fic archive: Star Trek Voyager - "Softer Than the Rain" 1/1
Series: VOY
Rating: NC-17
Codes: J/P
Summary: Sequel to "Softly." Chakotay does a bad thing and spends the rest of the story scrubbing out Jefferies tubes with Ensign Expendable. Other people go on to do other things.

Disclaimer: All of it belongs to Paramount. Absolutely all of it. Can you believe it? Where's the justice here, I ask you? How can a cultural phenomenon be owned? I demand to know the reason! (Oh yeah, the story itself is mine. They can't take it away from me, so you don't either, OK?)

This story contains sex. It's going to be described in loving, exacting detail. It takes place between two consenting adults. In the real world, sex takes place all the time. If this bothers you, tough. If you're under 18, you don't know about sex, and I won't be the one to tell you. Besides sex, this story contains *lots* of snugglebunnies (in honour of Easter, of course!), limited angst, homesickness in spades, and miscellaneous mush. You been warned.

This is a sequel to Softly. I didn't intend to write a sequel, but people kept asking for one (Sasscat, I'm looking in your direction!), so here it is. Most of the background is contained within that story. If you haven't read it, this won't make any sense. I'll re-post "Softly" for convenience, but if for some reason you need a copy, e-mail me and I'll send you one.

The title is taken from the song "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her," by Paul Simon.

To Ann Page and the Yarning Piper for reading this for me and telling me when it made no sense. I love you guys. No, really, I do. Really. Oh, never mind.



Softer than the Rain
by Jane St Clair



"Come in."

Kathryn Janeway stepped through the doorway into her first officer's quarters. The lights were down, and for a moment she thought she'd imagined the call that had admitted her. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of a cabin by starlight, she saw him. Chakotay was perched, if that was the correct description for such a large man resting in so graceful a way, on the window seat, staring at the stars. He didn't immediately raise his eyes to meet hers. Uncharacteristically hesitant, she let the silence stand between them for several minutes.

Finally, "I don't understand." He didn't answer her. She repeated, "I don't understand." Silence. "Three dots, Chakotay. What is that?"

Silence.

"Silence." He spoke very softly. "It's the silence that I don't know how to say."

She mistook the quiet in his tone. "I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt you. I . . ."

"You didn't."

"I . . ."

"Kathryn, I'm not angry. I'm just . . . stumped. I really don't know what to say."

"You were surprised." It was not a question.

"Not really. It's just . . . damn it." He got up. "Computer, half lights." Warm, dim light filled the room. Kathryn regarded her first officer. He was out of uniform, dressed in dark clothing, and he
looked tired. At her sympathetic look, he smiled. "Oh, it's not really so bad. I've just been reading the 'happy?' messages for the past four days. I'm probably going to have eyestrain before this is finished. If I had any sense, I would have arranged for the Doctor to go through them. Would he even have to read them to know what they said?"

"Probably he would. He might even if he could read them direct from the computer." She sank onto the couch at his gesture, reflecting on how casual she had become in his presence over the past four years. "Doing things the ordinary way - the hard way, I suppose - is a habit he seems to have picked up from Kes."

"I miss her."

"Me too."

"Not as much as I do, I'll bet. I'd love to get her advice on this one." He sank into his desk chair.

"On what I wrote to you?"

"Yes. No. Sort of. Damn." He ran his hands hard over his face. "I really am going to have eyestrain."

"Don't change the subject," she smiled. He might have been teasing her. It was seldom immediately obvious when he was, though she was becoming better at recognizing the nearly hidden smile that he sometimes gave as a signal. She supposed that, in the course of their relationship, he must have learned to read her at least as well or better than she could read him. At first it had been a delicate process of negotiation and treaty, circling one another carefully to keep Voyager's peace. Later, that dance had settled into a friendship that she would not have traded for a set of admiral's bars. It was teasing that had broken the tension in the hard days after they had come to understand that they would never be lovers, teasing that had allowed them to resume to casual physical contact that she found so necessary to her command style. Now, if he was teasing her, she understood that he was playing for time, seeking the right approach. When he found it, she supposed he would tell her.

Chakotay got up and began to pace the room. "Damn." A thoughtful pause. "Damn. Kathryn . . . I'm staring into the face of something I have to do, but I haven't the slightest idea how to do it. It's
professionally untenable, but it's, well . . . it's important."

Kathryn rose and padded over to where he stood shifting restlessly. She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the warmth of her friend through the contact. "Chakotay, weren't you the one who once told me that the Delta Quadrant sometimes creates extraordinary circumstances?" He nodded. "Mmm. Well, keep it in mind. I have the utmost faith in your sense of decency." She smiled wryly. "More than my own, sometimes. You'll do the right thing, Chakotay." She squeezed his arm, turned, and left.

