"You're the last person I expected to be arguing on Tom's behalf," Kathryn replies, but her tone is puzzled rather than suspicious.

I shrug nonchalantly.

"Regardless of my personal feelings, it would be irresponsible of us to abandon Mr. Paris if he is mentally incompetent. If he's unable to survive alone, like the Doctor said, it would be tantamount to executing him and that would reflect badly on us all."

"I'm well aware of my responsibilities," she snaps. "My main regret is that I didn't make this decision months ago. I kept telling myself we'd get home, that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life locked in the brig."

"What are you saying, Captain? Is this your way of telling me that you no longer believe we'll get home?" I ask innocently.

I see her left eye beginning to twitch, and she lurches towards the replicator to order herself another coffee. She doesn't turn around until she is clasping the mug in her hand, and although she hasn't yet tasted the coffee, it still seems to weave its spell over her.

"No. It means you've had your pound of Tom's flesh, Chakotay. Whatever happened down there, whatever he did, it can't be paid for by torturing him. Even if he spends his whole life in the brig, it won't bring Ayala back, and if we get home and he swaps one cell for another, it still won't bring Ayala back to life.

"Nine months ago I made a compromise to your grief. I understood that you wanted to see Tom suffer for what he'd done and I shared your anger and horror. But enough's enough. I believe the best way to cure Tom's current mental instability, if that is what it is, is to offer him his freedom."

"Freedom? Is that what you call it? Abandoning him alone out here with no hope of ever being found?" I challenge.

Kathryn does a double-take and looks at me in complete disbelief.

"I recall it was you who coined the phrase 'freedom'. I remember you telling me that you believed my original intention to leave him somewhere was an attempt to allow my 'pet project' to 'get away' with his crime. You demanded that I kept him aboard and made an example of him, to ensure that the Maquis remained loyal to me."

It is only at this point that Tuvok intervenes.

"The Commander manipulated you, Captain," he intones quietly. "Just as he is attempting to manipulate you now."

I am not expecting this. 

Tuvok's face, expressionless as ever, gives no clue whether he is friend or foe.

"I know perfectly well what he's trying to do," Kathryn snarls. "He's upset because I'm not going to allow him to punish Tom anymore."

Instead of answering her the Vulcan turns to me, raising an eyebrow in an odd gesture that seems to portray wry amusement.

"It appears that you have been entangled by your own web of deceit," he says. "To use a human expression, your plans have 'backfired on you', have they not?"

Kathryn is silent as she watches the interaction between us, but her eyes are flashing with a dangerous fire as the first worms of suspicion crawl into her mind.

Looking at Tuvok, I understand that the time for lies has now passed. It is finally time to throw my cards upon the table. The worst that might happen now is that both Tom and I will be left together. The prospect is only daunting in that I will never know.

But I will believe. I have always believed in him.

That's a lie.

There was one moment when pain and fear and unbearable grief made me strike out at him in hatred. A single act, a moment of madness, when I was judge, jury and executioner. It was the moment that I destroyed him.

It doesn't matter that my act haunts me. It is irrelevant that I have spent every waking hour of the last nine months attempting to put right that wrong, and every hour of my sleep re-living it in full Technicolor glory.

It was the moment that Tom's lips were sealed.

And with that silence, he found himself condemned.

So he has my belief. Because I owe him that much.

But, still, I want to know.

"It was never the Captain who I was manipulating," I admit. "It was you."

Tuvok nods, no more surprised by my confession than by the act that demanded it.

"I have meditated greatly on this situation," he says slowly. "I have considered your argument that the needs of the many take precedence over Mr. Paris's choice of silence. Yet, in conscience, I cannot do as you have asked. The danger is past, the facts of the case will feed only a desire for knowledge, they will not fundamentally affect the situation that has already occurred."

"They will affect Tom," I insist.

"In a negative way. The evidence is clear. We saw him strike the blow that killed Lieutenant Ayala. The vidtape is on record. The Doctor confirmed that Mr. Paris was not under the influence of either drugs or mental co-ersion. Unlike all the other members of the away team, Mr. Paris bore no physical injuries. All the evidence clearly shows that Mr. Paris co-operated with the aliens and used the murder of Lieutenant Ayala to prove his allegiance with them.His refusal to allow a mind-meld can most probably be seen as his attempt to conceal crimes of which we are not yet aware."

"You didn't say this before," Kathryn protests. "You said you wouldn't do it because it was unethical to force a mind-meld upon him unless it was necessary to protect other members of the crew."

"Indeed," Tuvok agreed.

