Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

        "Ready?" Harry asked.

        "Yup. Just finishing the pre-flight checks...now."

        "Okay, let's go," Harry said.

        "Yes, sir!" Tom replied.

        "Shut up, Tom." There was only humor in his tone.

        Tom grinned as he guided the shuttle out of the docking bay. It was just the two of them on this away mission, which meant Harry was in command. Nothing had really changed between them, even though Harry was now a lieutenant and Tom was still an ensign. Rank had never really mattered for them when Tom was a lieutenant and Harry an ensign, and it still didn't matter now that their positions were reversed. But he couldn't resist teasing Harry about it. Harry responded with his usual amused tolerance.

        Their mission was to investigate a cluster of star systems for resources. Several shuttles had been deployed, and Voyager herself was also scanning the many asteroids and planets for anything useful. "Let's check out the Class M planet at 398 mark twelve," Harry said.

        "Sounds good to me," Tom replied. "I'm getting pretty sick of leola root." He set the course, hoping they would find some tasty fruits. Or anything that wasn't leola root, really.

        The planet was disappointing. Despite having a mild climate, there weren't any interesting food plants. There wasn't much life at all. Just some low-level, algae-type things. "Looks like life is just getting established here," Harry said. "That's odd. It's old enough that things should be further along by now."

        "I guess it's leola root for the foreseeable future, unless one of the other teams has found something."

        "Well, might as well scan for minerals, since we're here."

        Tom dropped the Delta Flyer into low orbit, while Harry aimed their sensors at the surface. "Anything interesting?" he asked, after a few passes.

        "No dilithium, but there are some minerals B'Elanna might be interested in. And..." He broke off suddenly.

        "What?" Tom said.

        "There's a massive ion storm headed our way," Harry said, staring in shock at his readouts.

        Sure enough, there it was, an ugly maelstrom just visible over the horizon. It had come out of nowhere.

        "Let's get out of here," Harry said.

        Tom hadn't waited for the order. He was already turning the Flyer around, heading up and away from the storm. But it was too late. The storm was on them with shocking speed, shaking the small craft alarmingly. They started listing sharply to starboard. Some kind of damage to the control system, Tom guessed.

        "There's a breach in one of the EPS conduits," Harry said. "We're venting plasma."

        "Damn it." Tom wrestled with the controls, in vain. "We don't have enough power to reach escape velocity."

        The powerful storm pounded them, spinning them helplessly. Then suddenly, it was gone. Tom righted the Flyer as best he could, realizing they were going to crash. "Brace for impact," he told Harry. Then everything went dark.

        "Harry? Harry, are you okay? Harry!"

        There was an edge of panic to the voice calling his name, which pulled Harry to consciousness. He was confused for a moment, then it all came pouring back. Shuttle mission. Ion storm. And...crash?

        "I'm all right," he said. "You?"

        "A little dinged up, but I can't complain," Tom said. The relief in his voice was palpable, and Harry remembered that Tom still had nightmares about killing people in a crash.

        He tried to sit up, so Tom would see he was okay. Tom pushed him to remain lying down. "Whoa, let me check you first." He went to get a medikit from the supply locker.

        Harry sat up anyway. Which was a mistake. His head throbbed, the pain so intense it made him nauseous. He lay back down again.

        "Told you so," Tom scolded. He knelt beside Harry, scanning him with a medical tricorder. "You have a concussion. Here, this will help your head." A hypo hissed against his neck.

        Harry immediately felt better. He sat up again. "Report," he said, remembering he was in command.

        "We've crashed," Tom said. "The Flyer's in surprisingly good shape, but we're not going anywhere until we make some repairs."

        "Good job, getting us down in one piece." He'd have to remember to commend Tom for that in his report. Assuming they actually made it back to Voyager.

        This mission had taken a bad turn, and even though it wasn't really Harry's fault, he felt responsible. He was in command, after all. He got to his feet and staggered over to the Ops console.

        Class M planet, so the air was breathable. No water to speak of, at least in this area. Damage could be fixed, but power could be a problem. They'd lost a lot of plasma. He tried to send a message to Voyager, but there was so much interference in the wake of the storm, he knew it was useless.

        "We have to get the Flyer repaired," he said. "Communications won't get through the atmospheric interference, and neither will Voyager's sensors."

        "Well, let's get to it," Tom said.

        Tom wiped sweat from his face with a sleeve. They had crashed on a desert plain, and it was unpleasantly hot. "I think that's it," he said. "All the repairs we can do for now, anyway."

