Beneath Rain

"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."

-William Faulkner

I.

When the lift doors open onto the bridge, Tom is caught off guard by the complete silence there. Tuvok has command, the others on shift all junior officers- people who were once young and green and terrified, the way Harry used to be.

They're not so young now. Far from green. But perhaps still a little scared?

Scared.

That's about how Tom feels. And, understandably, filled with happiness, too. It's just that tied up in a knot with all the joy of his newborn baby, the relief of being three hours out from Earth, is fear. Complete terror, really.

But this last feeling Tom tries to push away, failing a little as he takes in each officer's look of trepidation.

"Lieutenant," Tuvok nods, in what has to be the Vulcan approximation of warmth. "I have yet to extend my personal congratulations."

"Thanks," Tom replies, embarrassed when his voice catches a little. Is he really getting all mushy at the mere mention of Miral? "The Captain asked me to come to her Ready Room," he adds, clearing his throat. "So I think I'll just…"

Tom's awkward, vague gesture goes without comment from Tuvok, the pilot inwardly chiding himself as he chimes at Janeway's door.

What has gotten into me tonight? Hold it together, Paris.

He enters to find the Captain in civvies rather than her uniform, her gaze transfixed on the paused image of an older woman, her grey hair pulled into a bun and a jacket tied tight around her.

"Tom," Janeway says, finally looking at the officer standing in front of her. She bid him entry, but it's obvious she's preoccupied. Her eyes a little glassy as she moves to dismiss the vid.

"Your mother?" Tom asks, making her pause the gesture that will send the image away.

"Yes," she sighs, sounding . . . a little unlike herself. "She commed a few hours ago, my sister too." Her eyes return to the screen, her finger soon tracing the edges of it. "It's apparently been pouring rain in Indiana, not cold enough to snow. . . I could hear it on the comm line. The sound of the water hitting the roof, sliding down the porch."

"Not a sound you ever get on a ship," Tom notes, perching a little on her desk.

It's strange that it's only something he misses now that he thinks about it. Remembers, with complete clarity, how it felt to listen to the rain in bed, growing up in his parents' house in Marin.

"I didn't realize how much I missed it," the Captain confesses. And as the sound of Janeway's slightly wobbly voice finds him, Tom has to desperately fight the pressure building up behind his eyes.

He would normally change the subject, bring up the paperwork from Auckland they both need to complete before he can be legally deemed a free man. But as he sits there, staring at the vid of Janeway's mother, a bay window in view behind the woman with a rain-logged landscape barely visible, Tom begins to shake, tears pooling in his eyes.

"I can't do this," he says, plucking his pips off and dropping them on her desk.

"Tom?" Janeway asks, now standing up in alarm. "Tom, what can't you do?"

"I can't cry in here," he begins, tears already streaming. "Not in here, and wearing these."

His apparent conflict is both a tribute to all that he's achieved and a reflection (unexpected and yet terribly appropriate) of what Janeway herself feels. And as Paris folds in, jagged sobs of relief and fear overtaking him, his Captain stands beside him, her own face quickly crumpling.

The hand she places on his arm trembles with seven years worth of hope and burden.

. . . . .