There was one message waiting on her terminal when she got back to her own quarters. It was from Chakotay.

And signed by Tom Paris.

*****

Authorization: Janeway 0-0-47-5-1
Distribution: Cmdr. Chakotay
Subject: -

Damn you, Chakotay.
K.

*****

He found her in the rear observation lounge. It was probably the least-used room of the ship. The room had a formal feeling: it hadn't been set up for recreation. It was an official place, a place for
receptions, a place to, well, observe. To see stars through the transparent wall. She was tucked into one of the chairs with her knees drawn up in front of her. A strange, vulnerable posture that made
part of him want to turn and disappear back into the ship. But she must already know he was there. The lights from the corridor would have shown his reflection on the glass as soon as the doors opened.

She didn't say anything for a long time. He gave her her space and leaned against the wall. The stars at warp were distorted, the colours merging into a spectral streak that was burned into the retinas of
every child born into Starfleet.

Finally, because it was becoming more and more clear that she wouldn't, he said, "He shouldn't have done it." There'd been a message, written by her, forwarded by Chakotay, waiting for him on his terminal at the end of the day. One that he shouldn't have read. She didn't answer. He let the silence hang between them for more minutes. "It wasn't right."

"It wasn't any of his business," she whispered. He couldn't make out enough of her face to see her expression. He wondered if she was crying. No, of course she wouldn't be. He couldn't imagine the Captain crying.

The silence continued to stand between them. The stars extended themselves and twisted their light through the warp field.

"I'll erase it," he whispered. "I never got it. I never read it."

"Don't. That isn't fair to you."

He had read what she had written to Chakotay, words that so closely echoed his own, that same memory told in a different person's words, and he had understood that she must also have read what he had written. As though his skin had been peeled back, and his insides were exposed to plain view. No. Only the Captain's view. And she, surely, had seen into him before. But Kathryn Janeway was such a private person, it seemed absolutely hideous to think that she should be in the same position.

"I'll go," he said.

"Tom." He stopped, turned.

"Yes, Captain?"

"I'm not angry at you. I'm just feeling a little exposed." Her smile was strange and awkward. Leave her now, let her put herself back together, never show in your face or your eyes how much you love her.

"Of course, Captain." He went.

*****

Oh those wild, blue, dancing eyes, sparkling as he looked up to her from the helm. Two weeks spent in uneasy silence had made for a tense bridge crew and an unhappy captain and helmsman. His smile cut through a little of that unease. It wasn't his easy, everyday smile, but it was a plea for peace between them. And surely she owed him that much. That much and a smile in return. He relaxed when he saw it, and followed her into the turbolift as their shift ended.

"Going to the mess hall, Mr. Paris?" That was right, let the tension all bleed away. Normal.

"Not a hope. I was in there at lunch and I *saw* what Neelix is planning to inflict on us tonight. It's green, and it looks like feathers."

She wrinkled her nose. "You're putting me on."

"I speak only the truth." He sparkled at her. "Of course, it might be really good, but I'm feeling kind of visual today, and I've been brooding on the way the damned stuff looks for almost five hours."
Tom was a textbook "at ease," hands behind the back, feet shoulder width apart, leaning a little away from her. Cautious.

The lift doors opened. They stepped out and Kathryn moved towards her quarters. The voice that came from behind her was hesitant. "Captain . . . ?" She stopped moving. Something ragged behind his tone. "Is it all right?"

She turned, looked him over. "Yes, it is," she said softly. He continued to look at her, and she met his clasping eyes. And there was only peace after he relaxed. "Tom? Join me for dinner?'

He flicked teasing eyebrows at her. Oh, Chakotay would never match him for sheer gall, not if he tried to irritate her for a thousand years. "That would be inappropriate," he grated, imitating her strictest command voice. "Join *me*." And then the grin broke out and when had she ever been able to refuse him?

*****

She was curled up again, but this time she was facing him, at least. They'd eaten on the furniture in his quarters rather than at the table. He must have given her the strangest look when she suggested eating that way. It felt . . . raw, having read her memories off the screen and seen them mesh with his own, still like a layer of skin had been ripped away, and now he was afraid to let anyone touch him. That must be why they were on opposite sides of the room, more intimate and less comfortable than they had been almost since he came to Voyager.

"I suppose I must owe you something in return for dinner," Kathryn said softly, finally. Blood flew to the surface to colour Tom's fair skin and he choked slightly in protest. She made a small gesture with her hand. "Could I tell you a story?" She smiled a little. "I always fancied playing Scheharazhade."

"Of course." He pulled his legs up under him in the chair and watched her rearrange herself on the couch into the cross-legged posture he had always imagined for the Arabian Nights storyteller.

