For Rossy

Part Two

"What's wrong?"

"Huh?" Tom asked, shaking his head slowly to dispel the unwanted images that were crowding his brain and looking up from his meal to meet Harry's concerned stare.

"You zoned out on me there," Harry commented quietly. "You feeling okay?"

Tom forced a smile onto his features and soft apology replaced the shadows that had been dancing in his eyes.

"Yeah," he replied, and it wasn't a lie. He felt fine. He felt great. At least he felt physically great. He wasn't so sure about his mind though.

"So why were you frowning?"

"Henderson's getting on my tits," Tom exclaimed bluntly.

Harry responded to the comment with his usual half-blush/half-smirk, as though unsure whether to be embarrassed or delighted at Tom's language. When Tom failed to add an explanation Harry cautiously tried to draw him out, keeping his voice low since the mess was crowded with most of the Alpha shift.

"I didn't know Henderson was giving you a hard time," he commented, which was both true and a lie, since just about *everyone* gave Tom a hard time one way or another. Still, Henderson wasn't known for being either vocal or vindictive about his likes and dislikes.

Tom opened his mouth to reply, but then winced and shuddered slightly.

"What?" Harry demanded, slightly panicked.

"Nothing," Tom groaned. "Just Henderson again. Maybe he does it on purpose."

"Does *what* on purpose?"

"Flies the ship like a first-year cadet," Tom snapped. "I swear he's doing it to put me off my lunch. It has to be deliberate because no one could 'accidentally' hit this number of sub-space anomalies in an hour."

"I can't feel anything," Harry replied cautiously. "I don't doubt you, Tom. You *are* the Chief Helmsman so I guess you can feel these things, but I've got to be honest and admit that it feels like a smooth ride to me."

"It does?" Tom asked, more surprised than annoyed at Harry's comment. Then he winced again and rubbed the bridge of his nose fretfully. "I *told* him the starboard nacelle was glitching and he needed to compensate. We're slewing all over the place. I need to get back to the bridge."

"It's not 'glitching'," an angry voice growled, the words punctuated by the slamming of a lunch tray onto their table.

"B'Elanna," Harry acknowledged warily, as the half-Klingon engineer dropped into the seat next to his.

"Starfleet," she nodded shortly, then turned her angry eyes back to Tom. "I don't know what game you're playing, Paris, but I've wasted three hours this morning looking for your so-called 'glitch' and there's nothing there."

"Nothing?" Tom challenged angrily, disbelief clearly written on his face.

She shrugged slightly. "So okay, there's a minor variation between the performance of the nacelles. *Minor*. Nothing you could have 'felt' at the helm. I don't know who you're trying to impress, but..."

"It's fucking up the navigation controls," Tom snarled back. "I'm having to constantly compensate."

"Just point zero zero three of a degree," B'Elanna countered. 

"Yeah, well over a couple of days at warp 6 that's the difference between flying past a star and landing smack bang in the middle of it."

"My routine maintenance would have corrected the 'glitch' even if you hadn't mentioned it," she pointed out. "I wasted the morning looking for a problem that will correct itself anyway when I realign the nacelles this afternoon."

"Yeah? Well I spent the morning having to compensate for that same fucking problem. Why the hell should I have to put up with your Department's inadequacy?"

B'Elanna slammed her fork into her plate and surged to her feet in fury. Tom jerked to his own feet, his eyes flaring with alarm although he made no effort to retreat as B'Elanna clenched a fist threateningly.

"Is there a problem here?"

The smooth voice cut through the charged atmosphere with the calm precision of a scalpel. 

Tom flushed, dropped his eyes and sank back into his seat, his shoulders hunching in subconscious expectation of a blow. B'Elanna flinched slightly, but swiveled to glare at the Commander defiantly.

"I was just explaining to Mr. Hotshot Pilot here that my department has better things to do than jump every time he 'thinks' there's a problem."

"Was there a problem?" Chakotay asked quietly.

"There's a..." Tom began.