        He and Harry went back into the Flyer, where it was cooler. Tom found the lunch Neelix had packed them, and brought it to the forward console, where Harry was sitting, studying the readouts.

        Tom sat beside him, opening up the containers and digging in. Now they just had to wait for the warp core to build up enough power to get them off the planet. Some of their dilithium had been damaged by the storm, so it would take a few hours.

        Harry wasn't eating. "It's not bad today," Tom said. "Only a little leola root in the sandwiches." Harry remained totally absorbed in the console readouts. "Harry?"

        Harry finally looked up. "I knew there was something odd about this planet. I think I know why there isn't more life here." His expression was grim.

        "Why?" Tom said.

        "Ion storms like the one we experienced," Harry said. "Judging from the geological strata, they are frequent and unusually violent."

        And fatal, Tom thought, though he didn't say it. "When is the next one?"

        "Soon," Harry said. "I've got the sensors at max range, and they're detecting a buildup at the poles. We have maybe an hour to get out of here."

        "That's not enough time," Tom protested. "We don't have enough power yet."

        "We need to lighten the payload," Harry said.

        Tom nodded. It was their only hope. Lunch abandoned, they got to work, removing everything nonessential from the shuttle.

        Forty-five minutes later, they looked at the things lying in a pile on the ground by the Flyer. Spare parts, tool kits, ration packs, survival gear. It wasn't enough. Harry looked at his tricorder, dismayed. "We're still 60 kilos too heavy."

        What else could they jettison? Everything else was either essential or bolted down so securely they wouldn't be able to remove it in time. They could try using the transporter to remove some of the heavier nonessential equipment, but that would take power they needed for liftoff.

        "I'll stay," Harry said suddenly.

        "What? Are you crazy?"

        "Take the Flyer up," Harry said. "I'll wait here. You can come back for me when it's clear."

        "Harry, you won't survive."

        "Neither of us will survive if we stay here," Harry said.

        "You go," Tom said. "I'll stay."

        "No," Harry said firmly. "You're a better pilot."

        "You're plenty good enough," Tom protested. There was no reason he had be the one at the controls. "Look, if we both stay, we might survive, in the shelter of the Flyer..."

        "Even if we did, the Flyer would be so damaged we'd never get out of here. Look, one of us needs to warn Voyager. If they send more shuttles looking for us, they could be caught like we were."

        It made sense...but every atom in Tom's body rebelled against the idea. "No. There has to be something else we can jettison." He went back into the shuttle, opening cabinets, looking for something, anything to throw out. There was a medikit, which he'd kept in case Harry's head injury started to bother him again, but it only weighed a few ounces. Everything else removable was already piled outside the shuttle.

        "Tom!" Harry called, voice urgent. "There's nothing left that weighs 60 kilos. We're almost out of time. I'm in command. I'm ordering you to take the Flyer and leave."

        Tom came back out. "You're determined to go down with the ship, aren't you?"

        "No, I want you to go up with the ship," Harry said, wry. "We don't have time to argue. Go!"

        Tom had expected this. Once Harry had his mind set on something, stopping him was like trying to move the sun.

        "Okay, Har," Tom said, conceding. "Just... I want you to know, you're the best friend I've ever had. I'll always remember you." He held out his arms. "Goodbye, Harry. I..." Tom let his voice break.

        Harry stepped into the embrace, hugging Tom hard. And Tom took the opportunity to apply the hypo he'd hidden in his sleeve.

        Harry shoved away, grabbing his neck where Tom had injected him. "I can't believe I fell for that." He glared at Tom. "My orders stand. I..." His eyes rolled up and he collapsed. Tom caught him, and dragged him onto the shuttle.

        "Goodnight, sweet prince. Looks like I'm in command of this mission now," Tom said.

Chapter Text

        Harry opened his eyes, utterly confused for a moment. Then he recognized where he was. Sickbay. And the rest came flooding back.

        He was alive, so Tom must be dead. Tom. A potent mix of grief and fury filled him, and hot tears welled in his eyes.

        "Lt. Kim, what is wrong?" The Doctor, puzzled, was running a scanner over him.

        Harry tried to speak, and found he couldn't. He just lay there crying, like an idiot.

        "Calm yourself, Mr. Kim," the Doctor said. "I would give you a sedative, but Mr. Paris gave you such a large dose of melorazine I'm afraid you wouldn't wake up for a week if I gave you anything else."