"Good." Kathryn watched him from across the room, a little smile playing across her lips. Did he know, she wondered, how much like a cat he looked, folded into such a natural position and leaning forward a little to catch her words? "Do you remember the weeks after we came to the Delta Quadrant?"

"Getting to be a long time ago," he shrugged.

"Mmm. Well. I remember that a certain number of people gave you a hard time." He flinched at that, but she ignored it if she saw it. "Once, after shift, I went looking for you. Your communicator was in your quarters, but you weren't. I probably worry too much . . ."

"You do."

"This is my story, Mr. Paris." She gave him a sour look. He shrugged again, those teasing blue eyes too carefully focussed on his hands. "Anyway, I was saying. I did a more or less deck by deck search for you. You're good at hiding, though I suppose I would have found you more quickly if I'd been thinking clearly. You were up in forward navigational control." Nav forward, the archetypal pilot's refuge, a crawl space like a closet at the nose of the ship. She sometimes wondered if each piloting student at the Academy was introduced to it in some private ceremony before graduation. "Sitting, with your arms around your knees, staring at the stars. There was a bruise, here," touching her cheek a little above the jaw line, "on the side of your face. I remember standing there for a long time, thinking I should do something, but I didn't know quite what. I remember that the stars were
so clear, even through the warpfield. And I remember I stood there for a long time, and then I left without telling you I was there."

Kathryn dropped out of the cross-legged pose, feeling suddenly ridiculous. For the love of heaven, it wasn't as though she had just told an epic story. Not much of a story at all, in fact. He didn't meet her eyes from across the room, just stared at his hands, and she decided that she should go.

His voice stopped her before she had managed to rise. "I knew."

"What?"

"That you were there." His eyes still on the backs of his hands, his hands with their fingers pressed into the arm of the chair.

"How?"

"You were right about my having problems with people. I'd thought it might be easier if no one could find me for a few hours, it might be better. So I dumped my communicator, and I set up a computer warning to let me know if anyone came down the hall. It told me a few minutes before you came in."

"You didn't say anything," she whispered.

"I didn't want you to leave." He unfolded himself, stretching his long, black-clothed legs, and crossed the room to crouch in front of her. "I'm sorry. I'll never make an issue of it."

God, this was a beauty sent from heaven, surely, and somewhere she found the audacity to reach right out and touch it. His skin was warm under her fingers. She was surprised to find that she could still trace the spot where the bruise on his cheek had been. "You're always having to be sorry for something, aren't you, Tom?"

He bowed his head. "I don't know. I guess."

She caught his hands in hers and pulled them into her lap, covering them with her own hands and holding them there. "There *are* a certain number of things in the universe that aren't your fault. This isn't something you have to be sorry for." He looked up at her, his face as raw as she felt, and he was so very young. Then, suddenly, he bowed his head and kissed the backs of her hands.

He stayed like that after the kiss, crouching in front of her with his face pressed into her hands and the black fabric of her uniform trousers. Slowly, she freed a hand and brought it up to stroke his
head, feeling the soft, short blond hairs slips between the pads of her fingers. "What?" she breathed. "What will you never make an issue of?"

"That I love you," he whispered. "I'll never mention it again." His cheek still rested against the back of her hand. "I'm making your life awkward."

"My life is already awkward, Mr. Paris." He pulled away. "Tom. You don't really make it any worse." He shook his head, slowly. "*Yes.* You mean damned near everything to me. You *do*," as he shook his head.

"No," said Tom. "It's just . . . it isn't . . . I feel like I've backed you into a corner or something. No, I feel like I'm lying to you. Since Chakotay sent you that message, I keep walking around feeling
like you haven't got the whole story. You only got the best of me. None of the shit between me and my father, none of the times I screwed things up, none of the times I used people or ignored them or hurt them accidentally." That soft, golden boy head down, the voice tight with anger and what Janeway gradually recognized as self-loathing. He wasn't touching her anymore.

She didn't want him to leave her yet. They were in his quarters, but he looked ready to walk out, and if he did, they wouldn't ever sit like this again. They would go back to their duties, sit on the bridge,
and never say anything beyond "change course" and "aye captain." She had come close enough to that with Chakotay. They had hurt each other only one time less than once too often before they established a working relationship again. Emotionally ragged as she had been then, she had never loved her executive officer with the same desperate attachment that tied her to this young officer who was drawing still farther away from her.

"Tom, sit down." He was surprised, she could see that. It wasn't an order, only a request, because she had left her captain's prerogative at the corridor junction where Tom had invited her into his quarters. He sat down, warily, re-establishing the space between them. "Now listen to me for just a minute. A lot of what you're talking about I know. I've seen your record. I've listened every time you talked about yourself in my hearing."