"I wasn't talking to you," Chakotay snapped, without breaking eye contact with B'Elanna.

"A minor variation," she admitted reluctantly. "Nothing *he* could have sensed. It's just a co-incidence, and I would have picked it up anyway," she added defiantly. "Now I'm hours behind on the regular maintenance schedule."

"He's the pilot, B'Elanna. It's his job to report problems, imaginary or otherwise, and as Chief Engineer it's your job to check them out," Chakotay replied bluntly.

She continued to glare at him for a fraction longer, then her shoulder's dropped from their aggressive stance and she gave him a reluctant nod.

"If you've finished eating, why don't we go down to Engineering and re-arrange the duty roster to compensate for the time 'wasted' this morning?"

Pacified, she stepped away from the table and nodded at Harry before turning and heading for the door with Chakotay. Neither she nor the Commander spared a glance at Tom as they left.

"You okay?" Harry asked the white-faced pilot.

"I'm alive," Tom snorted. "I should be grateful for small mercies I guess."

"It's not fair. You were right. There *was* a problem," Harry pointed out loyally.

"There still is," Tom replied, as he felt the ship jerk minutely in response to another of Henderson's clumsy maneuvers. Then he sighed at the look of confusion on Harry's face and understood that Harry hadn't felt the jolt.  "I guess it's a pilot thing."

"Yeah," Harry agreed easily. "You probably get a sixth-sense about these things. It's like when I'm on Ops and everything 'reads' okay but something tells me something's slightly out of sync anyway."

Tom nodded at him gratefully, then his face froze. Before Harry could ask him what was wrong, the source of Tom's discomfort moved into his own visual range.

"And there I was thinking it was just an ugly rumor,"  Mariah Henley purred. "I told Seska she was imagining things but it looks like she's right after all. For all the Commander hates your guts he obviously doesn't want your pretty face messed up. I guess you *did* keep him warm during those cold nights on Caton."

"Excuse me, Harry," Tom said, rising to his feet and reaching for his tray. "I need to get back to the bridge." 

Ignoring Henley completely, he stalked to the recycler, dumped his tray and left the mess, only the stiffness of his back acknowledging the sniggering of the other crew members.

"What's your problem, Henley?" Harry snapped, then he glared around the room angrily. "I can't *make* any of you like him, and as far as I'm concerned the loss is yours not his, but while you all sit there eating lunch maybe you should consider the fact that the only reason you're not eating Leola root is because *he* put his ass on the line for us on Caton."

"It's obviously not the only place he put his ass," Henley countered, with a smirk. "Hell, it's hardly a surprise is it? We already knew he'd whore his loyalty. Selling his ass is just a natural progression." 

"Really?" Harry drawled, though his heart was hammering furiously in his chest and it took all of his self-control not to slap the cruel expression off her face. "I'd be more careful where you fling your accusations, Henley.  Are you really suggesting Commander Chakotay is the kind of man who'd sell his protection in exchange for a fuck?"

The color drained from Henley's face as Harry's uncharacteristic crudeness drove his point home. Calling Tom a whore was a bit of harmless fun on her part, harmless because no one except Harry would be offended by the accusation. She hadn't thought it through to the logical conclusion that accusing Tom of whoring himself to Chakotay inevitably meant that she was casting an equal slur on Chakotay's character.

She shrugged weakly, quickly realizing she'd lost the support of the other diners now that Chakotay's reputation was the one at stake.

"The problem with you, Kim, is you can't take a joke," she muttered, and backed away from the table.

Although he'd lost his appetite, Harry deliberately lingered long enough to clear his plate. He knew the subject wouldn't be raised again as long as he remained in the mess hall so he stayed until the last possible moment, knowing everyone was due back at their stations at the same time as he was. By the end of shift, Henley's comments would have faded into the rest of the bitter gossip that seemed to continually shadow Tom's existence on the ship.