        "Tom," Harry managed to say.

        "He's on the next bed," the Doctor said.

        Harry was afraid to look. "You...you retrieved his body?"

        "Of course," the Doctor said. "It was almost too late, but fortunately he'd only been dead for a minute or so. Within the window for a code white resuscitation. That was the plan, wasn't it?"

        Harry struggled with that for a moment. He was afraid to believe it. "Tom...is he...?"

        "Mr. Paris will be fine, thanks to excellent medical care and no small amount of luck. A few more minutes and there would have been nothing even I could have done."

        A wave of relief washed through Harry, so intense he nearly passed out. Tom was alive. How was he alive? He tried to get up to see for himself, but the Doctor firmly pushed him back down on the bed. "You're not ready to get up yet. You'll fall flat on your face if you try."

        He looked over at the next biobed. Tom was lying there, pale and still. But the readouts looked normal. At least, there were readouts. "Tom," he breathed. "I'm going to kill him."

        "What exactly happened on that shuttle?" the Doctor asked, swapping the scanner for a regenerator.

        "I'm not sure," Harry said. He turned on his side so he could watch Tom more easily, still hardly believing they were both alive. "How did you find us?"

        "Would you please remain still?" The Doctor adjusted the regenerator, then continued. "The Delta Flyer suddenly appeared on our sensors, as if out of nowhere, broadcasting an automated distress signal. There was only one person aboard. Mr. Paris. He was not alive. The captain ordered him beamed to sickbay, where I revived him."

        "Where was I?" Harry asked, puzzled.

        "Mr. Paris had left a message on the Flyer, which we found after it was tractored in. You were in the transporter buffer. And you had been given a heavy dose of a sedative. Perhaps to lower your metabolic requirements? Life support was offline. Though that wouldn't matter, while you were in the transporter buffer." He put down the scanner. "I'm going to call the Captain now. She wanted to be notified when you regained consciousness."

        Harry brooded as the Doctor commed the bridge. He had to decide what he was going to tell the Captain.

        Harry signaled at Tom's door. They were both fully recovered, and had been released from sickbay. It was time to confront Tom.

        The door slid open. Tom was sitting at his desk. Harry didn't give him a chance to say anything. "Explain yourself, Mr. Paris."

        Tom...wasn't exactly intimidated. He raised his brows at the formal address — they'd been on a first name basis for years — and barely hid his smirk. "I wasn't going to leave you, Harry. So I put you in the transporter buffer. I figured that would reduce the shuttle's mass enough for the Flyer to reach escape velocity."

        "That's ridiculous," Harry said. "The energy it took to dematerialize me and maintain the data in the buffer was more than would be saved by the loss of my mass. It's basic thermodynamics."

        "Oh. I didn't know that."

        "The hell you didn't." Tom had a degree from Starfleet Academy in Astrophysics. Not to mention, they dealt with calculations like that all the time, especially here in the Delta Quadrant, where resources were often limited. "If you really thought the math worked out, you'd have just told me. And you wouldn't have turned off life support." The energy used by the transporter meant the Flyer couldn't achieve escape velocity without sacrificing life support.

        "All right," Tom admitted. "Look, Har, I couldn't leave you. I just couldn't. And we didn't have time to argue, so..."

        "Tom, two more minutes and the Doctor wouldn't have been able to revive you." A thought occurred to Harry. "That's why you put me in the transporter buffer, isn't it? Even though it took more energy. So I would survive even if life support ran out."

        Tom sighed, and nodded.

        "You disobeyed a direct order. Not to mention committing assault on a fellow officer and your supposed best friend." Harry fixed Tom with his best imitation of Captain Janeway's glare of doom.

        "And if I hadn't, you'd be dead," Tom pointed out.

        "You took a big risk. You nearly died."

        Tom shrugged. "I didn't. And you didn't either."

        "I was your commanding officer. What you did was mutiny."

        "Yup," Tom agreed with a grin.

        Harry took a breath, decided he was too angry to continue the discussion, and turned to leave.

        "Wait, Harry," Tom said, dropping the insouciant facade. "Please. Why are you so upset? It worked out okay in the end."

        "You don't respect me," Harry said. "I'm a lieutenant now, with five years experience in uniform. And you still think of me as that green kid you met on Deep Space Nine."

        "That's not true," Tom said.

        "Then why didn't you obey my direct order?"

        "Because you're my friend, and I wasn't going to let you die."

        "That's not how Starfleet works, Tom, you know that."