Tom smiled bitterly at her; the expression looked entirely too much like a scar against his delicate features. "That's not much."

"Then tell me the worst." She was angry now. It wasn't rational, but Tom's greatest talent had always been getting under people's skin. The Maquis's. Chakotay's. Hers. Damn him if he thought he could manipulate her. "Tell me the worst day you can remember and see if it changes my mind."

*****

"Then tell me the worst." She was angry now. It wasn't rational, but Tom's greatest talent had always been getting under people's skin. The Maquis's. Chakotay's. Hers. Damn him if he thought he could manipulate her. "Tell me the worst day you can remember and see if it changes my mind."

"Captain . . ."

"Tell me!" Janeway grated. He shook his head. The movement pushed at her rage. She sprang off the couch and crossed the room to him, leaned over his chair.

"No . . ." It was little more than a breath. His sapphire eyes had clouded over until the jewel tones were lost and only a flat, steel blue remained. The fear inherent in that expression drained the rage out of her. "Please, Captain, I can't. Not right now. Please." Begging.

The emotional drain had taken something out of her, and she sagged a little against the arm of the chair. An arm snaked around his shoulders, and she pulled him against her body. "I'm sorry," she
said simply. When he relaxed enough to lean into her, she pulled him up with her and led him back to the couch. He didn't resist when she pulled him down to sit, then lie beside her. His arms were already cautiously draped over her body; she brought hers up beneath them to pull him closer to her. A starscape over his shoulder, not a thunderstorm, but gods if he didn't feel about fifteen in her arms,
it couldn't possibly be right for her to love him this much. Breathing into his hair what she had said to Chakotay, "You'll never know, dear, how much I love you." He stirred against her shoulder, moving closer into her body.

This, she knew, was the answer. She had moved away from Chakotay into the comfortable realm of verbal fencing and teasing. She was moving into Tom by silence, settling comfortably into that embrace, then finishing the song silently, echoing the words through her mind.

You are my sunshine
my only sunshine
you make me happy
when skies are grey
you'll never know, dear
how much I love you
please don't take my sunshine away

"Marseilles," Tom said. He had been so still, Kathryn had thought he was asleep. "The worst was in Marseilles."

Oh gods, he must be out of his mind. But he was lying here against her body, listening to her breathing, listening to the humming that he knew must be almost unconscious. He thought he should know the tune, but what he came out with was what she had asked him, and after that first word, he knew he was going to have to tell her something. "Early morning rain in Marseilles."

"Tell me about Marseilles?"

Tom didn't raise his head from her body, but he began to speak.

"Marseilles was . . . just about as low as I got. I was out of Starfleet and I didn't have a family and I was drunk all the time. In some ways I think it was worse than Auckland. In Auckland, even when
one guy or another was after me, at least someone would have recorded if I died. Marseilles wasn't like that. It's still a seaport town, and sometimes I think it hasn't changed in five hundred years. I think that if I'd managed to drink myself to death there, they would have just thrown me in the Mediterranean and let the tide carry me out.

"Thing is, I didn't see the city for the first time, then. I'd visited it once or twice as a kid, but that was always to some one diplomat or another, and they didn't exactly live on the waterfront. Pretty
often they didn't live in the city at all, a few kilometres out, so they could have an 'estate.' It was, I don't know, fashionable in Europe at the time. In NA, if you were anybody you lived in the city." He smiled, and he knew she must be able to feel it through her uniform. "Doesn't do much for our image as a united planet, does it? Doesn't matter. But what I'd seen of Marseilles before had been really upscale and museum quality, so when I went there to disappear, I went as far from those places as I could get.

"The first time I staggered into Sandrine's, I was already drunk. It was still classier than some of the places I'd been in, but my father would never have let me go there while I still belonged to him. I
was in a mood to drink myself unconscious and see what kind of a gutter I could wake up in." Silence between them for a minute. "But the thing was, I didn't wake up in a gutter. I woke up somewhere else.

"It was one of those rooms that you only ever see in Europe, or in places where Europeans live. They've got a kind of, well, *continental* atmosphere that you can't reproduce without making it look either fake or cheap. I remember all the walls were white, and there wasn't a lot of furniture. What there was, was wooden, all painted white, and the sun coming in reflected off the paint so that it was almost blinding. I was laid out on some kind of futon or mattress on the floor, sort of buried in a pile of sheets and blankets and pillows that smelled just faintly of somebody's perfume, but not one I could recognize. Bright as it was, it must have been at least noon. Late.

"There were books -- paper books -- piled up in all the corners of the room. I love books. You know that." In her message to Chakotay, she had remembered the books in his room, the ones he hadn't thought about or seen in years. "Books are solid, I guess. At home I had a couple," she nodded, "but there was something old-fashioned about them that bothered my dad. I guess they weren't Starfleet enough for him. So I didn't make a point of having them. But there was something comforting
about being in a room with a lot of them. There were a couple of chairs with clothes -- mostly mine, but definitely cleaner than they'd been the last time I'd been in them -- thrown all over them, and an old-fashioned wash stand with a mirror.