Like he'd acknowledged himself, he couldn't *make* people like Tom, but he was damned if he'd sit back and let anyone insult his friend in his presence. Especially when what they were saying was so clearly untrue.  While Chakotay *had* seemed to be conspicuously protective of Tom during the three weeks since their return from Caton, the Commander hadn't actually shown Tom any favoritism at all. The only difference in his behavior was that he now treated Tom the *same* as he'd always treated the rest of the crew.

Chakotay wasn't pretending to *like* Tom, but he was at least giving a clear signal to the crew that their hunting season on Paris was over. 

~#~#~#~

"You're quiet tonight," Katherine pointed out mildly.

"Sorry. Something's just niggling at me and every time I try to relax it pops back into my head."

"Let me guess. It's about Tom, isn't it?"

Chakotay's eyes widened in surprise and he flushed slightly. "How did you know?"

"I'm not completely blind, Chakotay," she replied, with a conspiratorial smile. "It's obvious that you've been making a genuine attempt to treat him more fairly since you came back from Caton and I, for one, am damned glad you've finally put your differences aside. This ship's too small for two senior officers to be at each other's throats."

"I've never been 'at his throat'," Chakotay denied hotly. "When our crews merged I vowed that I'd protect Paris from any repercussions from the Maquis and I've always kept that promise."

"The letter of it, not the spirit," Kathryn argued. "You've ensured his physical protection but that's it. You've never prevented any verbal animosity towards him and you've never attempted to hide your own dislike either."

"I know," Chakotay agreed. "It won't happen again. I might not like him but he's a damned fine pilot and Voyager's lucky to have him at the helm."

"Well, you don't have to like him," she acknowledged. "Just so long as you respect his abilities. He can't do his job if you undermine his judgment calls."

"That's what's bothering me, Katherine. I spent the afternoon soothing B'Elanna's ruffled feathers over this nacelle problem. She was right. The variation *was* too small for Paris to have 'sensed' it from the helm."

"Yet he did," Kathryn pointed out. "He said the problem was in the Starboard Nacelle and it was. You're a pilot yourself, Chakotay, and a damned good one. So are Henderson and Baytart. Tom, though, well his flying is more of a talent. He qualified for commercial flights when he was just fourteen. That wasn't down to training, it was natural ability."

"I know," Chakotay agreed. "I'm not questioning his talent and I agree that natural instincts are more valuable than any amount of training. As the pilot of this ship, Paris has the right to ask Engineering to check any problems he senses, even if he can't justify why he feels uncomfortable about the way the ship is performing. I explained that to B'Elanna at length. She's not happy, but she won't publicly confront him in future."

"So what *is* bothering you?"

"I can't put my finger on it," Chakotay admitted, with a thoughtful frown. "There's just something...weird. Three months ago we had a problem with the isolinear drive."

"I remember," Kathryn said dryly.

"The conn was still damaged from the Kazon attack so Tom didn't realize until it was almost too late. We were almost at warp before he sensed the isolinear drive wasn't on line."

"Through pure instinct again, and I remember B'Elanna called him every name under the sun until she discovered he was right and that he'd saved all our lives. Doesn't that prove the point that a pilot's instincts are more valuable than any amount of instrumentation?"

"Yes, but that's not my point. What's weird is that *that* problem was far more serious than today's but he didn't sense it that time until it was almost too late."

"Maybe not," Kathryn countered. "Perhaps he *did*, but it took him until we nearly hit warp speed to be *sure* enough of his feelings to slam the brakes on."

"You're saying the only reason he spoke up today is because of me."

"Exactly. Now you're treating his opinion with a little respect, he probably just feels confident enough to voice his concerns earlier."

Chakotay nodded. It made sense. It certainly made more sense than the idea that Tom's sixth-sense about the ship had leapt into sudden overdrive. It wasn't a particularly comforting idea though.

"So what you're really saying is that the way I used to treat him put the whole ship at risk."

"He's our pilot, Chakotay. For all that I'm the Captain of this crew, I acknowledge that Tom's job is the fulcrum on which our survival turns. When push comes to shove, in crisis situations he holds all of our lives in his hands. Whatever orders we're shouting behind his head, a single mistake on his part could kill us all. That kind of responsibility is enough burden without him wondering whether his decisions are going to be second-guessed and criticized.

