~I was her~
~She was me~
~We were young~
~We were free~
~And if there’s somebody~
~Calling me on~
~She’s the one~
~She’s the one.~
And If I Were to Remove These Walls
by Magik
Tom Paris looked around the Delta Flyer. Its walls held them inside and held the rock, threatening to crush them, outside. The walls were strong but the rest of the Delta Flyer was failing them. Life support was down and there was hardly any air left in the ship.
He was going to die. This was something he knew in his heart, his soul. If Voyager didn’t find some way to rescue them, he would die, Tuvok would die, and Ensign Wildman would die.
It wasn’t that Tom hadn’t faced death before. There were many times when he had stared into the Grim Reaper’s eyes and smiled, taunted. Almost as if he had been saying, "Take me or leave me. Tom Paris doesn’t play those kind of games."
Once, long ago when he was still behind prison walls, the screams of the people who had died because of his stupidity, his pride, still ringing in his ears, he had contemplated death. He had nearly taken his own life. He had been ready to, that was for sure. Nevertheless, something had stopped him. It had been like a glimmer of a dream flashing in front of his eyes, daunting him, teasing him, keeping him going. It became hope for him, the promise of something to do, something to be. That hope gave him something to live for as he lay on the cot in his cell, praying that each day would not be as bad as the last.
The walls of prison had crumbled, setting him free, giving him a second chance. Captain Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager had given him that chance. She had risked her good name on him, on his reputation that he was the best pilot in the Alpha Quadrant.
In the Alpha Quadrant.
Pity they weren't in the Alpha Quadrant anymore. Thanks to the Caretaker they had been flung into the nether regions of space, into the far off, never explored Delta Quadrant.
He was going to die in the Delta Quadrant, far away from his home, far away from his world. Tom Paris, self-proclaimed best pilot in the Federation, the man who had broken the Warp 10 barrier, was going to die trapped in the shuttlecraft he had designed, buried meters beneath thick rock. It just didn't seem right.
Tom sighed and ran a hand through his blond hair as he sat down on the floor. There was a lot of junk occupying his mind right now. Junk like how long the air would last and who would fly Voyager when he was gone. The important loses hadn't set in yet, they hadn't hit him. He knew they would. It was only a matter of time.
When he opened his eyes again, Tom could see Samantha Wildman sitting on the floor, her blue eyes staring straight ahead, lost deep in thought. He speculated that she was probably thinking about Naomi, her daughter, and the only child on the ship. Then he wondered how Naomi was handling all this.
And those thoughts reminded him of B'Elanna.
Whenever death had come for him before, whenever it reached out its icy hand, there hadn't been a reason to deny it. He had never had anything to live for as far as he was concerned. His family hated him, the members of the crew mostly didn't trust him, and the voices of all those dead people still haunted him. Nothing to lose but peace and quiet to gain.
Now, there was B'Elanna.
He had loved her for the longest time. The moment he saw her as he helped rescue her from the jaws of death, from a rocky grave, he had felt something stir inside him. She was the one. She was his one and only true love.
It was true that they had run across rough spots, had fought and bickered and called the whole thing off a time or two. Yet, in the end, they always wound up together. Almost as if fate just kept stepping in and given their hearts that little extra tug that made her talk to him or him apologize for saying something dumb.
What he wanted more than anything was to be able to see her right now, at this moment. If he was going to do, if he had to die right now, like this, then he wanted to be able to say goodbye to B'Elanna and make sure that she knew how much he loved her.
I don't want to leave her, he thought, noticing how tight and stale that air around them was getting. I can't leave her now. After that whole Maquis thing, and that whole crisis thing, how can I die? It would kill her.
B'Elanna had hit a very rough patch just a few weeks ago when they learned that all her friends in the Maquis had died. Instead of crying or turning to him for comfort, she pulled away and forced herself through life-threatening holodeck programs. One after the other. Inflicting broken bones and head traumas in her need to feel. It was a wonder that she had lived through it at all.
Tom felt so bad about the whole thing because he should have known. Of all the people on the ship, he should have been the one to see that something was wrong with her, that she was hurting.
Nevertheless, he had been too busy working on his masterpiece, on his shuttle, on the Delta Flyer. The very same ship that he was going to die in, the one he was trapped in.
"Lt.?" Tuvok inquired his voice the same, flat monotone thing it always was. There seemed to be a slight twinge of dread buried in it today though. It comforted Tom to know that the Vulcan was worried. It comforted him a lot.
"Yes, Tuvok?" he sighed, willing his eyes to glance up at the thin, dark skinned man standing behind one of the control consoles.
"Perhaps we should record some messages for our friends and family. It doesn't appear that we are going to be rescued," the Vulcan responded, his eyes locking with Tom's blue ones.
"That's a good idea, Tuvok. A very good idea," Tom managed to mumble out.
Tom had finished recording his message to B'Elanna a few minutes ago. It hadn't come out very well. Almost as if he froze upon thinking about his death. Like he couldn't believe that it was real and as long as he didn't believe it, then he couldn't die.
He wasn't delusional. He knew things didn't work like that. It was just so hard to face death now, to lay down in the face of adversity and say, "Take me, I'm ready" because he wasn't ready. As long as B'Elanna lived, he wouldn't be ready.
It had been different when he and B'Elanna were suffocating to death out in the blackness of space. They had been together and he knew that she loved him. She had told him just as his eyes had been closing, death upon them, she had said it. Moreover, he had been glad to die in her embrace.
This wasn't like that. This time he was dying without her, he was dying alone. He didn’t want to die.
The sounds of digging woke Tom from his half-slumber. Tuvok was still standing behind the console, a pillar of strength to those who needed one. Tom could see through the Vulcan's façade. It wasn't hard for him to see in the other man what he had always tried to be, strong, unreachable.
"Is that them?" he asked Tuvok, voice forlorn in the stillness.
"Yes," the Vulcan answered. "Yes."
Tom bent over to check on Ensign Wildman and whisper to her, "Don't worry, Samantha. We'll have you back to your daughter in no time."
Then they were being beamed out of the Delta Flyer. Tom couldn't have been happier. He wasn't going to die. Now he just had to see B'Elanna, tell her how he felt.
She was waiting for him in the Cargo Bay when he was beamed in. It didn't matter to her that some many other crewmembers were there; she flung herself into his arms anyway. Tom could hear her crying lightly into his shoulder and muttering, "If you ever do that to me again, Tom, I'll kill you myself."
He let a smile stretch across his face as he held her tight, as he brushed his fingers over her thick dark brown hair, and said, "I'm never going to leave you, B'Elanna. Never. I promise. I promise."