"On the wall opposite the mirror, there was . . . I suppose it was a poster. A high-gloss reproduction of a painting. It was of a woman, and she was naked, but you could only see her from behind. She was sitting with her legs pulled up in front of her, and her face was buried in her knees and her hair was hiding her face. The whole thing was done in shades of blue, big, wild strokes going in all directions and leaving big patches uncovered, with yellow splashes to show the light on her, and her whole body was outlined in wide streaks of black. I remember it now I guess because she looked like I felt, like she was nobody at all, like something she couldn't even remember had hurt her. And I remember getting out of bed and going over and running my fingers down the picture. Must've looked really bizarre," he chuckled. He'd finally raised his head from Kathryn's shoulder, enough to see her face. Janeway didn't answer him, just went on stroking his hair with the tips of her fingers and the palm of her hand.

"I guess I didn't even really realize I was naked until she spoke up from behind me. It was just something soft, like 'Beau matin, cher.' A beautiful morning, sweetheart. If I hadn't been so god damned embarrassed at finding myself naked in front of a stranger I probably wouldn't have survived the shock of her sneaking up on me."

Impatiently, at his captain's smile, "Yeah, I know, a lot of people manage to sneak up on me. I get distracted from what's going on around me pretty easily, and Harry tells me I have nerves like piano wire. I don't really think they're that bad, but he likes teasing me about it." Pause. "But the thing is, she wasn't even laughing at me. She was just . . . smiling a little bit, like she could see something that I couldn't. She threw me my jeans when she saw how embarrassed I was, but it was more for my modesty than for hers." Kathryn raised her eyebrows a little. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I *do* have a sense of modesty."

"Really?" Oh, she was laughing, but he'd wanted her too. He'd wanted to hear that chuckle like dry sticks breaking, he hadn't heard it for weeks.

"Well," he grinned, "how about I did that particular morning. Anyways. She said did I want some breakfast and for a change I felt like eating. So I ended up facing her across a breakfast table in that Marseilles apartment, and I started to feel better.

"That was Sandrine. She's an amazing person, you know? I lived with her the rest of the time I was in Marseilles. I know she carried me way more often than I had any right to expect, but I'd never had to take care of myself. Never. First there was my father, who took care of everything whether I wanted him to or not, then Starfleet. When I was on leave, or on vacation, I usually just went nuts and tried to do as much damage as I could in as much time as I had.

"Sandrine gave me a few clues about how people live. First ones I ever had, I think. Like she showed me that it was possible to get up in the morning, and go shopping, and clean up after yourself without anyone expecting you to do it but just because it was part of your day. No orders, no standards but your own. I didn't really figure much of that out until way later though, in New Zealand, when I suddenly had a lot of time to think about everything. With Sandrine, I was still drinking, but not as much as I was before, and at least I wasn't waking up who knows where. I don't suppose it's everybody who has a French bartender teach them about normal, but god knows somebody needed to do it. After a while, though, I started to feel guilty about the way she was mothering me, and I was feeling closer enough to myself that it bugged me that I wasn't flying. So I took off for the Maquis, and I guess I proved about then that I really did still need someone to take care of me." He laughed softly.

"Do you miss her?"

"Sandrine? Not as much as I should, probably. I worked really bloody hard on that hologram, and it's a lot like her. Or enough like her, I guess. Mostly what she did for me that I remember now was listen."

"She wasn't . . ."

"No. She wasn't ever my lover. Just my friend. It was what I needed at the time. Besides, as she was fond of pointing out, my heart belonged to someone else."

"Ricky."

"You." Her expression was vaguely incredulous. "Do you remember what I said when you came to find me in New Zealand?" She shook her head. "I said that I was yours. I don't think you believed me, though."

"You didn't sound very sincere," Kathryn told him.

"I don't, usually. It's a lot easier to say things if people don't think you mean them. But I meant that, at least." The expression on his face was odd, thoughtful and not entirely focussed on her, as though he were working his way through a sticky, complicated problem. "Can I ask you something?" She nodded. "What you said earlier, did you mean it?"

"Which thing?" she asked.

"Never mind. It's not important" Damn. He'd closed to her again. She had no doubt that it *was* important, but he wasn't giving anything away. Go back, Kathryn, sift through the conversation and remember what would he . . . oh. Of course.

"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you," she said. He nodded. "Yes, I meant it."

The muscles in his shoulders relaxed at her response. She could feel them shifting under his uniform and skin.