"Maybe he sensed the problem with the nacelle, or maybe he was just being a Prima Donna and it's just co-incidence that there *was* a problem. I don't know, and I don't really care either way. What I do find comforting is that he voiced his concern and you backed him up this time instead of shooting him down in flames."

"It won't happen again," Chakotay assured her. "As I told him myself, we can't re-write the past and I'll never trust *him*, but that doesn't mean I can't trust his ability at the conn."

"How many times do I have to tell you that Tom didn't know where you were?" Kathryn sighed. "How could he? He'd been in jail for eight months with no outside contact and in the month he spent with your crew he hardly had time to discover your various hiding places. The only reason I offered him the position as observer was to pay an old debt, not because I thought he had any chance of actually helping us."

"So?" Chakotay replied coldly. "He still originally infiltrated my crew and set us up to be captured. We don't forget that kind of betrayal."

"You don't *know* that for certain," Kathryn countered. "All you know is that 'someone' sent a transmission to Starfleet."

"I asked Tuvok. He said he didn't send it and that he was the only Starfleet operative on board at the time."

"You don't seem to have a problem with Tuvok, and he *was* definitely a spy."

"He was doing his job. Paris was just an opportunistic bastard trying to...oh what's the point of this conversation? I've told you. I won't let my personal feelings interfere any more. Leave it at that."

Kathryn sighed heavily, but nodded her agreement.  Chakotay's attitude towards Tom Paris was still less than she'd hoped for but it was certainly far better now than she'd ever actually expected. The Maquis would follow his lead and at least treat Tom with indifference rather than antagonism now.

Which just left her with the hostility of the Starfleet crew to deal with.

"It's a funny thing," she murmured.

"What is?"

"That in spite of all the problems I anticipated in merging our two crews, the whole thing's gone remarkably smoothly all in all."

"It has," Chakotay agreed.

"All it takes is for people to find a common ground," she continued. "Some point on which they agree. It just sad that the thing that everyone decided to agree on is to hate Tom Paris. I don't like having a sacrificial goat on my ship, Commander. Particularly not when that scapegoat is holding the lives of the crew in his hands every time he sits at the conn."

"I told you..."

"And I'm telling you I've had enough. It's time we all moved on and left the past behind. You're helping that with the way you're treating him now and I expect to see your relationship continuing to improve." She raised her hand for silence when he opened his mouth to object. "I'm not asking you to play pool with him, Chakotay. Just to be 'friendly' with him in public."

Chakotay nodded his agreement.

"Thank you," she replied, with a genuine smile. "It's a difficult situation. One that would never happen in the Alpha Quadrant.  But I can't offer him a transfer and I can't ask for a replacement pilot, so we're stuck with what we have."

Honesty forced Chakotay to admit, "Personalities aside, I wouldn't want a replacement pilot. We're lucky to have him."

"I think so too," she agreed. "I know it's easier for me to take him on face value, because I haven't got the history with him that you do. So I do appreciate your efforts over the last few weeks."

Chakotay just gave her a bland smile and then changed the conversation by mentioning a problem with the Gamma Shift roster. Although he agreed with everything she'd said about Paris, including the fact that the entire crew, himself included, had  fallen into the trap of using animosity towards the pilot as the glue to hold their own relationships together, he still couldn't lose the niggling feeling that there had been something a little...odd...about the pilot sensing the nacelle problem.

Perhaps it was just as Kathryn suggested, that now Paris wasn't constantly watching his back on the bridge he was feeling confident enough to voice his concerns more promptly.

But it wasn't just that.

Paris was different somehow.

Little things. The way he moved across the bridge and slipped into his chair. It was more...fluid, more graceful, as though his body was flowing with the heartbeat of the ship. Chakotay had never given it much thought before, but the internal artificial gravity of a starship had a slight but perceptible effect on the way crewmembers walked. While they might appear to move naturally on the ship, the same person on shore leave had a looser, more relaxed posture. He'd never really noticed the difference until Paris had abruptly changed the way he walked.