"But what you just said, suggests that it was Tom you were trying to protect all along. You thought a mind-meld would increase the charges against him."

Tuvok nods.  

I look at him in complete amazement. Who would have thought it? In a weird, fucked-up way, Tuvok's been my ally all along.

"You're my Security Chief. It was your duty to reveal the extent of Tom's crimes," Kathryn says, her face twisted with disbelief.

"You appointed me to handle Mr. Paris's defense, when he refused counsel," Tuvok counters. "In view of his refusal to defend himself against the charges you raised, the only defense I could offer was to avoid the bringing of new charges.

"I was unaware of the Commander's subterfuge at that point. I perceived his demand that Mr. Paris should be forced to give evidence as the act of a man looking for vengeance. Had I realized his true agenda was to clear Mr. Paris's name, I might have reconsidered my decision."

"So, let me get this straight. You, Tuvok, deliberately allowed evidence to be buried and you, Chakotay, insisted that Tom remained on board, not for punishment, but so you had a chance to change Tuvok's mind about the mind meld?"

We both nod.

"You think he's innocent?" Kathryn asks me, incredulously.

"I do."

"Based on what?"

Based on nothing. Nothing substantial anyway. Nothing that could have changed the verdict of his trial, even if I hadn't spent most of it doped out of my head.

Given that the last act I had done, before being beamed half-dead to sickbay, was to punch Tom Paris in the face and call him a murdering coward, it was hardly surprising that whenever I gained consciousness for long enough to demand Tuvok performed the mind-meld to find out the real truth, he had perceived it as an urge to find more evidence of Tom's guilt.

And by the time the Doctor had finished cloning me a new heart to replace the organ that had been so brutalized by the aliens' torture, the trial was over and Tom had been condemned.

What could I have said? How could I have refuted the evidence of the vidtape and the witness of all my fellow-prisoners that while we had all been abused and tortured, Tom had lived in apparent luxury as a 'guest' of our captors?  How could any words from my mouth have countered the obvious truth that every one of us bore the injuries of a thousand cruelties, while his body appeared to remain inviolate?

I had condemned him myself, as I lay in my own filth in that cell, watching my crew suffering and dying before my eyes, while he lived above us clothed, fed and cared for.

It had been my hand that struck him when we were finally rescued. My mouth that had screamed out that he was a coward, a traitor and a murderer.

"His eyes," I whisper finally. "In the moment that I hit him, I saw it in his eyes."

"Saw what in his eyes?" Kathryn demands.

"His innocence," I reply. "I don't know how. I can't even begin to imagine a way that he isn't guilty. I don't doubt the vidtape. I know he killed Greg. I know he seemed to collaborate with the aliens. But, the expression in his eyes when I attacked him...it haunts me. It wasn't guilt or fear, it was reproach. It was hurt. It was the expression of a man so used to being misjudged that he wasn't even surprised."

"If I might point out, Commander. Since the effort of striking him in your weakened condition caused you to suffer a near-fatal heart attack, your memory of the event is suspect to say the least," the Doctor interrupts.

"It's why he didn't defend himself," I insist. "Not because he was guilty, but because of me. Because instead of giving him the chance to explain himself, I judged him and found him guilty. That's why he's never even tried to prove his innocence."

"Your argument is highly improbable," Tuvok replies. "It presupposes that Mr. Paris found your own condemnation of him so emotionally shattering that he didn't care whether everyone else shared that view or not."

"Besides," Kathryn interrupts. "Even if you're right, it would still have made more sense for him to prove you wrong."

"Except as far as he knew I was dead,"  I reply. "I spent that fortnight rejecting every artificial heart that the Doctor supplied me with and nobody thought I'd survive long enough for my new heart to grow. At the time Tom was sentenced, he still believed that I would die without ever knowing the outcome of the trial. That's why he didn't care."

"But even if that was true, which I doubt, that was nine months ago. He's had plenty of time to ask for a new hearing," Kathryn argues.

"Why would he bother? As far as he's concerned, none of us wanted to believe in his innocence. I've begged him over and over to talk to me, to explain, to tell me what really happened but it's like talking to a statue. It's like he's so hurt that he's passed beyond caring one way or the other. Sometimes I think the only satisfaction he has is in refusing to confirm one way or the other. It's like his silence has become the only weapon that he has left to inflict pain."

"You believe he is allowing himself to suffer, simply to punish you for your doubt?" Tuvok asks, steepling his fingers and narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

"I think he's trying to punish us all," I reply.

Go to Chapter Three