Suddenly, he said, "Stay with me tonight."

"Tom . . ."

"On the couch. Nothing else." That soft, glittering smile. "The last time I slept with you on a couch, you weren't there when I woke up and I didn't see you again for ten years. I'd like to improve that record a little."

Morals, ethics, command distance, impartiality, family ties, personal history, age difference, rank chasm, orders, protocols . . . respect, compassion, love you. I love you.

"You know I can't, Tom. Not tonight."

Something in his face, a blast of disappointment, an erecting of the mask, and he looked up at her and nodded. "I know," he said.

He watched her walk to the door to the door. When she turned back, he was standing by the couch, his hands folded behind him. Just watching.

That must have been what made her turn back and cross the room. What made her press a palm to each of his cheeks, tilt his face down, and kiss him on the lips. When he kissed her back, his hands fluttered around her body, millimetres from her shoulders but not touching them. The faintest impression of his tongue across her lips before she withdrew. Behind her as she left, she could feel the smile spreading slow as glaciers across his face.

*****

Oh gods, she was so tired, she'd been dreaming again. Not the dreams that ended in an adrenaline rush of falling, or the cold nightmares that left her awake and cowering under her blankets, unwilling to move. She'd woken spontaneously, pulled up out of her unconscious by a brain overcrowded with fragmented images. Her dream had shattered, but moments of it were still unspeakably vivid.

She couldn't remember the beginning . . . had she been having breakfast at home? But Mark hadn't been there. She'd gone out of the house barefoot, coffee in hand, and it had started to snow while she stood on the lawn.

There had been a funeral procession going past. It was a bizarre sight, almost mediaeval -- everyone on foot and waves of black wreaths and flowers. Then a cemetery, and she was walking through the crowd, asking people, "Who died?" And they told her, "Him. Or not him. His wife. She died." And they buried her.

The grave built up into a small hill of fresh earth, and a child clambered up on it. At first his face was dirty, as though he were playing king-of-the-castle, but then it was swollen and bruised along
the jaw. She couldn't make out his features, only the jewel tones of his colouring and the reproach in his eyes. He had looked up at the sky for a moment, like her dog about to howl, then buried his face in his hands and started to cry. And she had pushed through the crowd, still dressed in her peach dressing gown so that the people frowned at her colours, and swept him into her arms. But when she turned back, everyone was angry with her because she hadn't worn black, and how could
she attach herself like this to the boy when his mother had just died? And they took him away from her and passed him, hand over hand, through the masses, until she couldn't seem him for the snow.

Her dream had changed, after that, and there was a long period that she couldn't remember or understand. What she could next put back together was being in an enormous store and finding that they had taken the boy and put him in a hidden room, and they were going to . . . what? She couldn't remember. And she'd gripped the clerks' tunics, shouting, "He's mine! He's mine!" But she didn't know his name, and they wouldn't let her see him.

Once, for a moment, she caught a glimpse of him in the aisles, and she chased him outside. Beyond the store, there was a huge, grey sea, and the boy leapt in and disappeared. And she had to fish him out, but she didn't have a boat . . .

In the moments between sleeping and waking, Kathryn couldn't remember how much of this was real. She was suddenly frightened and out of bed. She found clothes and shoes and a sweater and left her quarters, running down the hall.

*****

"Tom!"

She couldn't have told how long ago the sleeping and waking images had fused together in her brain. In the turbolift or in the corridor? Before she grappled with the holodeck doors, finally feeling them
open under her limp, numb fingers? Surely. Because after that she had gone running through the streets of a city she didn't know and she was sure he was drowning . . .

"Tom!"

It was such a maze that she never would have found her way if all the streets hadn't led eventually to the ocean. The water on them ran downhill, making her slip. She hadn't realized yet that it was
raining, a steady soft vapour that barely disturbed the surfaces of the puddles. All the buildings around her were old. The water ahead of her was grey, blending into the sky and almost obscuring the body that sagged against the harbour rail, staring away.

"TOM!"

Until her voice cut through the wet air and hit the open space between the buildings and the quay and suddenly that body stiffened and spun and he caught her around the waist as she came flying out of the dark.

"Captain?"

The shock of finding him alive and concrete set her back on her heels for a moment, but Tom clearly didn't intend to let go of her immediately. After a stiff moment, she collapsed against his chest and
hugged him hard.

"Captain, are you alright?"

"Don't you ever disappear on me, Tom Paris," she hissed.

"Captain?" he asked again. She didn't answer, only clutched him against her body, trying to convince herself that he hadn't vanished into that grey water beyond the pier. "Kathryn, what's the matter?"

She pulled back for a moment and frowned at him, started to say . . . what? You disappeared, you drowned, you left me, I couldn't find you? The realism of her dream was dissolving in Tom's presence; she felt ridiculous. "Nothing."