Impossible to mention that small anomaly without admitting that his eyes frequently followed the progress of Paris's ass across the bridge. Besides, Kathryn would no doubt say it just proved that Tom was feeling more relaxed now he was less likely to have his head bitten off from the Command chair.

Which was probably true.

Either that or it was simply the fact that now he'd dropped his self-defensive hostility towards the pilot, the clear lines between the man he hated and the body he lusted over were beginning to blur.

Which was an even less pleasant thought.

So he shook his head and forced Paris out of his mind. 

Sort of.

~#~#~#~

Tom spent the next two weeks in a state of growing agitation, made worse by the fact that for several days he had absolutely no idea *why* he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

At first he just put it down to the fact that he'd apparently fallen down a rabbit hole into an alternative universe where the Commanding Officer of Voyager *didn't* treat him like low-life scum. That was a sufficient change in itself to justify a certain amount of confusion on his part.

Chakotay's new attitude, while far from 'friendly', was like a pebble hitting the center of a pool and sending resultant waves across the surface. It had a knock-on effect to the other crewmembers. As long as Chakotay had been publicly rude to him, the rest of the crew had felt safe in copying his example. Now that Chakotay was treating him with respect, it seemed to gradually sink in to the crewmembers that Tom was a Lieutenant, if nothing else, and that a modicum of politeness *was* necessary in communication.

In this new atmosphere of Tom-tolerance, a few crew-members even made tentative gestures of potential friendship towards him. They were the ones who had shuffled nervously on the sidelines in the face of the previous hostility, the people who had disapproved of the way he was treated enough to stay out of the arena but not enough to wade in on his defense.

Tom wasn't sure how he felt about them. In some ways he disliked them more for their ambivalence than he did the people who had at least been honest in their hostility. But separate from the Chakotay-effect, there were still the few people whom he could rely on to remain unaffected and impervious to the slow change of general opinion.

Harry, of course, who'd never wavered in his loyalty. The Delaneys, who still were brutally honest about the fact that they welcomed him into their beds but not their affection.  And Seska, who flexed her fingers every time they passed in a corridor, as though she was itching to resume her previous effort to literally rip his face off. 

It was almost a relief that *someone* was still being openly hostile towards him. It gave him a feeling of normalcy that was otherwise missing in this new, improved Voyager.

It seemed strange that his life could be changed so dramatically by nothing more than the fact that Chakotay was now choosing to be civil to him.  It also pissed the hell out of him.  Instead of being grateful for Chakotay's apparent change of heart, Tom found himself angry and resentful over the months he'd spent as Voyager's pariah. All Chakotay's new behavior was proving was that Tom's life on Voyager could have been like this all along.

Not liked, but tolerated at least.

Not happy, but not wrist-slitting miserable all the time either.

Yet, as much as his life had been turned upside down by this new, unfamiliar atmosphere of tolerance, it had only a peripheral effect on his overall psyche.

Because there was something wrong with him and the fact that he couldn't pin-point *what* it was that was wrong only served to make him more agitated.

It wasn't that he felt unwell. He felt physically better than he ever had in his life and when he'd surreptitiously run a medical tricorder over himself during one of his occasional sick-bay shifts, the instrument had confirmed his self-diagnosis. He *was* disgustingly fit. Something which, given his own tendency to avoid unnecessary physical activity, was somewhat surprising. Since he was naturally slim, he'd never gotten into the habit of using a gym or any other method of disciplined exercise. Eight months of virtual inactivity in the penal colony, followed by life in the confines of a starship, hadn't had any visible effect on his body but had registered in his last physical as a small decrease in his lung capacity.

Now his body had suddenly sprung back to peak efficiency and, although that was more confusing than worrying in itself, it wasn't the only change he'd noticed.

His hearing had improved.

Exponentially.