        "Sometimes there are more important things than Starfleet regulations, you know?"

        "Just...just don't do it again, Tom. Please."

        "I can't promise that, Harry."

        Harry slammed a fist on the desk in frustration, then turned to leave again.

        Tom jumped up, blocking his way to the door. "Look, Harry. Remember Akritiri?"

        Like Harry could forget. He felt himself flushing, angry that Tom would bring up the most humiliating experience of his life.

        "I was the ranking officer then, and I told you to leave me," Tom said. "And you didn't. If the rescue party had shown up even a few minutes later, we both would have died. I ordered you to save yourself, and you didn't."

        "That was different," Harry protested. "That place was a living hell."

        "So, if the accommodations were nicer, you would have saved yourself and let me die?"

        "No!" It wasn't the same. Couldn't Tom understand? "Anyway, you changed your mind later and told me not to leave you."

        Tom looked surprised at that. "I don't remember that," he said. "So, if I hadn't, you'd have saved yourself and let me die?"

        No, Harry thought, but he said, "I don't know."

        "Well, I do," Tom said. "You wouldn't have left me. Damn it, Harry, this isn't about rank. It's about friendship."

        "Just...leave me alone, Tom. I need to think about this." He left.

        "Ensign Paris," Chakotay said. "The captain wants to see you. In her ready room."

        Tom had barely set foot on the bridge, and he was already being called on the carpet. He threw a glance at Harry, who studiously avoided his gaze.

        The door opened for him immediately. She was at her desk. He stood at attention in front of it. "Ensign Paris reporting as ordered, Captain."

        "I read your report," Janeway said. She threw a padd onto the desk. "You admit to disobeying a direct order, and assaulting a superior officer."

        Tom winced. Put that way, it sounded pretty bad. But he couldn't deny it. "Yes, Captain. I'm sorry, Captain."

        "Are you really, Mr. Paris? You wouldn't do it again, should those circumstances arise again?"

        He couldn't lie. Not about this, and not to her. "If it meant saving Harry's life, yes, I would do it again."

        "That is against regulations, Mr. Paris."

        Tom knew that. He also knew that he would throw rules and regulations out of the nearest airlock in a heartbeat if it meant saving someone's life. Especially Harry's.

        "Lt. Kim recommended that you be reprimanded," Janeway continued. "I don't think that's appropriate." She stood, and came around the desk. Tom remained at attention, and was shocked when she reached up and took the lone pip from his collar.

        "You're demoting me? Again?" He was already an ensign.

        "Dismissed, crewman."

        Tom stood there, stunned for a moment, then turned and went back out on the bridge. He could swear everyone was staring at him. He felt like the missing pip on his collar was like a flashing beacon, though of course that was ridiculous.

        He crossed the bridge to Ops.

        Harry's eyes went straight to his collar. "She didn't."

        "Oh, she did," Tom said.

        "I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't mean for that to happen."

        He didn't seem sorry. He seemed almost...amused.

        "It's not funny, Harry. And this isn't going to change anything. If I had to do it all over again, I would." He turned to go to his station, when Harry grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

        "I hate what you did," Harry said. "But I can't argue with the results." He handed Tom a small box.

        Tom opened it. It contained a single black pip. "What, you're making me an ensign junior grade?" That wasn't even a real rank.

        "No," a voice came from behind him. He turned, to find the captain standing there. She was...smiling? "Lt. Kim actually recommended you for a promotion. For your courage, initiative, and selflessness. I've decided to go along with his recommendation." She held up the pip she had taken from him earlier.

        Tom was speechless as she attached it to his collar, along with the black pip Harry had given him.

        "Congratulations, Lt. Paris." The entire bridge broke out in applause.

        "Thank you, Captain!" Tom said, finally finding his voice. "That was...one hell of a promotion prank?"

        She nodded, laughing. "You should have seen your face." She patted his shoulder. "Keep up the good work, Tom."

        "Yes, m'am!" Tom turned to face Harry, who was positively beaming.

        "We got you," Harry said. "You really fell for it."

        "Yeah, I did," Tom said. "So...I'm forgiven?"

        "I guess," Harry said. "I'd probably have done the same thing, if I'd thought of it." He grinned. "Congratulations, Lieutenant."

        "Thanks!" Tom reached out to embrace Harry, but found himself held at arm's length.

        "You don't have any hypos on you, do you?" Harry asked.

        "Not this time," Tom promised, and threw his arms around Harry in a bearhug.