He smiled gently at that. "Right. Come on, Kat, tell me."

"It was nothing. I was dreaming, I dreamed you disappeared . . ." The cold fear of his vanishing hit her again. She pulled him fiercely to her. "Oh gods, don't you ever disappear on me. I was so frightened . . ." And then he was clasping her shoulders and pulling them so close together that their clothing, wet from the thin rain over the city and warmed with their body heat, provided a third, mutual layer of skin between them. "I love you so much."

"I know. Thank you."

The chuckle started low in her chest. She could feel its small vibrations transfer themselves into him. "Thank you?"

"Yes." His tone was so strange that she raised her head out of his shoulder to look him in the eye. The expression she caught there was equally enigmatic, hovering somewhere between desire and cold fear. She raised her eyebrows a little. "You know I love you. And you said you love me, sort of. But, gods, it matters that much to you what happens to me?"

"Absolutely. Yes."

"Thank you." Tom bent a little and pressed his lips into her hair, then withdrew, breaking off the embrace. "Walk with me."

It was so easy, she wouldn't have expected it, so settle into the shelter of his arm around her shoulders and let him navigate her through the soaking alleys of the city. The program was enormous, as intricate as a real city and surely as large. She had wondered, once, why he spent so much time in the holodeck alone, but assumed that he was playing pool in Sandrine's. But he must have been out in the city, adding the details that no computer records could simulate. But why
Marseilles? Why not somewhere happier for him? Why not San Francisco, where he'd grown up, or some Risan city that he must have visited?

And then they were out of the rain and climbing stairs - stairs! - and Tom was keying a door panel that opened for him, familiarly, in a kind of entirely comforting and household movement. It was so easy for her to follow him into that warm, dark room. He moved through it like home, knowing instinctively where things were without the benefit of lights and guiding her around the furniture with small touches against her arm. Only when she saw him again, silhouetted in the almost-light of a window he turned and pulled her close to him again. Tom bent slightly and pressed his lips to her forehead, to each of her cheeks, and finally to her lips in soft contact that wasn't quite a kiss. It only deepened into one after she opened her mouth and traced the contours of his face with the tip of her tongue.

"Love you," he whispered. Gods, she was shaking, he must be able to feel it against him. "Love you."

Then he was undressing her, pulling the soaking sweater off her shoulders and disappearing it into the room. Her other clothes went after that, and he wrapped a blanket around her body and his arms
around her again, still in the darkness.

"What are you doing?"

Was it possible to feel him smiling in the dark? "Getting you out of your wet clothes before you catch pneumonia?" A very small, silent laugh. "Seriously, we're going to stay here and sleep until morning. Just sleep," catching her lips again for a moment. "You need it. And there isn't anywhere safer in the universe. I know."

They were still in the dark when he guided her to the bed in the corner of the room. Really just a mattress and a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor, but comforting in the makeshift way that people lived outside Starfleet, having real lives, feeling safe and warm and still young. Tom was there behind her, stripped to his boxers and wrapping them both in layers of blankets that kept the humid chill of the outside rain away. And it was so easy to settle back against his body and sleep
like that, absorbing the sounds of his breathing and of the thickening rain striking the windows where the city light shone faintly through.

*****

It was still dark when she woke again, though she knew it must be approaching morning. She was . . . warm. Comfortable. The blankets wrapped around her had moulded themselves into a cocoon conserving body heat and smelling faintly of her own perfume and Tom's body and something else familiar and comforting that she couldn't entirely place. Tom was still behind her, fitting the curves of her torso against his body and gently stroking fingers up and down her arm. She shifted over a little and met sleepy blue eyes that cut through the semi-darkness of the room.

"How long have you been awake?" Kathryn whispered.

Tom shrugged. "A while. I don't get a chance to hold you very often."

"Mmm." She turned over and leaned into his embrace. She let herself be absorbed by the rhythm of his breathing and the felt rather than heard beating of his heart. Tom's hands stroked over her back and thighs and only gradually did she realize she was naked against his underwear-clad body. But his fingers were so warm against her, the contact was delicious. "How can you make me so happy?"

He kissed her, just below her ear. "I try really, really hard." Again, along her jaw. She let her own hands drift down from his shoulders to the small of his back, and lower, to pull him against her.

Simple touches after that. His arm around her shoulders, her hands against his buttocks, and the slow exploration of fingertips across skin that ended with him as naked as she was and buried with her in the warmth and the dark. None of his touches were urgent. Fingers drifted between her legs to stroke her gently and dip cautiously into her vagina. Kathryn gasped softly and let her own hands come around to rest against his cock, not jerking or demanding but only enjoying the warmth.
Enjoying the warmth too when Tom bowed his head down and took the tip of her breast in his mouth, stroking the nipple gently with his tongue, then resting his cheek against her chest and falling into a gentle rhythm like nursing while her hands rested against his back.