It didn't matter where he was on the ship, he could hear the constant purr of the warp engine like a constant drone in the background. He was becoming so attuned to its beat that he heard every fractional adjustment that the Engineering team made to its operation.  He no longer had to wait for his console to flash confirmation that the power he required was now available to him. He heard the surge and his fingers flashed in response, often executing the entire maneuver before he'd visually received his go-ahead.

It made his job far easier, especially in a tight situation, particularly now Chakotay had ceased his previous habit of staring over his shoulder as he flew. The conn had logged his increased efficiency but no one had, as yet, realized how he was achieving it.  Which was just as well, since his only explanation was impossible.

The truth was that the warp engine was so well shielded that you could barely even hear it when you worked in engineering, let alone on the bridge. So the idea that he could hear it anywhere on the ship was pretty damned scary and not something he wanted to discuss with anyone, since it would probably result in a psychiatric evaluation.

And it wasn't just the engine he could hear. It was everything.  If he sat still and concentrated through the droning noises that had become a constant background to his thoughts, he could narrow down individual sounds until he could clearly hear conversations on the other side of the room. Or even, sometimes, on the other side of closed doors.

Or maybe not.

Since he could never admit to eavesdropping on the conversations, he had no way of discovering whether he was really hearing them or just imagining them.

Like he was possibly imagining the ceaseless, throbbing purr of the warp-core.

And his new and improved sense of smell.

It wasn't just that he could now tell what Neelix was serving in the Mess before even vacating the conn at lunchtime, it was the *other* smells that worried him. The smells that made his heart thud in his chest as he walked past another crewmember and 'sensed' aggression, or dislike or, even, something that his cock insisted was sexual interest although he knew he was off-the-mark with that one since he'd frequently smelt  that particular odor on the Commander.

Still, the irony of the situation wasn't lost on him.

For the first time, since they'd all been thrown together on Voyager, Tom was finally being treated with something relatively close to respect by his fellow crewmembers. He was even being allowed to just do his job in peace and while he had no illusions about whether Chakotay liked him, he did seem to finally have his professional trust if not his personal.

So it was ironic that now Tom actually was being awarded that trust he was no longer deserving of it.

A pilot who *knew* he was suffering from auditory and olfactory hallucinations had no place on the bridge of a Starship. Even if they *were* improving his performance.  His failure to report his symptoms to the Doctor was probably a court-martial offence and the fact that he knew that and still had no intention of telling anyone proved that Chakotay had been right all along.

He couldn't be trusted.

Yet, what else could he do? If he went to the Doctor now, he'd be relieved of duty. If he confessed that his improved performance was because the warp engine was 'talking' to him he'd be lucky not to spend the rest of the journey in a strait-jacket.

Besides, if he'd learnt nothing else in his life, he'd discovered that truth was over-rated.  When he'd told the truth at Caldik Prime, it had gotten him kicked out of Starfleet. When he'd told the truth at his trial it had gotten him thrown into prison. And when he'd truthfully denied betraying the Maquis, Chakotay had simply laughed in his face and 'called' him a liar.

People didn't *want* the truth. They just wanted to hear the lies they could live with.  The Captain wanted to believe that Tom's improved performance on the Bridge was simply because he was feeling more relaxed now that Chakotay was no longer breathing down his neck and now that Chakotay believed it too, he was making even *more* of an effort to keep off Tom's case.

So Chakotay and the Captain were happy.

Harry was happy, for the first time in months, because he was no longer having to defend his decision to remain Tom's friend.

B'Elanna was happy because, after a few initial arguments, she was now listening to him when he said there was a problem and, as a result, her department was being hailed as an example of shining efficiency.

The crew were happy because Tom now could 'smell' potential trouble before it started and back away from a potential situation before it happened, thus avoiding any arguments that would break the tentative peace Chakotay had established.

Everyone was happy.

Except himself, since he was quietly certain he was going insane, but in a strange way even that was comforting.

At least his own unhappiness was a small constant in the increasingly bizarre strangeness of his new reality.

At least *that* felt normal.

Go to Part Three