and that that time
draws to a close, as Paris' overt grief should. He is
right and he is wrong. All of us lost two friends, two
good officers; all of us miss them, but if we took our
grief to such lengths we would all be dead by now. All of
us lost two friends, but not our two closest friends; we
all lost people we loved, but not people we were in love
with. As he was. I nod.

Perhaps I should go to see him again.

Again?

Again.

As I did before. Filled with good intentions, kind
words and soothing wisdom. And desire. Desire of some
nature, though whether it is for him or to alleviate his
pain I do not know.

Tuvok regards me quizzically.

I sigh; to tell Tuvok. And what would that do? What
would he do but flex his eyebrows and remind me of my
conscience. As he should.

Declining to go, I explain that I may well be the
reason Paris did not arrive for his shift, that my last
visit may have made it more difficult for him to return
to his duties. The events of my last visit.

He flexes his eyebrows.


I wait patiently for the door to open.

Until my patience wears out.

I press down the button and speak:

"Paris, I know you're in there, so make this easier
for both of us by letting me in,".

The door slides open to reveal not quite the sorry
state I expected.

"Commander, I'm sorry,".

He is unusually stiff and his words seem stilted,
too polite, as he continues:

"I didn't know who it might be,".

"Are you avoiding someone?" I ask.

His eyes dart above me, behind me, beside me, but
not daring to land on my gaze as they once would have.
Harry and B'Elanna's deaths had affected him into
revealing something beyond his helmboy facade.

He mumbles a reply.

"I thought we could talk," I state.

Nodding dumbly, he backs away to let me in.

The door shuts behind me.

The room screams to me as the last vestige of his
control; trying to exert control on something, anything
in his life. I mark the tidiness by sitting down. Paris,
apprehensively, sits at a distance.

"Paris... Tom," I begin "We all know how close you
were to B'Elanna and Harry and I can imagine how you feel
a-"

"How? How can you imagine how I feel?" he demands,
eyes flashing with life "To have everything I hoped for
ruined. And- and not to even know if it would be more
than hope. How can you imagine how that feels?"

I shake my head and lower it, not sure to what he
refers. By the time I raise my head the life has filtered
from his eyes and he looks at me, almost as though
begging for me to explain it.

"Maybe I can't, but I know how I feel about
B'Elanna. I love her and I miss her everyday, but none of
that alters what *is* and I have to continue as though I
am over it; as Commander I have to do that to help
everyone else no matter how I truly feel," I inhale
slowly and go to my deep heart for my next words which
come low and husky, raw with what might have been "B'Ella
and I... we were only friends, but once we were much
closer.... I think that she harboured feelings for me
long after that, even after we joined Voyager, and I
often wonder if I...what would have been,".

Paris nods as he rocks himself calm with silent
tears covering his cheeks. Of all the ways I could
imagine Tom, this have never been amongst them.

"I can imagine that if what you feel is anything
like I feel... well, you can't quantify these things.
Nobody expects you to miraculously be over what has
happened, but everyday you are missing from the helm is
another memory to mourn,".

He rips the tear stains from his face with both
hands.

"You think I should stop this for the good of the
crew,".

"If you want to think of it that way,".

He looks at the floor, the rhythmic sound of his
trembling leg increasing in frequency, and swear lowly.
Slowly, finally, he raises his head to meet my gaze with
cloudy eyes.

"It's not that easy. And I don't just mean... that.
Something's happened... I've done something I shouldn't
have,".

I smile a little:

"Nothing is irreversible,".


He slept with her.

*He* slept with her; *she* slept with him.

What can I say? It's a done deal, hardly as though
what I think matters. To anyone but me.

They had sex.

Maybe I accepted that she would never reciprocate,
but that doesn't mean that I abandoned what I felt for
her. It just became passive, aroused when forced to
acknowledge what did not belong to it. What would never
belong to it.


I exit my ready room and smile at the familiar body
hunched over the helm. Sharing the smile and a nod with
Tuvok, I cross the Bridge to take my place beside
Chakotay.

Taking the PADD he hands to me, I cannot help but
notice his distraction. And his eyes, heavy and puffing
as though through lack of sleep or crying. Briefly his
eyes meet mine before he turns away, but the moment
freezes within me, stills me, because in that moment, with
that look, he tells me he knows what has passed.

---

The End