3Beneath the Surface
By jamelia
Janeway's plan had worked. He was finally on board Seska's ship. He didn't yet know for sure who the spy aboard Voyager might be, although he did have his suspicions. He couldn't leave until he could confirm that person's identity.
He just hoped he'd survive Seska the Snake and her minions long enough to find out and send the information back to Voyager before he bought it.
After a brief tour of the Kazon vessel he had been shown to his new quarters. The inside of the ship was as grim as he'd expected it would be from his view of the outside as he approached in his shuttle.
All the tour had done was make him want to escape, but the only viable solution to that in this particular situation was to take a nap. Which he decided to do, even though he hadn't unpacked. Sleep, however, was elusive.
As he tossed and turned in his bunk he couldn't stop thinking about what was bound to happen to his friends on Voyager if he failed this mission. It had been so hard to leave, especially since Tuvok and the captain had both admonished him not to be too elaborate in his goodbyes to his friends. Harry, Neelix, Kes...they'd all begged him to stay on Voyager. He felt waves of the old self-loathing wash over him as he remembered them standing there, trying to talk him out of leaving. If only he could have explained! But Tuvok was right. It was the ancient "loose lips sink ships" thing in operation. He didn't dare breathe a word lest the spy get wind of the truth. Tom Paris, perpetual screw-up, wasn't screwing up this time. He was on a secret mission to find out and expose the bastard who was threatening Voyager's entire crew by feeding Seska intel to help her take over their ship and destroy them all-all but those who would switch loyalties to the Cardassian spy who had pretended to be a Bajoran in order to infiltrate the Maquis.
Was she a member of the Obsidian Order? Tom thought she had to be. Who else would have the power to provide the surgical and genetic procedures that would exchange Seska's Cardassian face for a Bajoran one? In Tom's view, she was a lot better looking as a Bajoran, but what had Seska thought when she looked in the mirror afterwards? To her it would be a mutilation, surely. She was slowly but surely reclaiming her original features, a reflection of the person she'd always been underneath.
Yes, she was a reptile. In fact, comparing her to a snake was pretty insulting to reptiles everywhere. They bit you in order to survive. Survival for Seska would have been more likely if she'd simply cooperated with Janeway instead of being such a negative force, spreading dissension between the Maquis and Starfleet crews. Janeway would probably have allowed her to remain on Voyager even after her true heritage was discovered by the Doctor if she'd been a decent crewmate. But no, Seska would rather destroy those who had been willing to help her. Her Kazon minions would do well to keep that fact in mind.
It's funny how the mind works, Tom mused sardonically. Thoughts of reptiles and transformations made him briefly think of his own excursion into amphibianhood, courtesy of the Warp 10 experiment. Not a pleasant memory. In some ways it had gotten him into his current predicament. He'd agreed to this whole charade, in great part, because he felt he owed it to the captain to make up for kidnapping her and turning her into his amphibian...lover? No, no, he didn't even want to think about that again.
Transformations. Casting about in his memory he recalled someone else's transformation. Or rather, transformations: the two B'Elannas, one all Klingon and the other all human, split cruelly in half by the Vidiians. The brief glimpse he'd had of Klingon B'Elanna had excited him like nothing else he'd encountered in the Delta Quadrant. Or any quadrant, if he were honest with himself. He'd been attracted to the human half of B'Elanna because she'd roused his protective instincts. She'd needed support, a friendly ear as she adjusted to her massive transformation. He may only have seen her Klingon half for seconds, but he'd been certain she wouldn't have needed his protection. At least, that's what he'd thought at the time. Now he wasn't so sure.
After the EMH had reintegrated B'Elanna's DNA to what it had been before the split, she'd been embarrassed by what he'd seen of her in the Vidiian mines. She needn't have been. He'd liked what he'd seen and felt about her then. Actually, that was the first time since arriving in the Delta Quadrant that he'd felt like his old self, the Lieutenant Thomas Eugene Paris who had been a competent Starfleet officer-before Caldik Prime. He'd stood up for his away team and insisted that he be the one to meet his fate instead of poor Pete Durst–unsuccessfully, or he wouldn't be in the mess he was in right now. If he had died then he would have fulfilled his true destiny as a Starfleet officer. His surviving crewmates would have seen the real Tom Paris, the one who wasn't a screw up.
He doubted he'd be so lucky this time. If Seska cut his throat (figuratively or literally-the latter a distinct possibility), the last his friends and the rest of the crew of Voyager would have seen of him was Tom Paris the slacker, the rude and incompetent "provisional" officer who had proven he didn't belong in a Starfleet uniform. So Seska killed him. Good riddance.
Would B'Elanna have thought that? He hated to think so, but she probably would, especially since she'd been so kind to him when she'd tried to get him to "straighten out and fly right" while they'd been working together during the Dreadnought incident. She'd been giving him such good advice at the time, advice he should have followed if he really had been descending back into Bad Tom Paris and not playing a role to catch a spy. That he hadn't taken her advice had probably cemented her disdain of him, if not actual hatred, for all time. And that hurt.
Yet she hadn't given up on him, had she? The night before he left Voyager she'd confronted him in the mess hall and screamed at him not to leave. She'd cared for his safety that much, at least. And he had been unable to justify his choice to her. How could he? He'd agreed with every snarl she'd hurled his way. Despite the pain, he couldn't help but smile at the memory. What passion! He could imagine the Klingon B'Elanna saying everything her actual hybrid self did that night. He could sense her avatar, hidden beneath her human/Klingon face, as she told him exactly where to go if he didn't change his mind. To actually go if he was such an ungrateful wretch.
And now here he was, gone because he WAS grateful, because it was what Janeway had asked him to do. Ironic was too weak a word for it.
He was afraid to think too far into the future, with Seska pulling the strings and ready to lower the Sword of Damocles onto Voyager-and Tom Paris, who had willingly put himself in harm's way to try to prevent it. But if he did have a future, could B'Elanna Torres become part of it? Of course, as long as they were on Voyager together as Chief Engineer and Chief Helmsman, they'd be together as shipmates. But could they be more to one another?
He couldn't think of anyone else on their ship who was more beautiful, more brainy and talented, more...passionate than B'Elanna Torres. Here he was, lying on a bunk in Seska's ship waiting for her to find him out and execute him, and it finally struck Tom that he may have found the love of his life in B'Elanna Torres. And the subject of that love of his life must be totally oblivious to how she made him feel. Talk about irony!
Typical, Tom thought. That's the way your life has always gone: tons of potential for success and an even greater gift for self-destruction, the most spectacular failure in Starfleet history. Maybe Alpha Quadrant history. "Saying galactic history is a bit much even coming from you, Thomas Eugene Paris," he muttered under his breath.
But if I do manage to get out of this alive and get back to you, B'Elanna, I'm going to find a way to break through that self-imposed isolation of yours and find out if we could be anything more to one another. Not right away, maybe. I'll have to regain your trust in me first. Friends first, that would be the way.
But first I have to succeed in my mission, get off this demonic ship of fools and back to my safe haven on Voyager. And to you.
Alive.
Note: This story is a companion piece to my 2017 story, "Book vs. Cover."
Thanks are due to Rocky_T and SeemaG for their insightful comments and edits, and to Lizzy74656 for reminding me I hadn't posted it here yet.