Without raising his mouth from her breast, Tom brought his hands around to Kathryn's thighs to spread them and raise her hips to him. And it seemed so perfectly natural to follow his lead. She felt warm, relaxed, liquid inside and wanting him gently. There was a long moment while his
cock rested against her wet lips, and then he penetrated her and she arched her back to bring him closer in. Only then did he raise his head to kiss her lips and face. Small, closed-mouthed kisses that she returned gratefully.

His thrusting was slow and easy, letting her find a comfortable rhythm against him. His arms were gently wrapped around her body, supporting her with hands cupping her shoulders. In that embrace, it was so easy to move against him and enjoy the quiet intensity of him.

She didn't know when her hands released his shoulders and began to drift again down his body. His skin was soft and marked by tiny, whispering hairs. Even in the dark, she could feel the golden tones of his body. Trying to imprint that sensation in her memory. Later, though, what she remembered were the moments after her palms came to rest along his buttocks and her fingers dipped into the cleft between them.

It was then that Tom stiffened and arched his body away from hers so that they remained joined only at the hips. He held himself away and over her, supported by his upper arms, still forming a cave over her body. In the dark, she couldn't see his face. She had to imagine the expression creasing its way across his boyish, aristocratic features. Imagine a mixture of fear and humiliation and something childishly defensive in reaction to the scar tissue tracing away around his anus, the poorly healed remains of some hideously painful violation.

"Oh Tom." She hadn't spoken in how long? She couldn't remember. Leaving one hand where it was, she raised the other to touch his cheek and felt tears there. His eyes were closed.

What was this pain that had settled in her chest beside her heart? Something a little heavier than she had been carrying before, a flash of understanding. Something that drove her to pull Tom down against her body and cling to him while he wept softly against her shoulder. Something, maybe, that she could carry a little of for him. "Oh my poor Tommy." Silence while his tears eased and he stopped shaking against her. "When?"

Whispered, "New Zealand."

"Oh Tommy."

"I didn't want you to know."

It's all right. It isn't all right. "I still love you." She raised his head out of the hollow of her shoulder and kissed him, feeling the tears transfer from his face to her own. Feeling the response of his body as he kissed her again and made gentle love to her while the room greyed and brightened with the beginning of the day.

It rose, finally, the warmth of orgasm spreading through her body and surfacing in a long, slow wave that made her gasp for air and rake her nails lightly over his back. Tom followed her. He made a bright contrast to the grey morning, golden and incandescent. He came wordlessly, as Kathryn had, cradling her body and supporting her as he cast his weight off her and rolled so that she rested on top of him. Still inside her, he laid back and let Kathryn fall over him.

In the aftermath of their lovemaking, Kathryn found a mass of rhythms in the room that she gradually distinguished as their heartbeats, their breathing, and the continuous rain still striking the window glass.

*****

The apartment balcony and the one above it provided a kind of cavern of protection against the rain. He was out there, wrapped in a quilt off the bed with his bare legs showing below. She couldn't remember quite when he'd risen and opened the shuttered doors, she might always have been sitting and watching him haloed in the brighter light, sharp against the skyline. The air that came through the open doorway smelled wet and clean. It clung to the edges of the room and insinuated itself into her hair.

Kathryn was still sitting in their bed, wrapped in indistinguishable blankets with her back against the wall. Gods, he was beautiful. So absolutely relaxed, as if some of his armour of damage had been shed and piled with his clothes in the corner of the room.

Gradually, she gathered herself together and rose. Half-buried in a quilt like his, she padded across the room and stepped out with him onto the balcony. He accepted her presence without comment, only shifting his body so he could gather her closer. The rain just beyond them made a very soft sound, like breathing.

"I love you," he offered into the air.

She chuckled. "I certainly hope so. I haven't got any intention of giving you up at this point." Another silence. "Are you all right?"

A shrug. A smile. "Yeah. Actually I think I am, for now."

"We should get dressed. What time is it?"

"Computer?"

"It is 0630 hours."

"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, went with her back inside, not really surprised that the rain-smell followed them in.

*****

Authorization: Chakotay 9-2-3-5-8-delta
Distribution: Cpt. Kathryn Janeway
Subject: Forgiven?

I just got the oddest smile from Paris in the corridor. Haven't seen you in a long time. All the Jefferies tubes are clean. Are things all right? Can I come back to bridge duty yet? Please?

C.
*****

Authorization: Janeway 0-0-47-5-1
Distribution: Cmdr. Chakotay
Subject: Forgiven

Yes. And we'll see. In that order. ;-)

K.
*****